On the far side the lake is divided from the hills by a slash of soft pink that arrived with the dawn...They set out, stepping over a yawning crack where the ice has buckled. All along the shore line the lake has twisted, churning the ice into contortions which it has thrown up and aside, forming banks of frozen rubble softened only by fresh snowfall. Ahead of them the ice smoothes out, leaving its fretted edges behind, coursing towards the other side...
They would normally carry their father's bore, or fishing rods, or both, but their hands are empty. Having made their decision they had wrapped themselves up with every layer they could find. Yet still they are lung-punched, speechless for now with the cold...
It is so early that the last of the stars are still out. The morning is clear. Pyotr imagines them seen from the hillside up above the village behind two dark figures against all that white. He had once climbed up there with his father and they had looked out from maybe a thousand metres up, and he had seen the tiny, matchbox houses below and the people, splinter-small. The lake had looked narrow like a river, like something you could just step across.
