They’re beautiful, the owls stolen from the ice. In the morning, the locals take hatchets to the lake until they’ve carved perfect, sparkling owls. These they set anywhere in the village where there is not already a perfect, sparkling owl and sell them to the tourists who come to wonder at the senselessness of it all.
I am not a tourist. I am not a local either. I don’t know what that makes me. An immigrant, maybe. An intruder, definitely.
The locals, for instance, would never call it a lake. The hard, black expanse of it never melts. They do not even have a word for liquid water, and when I try to explain it to the children, they accuse me of lying.
A lake would make for sorry owls, Miss, they say.
They are not wrong.
Rain, rivers, oceans—they reject all of it. Here, there is only ice, and ice is for owls. It makes for a stillness that freezes their very souls. When they look at me—someone who travelled from afar—they see a heretic because they can’t imagine gods that move, gods that live.
Where do you come from, Miss? they ask. Why can’t you return there?
Desperate for their understanding, I steal an owl from atop the lake and bring it into the classroom. I set it underneath a lamp and for an entire day we do nothing but watch it melt. When it’s gone, I pour what remains into a glass and drink it.
The children scream.
There’s an owl in your stomach, Miss! they cry.
I tell them that an owl such as this can only be returned to the ocean and propose a field trip to prove to them it’s real. No one in town believes there’s such a thing, but their parents all sign permission slips for a day of quiet time. They are wrong to do so. I am wrong to ask.
The children will gain knowledge, it’s true, but that will cost them everything else.
On the train, I open the children’s bags and find ice owls glowing in the porter’s passing flashlight. When I ask the children why they brought them, they say that they want the ocean to know what it’s wrong about.
When we reach the shore, the tracks pass high over the water. The children smush their faces against hot windows to look down at the tide.
What does this mean, Miss? the children cry. How much of the world can’t be trusted?
And I answer them by pushing open my window and jumping from the train down into the water. I bob up just in time to wave to the children as the tracks turn, loop back, carry them away to a place that will never again feel like home.