The Fishing Hut – Part 1: Through the Ice

"Now we wait," said Hamid.

"For how long?"

"For the fish to decide."

Elias laughed, settled onto the little wooden stool and peered down the neat round hole in the ice. Below it, black water glimmered. Outside the hut, the lake stretched flat and white to the horizon, ringed with snow-heavy pines. It was minus twenty and perfectly still. The only sound was the soft tick of the little wood stove in the corner.

Elias, thirty-three, a nature writer from Helsinki, had come north for a three-day assignment and a long overdue silence. Hamid, thirty-seven, the guide, had moved to Lapland from Tehran fifteen years earlier and never wanted to leave. He was big, bearded and gentle, with dark eyes and a thick wool hat, and he talked about the lake like an old friend.

"It talks, if you listen," he said. "The ice sings at night. Cracks, groans, like whales."

"I'd like to hear that."

"Then you must stay late."

They did. They sat together in the dim hut for hours, sipping hot blackcurrant juice, watching the line. They caught two perch and a pike, and Hamid cooked them on the stove with butter and salt. Elias ate with his gloves on. The fish was perfect.

"I thought you'd be bored," said Hamid.

"I've never been less bored."

"You write nothing."

"I'm collecting." Elias glanced at him. "Mostly you."

Hamid stopped, a fork halfway to his mouth. His ears went red under the wool hat. "Elias. May I say something? In my own bad Finnish and worse English?"

"Say it in whatever you like."

"I would like to kiss you."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Ice Song.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Ice Song.