Duncton Wood (11 page)

But Hulver, resting his old snout on his graying paws, did not fall asleep immediately, thinking about the strange young mole now sleeping in one of his tunnels. For all the youngster’s confusion and bitterness, and his youthful carping at the westside ways, there was something about him that pleased Hulver. He had a nice quick way with words; his damning criticism of some of the westside moles, including Burrhead, was on target, while his obvious courage in exploring the system so far was impressive in one so young.

Hulver was excited, too, that he seemed to have a curiosity about the old system and something of the spirit for exploration that too few moles had. He paused in his thoughts, scratching his forehead with his left paw, trying to catch the words to express the effect Bracken had on him. “Never was much good with words,” he muttered to himself, shifting into something nearer a sleep position. “But I like the youngster, there’s something about him, even if he doesn’t look as if he could fight a flea.”

He thought about the impulse that had taken him to the part of his tunnels where he had found Bracken. The same warm impulse he had felt in recent weeks lifting him out of the long moleyears of pain and desolation that had followed the preceding Midsummer Night when he had been sure Rune had been listening in the shadows. Only with the new spring had the load lightened and something of his old love of life returned. And now, this Bracken had turned up on his territory, bold as a brash young pup.

“Well,” he told himself, drifting into a happy sleep, “I’ll teach him something about the Ancient System and its ways. What I know of them. I might even mention something of the rituals to him, some of these youngsters ought to know about them.”

So began the first friendship that Bracken ever knew and the last that Hulver ever enjoyed. A strange association of the oldest mole in the system, who had long lost his political power, and one of the weakest, who had no power at all.

In the June days that followed Hulver told him a great deal, and Bracken listened well, taking an active part in his imagination in all the adventures and journeys, fights and rituals that Hulver talked about.

He soon asked Hulver to take him up to the Ancient System, but Hulver always refused, one excuse following the other: “I’m too tired today for such a climb... it’s worm-scarce up there at the moment, better wait a while... there’s nothing much to see that I can’t describe... too many owls now because moles have been gone too long.” But all this didn’t put off Bracken, who only became more determined to go.

But there were other things to talk about as well. It was from Hulver that he first learned of Uffington, where the Holy Burrows were, and where mysterious White Moles were said to roam.

“It’s far off, far to the west. I’ve never met a mole who’s been there, though I talked to some when I was your age who claimed to have met moles who had.”

“What do they do there?” Bracken wanted to know. “What moles live with the White Moles? Do you know anything about
scribe
mole’s
,
like Aspen mentioned in her stories?”

The questions tumbled from him in a flow that sometimes made Hulver feel old and helpless, for there were so many questions he didn’t know the answers to and, what was worse, had never
thought
of finding the answers to.

“I don’t know. I’ve never known,” he would say. “The scribes came from there, I know that!”

“Yes, but what do scribemoles
do?”
Bracken would persist.

“They write the stories that moles want to remember and the prayers and blessings that true moles love. They go out from Uffington to remind us of the Stone.”

“Have they ever been here?” asked Bracken tirelessly, and Hulver told him what he knew of that.

So. Bracken learned much from what Hulver talked about, but more without knowing it from the gentle way the old mole lived, seeking worms, openly seeking the Stone’s help, pausing sometimes to tell Bracken to listen to the sound of “this beloved wood.” Often just crouching and making Bracken do the same, even though he found it irksome crouching in silence when he could be doing something or talking.

“Which is why I make you do it,” Hulver would tell him mysteriously.

One day Hulver shocked Bracken by announcing that it was time for the June elder meeting and he would be gone for five or six days — “even though they don’t listen to what I say with Mandrake hard upon them.”

Just before he left, he spoke to Bracken very seriously. “Stay here quietly, live in my burrow silently as I have been teaching you to do, for though being Midsummer this should be a time of great happiness, I fear there is much danger about. I can smell it, so take care.”

A chill came over Bracken’s heart at this, for the sudden prospect of being alone again made him recognize the joy he had been living with in the last few days with Hulver, who, seeing fear cross his face, softly touched his shoulder with his paw and said, “There
is
danger, but you are strong enough to face it. You will never face an evil you have not the strength to master. When I come back there will be a lot to do and you will have much to learn,” Hulver told him finally. “I am going to take you up to the Ancient System. Meanwhile, do not be lulled by the June sun. There is danger in the system and I fear you may suffer in its coming, so be careful.”

Hulver turned and ran a little way down the slope before disappearing down a tunnel leading to far-off Barrow Vale. He hated to leave Bracken, for he had rejoiced in their friendship too.

Bracken watched him go, and with an enormous sense of loss turned back down into Hulver’s tunnels and along to his burrow, where he crouched, shaken and desolate. A terrible dark fear began to seep into him and he shivered, despite the June warmth. He had never felt so alone. In the darkness he tried to find words to comfort himself, the fear swirling about him, but they had gone. Then the fear took him over until it felt like a black cloud that would burst and explode inside him, and he found himself crying and desolate, repeating between his sobs lines from the first grace he had heard Hulver speak:

Let no mole adown my body

That may hurt my sorrowing soul.

And though he did not know it, it was the first prayer to the Stone that he ever spoke. Slowly it calmed him until he was able to think of Hulver again and not himself. He changed the “my” to “his” and said the grace again, hoping it might go down through the tunnels with Hulver to the elder meeting at Barrow Vale, where it might protect him.

But Hulver met another mole and had a conversation with her, before he joined the elder meeting – a meeting that affected him very much and caused him to think that Bracken was a more special mole than he might otherwise have thought.

The mole he met was Rebecca, and it would be the first time that Rebecca ever heard the name of Bracken spoken, for her now legendary first meeting with him by the Stone did not take place until the following September. She had known that an elder meeting was taking place in June and, as ever, her curiosity getting the better of her fear of Mandrake, she had dared wait in Barrow Vale to see the elders arrive for the meeting.

Other moles did the same. That was the nice thing about the communal tunnels beneath Barrow Vale. The moment she saw the old mole coming down through the tunnels that led from the slopes, his snout wrinkled and low, his fur ragged and graying, she knew who it was. She ran up to him in the old friendly way she hadn’t dared adopt with anymole during April and May, breathless and smiling. “Are you Hulver?” she asked. He stopped and looked up at her, for she stood more upright and young than he did, and he was so nice. Oh! he was wise and radiated love!

“I’m Hulver, I can’t deny it,” he said cheerfully. “Anyway, no mole else is as old as I am now, so it wasn’t hard to guess. Who are you, my dear?”

She hesitated to say from habit, for moles tended to back away when they found she was Mandrake’s Rebecca. But with Hulver she sensed it didn’t matter. “Rebecca,” she said.

“Sarah’s daughter!” he said. “And Mandrake’s. You’re a fine-looking female, I must say, though I suppose you’re an adult now, but you all look so young to me. Be the same for you, one day,” he laughed.

“Would you tell me about the old times?” she asked eagerly. “Because they say you’re the only one who remembers now, the only one who’s left.” She dropped her voice a little as she said these last words, because she felt an unaccountable desire to go close to Hulver, to press herself to him, to hold him.

“It would take a lifetime to tell you even a small part of it,” he said, “and unfortunately I’m in a hurry for the elder meeting.”

“Oh,” sighed Rebecca, disappointed. There was so much she wanted to know about things and she felt Hulver could tell her. Indeed, she felt he could answer questions she didn’t even know how to ask. She crouched down near him sadly.

Hulver, too, was affected by their meeting. She seemed so... so alive! Eager, and sighing, standing and crouching, sad, loving. Elder meetings never start on time, anyway, he thought to himself, settling down comfortably by her as a sign that he would talk for a little at least. “I’ll tell you about Rebecca, your namesake, if you like, Rebecca the Healer of the Ancient System.”

Rebecca changed mood again, now sighing contentedly, smiling, peaceful, and closing her eyes as she used to do when Sarah began to tell her a story.

“Mind you, I expect you know all about Rebecca; you can hardly fail to in Duncton, since she’s the only claim to fame we seem to have and at least they haven’t forgotten her, though they’ve forgotten everything else that matters.” Rebecca nodded happily; she had heard all about Rebecca but she didn’t mind hearing it again, not from Hulver.

But Hulver himself didn’t know what he was going to say, since it all came into his mind and out as words without him seeming to have too much to do with it. He felt very peaceful. “Most of the stories you’ve heard are nonsense, I’m sure; harmless nonsense, of course. It’s just that we all like a good tale and if there seems to be a gap in the telling of it, we fill it up with something we like to think might have been – and who knows, it
might
have been!” Hulver felt as if his words were exploring a tunnel down which he himself had never been.

“Do you know what I think?” He asked the question as much to himself as to Rebecca, but she shook her head and crouched even closer to Hulver, whose presence she found she loved, because there was something about his great age and goodness which seemed to grow out of the ground itself and make her feel safe and loved. “I believe she did stay here in Duncton for quite a time. I believe that in those days Duncton was a system where a mole like her would
want
to stay. I believe she loved Duncton Wood as you or I might love Barrow Vale in the spring.

“Now, what you are going to ask me, in fact, what I ask myself, is
why
I believe all that. Well, I’ll tell you, my dear, because even if you don’t understand now, one day you will, I’m sure.

“Twelve moleyears ago, before you were born, there was an elder meeting. It was the June meeting like the one about to be held. Much was said at it, though you needn’t worry about that. But during it, your father became the leading elder and his real sway over the system began. There were threats, dark talk, much sadness over the system for some of us, as there still is. For a time I felt full of despair and wanted to die. I saw that your father would destroy the system and there was nothing I could do about it I went back to my burrow and sat in silence. I would have liked to have talked to another mole, but even my dearest friend, Bindle, was too afraid to talk to me. Now he no longer attends the elder meetings. Anyway, I was alone. Everything seemed bleak, although outside the June wind was warm, the worms were plentiful and the youngsters were growing fast down in the main system. But I didn’t eat. I crouched alone and silent.

“The only thing that kept me alive was the knowledge that I alone knew the full Midsummer ritual and although Mandrake said he would kill me” – here Rebecca gasped lightly, and Hulver put a paw on her shoulder for a moment — “if I went through with it, yet I knew I had to.

“Then one of the old legends came to me; you know it, I’m sure – Groundsel the Owlkiller. You remember how he saw that it was better to die than to live in the thrall of fear? I began to feel the same. I went out onto the surface and looked up at the great trees above me, listening to the wood all around and waiting for first light. June! What a time! How happy I suddenly was as the light overtook the dark wood, cutting away its darkest patches, turning black into gray and then gray into the color of summer! When night came around again, I climbed the hill to celebrate Midsummer. The fear that had been hanging about seemed to have gone and, of course, I wasn’t killed by Mandrake. As I set off I
knew
I wouldn’t be killed, even though I was followed from the moment I left my burrow. I’m not sure by whom, but seeing how things have gone since in the system, and who is Mandrake’s most active henchmole, I think it must have been Rune. He probably thought I didn’t know he was there, but you don’t live as long as I have without knowing what or who is nearby – especially something as unpleasant as Rune!”

Here Rebecca sighed and nodded. She knew what he meant.

“Anyway, I went through the ritual carefully, not missing out one bit. I also said a special prayer and I said it in the direction of Uffington – asked that Duncton might be visited once more by a scribemole. There was something funny about that prayer, something powerful that made me know that the Stone
does
listen. One day you’ll understand what I mean.”

As he said this, Hulver looked full on Rebecca and into her eyes, which were alight with life and love, and for a moment it was as if his old body had stopped and was hung suspended in a place of wonder, for he knew that this mole, this female, was special and that in some mysterious way the Stone was speaking to her through him. And that thought caused him to think of Bracken, who had looked so frightened when he left him up on the slopes, and made him see that there was a connection between the two. He felt as if he were crouched between them and that there was a power, a force, an enormous, troubled strength that was coursing unknown between them and taking its path through him! He shook himself and continued his story.