The difficulty with the key was not its weight. Rowan had carried larger objects than this—a whole hazelnut weighed more, and he had pulled one of those up through the intake crack last autumn with his teeth and braced rear legs. The difficulty was the geometry.
The key was wedged in the angle between the ledge and the base of the iron sluice gate frame. The angle was perhaps thirty degrees—a tight V of stone and iron that had caught the key perfectly on its way down and held it against the current. Rowan's forepaws could reach the key. His jaws could close around the shaft.
But when he tried to pull it upward, the hexagonal head caught against the iron frame base and wouldn't come clear. He sat back on his haunches on the two-inch stone ledge, in the cold and the dark and the noise of the moving water, and thought.
The key needed to come out of the V at the same angle it had gone in—not straight up, but tilted toward the east wall, angled slightly so the hexagonal head cleared the iron frame.
He would need both paws free to tilt it, which meant he couldn't grip it with his teeth at the same time. And working two-handed on a two-inch ledge over a fast current, in almost total darkness, with his tail as his only additional balance point, was going to take a level of concentration that precluded moving at all until he had the method exactly right in his mind.
Rowan closed his eyes. This was a dormouse habit, not a human one—sighted creatures tended to keep their eyes open when thinking, but Rowan's best acoustic and tactile processing happened when he was not distracted by the minimal grey light filtering through the grating above.
He built the geometry of the problem in his mind instead: the key's position, its angle, the clearance required on the hexagonal head, the sequence of movements that would tilt it free without letting it drop off the ledge into the open water.
Five minutes later, he opened his eyes, wrapped his tail around the iron frame base for grip, and began. He used his right forepaw to apply lateral pressure to the key's shaft—pushing it gently east, toward the wall—while his left forepaw worked the hexagonal head upward in a slow, careful arc. The key shifted. The head cleared the iron frame by perhaps half an inch.
Rowan held both paws absolutely still, feeling the key balanced at the tipping point of the V, and then applied a slow, steady pressure upward. The key came free. He caught it against his chest with both forepaws, pressed his back against the east wall, and sat completely still while his heartrate returned to something manageable.
The key was in his grip—cold, heavy for its size, slightly slimy with river algae on the bow end but perfectly solid in his paws. Now he had to carry it back. The eastern ledge back to the crack was twenty feet of narrow wet stone with the key held against his chest.
What he could do—and had done with hazelnuts—was grip the key shaft in his teeth, tilt his head so the weight was balanced toward his shoulder, and walk on three legs while his tail maintained lateral balance against the channel wall. He bit down carefully on the key shaft, found the balance point, and began the slow walk east. The return walk was worse than the outward journey had been.
Outward, he had been moving with purpose and the clarity of a defined task ahead. Now, coming back, he was aware of the cold that had been working into his fur from first contact with the channel air, and the fatigue that was beginning to settle into his leg muscles from the sustained, careful, three-point gait. His fur along his undersides was damp enough to be losing its insulating value.
He could feel the difference in his core temperature: not a sharp drop, but a slow, steady decline that would become significant if he stayed in the channel much longer. He moved faster on the return, within the limits of safety. He made it twelve feet before the ledge narrowed further and his left forepaw slipped on a wet patch of moss.
His body lurched sideways. He caught himself with his tail, pressed hard into the stone, and froze with the key swinging gently from his jaw and the cold water rushing an inch below his belly. For a moment, the only sound was water and his own heartbeat.
Then he pulled himself back level, found the ledge surface with his left paw, and continued east. Eight more feet. Five. Two.
The crack above him, and the faint, grey light of the mill floor.