The Seventh Wish Read Free Page A

the solo dress for my own feis in Montreal later this month.
    â€œGot decent tread on those boots?” Mrs. McNeill asks me, and I hold up a foot to show her.
    â€œNope,” she says, and hands me a pair of ice cleats. “Wrap these around the bottom of your boots or you’ll be slipping all over the place.”
    I do that while she and Drew load poles, augers, and bait buckets onto the sled. Then we head out onto the lake. Right by shore, there’s a hole in the ice with a pile of shavings around it. “Were you out already?” I ask.
    Mrs. McNeill nods and kicks at the circle of snow. “Drilled a hole to check the thickness. We have a good six inches, so we’re all set.” She leads us away from shore onto the clearest black ice.
    The ice flowers are still here, but they’re flat and muffled today, like wildflowers someone pressed in a book. Theycrunch under my feet as we head toward a point of land sticking out from shore.
    I’m taking careful steps, one foot in front of the other, and managing to convince myself this is safe. But when we’re halfway out to the point, the ice lets out a booming-loud, timpani-drum thump. I’ve heard muted ice sounds from shore before, but this is
loud
. I jump about a mile and look at Mrs. McNeill. “Is it breaking up?”
    â€œI know how to survive being stranded on an iceberg,” Drew says.
    â€œI’m
so
hoping we don’t need that information right now,” I tell him.
    Mrs. McNeill gives me a reassuring smile and shakes her head. “The ice is fine, my dear. You’re simply hearing air bubbles working themselves up through the fissures now that the sun’s up. Listen . . .” She pauses, and the ice booms again, like thunder out by the island a mile offshore. Then it makes a weird, video-game sound.
Gurgle-twang-zzzing!
“That’s the ice talking, letting us know it’s settling in for a good, long winter of fishing.”
    I keep going. But my heart’s still pumping fast, and my legs feel wobbly, even with the cleats. If this ice really means to be reassuring, it ought to talk in something other than loud, scary growls and space invader weapon sounds. Right now, I’m hearing less “We’re going to have a good winter” and more “I’m going to swallow you whole.”
    Not far from the point, Mrs. McNeill pulls the sled to a stop and looks around. “You think this is about where we were in the boat?” she asks Drew.
    â€œPretty close.” Drew turns to me. “There’s a ledge around here where the perch like to feed. We were pulling ’em in like crazy back in August.”
    They start unloading gear from the sled. I pick up an insulated bucket and can feel the bait sloshing around inside. “Are these minnows?”
    â€œYep. They’re always better than lures when you can get ’em.” Mrs. McNeill pulls a power auger from the sled and turns to Drew. “Shall we let Charlie give this a try?”
    â€œSure, as long as I get to drill my own,” he says.
    â€œI don’t know how to use that,” I say. The auger has a pull cord like the outboard motor on the McNeills’ boat, and I couldn’t pull hard enough to get that started last summer.
    But Mrs. McNeill leans over to show me. “Piece of cake,” she says. “Pull the rip cord.” I do that, and the motor starts humming. “Great!” She points to a trigger thing on the auger’s handle. “Now give it some gas to make the blades turn, and we’re in business.” She guides the auger to a spot on the ice and holds it with me, pressing down while the blades whirl into the ice. In a few seconds, there’s a hole about six inches wide and a sparkling circle of ice shavings all around it. “Perfect!”
    She hands the auger to Drew, who makes his own hole about ten feet farther out. Then he pulls three short