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150the fire!%u201d The children sang for as long as they could. His sweat froze on his forehead. His leg shook as he pressed and let up on the brake. He blinked quickly so he wouldn%u2019t run into a tree, few though they were. His mouth was so dry that his tongue was swelling. Staring desperately hard, he wondered about snow blindness. When the light assumed the flat bluish cast of skim milk, he knew that dusk was upon them, and they fell into the lake.It wasn%u2019t, as he%u2019d imagined, an icy plummet. The water seized them so swiftly that there was no fear or pain, and the fall was surprisingly gradual. They rocked and swayed, lakeweed swirling around their necks and ears. Startled fish swam to the door and by instinct he let them in. He knew that he and the children were all lost forever. He didn%u2019t like his thoughts, but he was still glad that his son and his daughter were safe at home in the warmth of a good stove. He thought of them burning the wood that he%u2019d chopped. There was plenty. But then he heard their voices behind him and realized that they had got on the bus after all.Sorrow cascaded over him as the bus settled on the bottom of the lake. When there was no use steering any longer, he rose in his grief and turned to the children. He meant to apologize and hoped to recommence the singing, but the children had changed. By unknown means, on the way down to the bottom, the children had become hollow. They were transparent and so frail that they were almost unbearably weighted down by their clothing. Sagging and faint, they listed in the seats, their skin membranous and glistening. Ivek knew that he must not allow them to guess how precarious their existence was, so he went down the center aisle collecting their coats. Once they%u2019d shed their coats, some shot through the windows to the surface, while others would, he realized, spend their days at the bottom, waiting for their families to come to the lake and let down a line they might grasp%u2014%u2014hold of?Ivek%u2019s eyes were open but somehow they opened. He was once again driving on the surface of the blinding earth. He caught a glimpse of the school to the left of the bus before snow slammed shut over the sight. He doubted what he%u2019d seen, but his arms had faith. His hands guided the wheel according to his vision. He sensed that they were in the shadow of something large, a building. He pulled closer to the side. Idled the bus. It was the school. In the lee of the storm, he could see the familiar boards that he himself had painted.He stopped the bus. Opened the door. Wind almost sucked them out. He closed it again and instructed Agnid to sort out her classmates. They lined up in the aisle and made a chain of themselves behind the largest boy, a Spiral, with the smaller children in the middle, and, at the end, Ivek, with Morris grappled to his chest.The wind wrestled with them as they labored around the side of the school to the door, tumbled in. The children scrambled up and rushed to the stove. Ivek, who always set up the next day%u2019s fire before he went home in the evening, unclenched his fingers, clumsily opened the tin matchbox, lighted a cone of newspaper. Fire leapt from the paper, snapped to the splinters of bark. Ivek stood back behind the children, as they crowded close, and the blaze rose up.Or did it?The chill in Ivek was far deeper than the fire could touch. The reality of the cold world beneath the ice was stronger than the warmth of the school. He turned away from the stove so the children wouldn%u2019t see his tears. What was up and what was down? If he turned back, would the 2025Writing Workshop Analysis of Theme in FictionCopyright %u00a9 Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. Distributed by Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishers. For review purposes only. Not for redistribution.