The Ice Widow

This is for Mikeydred's January prompt.

Some truths are too heavy for the living. - Michelle Liew

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Icelia bathed in the usual atmosphere-cold, desolate, and snow-caked. The villagers, hearts hardened by decades of cold, cast weary looks at the town's only lake- but never ventured close.

Viola returned there every year like clockwork, her black ebony trenchcoat billowing like an ominous shadow against endless white. The awe-inspiring figure struck fear in villagers-they didn’t dare approach, yet couldn’t resist the aura of dark mystery surrounding her. 

Curious ten-year-old Maeve was one of those villagers. A fisherman’s daughter, the lake and Viola were no strangers. The little girl would eye her carefully, Viola’s mind at the back of her own.

Her inquisitiveness got the better of her on a fateful afternoon, and she walked hesitantly to Viola, her heart releasing a few wild thumps.

Viola looked up at the little girl, her wary eyes playing a subtle note of welcome. Maeve heard it and started a conversation.

“Why-why do you come here? You’re here on this day, every year. And to the same spot,” she asked, pointing to the flowers in Viola’s wrinkled hands.

“My husband. He drowned in this icy lake decades ago,” she answered, gently placing the flowers on a crescent-shaped boulder familiar to Maeve.

Maeve’s eyes swept over the snow-caked riverbank. Faint footprints led to where Viola stayed crouched and red-eyed. Clear in the untouched snow, they looked as if they carried the weight of the past.

Curiosity drew Maeve forward, but the ice held secrets that would not hold forever. Despite fears that told her “no”, Maeve followed Viola as she took careful steps to the centre of the lake. A cracking sound enveloped the otherwise silent waters, ethereal and perturbing.

Maeve glimpsed a shadow in the freezing depths- a shape eerily out-of-place. It writhed as if alive, and her breath caught.

And realisation hit Maeve, sinking like a wedge of ice in her chest. Viola. The ice cracked beneath her, a terrible groan echoing from the depths.

The villagers say the lake froze harder that year, as though trying to seal away an evil truth.

Little Maeve grew, haunted by that day. The story of the Ice Widow in the lake still lingers, and eerie tales of two ghostly figures return every January, one crouched, the other pacing beneath the surface, waiting - claiming a place on the ice which no one dares touch.