Cleave, slip, shatter, sink—I need to see it. Treading tepid water, freezing, insisting that it happen while I’m watching—I await the magician’s prestige. “I missed it! Do the trick again,” I plead. With no signal of another show coming, I contort my mind trying to will the titan to dance for mortal me. “A River of Ice” the marquee reads. . . . Cleave! Slip! Shatter! Sink! I’m shocked to hear an entire boat of people behind me. “Swim in!” they yell in unison. I glare the other way: Melt for me already. After one last insistent look at the stage’s static curtain, I turn in. Inhale, reach, pull; reach, pull; all the while, kicking. Alternately, seawater seeps into each of my aural orifices, muting the entire theater. Then I breach for a breath and see the audience awe-jawed, frozen, boatmen gawking. I twist-turn to match their gazes, seawater flings from my ears, and I hear the final measures of their gasps and groans, my mother’s among them; no one—not even she—is any longer worried for my safety. And all I see is a colossal wave rolling at me.
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'Tween the Trunks of Tall Pines