1. Dad let me learn to skate again this year, saying that “if you fear the ice, you’re more likely to fall through.”

2. In the summer, I cover the blades of my skates and glide on the kitchen tiles, using the perimeter of the bench top to guide me. It’s really more of a shuffling, like the way ducks move in groups, feet straddling each other's heels in close succession. Or like riding fish, one tied to each foot. Then when the winter finally comes and the pond is thick with ice, I skate in rings, pushing around an office chair like training wheels. The air braces me the same way it does when Mum stabs at the building ice that sticks to our freezer, the door left open and the room chilling in fast forward. When I leave the chair, at last, in the snow, a biped all my own, I fall, fall, fall, riddled with bruises and red knees. My ankles bend and crack, spraining for days at a time. Dad straps me up and encourages me to try again. He says: “before tackling the thing of athletes, Christ, and polar bears, children must first learn to balance on blades as thin as wisps.”

3. I am told to stay on the clear blue, avoiding the gray in the very center of our garden pond. The hole in the middle is difficult to see, and is big enough for someone unaware, someone distracted to fall into. I know it is there. I would not fall, I think, like others have before me. Swimming in icy waters is like waking up from anesthetic, my brother had told me, having done both at some point in his life. I’m not afraid of breaking through the ice, but instead of what might break out from it. In the winter, the water freezes to keep us above it; I fear the thing it traps beneath. Panic and hypothermia are fatal in icy waters—they say this is what killed my brother the last time he ever tread the ice, but I disagree. The figure appears in shadows, pushing up against the surface. My father tells me it’s the fish, but I’ve never seen a fish like this. It gurgles, heaving beneath the depths and circling the ice hole, waiting for someone like me to slip.

4. I watched the local amateur skating competitions in the year after my brother died, when Mum refused to let me on the ice. I leaned against the rink’s perimeter and stared intently at the skaters. I tried to memorize their moves, the way their bodies sat, and the angles against which their blades cut sleet. I watched a woman propel herself into the air, then land a jump so gracefully, extending her free leg beyond the rink so the blade crossed a child’s throat. Skates do not puncture skin so easily; you need to apply pressure and do so with force. Still, the child was winded, and knocked back onto his rear. It was almost funny, how the child fell like a domino. I thought he could be my age, and I laughed loudly when I told Mum of it later. She scolded me: “How would you feel if someone laughed at your pain?” she asked, and it reminded me of how the older, red-headed boy at school told me my brother must be daft to die doing something so easy. I made sure not to lean against the barricade when I visited the rink from then on.

5. I think if I could get my hands on that beast, I could avenge my brother and pierce his chest with my skate, should I use all my body weight and all the anger I've collected inside me.

6. You should not let your ankles fold when you are skating, but I’m unlucky. I’ve always had weak joints. They scatter beneath me, even though I’m better at skating now. My weight spreads evenly across my feet so I hear the cracks resound. Perfectly smooth, I slide, my legs bruising, my body nearing the hole in the middle of the lake. I can hear the gurgling growing louder as I near the open waters. But I can’t help it—I’m so near the ice hole I must look in. Is this the sensation my brother felt?

7. The monster looks up at me when my head crosses over the open window, like a hole in an igloo wall. I jump back in shock, a jarring thump back so my bottom will bruise. Crawling off the ice, I stumble through the snow, nothing but my breath and the sound of my crunching feet around me. I don't look back, afraid the monster will follow, or terrified as well that it will stay exactly where it is. Dashing through the house, I tumble onto and into my bed, ankles burning and bum ravaged. I tremble, thinking of the monster's face looking up at my own, recognizing the soft slant of those eyes, and that pouting open mouth. I pull the blanket around myself. I have never been so terrified in my life; the face of that monster: my own brother's. All round, and plump, and white.

8. I throw my skates away. When my father asks me why, I tell him I can’t stand the cold. I don’t tell him there is a creature wearing my brother's face. Or that the monster beneath it holds his body hostage. Instead, I say: “Walking on water should be left for miracle workers and the unafraid”—both things I am not.

Helena Pantsis (she/they) is an editor, writer and artist from Naarm, Australia with a fond appreciation for the gritty, the dark, and the experimental. Her works have been published in Overland, Island, Meanjin, and Cordite. More can be found at hlnpnts.com.