I pull harder on the oars, driving my boat against the current, through the frozen sea, larger pieces of ice diverting me, resisting, but unable to turn me from my path. A gentle wind begins to blow against my back, casting my hair into my face, my eyes, sticking to the sweat already formed on my forehead.
My oars fight to find purchase in the sea, scraping atop shattered sheets of ice that ripple and convulse at my passing, however slow and labored.
My progress is halted with a jolt as I meet a sheet of ice too wide and far too obstinate to be turned aside. I lift my head and look to my lands, fallow and gray. No smoke rises from my chimney, no hides hang drying. I set my teeth and plant my feet, pulling against the oars with all the strength I can muster. As I strain against the ice, fragments of the sheets around me bump and jostle, knocking against the hull and each other. I reset my grip and again pull on the oars, my breath hissing out from between my teeth, and I watch as the sea ice gathers around my boat, crowding in close, seeking to resume its previous form, a solid sheet, impassable by boat, yet unable to bear my weight on foot.
I rage at this and throw myself against the oars, dragging them through the field of ice closing in around me. I lean back on them, my joints cracking and popping, the oarlocks screaming in protest. I can't bear to turn and set my gaze upon the sheet of ice in my path, and so again I throw myself backward, the flesh of my hands tearing as I stare at my home, dead and empty, lost to the cold. My boat groans in protest of my efforts, every board and plank straining and creaking, as desperate to let go as I am to hold on.
The ice seizes the oars, refusing to release them, refusing to give even an inch's passage. I clench my eyes shut tightly, and again I throw myself against the oars, redoubling my grip against the betrayal my blood presents, the slickened wood threatening to escape me at any moment, and then it happens: an oar snaps, and with it the oarlock. I tumble backwards against the mast, still clinging to the handle of the oar and rising just in time to see the splintered shaft of my oar slip under the ice.
I rise and seize my remaining oar, yanking it free of the clinging ice and raise it over my head, crying out my fury and despair as I turn and bring it down on the sheet of ice at the bow, feeling the impact shudder up my arms as I'm sprayed with tiny bits of ice, my desperate attack having only the meanest effect on the ice. Again and again I raise the oar high and bring it down, my cries breaking down to choked sobs as my desperation sees my confidence flag.
I set the blade of the oar down on the ice and lean my head against my hands, still gripping the handle. The fog of my breath swirls about me in the new stillness, my heavy, shuddering breathing the only sound to my ears.
Then I think I hear her voice whisper past my ear before that too is taken from me, snatched up and carried off to sea by a sudden breeze from across the ice. I raise my head, now smeared with the sticky blood from my hands, and I swear I can feel a lingering warmth across my cheek, half-remembered as a lover's sigh upon waking, fading as quickly as it came, taking my strength with it.
My shoulders sag and my head bows, but then without a sound the oar slips through the ice and into the sea, loosing itself from my grip and disappearing into the brine where the vast sheet of ice before me has split and gently opened, a path to the bosom of the sea gradually widening as I look on.
I raise my sail and see it ripple slowly in the gentle breeze, filling reluctantly and coaxing my boat forward through the ice to the open sea. I seat myself at the rear of my boat, my hand on the tiller, and close my eyes, letting the breeze play across my face as it slowly carries me out of sight of land.
4 March 2015
