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The frozen lake cracked beneath his feet. You stared at the frozen lightning etched and snaking through the ice, so like a spider’s web. And you stared at the person caught in the web—a man, a nameless man, garbed in thick wools and a maroon coat fringed with snow. You couldn’t see his face at the time because of the colorful scarf wrapped to protect his nose and mouth from the winter. But you did see his eyes. You expected it to be big with worry, big with fear. But those eyes of his were steady, calm, acceptant. Lying on your warm bed in your sunny summer cottage a couple years later, you remember why the two of you chanced upon that lake. You were running for your lives. You don’t know where the man came from when you fled into the woods. You just saw him emerging out of the snowy forests, and at first you thought him one of the men who were after you, the wicked men, the soldiers with dogs and whips and guns who had forced you to board the black-smoking trains packed with people. You only managed to escape when the train stopped for repairs and when brave men and women rallied the people into a riot, distracting the guards, disarming most of them, but falling nonetheless to the cruel efficiency of your captors. You were lucky to reach the woods unharmed. When you saw the nameless man, however, you ran, legs and lungs aflame with a bitter and biting cold everywhere. You grew tired. You must have run for less than ten minutes, and already you were on the verge of collapsing. But you couldn’t rest now. Dogs’ bays permeated the woods, and shadowed silhouettes the hunters darted between narrow tree trunks. They would see you soon. They would catch you and haul you back to the trains for deportation and take you— Lying on a warm bed in your sunny summer cottage a couple years later, you shudder and shake from the idea of where those soldiers and that train would have taken you. You didn’t know of the destination at the time—you were so oblivious and naïve, but you knew it was bad, and that’s why you ran. But when the war was over and you heard of the horror stories from survivors—when you listened to reports of the atrocities performed by the invaders, the butchers, the same soldiers who ripped you from your mother and father and siblings and from your very home and village—you paled and shivered like a man drowning in a frozen lake. You would have been one of millions. You would have been another pile in a pit. You should have felt blessed to have survived the carnage, but… no. How could one feel fortunate when fortune was an ever-mercurial mistress, teasing with a naughty finger then lashing out with a poisoned nail? Those people were whole worlds, filled with laughter and family and joys unending. But it did end. You always attributed dumb luck for your rescue from a deathly, dehumanizing fate. Out of every passenger on that train, you were the only one that survived, after one. What else could it be except absurd luck? Looking back, though, as you lie on your warm bed and begin to feel the cold, you know now that it wasn’t luck or your own skill that allowed you to survive that day. It was the man. The nameless man. One of the hunting dogs was the first to reach you, and it leapt as fast as a shadow with foreleg raised and canine jaws frothing. Instinctively, you raised your arms and fell back to protect your face. You waited for those horrid fangs to sink in. But they didn’t. You fell into the powdery snow, and when you mustered the courage to open your eyes you saw the stranger taking a woodcutter’s axe out of the dog’s left flank. A hunter? A woodsman? A hermit? You’ve always wondered and can never know. The man was tall, and tough, and brave. You didn’t know his face and name, and he certainly didn’t know who you were, but he lifted you out of the snow and dirt with a firm hand and urged you to keep running. As you ran, you glanced back to see the stranger luring the soldiers away from you. It worked. They diverted their attention and their hounds at the man. You didn’t cherish the escape just yet. You kept running. You sought for a hiding place but couldn’t find a suitable shelter. The baying of dogs and the crack and snap of gunshots propelled you forward, and you hardly bothered wondering the direction you were heading so long as you were further and further away from the soldiers, and you hardly were deterred when the trees thinned and you were ought in the open so long as nobody was hunting you and you were safe from— The frozen lake cracked beneath your feet. Stiffly yet shakily, you looked down and saw a spider’s web slowly growing and expanding beneath you. You could vaguely see yourself while standing on this crackling mirror of a lake, and your eyes were big with worry and big with fear. And when you looked past yourself you beheld a darkness so terribly fathomless. It was quiet around you now. The dogs were gone, and the soldiers, too. You were alone. “Hey,” spoke a voice in front of you. You looked up terrified and saw the man, the nameless man, his arms raised towards you. “Easy. Easy. You’ll be okay,” he spoke in such a measured and controlled voice. “It’s going to be all right. Walk towards me.” You remember shaking your head at the man, too afraid to step forward lest a single step led you to the darkness. You even remember shouting at the man to stop moving, because now the cracks you caused were reaching towards him. But he tiptoed closer towards you, kept pacifying your worries with firm words and promises you hoped would be true. And now suddenly you were tiptoeing towards him while the ice snapped and groaned like a grumpy old man moving his bones. Without warning, the nameless man grabbed your arm and with his strength slid you across the lake. Your skin scraped and bled a bit from the friction, but you managed to recover on the lake’s edge in time to see the stranger just standing where you once stood, on a fragile mirror reflecting the cold, uncaring sky. And then… You must have sat on the lake’s edge for five minutes, still staring at the spot that might have swallowed you. The water had settled by then. It was almost cold enough to reseal the whole hole. Lying on a warm bed in your sunny summer cottage a couple years later, you don’t quite remember how you managed to leave the frozen lake or why. You could have easily stayed there, another victim of the frost, except a willing one. But you kept running until you found people as kind as the stranger who saved you, people who immigrated you out of the war’s way. For a long time, when peace blossomed in the country, you tried to figure out the name of the man who took your place on death’s mirror-like lake. Yet your research yielded nothing. You lie now on your warm bed in your sunny summer cottage after all these years, feeling the familiar cold once more like you are standing on a mirror and looking down at all you are and all you’ve done. But all you can remember was how the first mirror looked like when the frozen lake cracked beneath a man’s feet.&nbsp;

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Standing on a Mirror

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Standing on a Mirror

JohnDivinagracia

John Divinagracia

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Standing on a Mirror

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