The Trapper's Glass Eye

The thing that didn't belong was a button. Not a pioneer's bone button or a soldier's brass one, but a small, pearlescent disc from a girl's coat. It sat dead centre in the taxidermied beaver's left eye socket, a clean, bright circle against the dusty brown glass of the right. No one was supposed to be in the Fur Trade room after closing, but the lock on the back door had been jimmied with a pop can tab for years. The air in here always smelled the same: mothballs, cracked leather, and the faint, sweet odour of decay that clung to the stuffed animals.

I touched my own eye. The button was smaller than my thumbnail. It looked like it had been placed there carefully, not just tossed. A little bit of mud was wedged in one of the four tiny holes.

My job was to dust. Or pretend to. Mr. Jackson gave me five bucks a week to 'maintain the exhibits,' which meant running a feather duster over the same grimy glass cases and listening to him talk about grant applications. He was in his office at the front, the sound of his keyboard clicking a slow, uneven rhythm through the building's quiet.

I backed away from the beaver. It was part of a big diorama showing the glorious founding of our town, which was mostly a plastic river, some tiny fake trees, and a few mannequins in buckskin staring grimly at each other. The beaver was supposed to be the prize. Now it looked like it was winking.

"It's a code," Sam said. He didn't look at it directly. He looked at the reflection of it in the glass case across the aisle.

"It's a button."

"Yeah. A code button." He nudged a loose floorboard with the toe of his boot. His boots were always covered in mud, even in the summer. It was spring now, so they were caked in it, thick and grey like concrete. "Someone's leaving a message."

"For who? The other beavers?" I asked.

He finally looked at me, and his face did that thing where it gets serious, the way it did when we were trying to build the raft last year and almost floated into the rapids. "For us, Ben. Who else finds stuff?"

He had a point. We were the only people under sixty who came in here voluntarily. Everyone else was on a school trip or they were looking for a bathroom. Sam crouched down, his knees cracking. He squinted at the diorama.

"It wasn't there yesterday," I said, my voice quieter than I meant it to be.

"See?" he whispered, triumphant. "It's a map. The button is X-marks-the-spot. What's the beaver looking at?"

We both followed the taxidermied creature's gaze. Its one good glass eye was pointed vaguely towards a framed, yellowed map of the original township survey from 1888. It hung crookedly on the wall, right next to a display of rusty traps with teeth like a mechanical wolf.

"The map?" I said. "We look at that every day."

"Not properly," Sam insisted. He stood up, wiping his hands on his jeans even though he hadn't touched anything. It was just a thing he did. A nervous habit. "We gotta come back tonight."

"We are here tonight."

"I mean later. When Jackson's gone." He looked towards the front of the museum. The clicking had stopped. A moment later, we heard the squeak of his chair, a heavy sigh, and the sound of the front door bolt sliding home. Then his footsteps on the gravel outside, fading away. The whole building seemed to settle around us in the quiet.

Sam grinned. His front tooth was chipped from a hockey puck two winters ago. "See? Perfect."

Under the Surveyor's Eye

The only light came from the streetlamp outside, filtering through the tall, grimy windows. It cast long, warped rectangles on the floor and made the mannequins look like they'd moved. Sam had a little keychain flashlight, the kind you win at the fall fair, and its beam was a weak, wobbly circle.

He pointed it at the map. It was covered in spidery handwriting, naming plots of land for people whose gravestones were now worn smooth in the cemetery up the hill. Faded brown lines marked creeks and trails that weren't there anymore. We'd stared at this map a hundred times, imagining things.

"Okay," Sam said, his voice a low hum. "So, the beaver looks at the map. What on the map is… button-shaped? Or beaver-shaped?"

"A lake?" I suggested. Miller's Pond was a rough circle on the east side.

"Maybe." He traced the outline of the pond with his finger, leaving a faint smudge on the glass. "Or maybe it's not what's on the map. Maybe it's what's *behind* it."

My stomach did a little flip. It was one thing to be in here when we were supposed to be. It was another to start taking the exhibits apart. "Mr. Jackson would kill us."

"He'd have to catch us first," Sam said, but he didn't sound so sure. He moved the light away from the map and onto the trap display. The metal jaws were dark and ominous. "My grandpa told me one of these took a guy's hand off. Just… snip."

I didn't say anything. I just watched the weak light tremble on the rusted metal teeth.

"He said you don't even feel it at first, 'cause of the shock. You just look down and your hand's gone." His voice was barely a whisper now. He wasn't looking at the traps anymore. He was looking at his own hands.

"That's not true," I said. It was a lie. I'd heard the same story.

"Probably not," he agreed. We stood there for a minute, just listening to the old building groan.

The idea of prying the map off the wall suddenly felt stupid. Dangerous. "Maybe it's nothing," I said. "Maybe some kid dropped it on a school trip."

"And it bounced up and landed perfectly in a beaver's eye?" Sam shot back. He kicked the floorboard again, harder this time. It made a hollow thud.

We both froze. The sound was loud in the silence. We waited, listening for Mr. Jackson's car to come back, or for a ghost to float out of the mining exhibit. Nothing.

Sam kicked it again, gentler. Thud.

He crouched down, shining the light on the plank of wood. It was darker than the ones around it, and the nails at one end looked newer, less rusty. He pushed his fingers into the crack at the edge and pulled. The wood groaned in protest.

"Help me," he grunted.

I knelt beside him. The wood was rough under my fingernails. It smelled of damp earth and something else, something metallic. We pulled together. The nails screeched as they came free, and the board lifted up.

The space underneath wasn't deep. It was just a narrow cavity between the floor and the dirt foundation, filled with cobwebs and dust bunnies that looked ancient. And in the centre of the dusty patch, sitting right under where the trapper's map hung, was a small box.

It wasn't a pioneer's box. It was a modern tin, the kind that fancy mints come in, but it was dented and the bright paint was mostly scraped off. Mud was caked in the hinge. It looked like it had been buried and dug up more than once.

Sam reached for it, then stopped. He looked at me. His eyes were wide in the gloom. This was real. Not a game about codes and treasure maps anymore.

My heart was beating a fast, heavy rhythm against my ribs. It felt like one of the big mill hammers from the logging exhibit. I nodded. Just a little nod.

He picked up the box. It wasn't heavy. He shook it, and something inside made a soft, rattling sound. Not metal. Not rocks. Something else.

He fumbled with the lid. It was stuck fast with dirt and rust. He scraped at the edge with his thumbnail, his breath coming in short, sharp puffs. The whole museum seemed to be holding its breath with us.

Finally, with a soft pop, the lid came loose.