The river was dark, an opaque wall of freezing water moving around rocks and hairpin turns. Cold hung off the leaves of the surrounding foliage and wafted into the air, the river’s current the only visible source of life.

Inside of a wooden house sitting reasonably close to the riverbank, a light flickered on. A boy named Caspar was poking his head out the front door, gazing at the way his breath crystallized into a small fog against the early morning sky. Because of how far north they were, the sun always shone in June no matter what time of day it was. It was called the midnight sun.

Dressed in a thick jacket and rubber boots, Caspar carried a container of fishing equipment in one hand and an icebox in the other. He grumbled as he waited for his mother outside, his mind still lifting from the grasp of sleep. A woman that looked similar to Caspar but held more age in the lines on her face emerged from the door, wearing an old bucket hat that made her face nearly invisible. Caspar handed his mother the boxes and the two proceeded towards the river in silence, where their canoe floated gently on the surface of the water.

Night fishing was a delicate venture, learned properly only though the repeated action. Caspar’s work as he untied the boat showcased his expertise; his hands moved on their own, quick and precise with the rope. He held the boat steady as his mother got in before entering himself, sitting in front. Using the oars, the two worked in tandem to push the canoe off the bank and into the river, where the current began to slowly carry it forward. Caspar held his face in his hands, his dismal expression out of sight from his mother sitting behind. It would be another long morning, he could tell, that would leak into another long day into another seeping, stagnant night.

“We’ll go down to Whitehorse a little later today,” Caspar’s mother said. “I need to replace a tire in the truck.”

“Sure thing,” Caspar responded. Usually, they went to Whitehorse right after fishing. They would set up their stall at the market quickly, and by the time people were buying they had the day’s catches spread out over ice.

“It’s Desmond’s daughter’s eighteenth birthday, you know,” his mother said, “so I thought I would give him something nice for free.” Desmond was a middle-aged man who sold jam at the market. He and Caspar’s mother had developed a rapport over the years, often exchanging gifts of fresh fillets and fruit preserve. There was a new jam every month, the latest flavour a bright orange apricot. Desmond’s daughter was Caspar’s age, and neither his mother nor Desmond were subtle in their attempts to get them together.

“That girl, Ellis,” she said. “She seems nice. Pretty, too. Why don’t you give her something? Maybe a fresh grayling. Every girl appreciates a clean catch.”

“Mom, not everyone likes fish as much as you do,” Caspar replied, rolling his eyes. “Plus, I already told you I want to stay friends with her.” Caspar liked Ellis, but never anything more.

“That’s what you say now, but we’ll see how you feel in ten more years.”

“Whatever you say.” Caspar grimaced at the thought that he would still be here in ten year’s time, getting up in the early hours to fish in the frigid river.

The canoe continued pushing down the river, until a house similar to theirs came into full view. Most nights, the ever-extant sunlight allowed Caspar to see the house, but the morning fog made the visibility tough right now.

Two fishers lived there, a boy around Caspar’s age and his father. Caspar barely met up with them, but he knew the son, Ewan, very well. They had talked for years, communicating through their windows using flashlights and morse code. They were the only other people close to here, Ewan the only person Caspar could often talk to. The two might have known more about each other than they did themselves.

Recently, Ewan’s house had been left empty in the nights. Caspar sometimes spent minutes staring through the window, hoping to see the glint of a flashlight shining dots and dashes, but they came less and less.

“Where did they go?” Caspar asked, gesturing to the house, although he was fairly certain he knew the answer.

“In Whitehorse again, I’d say. They keep going down there so the son can perform. He’s got a real talent for music, at least from what I can hear.” Ewan was an avid violinist; occasionally, he opened the window and practiced in front of it. Caspar opened his window in turn and listened. He couldn’t deny Ewan’s skill.

“It seems like they go every day. How come I can’t do that? I could get famous too.” Caspar looked at their boat, sitting lonely. Sometimes both families would get fishing at the same time, and they would see each other here.

Caspar’s mother laughed. “Hah! He’s not famous, not by any means. And anyway, the only string you’re good with is a fishing line.”

“I’ve never tried. What if I have a hidden talent?” Caspar’s mother looked at him like he had just shouted that the river was turning into gold.

“That boy probably soaked up all the talent out of the earth for a kilometre around. And who knows? Maybe we’ll see him at the market. Him and his father.” His mother could’ve been right, Caspar figured. But even if they did meet at Whitehorse, Caspar knew it would not be the same way they met before fishing. One of them would have to go back, be clawed down into the water and left to struggle to get his head above the surface.

The canoe passed by Ewan’s house and the river widened, getting deeper as well. The reflective black of the water turned to a deep and endless darkness, hiding whatever one could imagine within the water. Caspar liked the folk tales of things in the water, whether they were of hidden treasure or forgotten monsters. It was better to think about that than know there was nothing in the river but an infinite stream of shade and scales.

Soon enough, the two caught sights of a small clearing in the surrounding taiga, where the ground was flat. They directed the boat toward the land, bumping up against it and unloading their equipment. Caspar once again took the rope, barely needing to look to tie a tightly wound knot. His mother extracted the traps and nets and set them up, ensuring her skin was fully covered before stepping in. If it was warmer, one of them would have waded further into the river and gone fly fishing; today was too cold for that, so instead both mother and son waited, staring at the midnight sun on the horizon that painted the clouds red and purple.

They had a good haul, bringing in a variety of decent fish. When Caspar’s mother found a grayling, she examined the colours on its dorsal fin.

“This one is nice! Give it to Desmond’s girl. I’m sure she’ll love it.”

Casper surrendered, his shoulders sinking with the groan he let out. “Fine. For her birthday, that’s it.”

“Flustered?” His mother jabbed him on the shoulder, a grin breaking out on her face.

They got back onto the canoe with their newly acquired catches and rowed back to the house. The current moved ever so slightly against them now, demanding more effort than the way down. When they got back to the house, Caspar dragged the boat out of the water and retied it to the try while his mother fixed the truck tire.

He examined the fish, paging through them and flipping them over. On a broad whitefish, he found what looked like a slimy black wire protruding from its side. He pulled at it and it popped off, revealing a small circle mouth filled with rows upon rows of small, sharp teeth inside.

A lamprey. They were parasitic little eel-things. Caspar had no idea how one this big had managed to go unnoticed by his mother. The mark where the lamprey had been on the whitefish was harsh red, countless small blots where teeth had pierced scales. The lamprey was dead by now, but the fish wasn’t usable, so Caspar took both and stuffed them inside a container next to the boat. They would make good bait for later.

When Caspar’s mother finished fixing the truck, the two got in and started driving. The trip to Whitehorse was under two hours on a good day, so Caspar spent most of the time gazing out the car window while his mother complained about the small number of drivers they happened to see on the road. The surrounding landscape was visible only once they got out of the forest, but it was clear as ever with the fog lifted.

Thankfully, there was space for them at the market when they got there. They worked quickly to set up the stand, laying their fish out over the ice. Caspar’s mother didn’t seem to notice that one was missing. She greeted a tall and thin man with wide-rimmed glasses and a sharply trimmed mustache.

“Maisie,” he said, “you’re late.”

“Just fixing up a tire, Desmond,” she responded. “I’m on top of it as always.”

“Good to hear. Some of us were worried you might’ve tried to reel in too big of a fish.” Desmond laughed at his own joke while a girl walked out from behind him. Ellis looked very similar to her father, down to the colour of the freckles on their faces. Where she was different was in the colour of her eyes, a dark green dotted with lines of black with pupils that were small and pointed.

“Oh, Ellis. Happy birthday!” Caspar’s mother said. Caspar walked up and handed her the plastic wrapped grayling, which had been cut up and prepared for cooking by his mother.

“Thanks,” Ellis said matter-of-factly. Now that Caspar thought about it, he wasn’t even sure if she liked fish. She took the offering and headed back towards her stand while Desmond and Caspar’s mother talked.

As Caspar looked out past the market, he could see the peaks of some tall buildings. One of them was a grey dome, the tip poking just high enough that he could see it. That was a concert hall, he had been told. Ewan went there more and more nowadays, to practice or perform. On the days he thought Ewan might be there, he sometimes strained his ears in the direction of the building. Maybe if it was quiet enough, he could hear the music.

Caspar waited at the stand until all the goods were sold and then assisted his mother in packing up. The air was surprisingly temperate, even for the summer months. Weird things came out when it was warm, he knew, like molds and alien-looking bugs. As they drove back, he wondered if the warmth of the water might bring something new to the surface. He wanted, so desperately, to find something new.

That night, Caspar looked at the river while he ate. His mother noticed, trying to snap him out of his focus on the river surface.

“What, you seeing something in there?” she asked.

“Just wondering,” he responded. “Is there something really big anywhere close to here?”

“Big?”

“You know, like this.” Caspar stretched his hands out wide, still holding his fork and spoon.

His mother snorted at the sight. “Just urban legends and stuff, but nothing like that, not really.”

“Urban legends?” Caspar inquired. His mother wasn’t usually the type to tell those sorts of tales.

“Just the usual stuff. Big fish-man hybrids, aquatic dinosaurs. And the fish with antlers.”

“What?”

“I remember some freak a long while back kept spouting something about a giant fish with antlers growing out of its head. Said it had huge teeth and destroyed anything it came by.”

“What happened to him?”

“Dead by now, probably. He was old, and it was before you were born.”

“So did anyone else see it?”

“Nope. He was a nutcase, but a loud one.”

After dinner, Caspar headed to his room and looked through the small window on the wall. He rubbed away the condensation and looked for the house on the other side of the river, where Ewan lived. It was dark again. Recently it seemed like it always was.

Two weeks later, Caspar and his mother were setting up in Whitehorse when Desmond came over, giving them a new jam. This one was strawberry, a bright red that Caspar was familiar with. Caspar didn’t say it, but he was a little let down by the flavour. He had seen strawberry before, so many times. He was still examining the jar when his mother turned to him, shocked.

“Did you hear that, Caspar?” He looked up, only vaguely aware of the conversation. Desmond was standing there as well.

“Hear what?”

“Ellis is out of the country to go to some school.” That caught Caspar’s attention. He set the jam down and moved closer to his mother.

“But school doesn’t start for another two months.”

“Her and her mother are going to check the place out,” Desmond announced. “Since it’s boarding, we wanna be prepared as we can.”

“Boarding school?” When school was on, Caspar and Ellis went to the same one. Their final year was set to start this September.

“Some fancy thing. I think it’s good for her,” Desmond said. “If she’s got the chops, I won’t be the one to keep herself up here with me. And if she can’t handle it, she can always come back.”

“She left this morning, then?” Caspar’s mother asked.

“Yep, probably still on the plane right now.” Caspar thought about planes, how he had never been on one. For all his experience with water, he had never even seen the sea, and neither had Ellis. He couldn’t fathom how she must have felt, looking out a plane window and seeing the whole ocean beneath her, like rivers stacked on rivers stacked on rivers.

Later, Caspar was taking a walk around the farmer’s market and approached a stone path leading onto a road that went further into the city. He approached it, leering into the alleyways that the street branched into. One of them led to the concert hall. Next to him was a green lamppost with an advertisement taped to it. Caspar suppressed a gasp when he saw the poster.

It was the first time he had seen Ewan’s face for three weeks now, though it was more done up than he was used to. Every imperfection in his hair had been smoothed out, every scar on his face erased. He was dressed in a suit and held a violin in his hand. He held it the same way he did a flashlight, hands wrapped around the thin, stringed part of the instrument.

Ewan would be performing, the ad said, at the start of July, in the very same concert hall Caspar often longed to visit. It would be Ewan and other young people playing, all vying for a chance at larger successes. Caspar contemplated running to the concert hall now, but he brushed aside the thought as quickly as it had come. There were other duties he was bound to.

He returned to the fish stand and found his mother now talking to another woman with hair that had been meticulously combed down to hide the frazzle that peaked through near the ends. Her noise was long and sharp, pointed in a straight line from her face.

“Here he is,” his mother said. “You haven’t seen Caspar in a while, have you?” The woman shook her head. Her face held some semblance of familiarity; in the abscesses of Caspar’s memory, he recalled a party many years prior where he had seen her.

“You’ve grown a few feet, haven’t you?” the woman said to Caspar. She was wearing e a long, airy skirt that flowed in the breeze and tan slip-ons.

“This is Liv.” Caspar’s mother gestured to the woman, and he extended his hand. Liv’s handshake was tough and certain, but also soft.

“You know,” continued his mother, “Caspar and I were just talking about your husband a while ago. That cryptid he was always going on about.” His mother laughed, a hiss of air that stabbed into the surroundings. “Tell him about it, Liv. Before he died.” Caspar looked to Liv. She was laughing, like his mother, but hidden in the wrinkles of her face was a deep hurt, like she did not find the humour in it.

“He got real obsessed with that one fish,” Liv said. “Every time something bad happened he would shout about how it was the fish with antlers doing it, tearing through whatever with his teeth.”

“What did he say about it?” Caspar didn’t want to press too hard, but his curiosity was immense.

“A big fish, with fins strong enough for it to walk when it needed to. Swimming just underneath the surface of the water, completely quiet. And the two stag antlers, growing from its head.” Liv scoffed. “Like something out of a kid’s book.”

Caspar’s mother went off to speak to customer, leaving Caspar alone with Liv.

“It was the worst a little before he died,” she said, “irrevocably convinced that the stupid thing was real. One time he came to and yelled that it was right next to the shore, crushing a dead fish with it’s fHis mind was going, slowly but surely.” She sighed, before the sorrow on her face melted away, something she must have had to do many times by now.  “You want my advice?”

“I’ll take anything.”

“Don’t be curious. Interested, sure. But not curious. These legends, all of them, are just the river again, nothing but water. They can take different shapes, but at the end of it, they can’t leave.” She looked down, examining the spots of dirt on her shoes.

“My husband could’ve gone nicely,” Liv said, her voice filled with air, “but he got curious, and he wasted his days on waiting for something that didn’t exist.”

Caspar’s mother returned to the two and whisked Liv away, chatting about the latest market happenings. They left Caspar alone, with the ice and dead fish waiting to be sold. He thought about what Liv said about being nothing but the river. He wondered if it was too late for him to be more than that.

They didn’t go to Whitehorse on Saturdays. Instead, they kept to the house, or visited someone, or did something else. On this Saturday, Caspar’s mother had elected to spend the time sleeping. She was too tired, she said. Her limbs didn’t work like they used to.

Caspar exited the house. He was awake so often in the frigidity of the morning that he often forgot it was summer, and that in the noon the river was not nearly as cold as it was when they went fishing. The water looked pleasant. He couldn’t remember the last time he thought the water had looked pleasant.

Moving to the canoe, he untied it from the tree and started pushing it toward the river. He didn’t bring any fishing gear or iceboxes with him. It would be him, the river, and nothing else today, the only thing pushing him to go his own wanderlust.

The surface wasn’t black anymore but a brilliant azure, mimicking the sky above. Caspar stuck his hand in the water as the canoe moved forward, feeling the rush of the bubbles as they slipped between the fingers. Usually the feel of the water brought him down, sogging his skin and clothes, but right now it was electrifying, rippling from the tips of his fingernails down his body and rousing the goosebumps on his arms.

He passed Ewan’s house, and the spot they usually fished at, and the thick treeline that dotted the land. Behind it was a clear spot, where he could see across the surrounding land for far wider than usual. In the distance was a gathering of houses, with small, coloured dots he knew were cars, and even smaller, thinner dots he knew were people. The streetlights were off, but the sun splintered off their empty glass shells and formed shining dots in the sides of his eyes.

For a moment, Caspar stopped rowing, the canoe drifting forward only under the influence of the water’s gradual stream. He wondered if he could be like that, living somewhere people didn’t want to leave. The water splashed up against the side of the boat. He thought about being in a small bright car and driving to small bright street, where he would not wear thick rubber boots.

The canoe hit a strong current and jolted forward, hitting a stray rock jutting above the surface. Before he could react, Caspar’s momentum flung him forwards. He couldn’t keep his balance, tumbling off the side of the boat and crashing into the water.

The water shocked his skin, stabbing deep into it and piercing his lungs with a sharp, ridged needle. Even in the summer, it was cold; Caspar knew that better than anyone, but he was still surprised by the way it seized his arms and legs and refused to let them move.

The river only pushed Caspar and the boat farther away from each other, separating them in the canvas of bluish green. By the time Caspar had recovered enough to stick his head above the surface, the water had seeped into his eyes and nose. His vision looked like it was melting, the canoe only a blurry splodge in the corner of his sight. Shaking off the droplets that had settled on his eyelashes, he began to thrash his arms through the water, maneuvering himself through the rucks and pieces of wood that were buried in the river sediment.

Splashes of water froth stuck to his hands and leaked into his open mouth, the small shards of rock and leaf in it filling the space between his teeth. His waterlogged boot dragged his shoe down, catching itself on a bank of dirt at the river bottom. Caspar bent his leg and kicked off the dirt, propelling himself against the current. He swam as best he could, his hands clutching at the water as they passed in and out in an effort to displace himself forward more.

His hand rammed into a wooden ridge, the edge of the canoe; the pain of the impact rung up through his skeleton. He grasped the boat and pulled it toward himself, hugging the boat as he clambered on. With water pouring from his clothes, he grabbed the oar and returned the boat to the nearest shore. Once it hit the ground Caspar tossed himself out and sat there in the sun. He took off his jacket and hung it on a nearby branch, allowing it to dry. He was there for a while, to get the warmth of the sun back into his blood.

He could still see the town, even more distant now than it was before. The people were almost invisible, the only details he could make out the shapes of the buildings. The water dripped down around him as the smell of the river wafting into the air. He realized that even if he was to live there, in that far away place, the smell of fish would follow him. It was a smell that permeated into your skin, a smell you didn’t get rid of even if you never touched water again. At least to your own nose.

When he stopped shivering, he put his damp jacket in the back of the boat and paddled back upstream. The house was exactly as he had left it, not a thing in a different spot than before he had left. His mother hadn’t even woken up yet.

Two days into July, even the night air carried a sense of warmth with it. The midnight sun covered the skyline with light as Caspar looked out the window in his room.

That morning, Caspar had been clumsy with the fishing. There were fish and nets dropped, knots badly tied, and the ramming of the canoe into the riverbank. His mother didn’t say anything, but the way the lines in her face wrinkled when he messed up told him all he needed to know.

“I slept badly,” he explained to her. “Some kind of animal was outside my window all night. Sorry.” Caspar had never been good at lying, so he worried if his mother could read in his eyes the actual reason he was distracted. Tomorrow was Ewan’s performance, and he so badly wanted to go, if only to listen like he used to through the open windows. The only thing he needed to do to attend was show up and be seen. But that was the hard part. To be seen by Ewan after all this time.

“Caspar!” shouted his mother, interrupting his thoughts, “I’m going into Whitehorse to help out Liv. Coming?”

He took a second to reply. “No thanks,” he said. “I’ll stay.” Liv was moving out of the area. She had said she wanted to go somewhere down south, where it rained more often so the winters didn’t bring a dry cold that peeled the skin off of your lips.

His mother left and Caspar made himself a quick dinner, eating while he watched the television. Afterwards, he went back to his room and saw Ewan’s house again, though something was different this time. The porch light was turning on and off erratically, dots and dashes of time that Caspar felt all too familiar with. His heart leaping out of his chest, he grabbed the sheet he had made of morse code letters and brought it next to the flashlight. It was the day before Ewan’s performance, so it made sense that he would have returned.

As Caspar watched the porch light flickering, he noticed the letters didn’t make any sense. They were far too dispersed to be anything more than gibberish. He eyed the doors and the window of Ewan’s house, still dark, and realized nobody was home. The flashlight and paper dropped from his hand, falling onto the desk below. The light was broken, nothing more.

Caspar opened the front door and headed outside to be closer to the light, knowing now that it was just a faulty wire but still helpless to stop it. It was naïve of him to think Ewan might be back. He wouldn’t return, not now.

Under a small brush was a plastic container that Caspar noticed gleaming in the night sun. He opened it and was assailed by the smell of rotting fish. It was the whitefish with the lamprey, the one he had taken at the start of June, now so decayed he could barely recognize it. The open mouth of the fish pointed up like it was mocking him. Carrying the container to the river, he dumped the contents in the water, his mouth and fingers tensing as he threw it. The particles of the fish and lamprey spread out into the water as flakes and without thinking Caspar took off his shoes and stepped in. The water was warm, comforting to his bare skin.

He stepped into the remains of the rotten fish, feeling it squish beneath the sole of his foot. He stepped into it again and again until he was stamping on it with all his might and fish blood stained his ankles. The smell was overbearing, covering him like a veil. He crouched down and smashed his hands into the shallow water, squeezing whatever fish was left in his hands until it leaked out. The river was loud, the touch of water on his skin mixing with his anger and filling his body. He could almost feel the antlers, pushing themselves through the back of his skull.