A page of The Leaf With One Side, a gamebook. Pick a line at the bottom to go on.
The Chute
The ice house closes at two. You stay. Someone has to watch the machine make ice, and it is you.
At 3:10 a block comes down the chute with a card inside it, the way a fly gets into amber. Cream stock. Handwriting like your own, almost.
Frost has grown over the words. It is November somewhere. It is always November in the chute.
In the one corner you can read: Whoever gets it has to thaw it.
You are whoever.
The compressor hums a note you have heard before. You can't place it.
- Press your thumb to the glass and wait.
- Tap the ice until it gives.
- Scrape it with a fingernail, a little at a time.
- Put it back in the bin with the others.
Whoever gets it has to thaw it. That is the rule in Thaw, where you freeze a note and the one who opens it warms, cracks or scrapes the frost away.
The book · Colophon and credits
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