5 Cylus 721
Oram lay on the ice staring up at the gloomy Cylus sky for several trills, then began slowly to move, after satisfying himself that he wasn’t hurt by his fall. The suddenness with which he had lost his footing took him utterly by surprise, as did the hardened smoothness of the surface on which he had landed. Turning his head once he dared move it, his ground-level eyes could see that the surface of the frozen pond was covered with a fresh glaze of smooth, black ice, different from the rimy white stuff he had been walking over in the past trials while setting and checking on his muskrat traps. In better sunlight, he would probably have seen and been able to avoid the black ice patch, but the perpetual, shadowless twilight of the season made the subtle differences in texture harder to see.
By the time he rose up and gathered his legs to sit tailor-fashion, the trapper’s jarred thoughts had collected themselves to the point that he could try to make sense of how the black ice could have formed. The temperatures had been consistently cold these last few trials, so there shouldn’t have been any thaw and refreeze. Nor had there been any sleet or freezing rain, only some powdery snow flurries. So where had the water come from? Perhaps the ‘Run’s level had risen for some reason and spilled some overflow over the pond. Oram would go and check, he decided. But that would wait until after he had checked his traps.
Today, as on the evening before, those traps were *all* full. In fact, Oram had noticed that the Sweetvine around Ol’ Tuck’s Run seemed overall to be more active than usual. Birds sang and squirrels scurried in the branches as if it were still Vhalar. Even more wonderously, the old bettie had re-appeared in his camp. The hunter had woken this morning to find it parked next to his cot. Given how cold the weather was, he hadn’t had the heart to evict the large turtle this time, and let it remain there, working around it as best he could in the cramped quarters. Well, Oram figured, if the turtles and other critters were out and about, that must mean there was something for them to eat, so he made a mental note to look for some greens to gather for the old bettie. Who knew? He might find forage for himself and his team, as well.
After at last getting carefully to his feet, Oram shuffled cautiously around the pond to retrieve his catch and reset his traps. His bag was full and heavy with muskrats by the time he had finished his circuits. Looking about, he thought he actually saw more pushups than yesterday. Were the muskrats even now throwing up new ones? He wondered; however, the more pressing puzzle was how these smooth ice sheets were forming. Picking up the pace once his boots reached land, Oram headed towards the main course of Run. As he suspected, he arrived to find that the water level had risen, at least locally. The creek should be in spate, so the hunter suspected that something had blocked the flow somewhere nearby.
It did not take him long to find the answer to the puzzle; the signs were everywhere once one knew where to look: the stumps of fallen trees chiseled to a point, a mound of earth looming at the water’s edge, resembling a muskrat pushup but much larger, the berm of vegetation that jutted well into the course of the Run. Beavers. The smooth ice on Oram’s pond was probably overflow seeping from the dam.
Oram couldn’t remember seeing a beaver dam this high up the ‘Run before. More unusual activity. And more opportunity. He went back to camp to check on his animals (now including the turtle), to stow his catch, and to inventory his options for trapping beaver.
