Frozen Fear

Deep below it slumbered, its features frozen and glassy beneath the solid plane of the pond. Scaled and serpentine in likeness, its glazed eyes staring lifelessly up through the thick tundra that held it captive, shimmering from the occasional rays of winter sun that penetrated deep enough below surface.

None of the locals ever thought twice about the perpetually pertinent terror held in static suspense beneath their feet as they scraped and slid across the frosty sheet beneath them. For more than a hundred years had any of them thought to second guess that perhaps as time went on, it may return.

Children played and fought and thought nothing of the ancient beast beneath their boots as they ran across crunching ices, games and laughter deafening any possible fears they should have known. Fire sticks plunged into the crust of rock hard ice scattered around the campsites, enveloping the villagers in the safety of warmth.

It was vanquished, vanished below and barely visible to most folks eyes, or in their minds. The frozen waters of the pond were its prison, and time was the peoples champion.

It had held for long enough for the people to become forgetful, complacent even. As it went on, time had also relinquished the memories of the horror that had followed the villagers steps for so many years.

The ice beneath them held more than monstrous memories of sleepless nights, of running in fear and hiding when they knew there was no safety.

When the time came it had taken four fractious tribes to defeat it, the combined loss of life insurmountable compared to conflicts between themselves prior to the threat before them. None of the elders had any idea what it was, or where it had come from. As much an idea as any of them, that it was there, taking their land, their families, their lives.

Grouping together to banish it to the depths below, forcing it down with nets and spears and fire to drown the beast. Tales were told and songs sung of the horror in extremis for years afterwards. The many valiant souls of villagers remembered and revered by surviving generations, thankful for the unnecessary sacrifice for something which by all accounts could not be of their world.

A vengeful punishment for crimes they knew not which they had apparently committed, however were paying the price ten fold.

And now, it hung beneath them, bound by invisible strings of ice and darkened waters it stayed, tethered tenuously to the happiness of the world above.

Nobody noticed before too long how the crunch of the ice beneath their feet grew less and less distinct. Bootsteps became less steady, thin skins of water began forming above the solid mass of crystalline coldness. The games of the children returned to the rocky shorelines of the pond, parents and elders inspiring wise warnings upon them should the invisible floor beneath their feet open up and swallow them whole.

It came with the passing of every season. The snowstorms became less frequent, the winds abated for some respite, and the ice began to return to its liquid transience. They knew it would, as it always did, though never enough to allow such terror to return to their surface world.

The pond held the warmth of the glowing sun for what little hours of the day it made itself known. Thin wisps of dead trees lined the edges of the ice mass, casting long and forlorn tendrils of shadow across the barren floor. Never enough to weaken it, they thought.

By the time the warmer days were due to pass, the first signs of trouble were showing. More and more water appeared on the ice. Tree roots and boulders which had been long forgotten and buried beneath white blankets began to materialise before the people.

Each night grew shorter, councils and families huddled together and whispered what it could mean. No-one dared speak what they were all thinking.

A distant memory of terrible times, of scales and slithering and wings and teeth. Nightmares had hold of most of them well enough, and those who denied it dwelled more than the others.

A summit was held, with members of the remaining families who had fought the beast in the past time. It was slain, it was buried beneath them they implored with eachother. Should the ice melt, should the monster below merely be resting, eyes wide open in some horrible hibernation, then what terrible retribution would be suffered unto them once it became freed? Torn loose from its icy shackles, swimming its way to the surface world and slicing through their entire villages with its sinewy spine of a serpents tail.

The decision was made.

The pond lay as it always had, cold, frozen, an expanse of white glistening in the late afternoon sun.

It lay silent as the villagers decamped all around it, swiftly packing any belongings they were able to carry.

Parents harried absent minded children along as they flung their final pebbles and sticks out on the ice, smiling gleefully as they bounced and glided scratching along the frozen surface.

One of the children swore they had seen the very tip of some sharpened bone-like shape beginning to ease its way through the ice.

They were gone in less than a day.

The fear of what could have been surging them forward into a greater unknown. Young and old ushered off to some otherwise ill determined fate, their guardians confident that anything was better than staying there.

Constantly under the silent gaze of the monster beneath.

The sun had lowered for another thirty years, the ice had hardened yet again. Harsh, dry ice winds whipped the wintry expanse, howling in mourning for the loss of its people.

Below the surface, two black eyes gazed up through the glass ceiling above.

They missed the orange glow of the fires of the people, the warmth of what might be possible once they were free of their interminable arctic prison.

They would be free, the beast could feel that the pond was warming, decade after decade the waters became softer, more and more hairline cracks creaked and clinked above it.

Soon it would be free, and it would find them.