frozen pond

The day had finally come. The long endless night was gone. The small town buried beneath the giant trees, surrounded by monumental mountains, was finally in the light. The sun was upon them. The town was exposed. The icy wind blew suspiciously around the vacant homes and throughout the empty roads, but no one was found. The wind slowly whistled its way to the back of the town, where the mountains gathered, where the wind stopped, where the pond was located. The place where the entire town was gathered.

Nothing was the only thing still in motion. The people stood as the trees, lifeless with anxious faces. Their eyes, all fixed on the frozen pond with anticipation. They wait. The air is cold. The atmosphere is heavy, the sound remained deaf. The day has arrived. A day they all feared. A day mothers refuse to even whisper about. The very day fathers prepare their son’s for. The day when the boys must choose to become men, by stepping onto the frozen pond. Only then are they recognized as men, only then are they free and allowed to go hunting with the men. Only then are they allowed to take a wife. Only then can they mate. The urge drives them mad, insane and so they choose to step onto the frozen pond, or remain on the shores as boys, until the sun returns.

The time has come. The entire town watched as the boys stood on the ice, in the midst of the frozen pond, far from the shores. The mothers prepare to look away, the fathers are preparing to hold their breaths, the young men on the shores are afraid but refuse to look away, the young women are all holding each other's hands, excited yet frightened. Their beauty is elegant, natural, innocent. It is to die for and the boys are ready to lose their lives for it.

They must eat from the mysterious tree that stands in the middle of the frozen pond. The tree that never dies but comes to life only when the sun arrives, to bring forth its magical fruits. They must eat of the fruit and carry the rest in their mouths in the frigid waters to the entire town waiting for them on the shores, so they too may have a taste. But the boys must wait for the ice under them to break first. This was what they have all come to see. This was the day they have dreaded and waited for.

As the people looked on, the shadows of the boys along with the shadow of the mysterious tree were the only things in motion, slowly moving across the ice as the sun arched its way across the heavens. The ice beneath them started to come alive. The sounds coming from it were strange, ominous. It quickly traveled to the people on the shores, breaking the deathly silence. They all gasped for the same air. Reality starts to become real as the boys on the frozen pond begin to realize that the ice on which they stand will soon break, plunging them into the icy pond.

Without moving they glanced subtly to their left and to their right at each other as they began to realize that many of them will not make it to the shores. Their breathing is deep, strong and uniform, their teeth sunken deep into the fruit as they hold it with their mouths. Fear was upon them, all of them, as they faced the most arduous journey of their lives. They took one last look at the people waiting for them, far on the shores. The ice breaks. They all fall into the frozen pond.

Don't stand on the shores of life. The sun may never return