The first hook came out of the water holding a tree.
Not a whole tree. A broken length of trunk, its bark gone pale and its roots trailing weed. The hooked arm lifted it, turned inward and dragged it toward the dark opening beneath the clearing frame.
Wood cracked.
The arm went down again.
Orret stopped the boat behind the outer reed point.
“That,” she said, “was not doing that last month.”
The clearing works occupied an old timber channel at Backwash Reach. Its frame stood between two stone piers, with a broad current wheel turning beyond the nearer one. The seasonal water had cut through a bank that once isolated the channel. Now the old wheel had a live flow again, and the machine’s mechanical trigger was accepting anything heavy enough to press its floating feeler.
A log. A boat.
