*
Fivrei and Sohvrena sit under the Solda Bridge in a tiny shanty, nursing a weak lamp. It is an unusual time to fish on the Solda, but the two men know a secret few do: directly under the bridge, where the Solda is widest and deepest, dozens of trout congregate, presumably, as Fivrei claims, seeking food and warmth. “As far away from the wind as they can get,” he says each time he drops his black line into his tiny hole.
“And they,” grumbles Sohvrena, “are wise.”
“Do you complain? How many did you catch last night?”
Sohvrena holds his mittened hands closer to the fire in the suspended brazier. “Six,” he admits.
“And the night before that?”
“Eight. But I must weigh the amount of fish I catch against the toes I lose.”
“Pah,” says Fivrei. “A real fisherman must be made of sterner stuff. This is man’s work. It calls for a man.”
But a man’s other work, thinks Sohvrena, lies in the soft, warm arms of a woman. Could he be unmanly for wishing he were there, rather than here?
A soft tapping fills the shanty.
“A catch?” asks Sohvrena.
Fivrei inspects his tip-up, which is suspended over the six-inch hole in the ice; the white flag on the black line quivers slightly. “No,” he says. “Perhaps they play with it.”
Then high-pitched squeaks join the tapping, like someone rubbing their hands against a pane of glass. Before Sohvrena can remark upon it, the flag on his own tip-up starts to dance. “The same here,” he says. “Not a catch, but it … moves.”
Fivrei tugs his black line. “Maybe I am wro— Wait.” He tugs the line again. “It is caught on something.”
Sohvrena watches the flag twitch on Fivrei’s tip-up. “Are you sure it’s not a catch?” asks Sohvrena.
“It does not give. It’s like it’s caught on a rock. What is that intolerable squeaking?”
“Maybe the wind?” Sohvrena, curious, tugs at his own line. It too does not give. “Mine is the same. Both of our lines are caught on something?” He shakes his head. “We had nothing on our lines a few minutes ago.”
“Maybe flotsam is being washed downstream, and our lines are caught.”
“Then why don’t our lines just break?” Sohvrena inspects the ice below them. Perhaps he is imagining things, but he imagines a soft yellow glow filtering through the frost in one spot.
“What is that?” he says, pointing.
Fivrei does a double take, and stares at the yellow light. “What is that?”
“That’s what I just said.”
The two men look at it, then at each other.
The fire in the brazier has melted away some snow on the ice; they stand and begin to clear away more with their feet, until the ice becomes more transparent.
Fivrei gapes. “What on … ? By the heavens, what is … ?”
Something is stuck to the opposite side of the ice, directly underneath them. Sohvrena is reminded of a starfish he once saw, brought back from the coast, but vastly huger, nearly thirty feet in diameter, and with many, many more arms, some of them wide, some of them thin and delicate. And in the center, a bright, glowing eye, and a many-toothed mouth that sucks against the ice, its black gums squeaking.
The taps and pops increase. Sohvrena looks up at the ends of the beast’s arms and sees many tiny claws scraping at the ice around them in a perfect circle.
“Oh, no,” says Sohvrena.
The light blinks twice. Sohvrena thinks, An eye. It’s an eye.
With a great crack, the ice gives way below them, and a mouth ringed with a thousand teeth silently opens.
*
The Vohskoveney Tea Shop always does a roaring trade whenever the weather dips; Magya Vohskoveney herself understands that it is not necessarily the quality of the tea that draws in customers—since she herself holds the opinion that her tea brewers are untalented clods—but between the endless flow of steaming water, the bubbling cauldrons, and the dozens of little gas lamps lit throughout her establishment, Magya’s tea shop is always churning with a sweltering humidity that would seem suffocating in normal weather, yet is downright inviting in the brutal dark of winter.
The tea trade has rocketed in the Continent in the past decades: what was previously considered a distasteful Saypuri eccentricity has become much more appealing as the climate on the Continent grows colder and colder with each year. And there is the additional factor that Magya has discovered a mostly forgotten old bit of folk herbalism: teas brewed with a handful of poppy fruit tend to feel so much more … relaxing than other types of tea. And after implementing this secret recipe, Magya’s trade has quintupled.