Beavers and Gardeners. Aivar Lembit

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СКАЧАТЬ corridor leading into the living-room in the lodge ascended in the ground, so it was possible to keep it dry when hustling and bustling and making preparations for nocturnal activities. Märt did not touch the emergency exit that opened on the brink of the hill, being afraid to draw attention or leave any scent for unfriendly creatures to trace.

      During the next couple of weeks no rain fell, the days were unpleasantly dry, the water level in the river dropped and the entrance into the lodge above the water level could be exposed. Märt understood that covering the river bottom was not enough.

      ”It’s time to dam up the stream,” he informed Mirt calmly but seriously.

      Mirt nodded without saying anything, ”I’ll come with you.”

      They both were aware of the danger building a dam could bring along: the dammed up river started to rise by every day, it would flood the forest floors and the gardeners’ fields and the thick blood running in the gardeners’ veins would make them come and destroy the dams built by beavers.

      “Yes,” Märt thought. ”It would be good if it were their only problem!” They had never been afraid of construction work, not to mention building dams. Gardeners could not compete with them and this challenge made them sneer and chuckle cheerfully.

      ”Let’s take some bigger sticks first,” he told Mirt. ”Let’s place them against the flow and wait until they gather mud and other debris in between them.”

      Both of them took a proper tree trunk and swam to the narrowest place in the river prepared for the dam.

      Mirt placed the root of the bush she had been carrying by the one carried by Märt, adjusted the branches a little to join them better, stuck her head out of the water and suddenly noticed two one-metre-tall gardener brats standing at the distance of about five metres. They also spotted Mirt and became speechless like her. For a short moment they stared at each other with wide open eyes in silence, then Mirt dived and hit the water with a light slap by her tail and with a couple of strokes caught up with Märt moving in front.

      “There are children by the river, two small kids,” she said in a hurry, when he questionably looked at her.

      “Kids?” Märt repeated in surprise. “And small? Are you sure that they are alone?”

      “Yes,” Mirt said, ”two little kids, a boy and a girl, and nobody else was seen!”

      “Wait!” Märt said, ”I’ll go and have a look. It is somehow funny! Small children don’t move around alone!”

      Mirt hurried back to the tiny cubs left alone. Her heart had started to pound faster without noticing. But Karu and Maru were fast asleep, happy with their stomachs full and Mirt calmed down after having seen them.

      But Märt came back with more anxious tones in his story.

      “Nothing good!” he shook his head. ”It is what I was just afraid of. They are not simply just small kids and they are not alone at all. At this age children never go around all by themselves, not to mention that the place is in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by marsh and forests.”

      “Who are they then if not children? Do you think we should be afraid of these tiny people?”

      Märt could not but grunt knowingly, “They are not small children but young gardeners. They have not come here alone, big gardeners are together with them. I could clearly smell them and heard their voices echoing by the ruins of the deserted dwelling.”

      Mirt dried her wet hair. It could be seen that the discussion did not make her happy at all and tried to ward off fears imposed on Märt.

      ”Maybe I don’t exactly know what happened at Aedoja. When we were living at Varsaniidu, we didn’t have such rows with gardeners, there’s no need to be afraid of the worst. Kids are kids, I didn’t see any hostile faces, their eyes were kind and they curiously looked around, nothing else.”

      “I have been to Varsaniidu, the gardeners didn’t have such fields there as you can see here upstream. When they puny potatoes and carrots remain under water due to the rising water level, they will start blaming beavers and look for their dams, this is the way it is and we can do nothing about it!” explained Märt wisely.

      “But every child grows up and becomes a gardener one day,” he added after taking a short break, “and nothing good may be expected from the gardeners, otherwise they wouldn’t be gardeners!”

      In response to the story Mirt sullenly scratch her hair that had become wet after diving and worriedly looked at the beaver cubs tossing in their deep sleep.

      They were too small to know anything about the surrounding world and the hazards threatening them on behalf of the grown-up gardeners.

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