Duncton Wood (42 page)

Mekkins was touched by the change that had come over Curlew herself since Rebecca, and then Comfrey, had come. They seemed to have put new life into her and the mole he remembered as being so frightened and withdrawn was now bustling with activity and full of purpose. Things certainly work out in a strange way, he thought to himself as he departed, and that was something to take comfort from.

When he got back to the Marsh End and heard what had been happening in the system, he realized how right Rose had been to warn that dark days were coming. They were already there. For fear and terror were taking Duncton over, as the henchmoles, mainly westsiders, were beginning to get so powerful that they were out of control.

There were random attacks on eastsiders and marsh-enders; there were takeovers of tunnels by henchmole gangs; there was even a killing in Barrow Vale itself, the one place in the system where a mole traditionally felt completely safe on neutral ground.

At the root of the problem was the change that had come over Mandrake which had started, the gossips were quick to point out, from the night he and Rune had killed Rebecca’s young. In the early days of Mandrake’s thrall, if there had been killing to be done it was done by Mandrake himself. He kept tight control of the henchmoles, whom he selected himself and who obeyed no mole but he. Slowly, subtly, darkly. Rune began to gain power. By acting as a buffer between the henchmoles on one hand and Mandrake on the other, he gained the confidence of both. A mole like Burrhead, who was the leading westside henchmole, preferred to work through Rune than directly with Mandrake, who was too unpredictable. He made a mole like Burrhead stumble over his words and feel stupid; Rune was so much more understanding....

By the Midsummer after Bracken’s birth. Rune had the direct loyalty of all the henchmoles, many of whom had gained their positions by his preferment, and one way or another (mainly by his guile) those henchmoles originally selected by Mandrake were frozen out. Rumors were set against them, for example, so that Mandrake no longer trusted them. At one elder burrow meeting, two of them, whose reputation with Mandrake had been poisoned by Rune’s slanders, were killed by Mandrake himself in front of all. So savagely was it done that only Rune smiled; there was something sensual in death for him.

After the death of Hulver, or, more particularly, ever since Mandrake had been so shocked to hear those words of grace spoken by Bracken – the voice of the Stone, as it seemed to Mandrake – he had slowly lost interest in the power he had won for himself. No mole doubted he was in charge, not even Rune, but he preferred to let Rune exercise power for him, with occasional excursions into mindless brutality just to show who was in charge.

Most moles in Duncton, including Mandrake, assumed that Rebecca had been taken by an owl along with her litter after their killing. But seemingly worse, for Mandrake, was the fact that his mate, Sarah, who had opposed the killing of the litter from the start, had been taken by owl as well – at the same time as Rebecca. The sudden loss of his mate and daughter seemed to mark the start of Mandrake’s decline into distracted brutality. He would suddenly appear in Barrow Vale and spend hours sitting brooding, while the moles there would quietly disappear. Sometimes he was heard to attack the walls of his tunnels in great lumbering crashes and to mutter to himself in the language of Siabod. Words that sounded like curses, and ravings no mole could understand.

He became obsessed, too, by the Stone Mole, a rumor that had never died out. Indeed, the incident with Rebecca got tangled up with the Stone Mole, who was said (and Mandrake appeared to believe it in some way) to have mated with Rebecca. Oh, yes! Haven’t you heard? The pups Mandrake killed were the Stone Mole’s pups!

No mole quite believed this, and yet it was a good story... so rumors feed on themselves.

As for the reports of her death, these were so confused that no mole could really tell what the truth was. Mandrake himself believed her dead but there were others, Rune among them, who were not so sure. Some even said – but this was the wild gossip of those who had exhausted the titillation in every other story – that she had escaped from the system with a single pup who had not died in the assault and was rearing him as a second Stone Mole to come and avenge his siblings’ deaths, “Typical Rebecca!” some said, not knowing that the Rebecca they had known was no more, alive or dead.

Mekkins garnered all these stories in visits to Barrow Vale, for Marsh End was too cut off and unpopular to be a good source for gossip. He trusted the henchmole who had so bravely led Rebecca down to the Marsh End to keep quiet – it was in his interests to do so.

More serious was the possibility that the news of Rebecca’s existence and whereabouts might leak from the Marsh End, where a few moles must have guessed at it. He began to think that if there was any way for Rebecca to leave the system he should find it. For surely if they ever did discover her, especially with Comfrey, then she
would
be killed. It was to discuss this that he himself decided to risk a journey to the pastures to see if he could locate Rose for her advice and help. He wanted, in any case, to bring her back to Curlew’s burrow to take a look at Rebecca and see if she could inject into her a greater will to live again.

Meanwhile, the Stone Mole rumor was resurrected periodically by glimpses of Bracken, who now had such a command of the Ancient System – except for its most central part, whose exploration stilt defeated him – that he did not mind taking a few risks. In fact, for him it was quite fun. But he was seen only down on the slopes, for as the atmosphere of fear in the wood increased, no mole ventured too far from his burrow, and none up onto the hill itself.

Bracken’s visits to the slopes were principally to see Rue and her thriving litter – Violet, Coltsfoot, Beech and Pipple.

Bracken had tried several more times to find his way through the Chamber of Roots but finally gave up when, one windy day when the roots were viciously active below ground, he got cut off by a deep and treacherous fissure that appeared in the floor and took a long and dangerous time to find another way out again, while the roots got noisier and noisier and seemed to want to entwine themselves about him and take him for their own. He was determined to return one day and find some way of completing the exploration, but meanwhile decided to create tunnels of his own.

He established his tunnels at the wood’s edge beyond the Stone clearing, quite near the spot where Cairn had died. His choice was decided principally by the existence of the second tunnel leading out of (or into) the circular tunnel around the Chamber of Echoes. The tunnel was a slight affair, meandering here and there and eventually petering out to the west of the Stone. Bracken constructed a clever series of tunnels that connected up with it in a deliberately confusing and roundabout way, designed to put off any inquisitive mole who found his own tunnels. He liked the idea of having access to the Ancient System underground but saw danger in creating a direct route.

Meanwhile, Duncton Wood declined toward winter. The winds off the pastures grew grayer and colder, and the last of the leaves blew in desolate flurries off the trees, leaving just a few dead ones hanging on the beech and oak trees as a reminder of the summer now long gone. The only green that remained was the ivy that hung off some of the older trees, some mistletoe that had colonized the occasional oak on the lower westside, and near Barrow Vale a holly tree or two, whose shining, prickly leaves and clusters of red berries seemed the only splash of color in the whole wood.

Creature after creature disappeared from sight. Most of the birds had gone, while the gray squirrels, which had scampered their way over the trunks and branches of the oaks or across the wood floor between the beeches all spring and summer, began, one by one, to disappear into the nooks and holes in which they hibernated.

A colony of pipistrelle bats found out the hollow dead elm in the lower wood and, after wheeling and circling round it dusk after dusk, settled down to sleep the winter through in the safety of its dark inaccessibility. Insects like wasps and ladybirds crawled away under the looser patches of tree bark while hedgehogs, after growing slow and dozy, finally chose their spots for sleep as well, curling up under a cover of leaves and mold with only the very slightest trembling of their snouts to tell that they were still alive.

Then, as November gave way to December, the Duncton moles responded to winter by clearing out their deeper runs, shoring them up where necessary, blocking off colder entrances, and crouching still in the cold darkness of a system, and a season, bowed down by gloom. For hours a mole’s only movement might be the shivering of flanks or a sullen search for food, while the only sounds carried in on the wet, cold wind were the periodic crackings and fallings of twigs and branches, or the flap of a magpie’s wings whose black sheen reflected a gray sky.

Yet, however bowed down a system may be, nothing can quite destroy the spark of excitement that comes to everymole’s breast with the start of the third week of December and the approach of Longest Night. For even in the darkest hour there is a distant star, a tiny light of hope whose glimmer, though far off, is enough to thrill the most despairing heart.

Longest Night! The time when youngsters grow silly with expectation and adults grow young with memory. The time when a mole may forget the icy months still to come in the knowledge that the imminent passage of Longest Night means that the days are beginning – however unlikely it seems – to shorten once more. Longest Night! The time when darkness and light hang in a balance and the mystery of life is remembered again.

Then are the old tales told and the ancient songs sung. Of the coming of Ballagan; of the finding of the first Stone, of its splitting into the seven hundred Stones; of Ballagan’s mate. Vervain of the West Stone; of their struggle with darkness on the first Longest Night; of their sons and daughters and the founding of the first system; of Ballagan’s discovery of the first Book, and Vervain’s discovery of the second. But most beloved tale of all, and the one all moles like to hear again on Longest Night, of how Linden, last son of Ballagan and Vervain, made the trek with the books to Uffington and then learned to read them, and in the course of one Longest Night, became a White Mole, thereby allowing the Stone’s healing power for love and silence to pass through him to all moles.

In honor of Linden at least somemoles in every system traditionally trek to the Stone (or whatever feature in their system represents it) on Longest Night. And what an exciting memory
that
is for those who take part, as jokes, smiles, giggles, whimsies, buffoonery, tomfoolery and games mix with prayers, silence and mystery in an evening of pilgrimage. Then back to the burrows for a feast and a chatter and a tale well told; and then sleep, if there’s time, before waking at last in the knowledge that Longest Night has been survived and the long journey toward spring has begun.

As this particular Longest Night approached, many Duncton moles thought to themselves that one way or another they ought to make the trek to the Stone this time, having been deterred from doing so by Mandrake’s outright threats on the previous Longest Night. This time their fear was greater and morale lower – yet it is just at such times that thoughts turn naturally to the Stone, and the need to ask for its help. So many moles secretly planned to make the trek, though few admitted they were making plans to do so. As December entered its third week, the system began to buzz with excitement and chatter as moles cleaned out their burrows and made their plans, and laughed with pleasure at the prospect of Longest Night.

But there are always moles – and always will be – who, through character or circumstances, decide they cannot join in the gregarious fun in the approach of Longest Night. Bracken was one of them. He could, it is true, have spent a little time with Rue, assuming she would have allowed it, but the spirit was not in him. At the very moment when most moles in the system were finding a little relief from the shadows of winter in the celebration to come, he found himself falling into an uneasy sadness.

Some days he would go to the edge of the wood and look across the pastures and wonder if, after all, his first impulse on coming to the Stone might have been the best – to leave the system altogether and make his way to whatever lay beyond it in the direction of Uffington. Other days he found himself crouched in anguished silence in its shadows, wondering whether, after all, its power was imaginary – demanding then to see the power, to feel it. Or again, he would think about the Chamber of Roots and wonder why he could not cross it – and then ask himself how he could consider leaving the system if he had failed even to explore the system’s most secret part. “What will I find out there,” he would whisper to himself as he looked across the pastures, “if I can’t even follow my snout in
here?”

He was lonely. He wanted to talk to a mole again as he had talked so long before to Hulver; he wanted to leam something from a mole who could tell him what to learn. He wanted knowledge, but did not know where to find it. And Longest Night, which he knew was near, and when all moles shared a joy together, simply underlined the fact of his isolation from the Stone, from the heart of the Ancient System, and from all other moles.

“Rebecca! ‘Ere, Rebecca! I’ve got a surprise for you, my girl!” It was Mekkins, full of joy of the season and suddenly back in Curlew’s burrow with many a whisper and a laugh on the way down the tunnel to it. He had brought Rose.

She took one look at Rebecca and said, “My love, how frail and thin you have become. This certainly will
not
do.” She said it kindly but firmly, crouching down snout to snout with Rebecca and examining her with motherly care.

“I’m sorry. Rose,” said Rebecca. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry.” And faced by Rose’s love, she started to cry as she had never cried, ever before. She tried for a moment to stop, for little Comfrey, who was snuggled up against her, started up frightened, but Curlew took him to her and played a game with him, which had him and Mekkins running out into the tunnel, leaving Rose and Rebecca alone together. So that Rebecca could cry.