The frozen pond

Source: an original fiction extract.

“By midday the snow had stopped, and the park was full of people discovering how quiet their own footsteps could be. Theo walked beside the pond with his cousin Ruth. He had promised to show her the place where the ducks nested in spring. The pond was covered by a thin sheet of ice, except beneath the bridge, where dark water moved between the posts. A red warning sign stood near the path. Someone had brushed the snow from its letters.

The ice held a cloudy version of the sky. Trapped leaves spread beneath it like hands pressed against glass, and a fallen branch lay half inside the frozen surface, caught in the act of reaching. Near the bank, tiny cracks stitched themselves into pale stars. Theo could hear water under the bridge, patient and invisible beneath the brittle silence.

Ruth dropped one glove while taking a photograph. It slid down the bank and stopped on the ice, no farther away than the length of Theo's arm. He laughed and found a stick. The first stick was too short. The second bent when he reached out. Ruth said it did not matter; she had another pair at home. Theo said he could get it. Two children farther along the path had stopped to watch.

He put one foot on the frozen edge. A crack ran out from his shoe with a sound so small that he nearly ignored it. Ruth caught his sleeve. 'Leave it.' He stepped back, angry at her sharp voice and at the children watching. Then a patch of ice loosened around the glove. It turned slowly, carrying the wool towards the dark gap beneath the bridge. Nobody said anything. Theo dropped the stick.

They walked back along the path. Ruth put her remaining glove in her pocket and kept both hands inside her sleeves. At the gate, Theo offered her his pair. She took one. He wanted to explain that he had known what he was doing, but the explanation would not settle into words. Behind them, the warning sign faced the pond, its clean red letters visible to anyone who chose to look.”

Refer only to the second paragraph. Analyse how the writer uses language to present the ice’s beauty and fragility. Support your ideas with quotations from that paragraph. You could consider words and phrases, language features and techniques, and sentence forms.