The shape inside the ice

Text: an original contemporary feature-style practice extract.

Before the fair opened, the square belonged to delivery vans, folded tables and a single block of ice. It caught the early light but offered no clue about what it might become. From the front, it resembled a door with nowhere behind it. The sculptor walked around it twice without raising his tools. When a waiting child asked what he was making, he replied, “Ask me when you can see it.”

His first cut was not a flourish but a shallow white line. Then came a repeated sequence: tap, scrape, brush. Chips skipped across the paving and gathered around his boots. For several minutes, the work looked like damage. A corner disappeared; a deep groove divided the smooth surface; clear fragments slid away. Gradually, however, a long beak pointed out of the block. A folded wing followed. People who had been hurrying past began to stop.

Once the heron was recognisable, the sculptor spent longest on its eye, making a hollow no wider than a fingertip. The crowd applauded before he had finished. He lowered his tool and waited for the noise to fade, then brushed a final veil of frost from the bird’s neck. At that moment, the sun cleared the roof opposite. One bead of water formed beneath the heron’s beak and travelled slowly towards its chest. The sculpture had arrived just as it had begun to leave.