Duncton Wood (32 page)

Bracken had been there for several molehours, from the time the rain had begun to fall, thick and wet. His few days with Rue in Hulver’s old tunnels, which might have left him feeling less lonely after his initial exploration of the Ancient System, had had the opposite effect. He had left her as the rain started, and trekked miserably up the hill toward the Stone, for no reason that he understood. Back to the Stone.

He had looked at it for a long time, feeling alternately resigned to its impassivity and angry with it just being there and “doing” nothing. Then he was angry with Hulver, who had said the Stone held everything, a promise which did not seem to be fulfilled now that Bracken was alone and desolate before it.

Finally Bracken had started to weep tears from a well of lonely desolation so deep that they shook his whole body in their sadness. Tears which mingled with the rain that tumbled on his face and fell with it to the ground which, slowly, took them in and carried his grief for its own. Then he had turned away from the Stone and went to crouch, still miserable, in the spot to the west side of the clearing which lay toward Uffington where the Holy Moles were said to be.

Some time later he started to speak to the Stone behind him and to Uffington far off before him, not knowing that what he was doing was praying. He asked for the Stone’s help in his search for strength. He asked for the strength to continue his exploration of the Ancient System. He asked for help.

At first, the wind lashed the trees, which swayed and whipped each other in the wet, far above where Bracken crouched. But then the wind died and solid ram poured down, the same that seemed to deafen desolate Rebecca as she heard Cairn and Rune disappear deeper into the wood, and it ran in rivulets down the tree trunks round the Stone clearing, turning the leaf mold into a sodden carpet, cold and wet.

And the noise! The endless random drumming of the rain drowning every other sound – not a scurrying fox, or a scampering rabbit, or a scuffling mole could be heard above the noise. Until, when all creatures had found their burrows, except those like Bracken and Rebecca who had been caught out by trouble, the wood was as still in the rain as a lost and forgotten tunnel.

Then a peace crept slowly over Bracken. A peace that was mingled with the sighs of the understanding that came with the knowledge that he was alone and that moles like Mandrake and Rune, who could chase after a Stone Mole that did not exist, were surely no less alone than he. A peace that came with the certainty that it didn’t matter where he lived, and if the Stone had brought him to the Ancient System, he might just as well explore it to the end.

So, as Rebecca began her own weary ascent of the hill in the rain, Bracken fell into the peace that follows the tears of a prayer spoken truly from the heart, surrounded by suffering and darkness. The words that Hulver had taught him now came back and each one seemed to carry a meaning for him now he had not seen when he first recited them:

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.

Then his mind fell silent for a time and he saw for a moment past the impenetrable, impassive face of the Stone into the world of trust and love beyond it.

Weary, her wet paws sore, her mind dazed and upset, Rebecca crouched down in the Stone clearing looking up at the Stone, unafraid of the strange mole who crouched off to her right in the pouring rain. She stared at the Stone for a long time, wondering at its size and majesty, losing herself in its strength.

Finally she grew cold and shivery, but found that her panic and confusion had gone, and she just wanted to get back to the tunnels of Duncton where she could shelter for a while and then try to find Cairn again.

She approached the mole on the edge of the clearing carefully, for fear of disturbing him, for he seemed not to have noticed her. There was a patch of sanicle into which she went and made her way round to him. At first she might almost have thought he was dead, so still did he crouch, looking away through the trees somewhere out to the west. But rain seems to sink into a dead creature, leaving no light, whereas with this mole there was about him the light of the few brighter parts of the sky which lay over to the west and were reflected in the sheen of his wet fur.

She watched him longer than she intended, for a great sense of peace seemed to come from him, even though he was small and hunched and seemed, in a way, almost afraid. She wondered for a moment who he might be and decided he must be one of the pasture moles. The thought that he might be Bracken never occurred to her, for her idea of Bracken was that he would be at least as big as Stonecrop or Mandrake, and quite unafraid. She wanted to get dry and warm again and back to the Duncton tunnels. But she needed help to get there, for the strength that had carried her up the hill had deserted her now, and she was weary.

Little by little the heavy rain began to fade and the drumming noise it had been making for so long became a patter again as individual droplets, falling through the trees that surrounded them, could be heard once more. Slowly the sky began to lighten from the west.

As this happened, the mole Rebecca was watching turned to face her, looking at her in an abstracted kind of way. Neither could have known how unutterably weary the other was. But just as Bracken sensed that the mole before him was anxious and lost, so Rebecca sensed that he, too, had been lost and lonely. It gave her the strength to speak to him, and in other circumstances would have been enough for Rebecca to run forward and make, his eyes light up with her own vital joy, just as she had done sometimes with her brothers, and Mekkins, and Rose. And even, had she known it, with Mandrake.

But she was too tired to follow this impulse and instead came forward just a little and said “I’m lost. How do I get back into the system?”

The mention of the word
system
made Bracken look past her in its general direction down the slopes, as he remembered that it really was no longer his system. He was
not
of it. He had little desire or need to return to it, but then, what did it matter? And anyway, it was a pleasant feeling to have a mole ask him to do something to help. He looked at Rebecca and thought to himself that he wanted to help her because she... well, there was something warm about her that... but he didn’t have words for it, or even clear thoughts.

“I’m a Duncton mole, you know,” she added. He
knew
that – he could tell by her fresh wood scent that reminded him of the sunny surface of Barrow Vale when he had seen it at its best in early summer.

Bracken was especially pleased to be asked by a mole from the system to find a route. It was the first time (apart from the odd occasion with Root and Wheatear in their puphood) when somemole had asked him the way and there was almost nothing Bracken liked better than to exercise his unusual ability to navigate.

“Come on,” he found himself saying happily. “I’ll show you.” And he was ofi past her, leading her down by a way he remembered to an entrance which must lie just beyond the slopes and from where she could find her own way on. He liked the feel of running down the slopes, this way and that, through the wet foliage, with another mole following, who depended on his skill. He enjoyed it so much that he was sorry when they got there and had to turn to her and say “There you are! I told you it was easy!”

He looked at her looking at him and wanted to stay and ask all sorts of things. But somehow the way she was looking at him stopped him asking the questions he was framing and left him mute, as she came forward and touched him on his shoulder where the scar was fading under cover of new fur. She did it with such gentleness that the words he wanted to say were quite gone and he felt suddenly achingly vulnerable as he let a route into his heart open up that pride, or fear, or vanity, would never again quite be able to close. He wanted to go up close to her and touch her in his own turn, nuzzling his snout into the soft fur of her neck. The feeling frightened him and he wanted to run away from it, and from her, and the system.

“What’s your name?” she asked gently.

“I’m Bracken,” he blurted out. Then he did run, turning away from the entrance where they had been crouching and making for the slopes. As he ran, he felt a relief that he was gone from her, but he could still feel the touch of her caress on his shoulder where once his terrible wound had ached so much; and though he was glad she was gone, he wished he had asked her name.

He did not hear her call out to him “My name is Rebecca,” or see her run a little way toward the way he had gone, nor did he see her stop and look up toward the slopes to which he had returned before turning away herself into the tunnels of the system.

II

EBECCA

   15  

T
HE
silence of the Stone. A mole may listen for a lifetime and not hear it. Or it may touch him at birth and seem to protect him with its power for the tasks that he must face.

Such a mole was Boswell, scribemole of Uffington, where the Holy Burrows lie, who is now known and beloved of all moles as Blessed Boswell.

Yet there was a time when his vow of obedience had shaken his heart as day after day he prayed and meditated in solitude by the Blowing Stone that lies at the foot of Uffington Hill
 
–
a stone whose special power for truth everymole knows. He was seeking the guidance he needed before making his now-legendary decision to break his vows and make the trek over chalk hills and clay vales, across river and marsh, to the Ancient System of Duncton.

The time was September, the same in which Bracken and Rebecca first met, and the weather was changeable. A storm had come in from the east, the direction of Duncton Wood. It obscured the top of Uffington Hill in rain and mist, leaving Boswell below it, isolated and alone with the Blowing Stone, to make up his mind. At the height of the storm, the wind was strong and it wound and raced around the hollow convolutions of the Stone until at last it sounded the deep vibrating note that cast all doubts aside and filled his heart with the terrible certainty that he must make the perilous journey.

He had already asked that he might do so, going with his master, Skeat, to the Holy Mole himself and begging to be allowed dispensation to risk the long trek to Duncton. But, though with kindness and compassion, he was refused, just as Skeat had warned he would be.

“You’re far too valuable here, Boswell, for no mole knows the secrets of the libraries as well as you do, or the old language, which even the scribes forget. And anyway,” and here Skeat looked sadly on Boswell, “you know you can never make such a journey and survive. Others might, perhaps, but not you, Boswell.”