Touch

Excerpt from Alexi Zentner's short story "Touch:"

        I woke in the middle of the night, thinking I heard Marie calling me. Out the window, something looked wrong, as if the entire world were under water with my father and Marie, and I realized that thin sheets of rain were falling from the sky, icing the trees, turning all of Sawgamet into a frozen river. I went to check the fire in the stove, remembering my mother's shivering, and I saw that the az no longer hung above the door.
       The steps beside the log chute were slick, and the mist was star-bright, neither water nor ice- diamonds falling from the sky. When I reached the river, my mother was swing the ax. The ice shone below here, as if the river had swallowed the moon, and the sounds of the ax stricking the ice was ringing and clear, like metal on metal.
       I walked closer to my mother and almost expected the river to shatter under the sharp, oiled blade, the ice to cleave beneath our feet. The river would take us and freeze us alongside my father and Marie. Or my father would step from the open ice himself, pulling Marie behinnd him, holding her hand, the four of us walking to the house, where were could sit in front of the irres and he could tell us stories about fish made of ice.