Duncton Wood (96 page)

Moleyears later Tryfan remembered finding himself in the Chamber of Echoes itself, his pawsounds and whimpers echoing around him as if there were a whole lot of youngsters lost like him, but not one of them near enough to give him comfort.

“But then, all of a sudden, even though I was lost and should really have been very frightened, I knew it was all right,” he was to recall; “I didn’t know what it was then, but I know now, as I know that Midsummer Night is the night for the blessing on the young, when the Stone gives them its protection. That’s what it did for me.”

As Tryfan was later to remember, there shone in the confusing tunnels around him a light – not all around him but from somewhere ahead, and with its white glimmer on his snout and pale fur he turned toward it and ran toward it without question, knowing he would be quite, quite safe – just as he would have done had he heard Rebecca calling for him: “Tryfan, my love, I’m here!”

So he scampered toward the light, but whenever he thought he had reached it, he found it was ahead of him again, until he was in a great chamber, bigger than the place of echoes, with swaying, sliding tree roots all around, towering high into the darkness above him and plunging into crevices along whose edge he teetered, led forward among them by the light.

How long this took he never knew, but eventually he was beyond the roots and inside the hollow of a great tree from whose heights echoed down the faintest sound of wind among beech leaves and the murmur of adult voices chanting and saying prayers.

Then he followed the light around the side of the tree’s deep hollow, the sound of the wind above, so distant that it might have been another world.

The next thing he remembered, and what he remembered most of ail and yet most confusedly, was plunging into the ground even deeper, over and among great roots that towered and rolled above him, the light getting stronger and warmer and all around him the massive, tilted underside of the Stone of Duncton.

Right under the buried part of the Stone he went, toward the source of the light itself, which was a stone, a Stillstone, the Seventh Stillstone, whose glimmering lit up his fur and cast his shadow on the roots of stone and chalk walls about him as if he were a huge, strong mole, and adult, with not a single trace of fear in the way he boldly stood, looking into the eternal light of the Stone.

He remembered that as he stood there he heard the deep voice of his father, carried down to where he was by the hollows and convolutions of the ancient beech whose roots encircled the Stone, as he said the final words of the Midsummer ritual. But of course he could not yet understand the words:

We bathe their paws in showers of dew

We free their fur with wind from the west.

Then, as the seven blessings began to be spoken, the wonder of the Stillstone became too much for Tryfan, and as any youngster would, he stepped forward and touched it with his left paw. Instead of its light going out, as it had when Bracken had touched it, it seemed to glimmer even more – so brightly, indeed, that had any other mole been watching, he, or she, might have sworn that Tryfan was suddenly completely white with light.

The grace of form

The grace of goodness

The grace of suffering

The grace of wisdom

The grace of true words

The grace of trust

The grace of whole-souled loveliness.

And that, or rather the sounds of the words, was all that Tryfan ever remembered. Except that much later that night, when he was very tired, he heard voices calling “Tryfan! Tryfan!” and scampering, urgent paws running here and there; and it took him a long time to find them until he turned a corner in tunnels he knew again and an adult voice said “There you are! We’ve been looking for you everywhere!” Then his mother, Rebecca, was there and for a moment he thought she’d be so angry, but all she did was take him into her paws and he could feel her love and it was safe, so safe, like a light he had seen and was beginning to forget he’d seen because he was so tired now and Rebecca’s fur was all around him and he was safe again, snuggling into the safety of her love.

But those adult paws searching for Tryfan after the Midsummer ritual was over were not the only paws that scampered and urgently raced that Midsummer Night.

There were some that did the same in Uffington as well. From the silent burrows they ran, down the long tunnels, through the deep night, on and on they ran to find Medlar, the Holy Mole, in the Holy Burrows.

“What is it?” he gently asked the two novice scribemoles who finally gained an entrance to him. “What is it that makes you run in the Holy Burrows on this happiest of nights?”

“It’s Boswell,” they gasped out. “He’s leaving the silent burrow. He wants to come out.”

“Yes?” smiled Medlar.

“But that’s not all. He began to scratch at the wall inside the burrow, where the seal is and then, when we heard that, well... there was suddenly a light —” began one.

“All around the outside of his burrow,” continued the other, “shining and bright.”

“Sort of white and glimmering,” finished the first.

Medlar could see the awe in their faces. Indeed, he could see something of the reflection of the light they had seen.

He raised a paw and spoke softly to them: “This is a blessed night, a holy night, and what you have witnessed may be remembered for generations to come. I have felt the peace in the Holy Burrows, felt the silence.” He stopped and stared at them, and they saw that awe was on his old face as well. “Come,” said Medlar, “come. We will return to the silent burrows and see what we may do.”

So back went Medlar and several of the masters, with the novices as well, gathering in a circle around the burrow in which Boswell was sealed. The light the novices, had spoken of was gone, but the weak scratching continued sporadically, and as several of the moles went forward to start breaking the seal from the outside. Medlar raised his paw to stop them.

“Let Boswell do it for himself,” he said quietly, “for he would wish it to be so.”

They crouched in silence, whispering and chanting prayers of thanksgiving as Boswell continued slowly to burrow his way through the seal, his sounds falling silent for long periods as, no doubt, he rested from the effort of it. He had, after all, been sealed in the silent burrows for no less than seven moleyears, nearly eight. He must have been very weak.

But eventually dust began to fall from the outside of the wall, a tiny crack appeared in the seal, crumbling soil fell on the floor at the paws of the waiting moles; and the seal began to break away.

Then, as they caught sight of his paws at the widening hole, while the others continued to pray, two or three of them did step forward to help him tear down the last of the seal and bring Boswell out into the main chamber.

He looked as frail as a pup and almost translucently thin, his fur pale and his snout even paler. Yet from him there came a strength that filled all who saw him with exaltation and wonder. There came from his eyes a brightness, a light, a life and a love that made each one of them feel that they had come home.

They stood in awe about him as he looked slowly about him, and at each of them, and then said softly “Blessed be thou, and ful of blisse,” and they had never heard the blessing said with such power. They were blessed to hear it.

He was silent for a long time, as if thinking, and then he spoke again, with an authority that made each word he spoke seem absolute so that none doubted that what he said would come to pass: “Soon the Seventh Stillstone will come to Uffington from Duncton, in whose ancient tunnels it lies waiting. With the Stone’s guidance I shall make a final trek there myself and find it. There, too, I will meet a mole whose life will be a blessing on us all, and those who follow us, and only with his help will the Seventh Stillstone come back here. For he has seen its light and been graced with it, and it is of him that the ancient text that I myself found so long ago is finally about:

Find the last Book send the last Stone

Bring them back to Uffington.

Send a mole in courage living

And a mole compassionate

With a third and last to bind them

By the warmest light to love...

Bracken, Boswell and Rebecca, they were the moles, they were the ones. But as Boswell paused in the middle of the verse and looked at them all with gentle love, he was thinking only of the fourth mole, the mole he would himself guide back to Uffington but whose name he did not yet know. So he continued:

Song of silence Dance of mystery

From their love one more will come...

He the Stone holds

He the Book brings

His the silence of the Stone..,

There was silence as he finished until one of the moles there whispered, “Will you bring the Seventh Book as well? Will
he
bring it?”

“I do not know,” said Boswell softly. “Only the Seventh Stillstone will come. I do not know about the Book,” he whispered.

They went to his side, for he was suddenly very weak, and held him until he was steady again, and then they led him slowly back to the Holy Burrows, their prayers changing to songs of exaltation as they went.

   48  

B
Y
August Rebecca’s litter had nearly caught up with litters born in April and was almost ready to leave the home burrow. In some ways they had already, for all of them spent longer and longer away, roaming and exploring about as they began to put out feelers for territory of their own.

Of all, Tryfan was the most independent and yet the most loved. He had grown into as fine a mole as a mole who is not yet adult can be: strong, ready to laugh, well enough able to look after himself not to need to be unnecessarily aggressive; and able to spend long periods alone, as any mole must.

Early on, he had taken to wandering off by himself, spending whole days on the slopes, or exploring bits of the Ancient System that other moles did not bother with – though like everymole in the system, he kept away from its central core, for that was a special place where a mole had best tread carefully.

But for all his disappearances, Tryfan bad a way of turning up in the right place at the right time. There had been occasion, for example, when a pack of youngsters from the far side of the system had taken it into their heads one day to intimidate Rose and Curlew – still smaller than other females born that spring. But intimidation sometimes escalates into roughness, and roughness into hurt – so that Rose began to cry and Curlew to try to hit out at the bigger youngsters, who started scratching and lunging at them for real. •

Eventually, Rose and Curlew shivered and trembled with fear, not sure what to do except cry, arid the other youngsters jeered and hit out at them even harder until Tryfan quietly appeared and crouched looking at them all.

“Leave them alone,” he said.

“And what are you going to do about it, mate?” one of the biggest youngsters said, coming aggressively forward. Youngster males liked a good scrap, the rougher the better.