Duncton Tales (46 page)

He stared at the wretched things and nodded his slow head.

“At dawn I’ll come. Then I must take them from here. The system will expect it. There will be other broods. Remember, there will be more for you to love.”

Did he understand then that these ones she loved more than the ones before? Perhaps.

But what she knew he could not know was that there would be no more broods from her, never. The murrain had taken that ability away. She
knew
it to be so. These poor things, then, were the first and last she could ever call her own, they were the Stone’s gift to her made in love, and in them she must find love by giving it.

“Teach me,” she whispered up in prayer when he was gone, “teach me to love them through this day and night with all my heart and body. Teach me what I must do.”

There, to the thunder of the River Reap, in air all dank with its endless spray, with great Ratcher brooding out on the Span, the Stone found an answer to her prayer. Good Samphire rediscovered all the love she had lost, and much more as well. In those few hours that she had, she gave her love to her poor litter, each one encircled in her paws, each one that could suckled at her teats, each one living in the endless moment which is a pup’s consciousness. Each striving to live that soon must die.

Except the fifth, which lay inert, silent, beyond even her dear love; yet breathing still and only just alive.

What words of love she whispered to each one of them, what tears she shed, what agony she felt to feel them weaken with the chill advance of dawn, what stabbing pain of loss she began to feel when Ratcher’s shadow crossed her portal once again.

“One here,” she said immediately, “has not yet known my love. This fifth and last has not stirred for me. Let him stay by me to the very end for perhaps even yet he will know a moment’s consciousness and sense how much he is loved by me.

“But these others, all nameless, have known my love. Each one is weakening even as we speak, and suffering more, but each has acknowledged its mother’s touch. Take them now, my dear, and give them peace.”

Then, gently for such a mole, Red Ratcher took each one out into the dawn, carrying it in his great maw before the gaze of other moles. Even as he trod out upon the treacherous Span to throw them off he felt them fade away and die. Not one but died before it was dropped down, and what-mole can say they had not had the happiest of lives, encircled by a mother’s love, carried by a father to their end? Returned to the Silence of the Stone before they were dropped into the oblivion of the Reap below. Who dares say that?

But when Red Ratcher went down into Samphire’s tunnels for the fifth, she would not let him go.

“I felt him begin to stir, my dear. I felt him begin to know my love. Let him be with me a little more for he may yet live and be your pride.”

Red Ratcher stared at her whom he held more beautiful than any mole he ever knew, whose life he had stolen, whose family he had destroyed, then down at the inert pup.

“He is deformed and must die even if he lives,” he said, “look at his paws! Look at his great strange head! We have made better pups than this before and will again. Let me take this one now.”

She licked at the pup’s paws, which were large and strange; she nuzzled at his head, which was huge, swollen and wrinkled at once. Yet she felt love for him, and felt deep within his tiny body the first stirrings of real life.

Watching, Ratcher said, “Tend him a few moments more before I take him then.”

Desperately she licked her pup, and caressed him, and tried to whisper movement into him enough that Ratcher might relent. But he seemed barely alive at all.

“I must take him now,” said Ratcher.

“Yes,” said Samphire blankly, giving up, “yes, take him and may the Stone take him for ever to its care.”

“The Stone?” said Ratcher uneasily.

“The Stone.”

It is not of this system,” growled Ratcher, suddenly angry.

“It is of everything,” Samphire dared to reply.

His love was great, but mention of the Stone was too much. Frowning and without another word, Ratcher took up the pup and went out with it to the Span, while Samphire, her moment of defiance gone, lay thinking that with the last pup’s death her life would end. She began to weep for the nameless pup and all the love she had known and lost that day and night just past. As ever, the thunder of the River Reap was sole companion to her despair.

Meanwhile, as Ratcher crossed the Reapside and set paw upon the Span once more, moles watched him, and stared without compassion at the still form of the ugly pup dangling from his mouth. The Reap was heavy with recent rain, and spray drifted all about. Before and behind the cliffs loomed dark, and juts of rock were stark against the sky.

As Ratcher went to drop the pup into the void a raven mother’s desperate cry came forth across the Charnel as one of its fledgling young pushed off too soon from its ledge and the downdraughts carried it helpless, straight into the depths below the Span. Several ravens flew up, the mother called out again, but none could help the hapless bird, as spumes of dark-stained spray came up like talons to engulf its feeble wings.

Ratcher, pup in mouth, stanced still, watching the bird’s last flight, when suddenly a shaft of light which seemed almost too bright for sun came from between the grey, breaking clouds and lit the depths where the bird, its wings still beating frantically, tried to rise. Light shining on the wet gorge sides, surging light in all the spray, greens, blues, yellows, shining greys and blacks, all alive in the gorge right then, as if declaring that life
was
.

The fledgling paused in flight, turned on its back as it had seen its parents do, then righting itself, stooped straight towards the raging water just below, opened its wings as wide as it could and with a mighty, flapping, desperate pull, succeeded in halting its fall just above the water’s surface. Then heaving, struggling, fighting, it rose through the spray that tried to drag it down, up and up to the level of the ground once more, and then beyond and up into the fullness of the light, up to safety once again.

Even as its frantic mother stooped through the air to guide it back to the ledge the watching Ratcher felt the pup he held suddenly stir with life, in the light that seemed brighter than the sun, stir strong, and then he heard it bleat and mew and bleat again.

Awed by this sudden surge of life Ratcher pulled back from the void and placed the pup down on the slippery Span. In some alarm he stared at it, thinking he must hurl it from him now to death but knowing even as he thought it he could not. And all he could think of was Samphire’s mention of the Stone, the very thought of whose name froze his mind. Caught between desire and incapacity he raised his head and roared out his frustrated rage. The roar seemed only to stir the pup still more, for it rolled on to its paws, stanced up shakily, and blindly crawled forward all unknowing towards the void once more. Its head dropped, the rocky surface gave no grip, its weak paws lost their hold and it began to slide down towards its death.

Ratcher rushed forward, stooped, and snatched it up again. The watching moles blinked their puzzlement and displeasure at this first show of weakness they had ever seen in their leader. Yet caring not a mite for that but only for the fear and awe he felt, and the sense that the dreaded Stone had sent its Light into this place, Red Ratcher turned back the way he had come, back to where Samphire lay defeated in her birthing nest. From the portal he stared at her, the struggling pup hanging from his mouth.

She heard him come, but dared not look up for grief, and for fear of what he would do to her because of her earlier mention of the Stone. But then his shadow fell across her face and she scented mole apart from him. Soft scent, sweet scent, fresh as grass in spring. A pup’s scent. Not believing what she knew, she felt a surge of love and joy as she realized it was her own pup’s scent, the last one of all, alive; and then she heard it mewing for her love.

She turned, looked up, and instinctively reached out her paws to take back what she had trusted to the Stone and what the Stone had given back to her. She began to cry.

“Why?” she sobbed in relief and gratitude. “Why?”

“He stirred,” said Ratcher, helplessly, frowning in puzzlement at himself as he stared down at the scrabbling pup.

Samphire rose and embraced the rough cruel mole who had robbed her of all joys of life and love and yet, now, granted her this charge. She felt that finally the Stone had heard her cry and answered it.

“He has no name,” she whispered as she cuddled the pup and Ratcher pulled away from her as if he might be made contaminate. She stanced down again, encircling her last and only pup within her paws, and brought her teats where he could more easily reach them. Already he was seeking one of them out with his strange grotesque head and misshapen paws; oh no, to her his beautiful head, his beautiful paws.

“My love, my beauty, my only one,” sighed Samphire.

Perhaps remembering then the roosting ravens that had watched that fledgling fall into the Reap and then emerge again, Ratcher said, “Let him be named Rooster, and whatever he may be he shall not for now be harmed by others here. He is my son.”

“Ratcher …’ she began, wanting to share her joy with him, to show him what pleasures a pup can give.

“No,” said Ratcher retreating, his eyes hard, “it is enough I brought him back to you, mole. Be glad of that. No more weakness can I show.”

“It is not weakness,” she said.

“It is so!” said Ratcher turning to leave. “It is more than I should have done. But take him this day and raise him on the Charnel side, for you and yours are tainted by something worse than plague now — you are infected by the Stone.”

“He’ll not be harmed then?” said Samphire, sensing a retreat in Ratcher’s heart and already fighting for her pup’s future.

“Not by me, that much I promise. But from his siblings I cannot long protect him, for they will not tolerate his deformity or your Stone beliefs. Therefore for my sake and your pup’s leave the Reapside. I cannot be seen to love you more.”

With that Red Ratcher left, his heart hardening against them both even as he went, and where for so long there had been the warmth of love now came the chill gloaming of no love at all.

That same day moles saw Samphire, weak and gaunt from the fateful pupping she had made, carry the dark pup over the Span into gloomy Charnel, and thence plod steadily up past the dreary entrances into the tunnels there and climb the slopes beyond to make a place higher than any others dared among the moist scree beneath the cliffs.

The torrent’s roar was muted up there, and not far above the ravens chuntered to themselves, or croaked loudly as they flew out and turned on the updraughts of the cliffs. Nearby a sudden cracking of rockfall came, loud and clear, but Samphire disregarded it and all else and trekked on upwards until she found a place that suited her.

There, where no sun shone, nor mole came in kindness, nor mate came to relieve a sleepless midnight hour, Samphire made a home to raise her pup, all deep and dark and secret.

The night out on Withens Moor had grown wild and rough, and all the youngsters had fallen asleep with Turrell’s tale.

“They’ve heard it before,” said Myrtle, “and will hear it again before they’re done. Now, you can see our visitors are tired, Turrell, so you can stop talking now and tell the rest another day.”

It was true enough — Hamble was almost asleep where he stanced, while Sward, whose snout was extended along his grey-furred paws, had in the last short while begun to feel more tired than he had ever felt. Only Privet was bright-eyed and listening attentively, excited by all they had heard and feeling again that sense of destiny that almost from the first the mere mention of Rooster’s name had stirred in her.

“You
will
continue tomorrow?” she said quietly.

Turrell, nodded his head and fixed her with a stare.

“I can see you’re a mole who knows how to listen,” he said. But venturing out on the Moors? A scribemole from Crowden? Seems strange to me.”

She grinned and looked at her two companions. Hamble was already asleep while Sward was humming to himself with his eyes half closed, some old and tuneless song he remembered from his youth.

“I’m in good paws,” she said, “and I’m not really scared. I’m glad … I mean …”

“Glad we’re the first grikes you’ve met?” said Turrell. “Eh, lass? We’re not all bad you know. ’Tis circumstances and missed opportunity degrades a mole, not original malevolence. We grikes were never taught anything but violent ways.”

“No,” said Privet quietly, humbled that he should see into her thoughts so well.

“You sleep now, and one way or another I’ll finish off this tale when next we’ve a moment to stance still. Sleep, mole.”

The last Privet remembered of that night was the racing of wind among the heather, and a mole coming towards her through it, who was no more than a pup and yet had huge paws and a monstrous head, and eyes she could not see.

Chapter Twenty-Two