The Sound of Ice Growing

Part One – The Frost

Winter in Eirik’s Landing isn't just cold. It’s quiet. By December the lake freezes solid, and the old folks say the ice gets hungry. They claim if you shout near the lakefront, the sound gets pulled down. Trapped. I always thought it was just a lie to keep kids off the thin ice.

I don't think that anymore.

You have to be careful what you say here. Because in April, when the thaw hits, the air screams. Arguments, confessions, prayers—three months of noise releasing at once. It sounds impossible. It is. But I’ve heard it.

I was thinking about the thaw while I watched Noah sleep.

Three in the morning. The bedroom smelled like iron—that specific scent the cold has when it gets inside the walls. The heater was clicking, losing its war against the draft.

Noah shifted. The quilt slipped off his shoulder. My hand went out to fix it, then stopped. Hovered there in the dark. Three months ago, I would have touched him. Three months ago, he would have pulled me in.

Now? Nothing.

He hadn’t looked at me properly since the first frost. When I asked what was wrong, he gave me that tight, brittle smile. Just tired, Sophie. Just the winter.

But tired doesn't make a man leave his bed every night at three a.m.

I kept my eyes closed as his breathing changed. Felt the mattress dip. He moved slowly, trying not to wake me, which hurt worse than if he’d just stomped out. You don't tiptoe around someone you love. You tiptoe around a bomb.

The latch clicked. A rush of freezing air, then the soft thud of the door.

I lay there staring at the empty space. The sheets were still warm. I pulled his pillow close and breathed him in. Soap. Sleep. And underneath that, the smell of the lake. Mineral and dead.

My mind went where minds go in the dark.

In Eirik’s Landing, there’s nowhere to hide. The tavern closes before midnight. The church is bolted shut. So where does a man go in the middle of the night if not to someone’s bed?

I sat up. My hands were shaking. We were supposed to get married in spring. The invitations were on the kitchen table, waiting for stamps.

Outside, the ice was growing. A deep, resonant booming as the ice expanded and shifted. It sounded like whales calling to one another from the deep.

I heard it now, vibrating through the walls of the cottage. Boom.

Noah was out there. With the ice. With his secrets.

I threw off the covers. Dressed fast—two pairs of socks, my father’s old coat. I grabbed the flashlight from the drawer. Then, without letting myself think about why, I took the iron ice chisel from the closet.

Maybe I wanted something heavy in my hands. Maybe I wanted to break something.

Part Two – The Thickness

His tracks were fresh. Deep gouges cutting straight toward the open water.

The lake stretched out like a hole in the world—flat black where the wind had swept the snow away. In summer this lake is chaos, gulls and tourists. Now it was dead silent.

Noah was out there. A dark smudge against the gray, maybe a hundred yards out. Alone.

I watched from behind an old oak, gripping the chisel until my fingers cramped. No other silhouette. No lantern bobbing. Just him.

He stopped near a pressure crack. Then he did something that made my stomach turn.

He dropped to his knees. He didn't just kneel; he folded, like he was in church. He brushed the frost away with a bare hand and lowered his face until his lips nearly touched the black surface.

I couldn't hear him, but I saw the white puff of his breath hitting the ice. Rhythmic. Fast.

He was speaking to the water. His shoulders shook. He’d pause, like he was listening, then start again. It looked like a confession. An intimate confession.

The old lore flooded back. The ice keeps receipts.

He was banking his affection. Putting it where I couldn't hear it. An old lover? A ghost? Or was he listing all the reasons he couldn't stand me anymore, hiding them until spring so he could leave me with a clear conscience?

He stayed twenty minutes. When he stood up, he was stiff. He touched his fingers to his lips and pressed them to the ice.

A kiss.

I shrank back behind the tree as he passed. His face was gray. Hollowed out. He looked like a man who’d just given blood.

When he was gone, I walked out to the spot. Knelt where he’d knelt. Put my ear to the ice and strained.

Nothing. Just the deep groaning of the lake settling. His words were already frozen, trapped inches below my knees.

The next morning, I found the notebook in his boot.

Not a diary. A map. Hand-drawn sketches of the lake, coordinates, dates. Nov 12 - North Cove. Nov 18 - By the sunken log. Dec 2 - The Deep Drop.

He’d been filling the lake for weeks.

"Deep freeze tonight," the radio said. "Temperatures dropping to twenty below. Ice thickening."

If I didn't get to those words today, the new ice would bury them too deep. I couldn't wait for spring. I couldn't walk down the aisle toward a man whose heart was buried in the mud.

I grabbed the heavy ice pick from the shed.

"Going out?" Noah asked. He had a towel around his waist. He looked softer in the morning light, less like a stranger.

"Clearing the walkway," I lied. The words tasted like dirt in my mouth.

"Be careful," he said. "I heard the ice growing last night."

"I know," I said. "I heard it too."

Part Three – The Fracture

The first swing jarred my bones. Iron on ice, a crack that echoed like a gunshot. A chip flew up and cut my cheek.

I didn't stop.

Crack. Who is she? Crack. Tell me.

The ice fought back. Every impact shook my arms, rattled my teeth. I was sweating inside my coat, hot and sticky, but my feet were numb.

Just leave it, the thought whispered. Walk away. If you don't hear it, it isn't real.

But I couldn't. The silence was a cancer. It had to be cut out.

I raised the pick one last time. Put my weight behind it. Screamed as I brought it down.

Thunk.

The sound changed. A dull, wet noise. The bottom of the crater went white, spiderwebs shooting outward. Then, the seal broke.

Air hissed out. It smelled like stale water and ozone. And with it—the sound.

It started as a vibration humming through my boots. Then voices rose up, distorted by the cold pressure. A chorus. But a chorus of one.

"...blue wool sweater..."

"...the way she hums when she's cooking..."

"...dark roast, two sugars..."

I froze. This wasn't a love letter to another woman. It was a list.

"Her name is Sophie," his voice said from the water. Tinny and distant. "She was born in October. She hates the cold, but she stays because I love the mountains."

My heart hammered against my ribs.

"She has a scar on her left knee from a bicycle crash when she was twelve."

"She wakes up at 6:30 without an alarm."

"She is the only thing that makes sense."

"Her name is Sophie. My name is Noah. Her name is Sophie."

The words looped and overlapped, a desperate recitation. Big things. Small things. My mother’s name. The date we met.

The anger drained out of me so fast I went dizzy. Why was he telling the ice things he already knew? Why was he reciting my life like he was studying for a test?

"Sophie!"

He was running across the ice in just his flannel shirt, slipping, scrambling.

"Don't!" he screamed. "Don't break it!"

He collapsed at the edge of the jagged hole, hands scrabbling at the slush, trying to cover it. Like he could shove the sound back in or catch the words before they evaporated.

Too late. The air was full of his voice, reciting my name over and over.

He slumped forward, hands in the freezing water, shaking.

"I needed them," he choked out. "I needed to keep them safe."

I touched his shoulder. He flinched away.

"Safe from what?"

He looked up. His eyes were red.

"I forgot where I was yesterday," he whispered. "I was in the kitchen, holding a cup of coffee, and I didn't know whose house it was."

The wind howled over the open hole, but I couldn't move.

"It's starting, Sophie. Like my dad. The fog." He gestured helplessly at the black water. "I thought if I put it here... if I listed it all... the ice would keep it. Even if I lose it, the lake would remember you."

He looked at the hole I’d hacked open. "But you let it out. You let it all out."

Part Four – The Thaw

The last echoes faded. Silence rushed back, heavier than before.

While I’d been afraid of losing his heart, he’d been terrified of losing his mind.

I moved without thinking. Wrapped my arms around him, pulled his frozen hands against my chest under my coat. He was shaking so hard his teeth clicked.

"You didn't lose it," I said. "Look at me."

He wouldn't. "I need the backup, Sophie. Some days are clear, but some days the edges go fuzzy. I needed to know the record was safe."

I grabbed his face. Made him look at me.

"The lake is just water. It doesn't care."

"But if I forget—"

"Then I'll tell you." The wind stung my eyes, but I didn't blink. "If you wake up and don't know who I am, I will tell you. Every morning. The coffee, the scar on my knee, the way you look at me when you think I'm not watching. I will tell you until you believe me."

He stared at me. The panic receded, replaced by something fragile.

"You're not leaving?"

He’d pushed me away for months, hiding this, certain it would break us.

"I'm staying for the freeze," I said. "And I'm staying for the thaw."

He broke then. Really broke—loud, ugly sobs against my shoulder. I held him while snow dusted his hair, covering the wound I’d made in the ice.

"We have to go back," I finally said. "We'll freeze out here."

He nodded, wiped his face on his sleeve. He looked at the black water one last time. Already a skin of new ice was forming, crawling across the surface.

"Wait," I said.

I pulled off my glove. Leaned over the hole, feeling the chill rise to meet me.

"We don't hide things anymore," I said. "But we can still save them."

I put my lips close to the water.

"My name is Sophie. His name is Noah. We are not afraid."

He hesitated. Then he leaned down beside me, our shoulders touching.

"We are not afraid," he whispered.

We watched the water darken as the ice sealed the promise in. Not a secret this time. A foundation.

We stood up. My feet were numb. We walked back toward the shore, toward the blinking lights of the house. We had a long winter ahead of us.