Tomorrow

"Yes, I know, Magda," I sighed, resting my head back against the ice. Her voice scratched through the cellphone, tinny and unpleasant. "Yes, I brought it on myself. I know. I don't care."

The minor explosion on the other end of the line had me yanking the phone away from my ear. As she screamed, I waited, staring up at the blank grey sky and feeling the cold water seep into my coat. Snow scattered across the frozen pond had found its end beneath me, melting and crawling up into my clothes. Her screaming, likewise, melted to tears and I brought back the phone with a weary inevitability.

"It'll be alright, Magda. I don't need to go to law school to live."

She didn't seem convinced. My ears were burning from her renewed energy and the stagnant cold alike. Every word burst from her with frigid disapproval laced in biting fear. What would a girl like me do a thousand miles from home with a student visa that wouldn't be valid when I wasn't a student? How would I get back when I'd spent everything to get here?

I spread my free hand against a thinner patch of ice, watching how it gave slightly with my movement, bubbles shifting in the dark.

What would I do?

My chest was too heavy to lift from the pond as Magda finally wound down. But I managed to give her the farewells she required.

"Yes, goodbye. I hope Sylvie is doing well. Goodbye."

I hung up on her muttered, "Better than you."

My aunt had never been prouder of me than the day I'd gotten my acceptance letter, and I'd known that day, seeing that greedy light in her eyes, she never would be that proud of me again. Her investment in me had finally borne fruit and she could receive the gains she deserved.

Or I could disrespect the entire board of deans and get unceremoniously dropped from the roster days before class began.

But I couldn't let them do it.

It hadn't taken all that long to find the right laws to stop them. There was precedence in cases just like this one that had stopped construction before and whether the building was a corporate factory or a university music hall made no difference.

My fingers were numb and red as I held them over my face and screamed.

What else could I have done?

Magda knew the answer to that. Silence would have served me well. I could have frozen my heart and laid still and unnoticed. I'd have been much better off.

But this hill, this pond - they were special.

I couldn't have let them go.

I wouldn’t. They weren’t mine in name, but they were all I had left. All that could remind me of…

My fist smashed down onto the ice. That thin spot I’d pressed forgotten as the cold seeped in. My past had betrayed me and my future had shattered into a shambles of what it might have been.

“Why couldn’t I have both?” I asked the empty sky as sparse snow began to pepper my face. I could scarcely feel it. There was nowhere to hide from it, anyway. Magda wouldn’t take me back. The country I loved would treat me as a criminal if I tried to stay. The school I’d aspired to had slammed the door in my face. My heart beat fast and feeble like a bird in my throat, fluttering in panic even as the snow weighed it down. What could I do?

Peace was far away, somewhere up beyond smears of grey clouds or perhaps, down below the ice in the quiet dark of the pond.

An ominous crack.

Finally my chest didn't feel quite so heavy as I leapt to my feet. Cold electricity shot through my arms and legs as I slipped on the ice.

It fractured beneath my feet.

Branching out with an inevitability that froze my lungs into an aching keen, the ice failed me. I fell.

I'd never seen this pond before. I'd never swam its waters in the warm embrace of summer. Yet I now knew it more intimately than my mother's stories could have ever given me.

My thick winter clothes dragged me down as the water pressed freezing hands to my mouth, my shoulders, and pushed.

This hill was sacred. This pond was home to the gods my mother had worshipped, older than the trees planted at its edges.

Light was thin and pale in the depths, my blood screaming through my veins could not bring me closer to its source.

A woman of mud and silt was guardian of the pond and the surrounding waters. She had entranced farmers and blessed their efforts when they pleased her.

My shoes tangled in the weeds as I hit the bottom. Burning need tempted my mouth to break, only to let dark waters freeze within.

She had also taken those who had hurt the land into her arms, into the earth beneath the water, and never let them rise again.

Fumbling with my laces, I fought numb fingers to free my feet. The cold was scraping through my blood like a steel brush against a chalkboard. I couldn't die here - I had...

What did I have?

What was left to fight for? The pond would be safe without me. I was broke. Kicked out of law school. Kicked out of the family I had left. And I'd done it all to myself.

I'd even cracked the ice.

And still.

Still I did not want to lose tomorrow, too.

Doubling my efforts didn't make a difference. My fingers were stiff and curled in the cold, my lungs burning in ice water, and my heart too heavy to rise above the ice on my own.

But I fought.

As the darkness slendered the last ray of light to a pinprick, I fought.

And the water gripped me tight.

I awoke in that darkness.

But no- the light was fuller, now. The moon clear and unwavering above painted the shore in gentle white and grey. I was on the shore, too tired to shiver, too cold to be dead.

And I could hear voices approaching.

"She needs help!" Someone shouted, and I couldn't exactly disagree, seeing the blurred bob of their flashlight some distance away.

And somehow, I felt that I had already received it.

Beneath my arms, where a rescuer might grip to raise me from the water, two thick muddied handprints froze to my coat in the chill night air.

I closed my eyes as the searchers circled me.

There was still tomorrow.