The dog was alive. Petra could see him standing on a broken plate of ice, one foreleg raised, his whole body trembling. His owner kept calling him a good boy in a voice that had almost stopped belonging to a person.
"What's his name?" Petra asked.
"Morse."
"Keep using it. Don't call him over."
The quarry had flooded years before the wildlife park closed. Now its perimeter fence lay in sections beneath brambles. Somebody had cut through the fence that morning to make a shortcut, and Morse had followed a rabbit onto the ice.
Petra crouched beside the bank. Under the transparent surface, a white hare ran past her knees.
It ran upside down, its feet touching the underside of the ice. No bubbles followed it. Its fur moved as though it were crossing dry grass.
"Did you see that?"
Her partner, Matt, was unpacking their equipment. He looked where she pointed. Another hare passed, then three together. They circled beneath Morse, who lifted his other foreleg and gave a thin whine.
The owner stepped forward. Petra put an arm across him.
"Stay here. Keep talking."
She had spent six winters on the volunteer rescue team. People were usually willing to listen once they saw the orange jackets. They understood that the jackets meant other people had practiced being frightened in useful ways. She had never practiced for animals running beneath ice.
Matt suggested a route along the old launching ramp. Its concrete edge continued below the surface; they could use that while he worked the sling toward the broken plate. Petra agreed. Neither of them wanted to say that they were avoiding the hares.
One stopped beneath her boot.
Its eye was a black oval with a white crescent missing from the bottom. Above the quarry, the same damaged eye looked down from a painted board: a smiling hare welcoming visitors to the park. The paint had flaked away years ago. Petra remembered noticing the defect during summer walks.
She shifted her foot. The hare shifted beneath it.
Then its back opened.
The fur separated in a straight line, revealing a dark wet cavity without teeth or tongue. The opening widened until it was as broad as her boot. The animal's legs continued moving against the ice, arranging the hole directly beneath her weight.
Petra stepped back onto the bank. The hare followed as far as the frozen mud and folded itself shut.
Matt saw her face.
"We can wait for the other team."
Morse's plate rocked. Water washed over his hind paws. Waiting had a cost they could see, and Petra hated that the visible cost was the one most likely to decide for them.
"From the ramp," she said. "We don't leave the concrete."
The owner talked about the dog's breakfast while they worked. He described the little dance Morse did when he heard the bag open, and the shoe he carried to the door without ever chewing it. Petra made him keep talking whenever his voice failed. The hares turned beneath the ice toward the sounds, their painted eyes no longer all the same shape.
It took several attempts to get the sling where Morse could move into it. Once he slipped, and Petra had to grip the owner's coat to keep him from running out. Matt stayed flat against the ramp, watching the dog instead of the dark mouths opening below him. When his shoulder slid beyond the concrete, Petra raised two fingers, curled them toward herself and pressed them to her chest. Come back to me. He understood and drew himself onto the ramp.
When Morse reached them, the owner made a noise Petra had heard from relatives outside accident sites. He wrapped the dog inside his own coat. Morse tried to lick his face and could not stop shaking long enough to reach it.
They were gathering the wet equipment when a hand rose through the hole in the ice.
It was bare, pale and unmistakably human. Four fingers hooked over the edge. The thumb opened and closed.
Matt stopped moving.
"There was somebody in there."
Petra watched the fingers. The little finger was the same length as the others. While she watched, it shortened.
"Don't go out."
The hand slipped, caught itself and waved. The gesture was clumsy. Petra felt her own body leaning toward it before she realized she was moving.
"Petra. We can't leave them."
She told Matt about the painted eye. He stared at her as if she were offering an interesting theory beside somebody drowning. She understood that expression. She had worn it when people explained why an emergency was someone else's responsibility.
"Call the second team," she said. "Tell them everything. Nobody enters the water."
Matt made the call. He did not look at her again while they waited. The owner sat with Morse in the van, crying into the dog's wet neck.
The hand remained above the ice. Slowly, orange fabric formed around its wrist. A black grip appeared across the palm. It raised two fingers, lowered them, then repeated the small beckoning gesture Petra had made to Matt only minutes earlier, asking him to come back to her.
Matt turned his face away. Petra kept watching until the others arrived, afraid of what it might learn from her if she let it see her close her eyes.
