Duncton Rising (73 page)

But none of them needed a second telling. Whillan’s earlier pace had scarcely slackened, but now with a new urgency he led them off once more, turning north by ways which went across pastureland and past occasional ploughed fields. The air grew still and colder, the bright clear sky turned pale blue, and the only movement they saw was the occasional flapping of rooks on distant hedges and trees. Then Whillan slowed and let Maple take the lead again, almost as if he wanted to conserve his energies for another push later. He went back among the others, and all sensed something subtle had changed between him and Rooster, some unstated understanding been found.

Not until late in the afternoon, when the first ominous signs of white frost crystals appeared in some of the rutted earth they passed, did Maple see at last a possible safe haven – not that the others could see it at all.

But their route had taken them alongside a ploughed field which curved away to west and north, its furrows deep and its clods of earth great; not an easy place for mole to cross.

“You see that clump of trees beyond it all?” said Maple. The others nodded, mostly thinking that they were so tired they could happily stop right where they were. “Well if you’ve got the energy...”

“We haven’t,” said Weeth, “but no doubt you’ll convince us we need to find it.”

Maple grinned. “It’s just that Haulke, in his text on war, describes how a party of wounded Stone followers evaded imminent capture by crossing a ploughed field nomole would have expected them to cross. Well, we can do the same now, and if a freeze does come down a few trees will give us just the shelter from the cold we need.”

He glanced at Whillan, to confirm it as the way he wanted to go too, and Whillan nodded briefly. Yes, yes, this was the way, it surely was.

To moles as tired as the party had become the rough ridges and furrows of the ploughed field were a grim prospect, but the promise of final shelter, and security, was an attractive one, and to continue over such nondescript country in the hope of finding something better had little appeal. So off they set, clambering over the clods of earth and helping each other on. They began by heading straight for the coppice of trees, but climbing up and down the steep furrows was so exhausting that they took the easier line along a furrow to get as near the trees as they could before crossing the ridges again.

They made slow progress and the only bit of comfort they found was when Rooster, who had not said another word since his support for Whillan’s choice of route, stanced up when they were halfway to the wood and feeling they would never get there and said, “Good place. Safe place. Like it, Privet!”

So on they went until with darkness all but on them, and the leafless trees turned to black silhouettes against the icy sky in which stars were already shining above on the far horizon as they reached the wood’s edge. Whillan and Madoc scurried about seeking worms beneath the turned-up clods of earth on the ploughed land, while Maple and Weeth investigated the ground just inside the trees and found the soil beneath the old leaves and twigs soft enough to burrow. They quickly made some temporary burrows for the night, thinking that in the morning they could explore a bit. Provided the coppice was uninhabited by mole, they would be able to establish a proper system of tunnels in which they could stay in comfort for as long as they felt it necessary.

“It’s wormful enough!” said Madoc, pointing at the worms she and Whillan had found.

“And it’s off any route Newborns are likely to follow!” added Weeth.

“Well then,” said Maple, 1 suggest we eat and sleep, and when dawn comes everymole can go to sleep again if they want because we’re going to rest. Except... it will be well if we maintain watches as we have done – not that I believe we will be followed at night over
that
field, but we don’t know what’s beyond the wood, and whether moles might be about.”

“Weeth, you can take first watch; Privet...” and so, quietly authoritative and sensible as ever. Maple organized them for the night and, their duties agreed, they settled down in a weary way to eat their food and crawl off thankfully to the burrows Maple and Weeth had prepared.

Before they did so Rooster said something strange, and Whillan responded with something stranger still.

“Six of us,” said Rooster a little gloomily.

“We’ll need another for the Seven Stancing,” said Whillan, surprised at his own words.

Privet stared at them both, and at the dark sky, and sniffed at the air.

“I feel restless,” she said.

And suddenly they all did.

But the real restlessness came on them subtly, after they had munched their worms. Maple had again told all but the watcher to sleep and one by one they should have done, with a last glance about the benighted wood and at the starry sky beyond, and with a final stretch and yawn. How tempting a burrow would surely be, how companionable its close warm silence, broken only occasionally by a sniffle, or a scratch, or a snore.

But that strange night was only just beginning and it would be most accurate to say that one by one they failed to sleep. Whillan and Madoc went below to the communal burrow, hoping to find rest for a time, but lay in silence, not speaking to each other. Madoc tried to sleep, for she was very tired and her watch was much later – but she lay restless, her mind active, her eyes on the jagged round of sky she could see above her where she lay.

“Whillan...” she softly whispered. She had enjoyed searching out food with him, the first time they had done anything together since Caer Caradoc, since when, judging by his silence and ignoring of her, she had decided that he did not like her. Well, he could not possibly if he behaved like that! But this evening, why, he had been almost friendly, and once his paw had touched hers.

She liked Whillan, more than any mole she had ever known! Except for Privet – but that was different. She liked the way he looked, which was more interesting than the Newborn males she had known; she liked the way he frowned sometimes when he spoke; she liked the way he talked quickly and nervously – not to her, but to Weeth and Maple; she liked the way he showed no fear of the Newborns.

“I even like the way he got exasperated with Privet when she was being emotional in Caer Caradoc at the Convocation and passed her on to me to comfort!” said the sleepless Madoc to herself, liking the fact that she had been entrusted by one to care for the other, however briefly. “But what don’t I like about him?”

It was the way his eyes sometimes seemed to seek out the more distant prospect along the way, especially when the talk concerned moledom as a whole, or some distant part of it. It was plain that he really did want to travel, just as he said he would when they had talked briefly together in Caradoc. Well then, perhaps she could find a way of persuading him to stay...

Whillan, for all his general and inexplicable unease earlier in the day, had become acutely aware of Madoc’s presence near him when they had been collecting the food, and later when they had all settled down together to eat it.

His distress at whatever it was that nagged at him gave way now to his consciousness of her, which grew more acute by the minute.

He tried now to work out if she was asleep or not. Her breathing was regular, and disconcertingly alluring to listen to, but occasionally her paws and body shifted. He stared up at the stars beyond the portal wishing he dared do what he most wanted to, which was to move nearer to her, right next to her, to
touch
her.

Up above he heard Maple laugh, and moles move, and his mind raced with disappointment at the prospect of others joining them and spoiling these moments.

“Madoc,” he wanted to whisper, “I like you more than anymole I have ever met. Madoc, I want to talk to you. Madoc, I would like to feel your fur and flank against mine.”

So easy to say things silently, so hard even to start in reality. What
does
a mole say? Could he say anything now? If she was asleep she wouldn’t hear, wouldn’t know, so it wouldn’t matter. “Madoc, I’d like to be near you!” That would do. It would make him feel better just to say it. But... supposing she was awake? Well, he couldn’t say it then. It was
difficult.

“
Whillan?” It was Maple from above. “The others are restless and there’s the brightest moon we’ve ever seen come out. Do you want —?”

Whillan yawned loudly and said, “No thank you, I’m really tired, I mean —”

“And Madoc?”

“She’s asleep, I think,” said Whillan hopefully.

“We’ll not be far...” and Maple’s voice and pawsteps faded away.

It was Madoc who broke the silence that followed, a silence in which poor Whillan felt his heart might burst from its thumping, and his chest explode from the way he felt himself holding his breath – why, he did not know.

“I’m not asleep,” said Madoc.

“Oh,” said Whillan, unsure what to do or say. “I’m quite tired.”

“Oh,” said Madoc, disappointment in her voice.

“Does she want to talk?” Whillan asked himself in the dark, his heart still beating too hard and fast, and the sense of a missed opportunity looming near. What would Weeth have said?

“I’m not
that
tired,” Whillan said, suddenly inspired by Weeth.

“I’m restless,” said Madoc, her body rustling in the dark.

“I think I am too,” said Whillan, easing his body nearer to hers.

“Whillan?”

He realized she was nearer than he thought –
and moving closer.

“
Um, yes?” He moved too. And more.

“Are you really... I mean you said... well, um, Whillan...”

“It’s, well, they said the moon... Madoc.”

They started back from each other when they first touched, the disintegration of their thoughts well expressed by the reduction of their words to nothing but each other’s names, and the discovery of that huge world of acceptance and warmth that exists for any two moles who dare reach out and find it in each other, when need and circumstance, and a moment’s courage, permit them to.

Acceptance and...? Love? Too soon for that word for two such moles, great though their need for it might then have been. It was enough that they touched, and held, and began the incoherent chatter of mutual discovery that is all the talk necessary to fulfil their new-found needs for now. But if the stars that shone through the leafless branches of the trees out on the surface did so more brightly after they touched, and if the light that came from those self-same stars and the moon grew brighter in their burrow, and shone in their eyes, let nomole be surprised.

Young love below, self-centred and blinded to all but itself – but none the worse, nor less real, for that. While up on the surface was old rediscovered love, there for others to see and stare at. For when night fell the moon had grown bright indeed, and it had been Privet who had said, when the younger ones had gone below, “We’ll keep you company for a time, Weeth, and you, Maple, for this is as beautiful a night as I remember in many a moleyear and I’ll not sleep without a time for thoughts of the hard days we have been through.”

Then turning to Rooster, Privet had said, “Will you come with us, my dear, to the edge of the wood?”

“Will,” said Rooster, who had become more good-humoured and communicative by his standards ever since they had first seen the wood. “Good place,
safe
place, we have come to.”

“That’s more words than you’ve said in all the days past,” said Weeth cheerfully.

“Had nothing to say,” said Rooster, “now may have. Whillan feels a need he does not understand. Is afraid of it, but I feel it and you feel it, Privet. Yes?”

“Yes,” she confessed, “I do. It worries me.”

“Worries all of us.”

“Why did you need to say there were only six of us?”

“Like Whillan said: need one more. Hard night coming. Like storm building. Like terrible storm.”

Together the four moles felt their way slowly and silently to the edge of the wood – their quietness as much to do with the respect and reverence they felt for the way the rising moon caught the trees in its clear cold light as to any fear of being detected. They settled down, the air so still and cold that the silvery trees above them were utterly silent but for the occasional creak of ancient branch, or nearby fall of withered leaf or tiny twig which had survived the autumn winds only to tumble in this time of holy quiet.

For holy it seemed to become, as the moon rose higher, and every battered remnant of grass, or torn bramble, and ploughed clod of earth in the field they had crossed and over which they now gazed was caught by moonlight, and slowly gaining a covering of frost. While further away they could see almost more clearly than by day the dark rise of the wooded hill up which, had they so chosen, their route might have taken them.

The air was very cold, and now the leaf-litter in the grass where they had stanced down was stiff and crackly with frost. Their breath was white in the night, and the stars bright, clear and innumerable as far as eyes could see.

It was the kind of night which a mole contemplates in silence for a time, especially if after travelling far and doing much that is difficult and dangerous, he has found a safe haven. Having done that, and collected his thoughts, and if the company is of like mind, it was also a night to talk of memories and things that matter, and wish well of old friends who are far away.