Däremellan Hannah Lee, Third Place
The lake beyond the mountains
all winter long.
cracks ran parallel to the shore, betraying the shifting water beneath. Through the years, the man had seen every shade of blue reflected in the ice—had seen the sun change the hue of the lake like a glass window. He had grown fond of sang life by the water and the sounds the lake would make.
After nearly a month, the grip of polar night slowly released her hand on the land. Unforgiving winter and twenty-eight days without sun—nothing but darkness and the constant fall of snow—left the world barren in its wake. Here, at the top of the world, there was a bargain: the midnight sun in June in exchange for the polar night in December. The lake settled and sank in the valley, solidifying into stone. Evergreens weighed down by snow ran down the swooping mountain range, stopping on the banks of the frozen lake. There, beside the lake, an old man lived alone. He had seen the lake freeze and thaw enough times to know that each year the ice was different. Some years, the ice broke apart into pointed shards before freezing down solid, creating a crown of spikes along the outer banks. In quieter years, the water went still without a fight and froze clear as glass. This year, frozen pockets of air ran up through the ice like trailing rivers. Long, thick [ 40 ]
As the ice shifted and expanded, settling atop the water, the ice cried out wordlessly— each crack a plaintive call. Deep and resounding, the notes swooped in the air like diving birds weighed down by a foot of ice. Many years ago, the old man had heard the call of a breaching whale beside the sea. It was the closest comparison he had to the sound of the ice. And, all winter, the lake called out like a living creature larger than the greatest animal in the sea. This week had brought the first glimpse of light since November. A sunrise hovered along the horizon before slipping back to the other side of the world. Spring would come in the following months—but now it was a matter of waiting. The old man had seen the seasons come and go. He could outlast the season between seasons when winter refused to release her grip. Stuck between winter and spring, the world could only wait until spring grew strong enough to take lead. They said winter lasted six months in the north, but it wasn’t really winter. It was a terrible space of in-between, the two seasons
