Duncton Wood (62 page)

Down, down through the night, the warm air no comfort to their fur, down toward the Marsh End that lay below them still and strangely silent. Running on and down to the edge of the wood itself, and there stopping and listening for sounds, hoping that somewhere they would see a youngster who should be aburrow, a female who couldn’t sleep, some kind of Marsh End life. But there was nothing.

Then, creeping skillfully by secret Marsh End routes toward the tunnels themselves, and his terrible fear confirmed – for the sound of the deep bully voices of henchmoles could be heard in the tunnels where Marsh End youngsters had so recently run and played and females gossiped.

No good four of them attacking – best find out the worst. Creeping again by secret ways, looking for what they feared to find – the massacre of their youngsters.

Henchmoles here and there but no bodies yet... and then to the central place, in and out of the shadows, fugitives in their own tunnels, seeking the sight that would make them fugitives for life. Were they all dead, all killed?

It was only after peering down into many tunnels that Mekkins and his three friends began to realize that there were
no
Marsh End youngsters or females here at all, dead or alive. Not a single one.

“They’ve all gone!” said Mekkins. “They’ve gone!” And it was confirmed by a conversation they overheard between two henchmoles: “Bloody waste of time, this jaunt were. That Mekkins must have taken the whole pack of them onto the pastures, youngsters and all! Cunning little bugger, isn’t he?”

But “that” Mekkins had done nothing of the kind. Mekkins crouched in the shadows as a sense of wonder and disbelief settled over him. They could not
all
have gone!

“But they have!” said one of the three with him. They checked again on the surface, down to the marsh edge, creeping silently along for fear of disturbing the henchmoles, peering into tunnel after tunnel and burrows when they could. But not a sign of life could they find. Just a few grumbling henchmoles in deserted tunnels of Marsh End.

They stopped still again up on the surface, which was bright with the cold ligjit of a nearly full moon. Out from the marshes came the call of curlew and snipe, calls which every one of the four had heard a thousand times and which they barely noticed. Leaves of oak and ash rustled gently above them, catching the moonshine. Mekkins looked about him in wonder and then, very slowly, his face and snout rose to point up toward the moon.

“It’s nearly full strength,” he murmured to himself. “Nearly full. You know what tomorrow will be?” There was silence, so he answered his own question: “It’ll be Midsummer Night, that’s what day it is.” He turned away from the marsh to face southward, up toward the distant hill now sunk in wooded darkness, where the Stone stood waiting.

“You know where youngsters go for Midsummer Night, don’t you? I think I know where ours have gone. They’ve not gone, they’ve bloody well escaped!” Then he laughed gently with wonder and relief and added “And I’ve got a damn good idea who’s leading ’em there!”

   31  

R
EBECCA
had sensed something wrong in Duncton Wood two hours after Mekkins had left in the early evening with a band of Marsh End males and the stronger females to enter the pastures to try to help Brome. They had gone off amid excited chatter and cheering, eager to be a party to a possible defeat of Rune.

But Rebecca had stayed behind and only later did she begin to know why. Something
was
wrong. She had the same impending fear she had felt on that night when Rune and Mandrake had come and killed her litter. She went up onto the surface, where the light of the rising moon against a still sky was just beginning to filter among the trees and fall weakly on the wood’s floor, and snouted up in the direction of Barrow Vale. Dark shadows, talons, the shifting unease of danger was what she sensed. She went down into the tunnels where burrow after burrow was filled with the gentle sound of youngsters, some still suckling, others rolling and fighting each other with the strength and independence they had found by the third week of June.

Mothers relaxed with their young, a few older, litterless females gossiped among themselves, chattering about the excitement of seeing Mekkins off “to give that Rune a taste of his own violence.”

It was quiet and peaceful with just a hint of laughter in the air. Rebecca paced about uneasily, the few marsh-enders who met her smiling, for they knew from Mekkins who she was and that she was a healer like Rose had been.

“Tell us a story, Rebecca!” a giggling youngster asked her, pushed forward by his less bold siblings. She touched him, shook her head and passed on, her tail twitching with tension. Something was wrong. Then up onto the surface again and the growing feeling that there was a terrible danger coming through the night, down here where only youngsters played and females were unprotected.

Birdcalls drifted in from the marshes, as they had on the night Bracken had gone; a tree occasionally stirred and whispered in a breeze that ran above the wood but • not on its still floor.

Fear began to come into her, her eyes widened in the night, her snout pointed and pointed to the dark toward Barrow Vale. She felt that she was the only thing protecting the Marsh End... from what? The moon rose slowly, stronger, full,” the sky finally turning black, and somewhere a small branch fell rolling through the fresh-leaved branches of a tree, tumbling round and down leisurely until it hit the wood floor and all was silent again.

There was danger, and it Was coming. And she knew suddenly, and with a ruthless certainty, that she must take them away to somewhere safe where no hurt could befall them. These youngsters were in her protection, just as once her own litter had been.
This
time there would be no mistakes.

So powerful was her sense of danger and so determined her resolution, there was no argument. The females with litters heard her in silence, her instinct for protection of the young soon becoming theirs.

Urgent whispers, silent runnings through tunnels, low voices, scurrying, sleepy youngsters suddenly awake and standing still waiting for instructions, last-minute checkings of more distant tunnels and then off together through the tunnels to the east, where no mole likes to go. Where that Curlew had lived. Youngsters running and scrabbling to keep up, calm fear of mothers knowing they must not panic, away and away through the night tunnels, to where the soil is damper and the smell is strange.

Rebecca leading them, away from a danger she had not yet seen but which
was
coming, toward a place to rest on the east side of the Marsh End and then on, the massed sound of escaping paws pattering in the silent night.

On and on she led them, letting none lag behind, the youngsters holding back their tears and tiredness before the urgent seriousness of adult moles.

Even at Curlew’s place there was no safety in the air. The wood was too still in the light of a nearly full moon. Where to take them? Where to lead? Again and again her snout led her round and up toward the distant slopes where once, on Longest Night, she had gone with Mekkins. Beyond, the Stone waited. It always waited. A full moon, and nearly Midsummer, when the Stone blessed the young. One day to get there, sneaking through the wood. She could try along the east side, up on the surface, pray to the Stone and take them there.. The Stone would protect them on Midsummer Night. On to the Stone.

Mekkins and the moles who had followed him finally got back to Brome in the pasture system at dawn, fatigued beyond sleep.

“They’ve gone,” Mekkins said blankly to Brome. “Rebecca must have taken the Marsh End youngsters over to the east side so that Rune and the henchmoles couldn’t get them. She’ll probably try to reach the Stone. We’ll have to help...” But his body could hardly hold itself straight he was so tired, and his eyes could not focus.

“Try to sleep,” urged Brome, “and when we have all rested we will work out what to do. We will help you as you helped us. If need be our moles will die for your youngsters.”

Mekkins awoke restless and worried. It was late morning and the tunnels of the pastures were light with warm air and the soft smell of summer wafting down from the surface. Then a curious, distant rumbling slowly filled the tunnels as he woke up, quite unlike any sound he had ever heard, and it brought him wide awake and out into the communal before he could blink twice more. A passing pasture mole must have seen his concern, for he said the single word
cows
as he went by. The rumbling stopped and started, passing overhead like a summer day’s cloud that hides the sun for a while in its passing. “Cows!” muttered Mekkins in a grumbling voice, finding a tunnel to the surface, and going to see them close to. He smelled them before he got there, heavy and sweet, and then watched their black and white flanks swaying and stalling above his gaze against a blue sky, the tearing sound of the grass they grazed filling the tunnels and mixing with the slow sound of their chewing and breathing and chomping and thumping of their hooves. All harmless and sad. Bloody cows!

The wood was too distant for Mekkins to see, but the sun was high enough to have caught its western edge billowing green above the pasture, dark at its base where the trunks and shadows were and then bright-lit greens of great branches of leaves, thousands on millions; and a shimmer of the lightest blue haze covering them all as soft flaps and sounds of lazing birds, mainly wood pigeon and magpie, broke out through the haze and drifted over the pasture toward him. A couple of young thistle plants, spikes still soft with youth, cast a shadow on the entrance where he crouched.

He would lead them to the Stone, for it was Midsummer, and tonight, surely, that was where they should be. They would wait for the safety of dusk and then start the trek toward the high wood, into the rustling shade of the beeches as the day drew in, and then over to the Stone. He was restless and worried, but never had he had so much faith in the Stone.

Brome joined him, snouted out into the air, and said “It’s the kind of day pasture moles love, when the young can play and us adults can find a bit of food early and then laze around doing nothing!”

“We ain’t no different,” said Mekkins. “Pasture, wood... moles don’t change. Not really.” He told Brome his plan and Brome nodded: he knew it would be hard to persuade his own forces to follow Mekkins so soon into Duncton Wood, but if he had to kick them all the way there he would see they went. And anyway, wasn’t this what they needed – access to the Stone? They would see when they got there, just as he had. There was nothing worthwhile in the world that a mole didn’t have to fight for.

As the warm day slid imperceptibly into the evening of Midsummer Night, Rebecca, moved silently among the sleeping mothers and youngsters where they lay hiding and resting in an old tunnel she had found for them.

The mothers dozed rather than slept, looking anxiously over the young who snuggled against them to see that they were safe. Some of the youngsters lay separately, paws out and snouts stretched, like the young adults they almost were. As Rebecca passed them by, she was aware that they looked at her with mute concern, just to see if she was really confident that where she was leading them was all right and that she knew they would be safe. She could sense that panic was not far below their seeming calm, and knew that if it broke out they would all be lost. So she went by calmly, deliberately slowly, saying a word here, pushing a youngster out of the main tunnel there, every second seeming an hour to her.

She was almost reluctant to leave, for once they got to the Stone, what then? It was like leading them to the edge of a void with the enemy behind and wondering how, exactly, they were going to fly to safety when they got there. She had no wings for them.

Henchmoles
were
about. Earlier she had met one, scurrying busily down toward Barrow Vale, and with the rest of them freezing into the wood’s floor, he had questioned her briefly and she lied that she was from the eastside. “Well, get on back there now, you know the rules. If I weren’t in a hurry you’d feel the strength of my pawl” Big and mindless his voice was, and the youngsters from the Marsh End shivered when they heard it, their mothers’ eyes silent on them, imploring them to keep quite still.