Fishing.

I waded into the lake until the water lapped at the top of my boots. I could touch the edge of the ice, softened by springtime. Before me it stretched, barren and desolate beneath a white sky. The boys launched rocks and branches to break it; but toward the centre it was impermeable. Their projectiles fell from the air and bounced on the surface; the ice jolted with the impact. The shock waves came rippling outwards to the shore. When a stone finally shattered through, bubbles formed under the surface, which floated towards me and gurgled out from under the ice. Mermaid's breath.

The worm writhed in his muddy fingers. He pierced its skin with a dark little hook; a needle into a satin pincushion. Ver de terre. Into the icy water it was plunged, and, seconds later, the line was tugged on. He reeled out a bright wriggle of silver. A small fish, mouth gasping, eyes round and golden with the shock of the burning air, with the dirty, dry warmth of our fingers. Blood trickled down its mouth. I was startled by the colour of it. Red, like my own. We laid him on the grass whilst we found a bottle to keep him in. His mouth gaped, open and shut. I'm still alive, he was screaming. But in the air, his voice didn't carry. 

In the bottle he thrashed, but not for long. Soon he floated belly-up. His time had come. I accepted his death, for his blood was on my hands. Then a white van came and a man stepped out and asked for our fishing licence, and of course we had none. We shooed him with apologies, and he left us, and our little fish. Put it back, he'd said. And we did. We poured him into the cold lake like liquid silver and life snatched him right back into its depths. Then he was gone, that brief transcender of two worlds, separated by ice.

I bent and rinsed his blood from my fingertips.