14 - Frozen

On the day of the last Raymond family picnic, sunlight dappled the surrounding leaves across a continuum of green and gold. They had been walking for approximately an hour before they reached their destination. They'd left the car in a small, off-road gravel car park that was at the end of a long, unpaved road. Each of the party was equipped with a bottle of water, a towel, and their swimming gear. Anthony carried a wicker basket that contained thinly sliced ham, ripe tomatoes, a cucumber, cutlery, plastic cups and plates. Alison carried a plastic bag that held a blanket, a bottle of lemonade, and some sunscreen. Carl carried a French breadstick, wrapped in paper, over his shoulder like a soldier carries a rifle on parade. They walked in single file, Anthony at the front, leading the way, James right behind him, then Evan, then Carl, with Alison following them at the rear. They walked on a narrow path through the bushes, so thin and sparse that it was sometimes not clear that they were still on the path at all, and had not strayed from it, only to find themselves walking randomly through the bush. It was sometimes necessary to step under a gnarled tree that crossed diagonally across the path, other times they had to climb over some stunted log that blocked the path. It mattered little, they were not in a hurry, and were enjoying the walk, although the younger children did begin to complain and asked how much longer they would be walking. Anthony smiled as he answered truthfully: He didn't know.

Low branches continually blocked the path, Anthony was careful to push them aside, and then wait for James to take the bent leaf from his hand, so that it would not swing back like a catapult and hit him in the face. As an older brother he was not nearly as circumspect, he would immediately release the branch the moment Evan was within range, sending a spring of dew and leaves flying into him, as they both cackled with laughter. It was colder than they had anticipated under the thick shadow of the leaf canopy, it covered the sky like the roof of a cave, yet they had dressed for summer. Yet every now and then the path would go through a treeless area, and the sunlight would burst through to ground level, a pillar of warmth that they would soak themselves in before moving on.

The travelers were continually accompanied by the soothing sound of water rushing over smooth stones. The path was following a course that was roughly parallel to a creek that was running in a direction opposite to the one the family was traveling in. It was also heading slightly downhill, as rivers do, while the family was traveling up a very slight incline, barely enough of an angle to notice, but one that made the walking slightly harder than a flat path would have. Every now and then the path took a steep upwards angle to move to the top of a hill or a bank, but previous travelers had been kind enough to carve crude steps into the earth. The feet of many travelers had worn the edges down, but they were a sign that they were still attached, in some small way, to the remnants of civilization.

From time to time, and never for any particularly discernible reason, the path would cross the river to follow it from the other side of the bank- at these times, the family would have to traverse the river. The crossings were always at some very shallow point, and often at a point where one could step from rock to rock, staying above the waterline and reaching the far side without even coming close to the water. At one crossing an enormous log had been placed in such a way that they could simply walk across it. This would not be there for long, during flood season the river would rise and cover this log, and if not push it out of the way with the sheer weight of many tonnes of water passing over it every second, then simply whittle it down a layer at a time, as it was surely doing as they crossed it, little by little.

During one of these crossings, Anthony stopped at one edge to let the first two boys pass, and then returned across the river, jumping from rock to dry rock until he was over the water which trilled gently below his footfalls. He kissed Alison quickly over his son's head, then picked up Carl with both hands and turned him around, Carl's feet traveling outward in a centrifugal-motion arc as he spun him about and landed him gently on the first rock, still holding him under both hands.

"You need help crossing this river, little buddy?" he asked.

"Yes please, dad." Carl said with a mixture of resignation and hidden excitement. Even cynical ten-year olds still loved to be picked up by their dads. Anthony jumped Carl from rock to rock, holding Carl in front of him and dropping his feet to the ground when they landed, as if it was he who was doing the jumping, not his father. Carl was smiling and laughing. His brothers had already gone on ahead up the path. With three jumps they had reached the last big sun-warmed rock, and there was only one more jump before the bank. Anthony leapt, but as he did so, Carl reached his arms forward and their collective balance shifted forward. They made the jump, but Anthony's foot slipped backwards on the earth of the bank and right into the flowing water, which ran over his foot and soaked his shoe as he fell ankle-deep into it.

Anthony screamed out loud as he leapt from the water. He let Carl go instinctively, but he just dropped to the ground on his feet and stepped forward. His father, on the other hand, was jumping up and down on one leg, cursing.

"What is it?" said Alison, who was now on the rock behind them.

"That water, it's really freezing!" Anthony said, jumping on his wet foot to get circulation into it.

"Oh, honey." Alison said, laughing. She took a graceful jump across the gap and landed next to him.

"I'm serious!" he said, still wincing from the pain, which was receding with the warmth of the sun.

"You really are a big wuss." she said, and started up the path, Carl following close behind her.

"It really was freezing." he said, more to himself than anyone else. He looked over his shoulder at the flowing water, as though it harbored a deep secret it might only reveal when he had his back turned. Then he shivered, shrugged, and followed his family.

They heard their destination before they reached it- its roar echoed through the trees for at least a kilometre in all directions. By the time they reached the source of the noise, it was so loud that one had to raise their voice to be heard over it. Anthony thought briefly of the Big Chief in 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. His tribe lived next to a giant waterfall, but they never heard the noise of it, since they had lived by it all their lives. It was only when they left the waterfall that they heard its absence. Anthony wondered if he could ever get used to such a noise.

The Shelloak Falls were a series of waterfalls in the middle of the Yarra Ranges. There were three in total- two small ones at the top of an enormous one that the Raymond family now stood at the foot of. It was a massive column of water that began as a thin stream issuing from between two rocks, but then fell almost two hundred feet, widening the entire time, before impacting at terminal velocity onto the surface of the small pond at the base of the stream which was the font of the creek they had been following for the last hour.

The kids issued forth various exclamations of surprise and wonder. Anthony was quiet, simply stared up at the beautiful fountain of water, and in spite of the near deafening noise, felt very much at peace. He was happy to be surrounded by nature. The nearest other human apart from them must be hundreds of miles away. He felt content.

Alison took the blanket from the plastic bag and spread it out on a grassy part of the bank, while Carl and Evan hunted for rocks to put on all four corners of the blanket. It was not windy by the pond, as there were trees covering them from every direction, but blankets had a tendency to bundle up when people were sitting and moving on them. They found four perfectly round sandstones, two each, and bought them to the blanket, placing one at each corner to pin the blanket down. By now their mother had laid out the ingredients of the hamper in a row on the blanket, and lunch was about ready to be served.

"If you boys want to go in you should go before lunch." she yelled to James, who was skipping stones across the surface of the pond.

Anthony turned at this. "I'm not sure they should go in at all." he said with concern. "That water is way too cold."

"Aw come on dad!" Evan and Carl exclaimed at this announcement, while behind them their brother said, more reasonably: "We bought our gear all this way; we may as well use them."

Anthony shrugged, trying to seem less concerned than he actually was. "Go in if you want to, but I'm warning you, you'll be out in one second flat once you see how cold it is."

Anthony walked over to where Alison had laid everything out.

"Need a hand?" he said.

With the easy familiarity of fifteen years together, she didn't look up; she just continued to lay things out. "You can pour the lemonade if you like." she said offhandedly.

He took the green Sprite bottle from the plastic bag, which was now empty as the boys were slathering sunscreen over their arms and legs, preparing for their dip.

"Don't forget the back of your neck!" he yelled to them. "Do each other's backs!" He watched as James rubbed sunscreen on the backs of his younger siblings, proud of the responsibility he was showing at his typically irresponsible age.

Anthony turned from them and sat next to his wife, putting the plastic bag under one of the four rocks that was holding the blanket firmly square. He picked up the pile of five plastic cups; each slotted into the other, grabbed the one at the end and separated it from its brothers. He put it down next to him, put the Sprite bottle between his knees to hold it steady, and opened it with both hands- one at the neck, the other twisting the blue cap away from the top. With a clicking of plastic as the cap came away from the ring, and hissing of gases as the pressure differential between the bottle and the outside air equalized with an outrushing of carbon gas. Almost immediately, the previously clear liquid inside the bottle began to be filled with bubbles, coming from nowhere. Anthony picked up the cup with one hand and, taking the bottle by the centre, turned it on one side and filled the cup with lemonade. It too made a satisfying hiss as it bubbled in the cup, a thin haze of tiny droplets hovering over the surface of the liquid as it bubbled in the glass. Anthony watched them closely, tried to track a bubble as it formed, clung briefly to the side of the cup, rushed upwards through the clear fluid, and then popped at the surface. He found he couldn't follow them; they were moving too fast, gone before they had barely formed.

"Hey dad, watch this!" Anthony looked up at the call to see that it was Evan. Presumably in an effort to get into the water before James beat him to it, he had climbed to the top of a rock on the water's edge, and now stood about seven feet from the surface of the rock pool, the sunlight bleaching both him and the rock in a dazzling white.

Anthony began to call out, to tell Evan to make sure he checked the depth of the water before jumping, but before he could get more than one word out he saw that Evan had already leapt, head-first, a long slow arc into the mirror surface of the pond. He slipped through the water with barely the hint of a splash, and was gone. Anthony stood, the lemonade cup still in hand, and tried to track Evan's progress through the water, but the surface showed only a reflection of the rocky walls that formed a wall on the far side of the small body of water.

"Dad?" James asked in a tone of voice that made Anthony take an immediate step forward. "Something's wrong!" James yelled as he started to sprint towards the water's edge. Anthony let the cup of soda water go with one hand and immediately started running over the rocks towards the water. James was much closer and so reached the rocky edge before Anthony had even taken his first few strides, leaping from the same rock that his younger brother had leapt from a few brief seconds earlier. He hit the water with a splash. By now Anthony had closed the distance to the pond dramatically, his heart thundering as loudly as the enormous crashing at the base of the water his sons had leapt into. From this angle the reflection of the water was obscured, and he could see more clearly what was happening.

Evan had returned to the surface of the water. He was face up, and shaking badly. His face was in a rictus of pain, and small ripples of water emanated from him as his body shook, little tremors on a seismograph. There was no red, no blood, and his eyes were open. To Anthony's horror, James emerged from the water beside him in a similar state- face up, body shaking possibly more violently than Evan was. Evan as he ran towards them, Anthony's mind flashed with possibilities: Had they both struck the surface? Was the water electrified? What was happening.

The ground between Anthony and his children was made up of smooth, round stones, the sort you need to keep your eyes on when you move across them quickly. As Anthony was running and watching his endangered progeny at the same time, his foot slipped on one of the stones and he fell forward, banging his knee painfully on another rock. He swore loudly but continued his forward movement, immediately continuing his run forward. At any other time such a fall would have left him sitting and cradling his knee in pain, but now he barely felt it at all, such was his concern. Carl stood at the water's edge, his mouth agape, his eyes watery, his young brain unable to process what was unfolding around him, the danger his brothers were in.

Anthony finally reached the water. He was perhaps twelve feet from his children, and he stumbled into the shallow water at the edge, moving quickly into the deep part where his two sons lay shaking. With a shock of pain he realized that the water was intensely cold- it must have been on the brink of freezing into ice. His sons were paralyzed by cold. By now Anthony was up to his waist, and the entire lower half of his body was racked with pain, like being set on fire, more painful than anything he had yet experienced. He ignored it and continued to wade, and then leapt forward, plunging headfirst into the water towards his two pale boys, helpless against the cold. Once submerged, Anthony realized his mistake- he, too, was finding it difficult to move. His heart felt as though it had been hit by a locomotive at full speed. He reached forward with one hand, almost made it to Evan's ankle, then saw it turning involuntarily into a claw before him- his limbs were freezing up. He couldn't move. With a gasp, his body inverted in the water and he turned over on his back, taking up a position alongside his sons, shaking uncontrollably. His brain screamed in agony, but his mouth had frozen up, he could not move, could not escape. He was trapped in the water.

He could see Carl standing on the water's edge, crying. He wanted to call out to him, to warn him away, but could say nothing. Carl watched as his three heroes lay helping, shaking in the water. Anthony felt water splashing into his mouth, wanted to cough, but could not. To his horror, he saw Carl leap into the water, and then disappear out of his field of vision. His poor, gallant son, seeing his father and brothers helpless in the water, confused and afraid, had leapt after them to try and save them himself, and condemned himself to the same fate.

The last thing Anthony saw before he slipped under the water was Alison, standing at the water's edge, watching them. Again, Anthony tried to cry out to her, to warn her not to follow them into the freezing water, but his lips still refused to do anything other than chatter against each other with his teeth. But there was no need to call out. She stood at the edge of the pond, watching them all go under. He could not see her clearly enough to see her eyes, but from this distance she seemed like a statue, unmoving. Until the water passed over his eyes and she began to waver and fade.

This is what happened, on the day of the last Raymond family picnic.