Duncton Found (25 page)

Then Terce signalled to Clowder to come to his side, and the two moles – one most senior Keeper of all and the other the most recently anointed sideem – sought to reach forward and immerse Lucerne in the holy sanctifying waters of the lake.

But even this he would not have.

He waved them back imperiously and then, alone and untouched, he turned to face across the lake towards the Rock. He dipped his paws in the water, he raised them and tumbled the water’s shining darkness in cascades upon himself.

“Word, to thy service I commend myself,” he said. “Anointed by thee alone. To thy care I commit my body, to thy will I commit my soul, to thy purpose I commit my life.”

With this he thrust off into the water and swam out towards the Rock, but not to the left, nor to the right, but straight to its darkest heart and very centre where Mallice awaited him.

Nomole who witnessed that fabled moment in Whern’s dread history, save Henbane alone, ever gainsaid the dark glory and evil wonder of that moment. But for her it seemed a moment of turning evil.

Out swam Lucerne, swift and sure, and if Clowder’s swim had seemed powerful his appeared as if preordained to triumph by the lake and Rock itself.

The waters drew him on, the shaft of light cast down upon the Rock and dappled now in reflections as he went lighting his way.

This was the Master in the making. This was Scirpuscan power reborn. This was of such power that anymole who saw it would follow him for evermore. Anymole but Henbane.

To the right flank of Mallice he went, defying the current that ought to have swept him on, turning without seeming to need to touch the Rock for support at all.

“Return to thy life renewed! I, thy Master now, so order it!” he cried out to Mallice. Dark sound whispered, strength came to her, and she who had so nearly died now swam out against the current and defied it. Back towards the awestruck moles she came, across the dappled water, as Lucerne watched, his power beyond questioning.

Then he turned, stared up at the Rock and then, as the waters seemed to surge and raise him up, he reached forward his talons and scrivened bold and mightily across the Rock’s great face.

Such dark sound sounded then that moles covered their ears in fear, moles closed their eyes in terror, and moles sought vainly to bury their snouts in the unyielding ground.

Then, when that sound began to die, they looked back across the lake, and saw Mallice coming and Lucerne protectively behind. While on the shore Clowder waited for the mole who, the moment he touched the shore once more, must surely be acknowledged Master; and for she who, saved by him, would be his consort and mistress.

So they stared, and might have stared on had not a sudden movement to their right reminded and alerted them that the Mistress was witness to her own supersession. They turned as one and saw Henbane turn before them, back and gone into the cavern wherein the Master-dead lay encrusted by the flow of time.

“Take her!” cried out Terce. “By my power as Twelfth Keeper I order thee to follow her to where the Masters of the past lie still, and take her!”

So it was that Lucerne’s triumphant return to shore with Mallice was overtaken by a rush of moles up to that raised place where Henbane had been, and then on to where she had retreated among the encrustations of the past.

The first there saw her at that tunnel’s mouth from which one of the feeder streams came down, with the contorted body of Rune, limed over, at her side.

“Take her!” roared her son Lucerne, Master designate, as he reached the shore and sought to scramble up to where she had been. “All favour to him who gets his talons on her first!”

Ominous and strange what happened next. Unreported until now. Distasteful. A precursor of worse to come.

Henbane seemed unsure, as if to flee was to turn towards an unknown that even now she feared more than the evil from which she fled. But moles advanced upon her, greedy to touch their talons to her hallowed flanks. Greedy for the favour her capture might bring.

Quickly she turned, suddenly she stumbled, and her left paw fell upon the flank of her dead father Rune. So vile, so unexpected what happened then.

Rune’s flank cracked. Rune’s dead body burst. The encrustation broke beneath her paw and revealed a body rotted into slime and dark tuberous remnants, sliming odorous protrusions that burst and spattered, slid and flowed down towards the moles that advanced on Henbane. The smell was viler than moles had ever smelt before, as if all evil was concentrated in the squirting cracking thing that Rune’s body had become.

For a long moment Henbane floundered in her father’s body’s rotten flesh, then she screamed; and as the odour of what she had disturbed rose up she screamed once more and found the strength to push on past it, leaving its sliming flow in her wake, a wave of vileness that stopped the pursuing moles in their tracks.

Some pulled back; others, too late, found their snouts and mouths caught by the filthy stuff and retched and vomited where they were. While others, behind these ones, were overtaken by the horror of the smell and turned away, deaf to the cries and orders of Lucerne, their paws to their retching mouths, their eyes watering into blindness.

Most strange of all was Lucerne. Such was the confusion of the moles ahead of him that he could not break through; and yet he retched not and seemed unaffected. The rottenness of death had no hold on him.

“Catch her!” he cried, but nomole could obey.

“Then to the surface!” was all he could command. “Find her and the Word will judge her through me!”

So, out through known tunnels Lucerne led them; the rite was done and power transferred in confusion, and a new Master made and eager to mete punishment on the Mistress whose power he had stolen.

While deep in the heart of Whern, unseen, alone, Henbane fled her father’s broken cadaver. Retching, near to being sick, she ran on gasping and desperate, not knowing that those who had sought to follow her were not behind. To flee the rottenness, she headed for light and air. She ran from power to powerlessness, from being the pre-eminent mole of her time to being nothing.

The more she went on and that stench was lost behind her, the more she sensed the freshness of life that lay ahead. On and on, towards the glimmering of new light.

And she laughed, and she cried, and she whispered as she went, “Lead me, help me on, take me to where those I lost so long ago still live. Lead me....”

She went where good Mayweed had once gone, she ran in the steps of brave Sleekit, she seemed to know that this was how her pups whose names she did not yet know had escaped.

“Help me!” she whispered as she went. And the tunnel helped her on until the air was clear, the light was good and she surfaced high on Whern, into the last of the Midsummer sun and saw its glory across the sky, and its new hope.

“Give me strength!” she said, and as the sun shone upon her aged fur she turned and went across the fells of Whern to seek out what light her life would still give her time to find.

“I shall find you,” she whispered to the pups she had lost so long ago, “and you shall teach me what I was denied.”

Peace began to come to her and sometime then, among the humble peat hags there, she saw a pool of water. But it was not black or stained as such pools are, but rather seemed as clear as a summer’s day, shining with the blue and white of a great sky, and into it she went and cleansed herself.

“By the light that makes this water bright I am reborn,” she said. Then she came out and took a stance on the open surface of the moor, and let the wind dry her fur, and felt the evil that had been her inheritance leave her.

“My name is Henbane no more,” she said. “Whatever task I still can do, grant that I do it well.”

The Midsummer sun began to fade and gave the mole that had been Henbane, and now seemed nomole at all, the security of darkness to make her escape; the special darkness of Midsummer Night.

The special Night when others, far away from that place called Whern – moles whose hearts are turned not to the Word’s dark sound but towards the Stone’s great Silence – touch each other’s paws, raise up their eyes and pray for those less fortunate than themselves, who wander lost but seek to find the hardest thing of all: the better way.

So, that night, did an old female go out alone at last, free to find the self that once, by a lake dark and forbidding, before a Rock, her parents took away from her, “Which way?” she whispered to herself. Then with a sigh, and trusting to herself at last, she journeyed on. Which way?

Moles, let it be towards our prayers she comes.

Chapter Eleven

That same night, in distant Duncton, Beechen was initiated another way, as ancient as that we have witnessed in Whern, but more loving, and before the Stone.

In the great clearing there, with all those moles whose friendship he had made and company he had kept in the previous days of June as witnesses, Beechen took part in that great Duncton rite which marks a mole’s passage into adulthood.

Where Tryfan’s father Bracken stanced so long before, where Tryfan himself had been, now Beechen was. Many of those who grouped about him, to witness with pride the rite that Tryfan spoke, we know already....

Feverfew, Beechen’s mother, was there. Mayweed, with Sleekit at his side. Good Bailey, brave mole, was witness too.

Then Skint and Smithills, and Marram: strong moles all, whom age had worn towards slowness and frailty, but not yet conquered. They were there.

Others, newer to us than these, though most more aged still, the survivors of those outcast to Duncton Wood: Dodder and Madder, between them scolding Crosswort and, watching over all three, good Flint, anxious for peace and finding it this night.

Teasel was there and old Sorrel of Fyfield, their bodies withered but their spirits bright as the stars that began to show soon after dusk crept up the slopes and settled on the wood. Hay was near and Borage, too, and Heather.

All these and many more: moles whose lives this history does not tell but, if time allowed, would surely be spoken of as well. In some way all outcast, all survivors, and now all with humility enough to be awed by the presence of the Stone, and the light of the stars and moon it brought unto itself.

The wood grew darker, great trees became but shadows of themselves, while by the Stone the sense of Midsummer peace deepened, and Tryfan, great beloved mole, leader who preferred no more to lead, mole whose talons had fought their last fight and now touched the ground worn and broken, never to be raised in anger again... Tryfan was humble before the Stone and spoke a prayer.

“O Stone,” he said, “many here have never been before thee at this time. Some from lack of opportunity, others because they are not of the Stone at all but now, being of our outcast community, wish to share in what we are this special night and join their paws to ours. Guide my prayer towards their hearts, guide their hearts to mine, and hear all our prayers tonight, whatever our beliefs may be.

“We pray first for those who are not here, but would be if that chance was theirs. Moles we know, moles we love, moles we have lost but trust are still alive....”

Poor Bailey, ever a mole to shed a tear, shed one then and lowered his snout to his paws and thought of the sisters he had lost: Lorren and Starling. And Feverfew, knowing why he wept, came close to him and put her paw to his and whispered her own prayer to him that by the Stone’s good grace one day his sisters might be with him once again.

While Madder remembered his home system by the Avon, Dodder, graceful in age and the Stone’s light, reached out a paw and touched the mole who had so long seemed his enemy.

“Next, to those of other faiths than ours,” continued Tryfan slowly, “we ask that they may trust their hearts and minds before they listen to our persuasions; they may be right, Stone, and we wrong! In thy great heart all moles shall find the place of truth and there learn that many are the ways moles come, many the names they give to thee.

“Last, guide me back into the hearts of those who profess the Stone, including I myself. Imperfect, our spirit but partially formed and far from thy Silence, striving onwards, let us yet be proud of what we are and seek always to dwell on the rising sun of the morrow rather than the fading sun of the day gone by. Let us drive ever forward to thy reality, not falter backwards to the dreams and fantasies that never were. Guide us forward to truth, Stone, not backward to the lie.”

Tryfan was silent for a time, and let the many gathered thereabout think of the prayers he made, or what they wished, and gave them time to say those special prayers a mole can often best say in company of others whose faith strengthens his own, and whose wishes go to absent friends all the better for the company he is in.

At last Tryfan spoke once more.

“Midsummer is a time when Duncton moles like to celebrate, just as they do when Longest Night comes at the end of the December years. But that dark time is a celebration of deliverance and the revels mark the beginning of the coming spring, when life begins once more.