Beneath the Floe

The auger bites through the sea ice with a sound like grinding teeth. A meter down, slush blooms up around the bit, and then you're through. Black water yawns at your feet, older than any night you have known.

You bait the hook with a strip of pemmican, mutter something that might be a prayer, and lower the line into the dark. It does not sink so much as descend, drawn down with intent. Forty seconds. Fifty. Then the line snaps taut and your shoulders jerk forward.

You skid across the ice on your knees. Whatever has taken the hook is enormous, and patient, and pulling you toward the hole with the slow inevitability of gravity. Your mittens smoke against the line. The water below the auger shifts, and for an instant you see something pale turn beneath it, large as a door, watching.