Duncton Wood (9 page)

Bracken had an unpleasant childhood. He was always struggling for food and losing, ending up with scraps. As a result, he was slow to grow, which perpetuated the situation, making him the skinny runt in the family, always ill and whining when very young, frightened and crying when older. However, he was at least intelligent (“cunning,” Burrhead called him) and quickly learned to avoid being attacked when danger threatened or his bigger brother was feeling aggressive. He found that there was no point in fighting back, because he always got beaten, so he took to hunching up into a defensive stance so that he was always ready for the blows and scratches that came to him from all sides. He adopted a low snout, keeping eyes averted and playing the fool so that Root and Wheatear were bored with him.

His task of survival was easier because his two siblings, like their father, had a complete lack of imagination, which meant that he could usually work out well ahead of them what they would do and then take appropriate avoiding action.

At the same time, he had enough sense to work out what would please them – worms, new places to play, new tunnels to explore – and put it their way, which meant that they relied on him, grudgingly, for ideas. That didn’t stop them thumping him quite a lot and ignoring him a great deal, but that was better than out-and-out assault. Still, he did often end up in tears, and it was then that Aspen came, for a rare moment, into her own. For along with her untidiness went a certain romantic whimsiness which meant she loved telling stories. And when Bracken was upset, she would comfort him with mole legends and tales, simple stories of honored, brave moles, or tales of line males fighting for their mates.

Many were traditional mole legends of which every system had its version; others were peculiar to Duncton and were usually set in the long-distant past, when the moles lived in the Ancient System up on top of the hill. She entered into the spirit of these tales to such an extent that she would often moan and weep as she told them, and Bracken, his head against her flank, would feel her breathing getting heavier and faster as she neared a climactic end, and for while he would forget his tears and the bullying in the drama of the tale.

He would enter into them as she did. His eyes perhaps half closed or affixed to some distant place beyond the walls of the burrow and soon he would be there, fighting to the death, weaving magic with his talons, facing the most dreadful dangers. Aspen loved to paint in the rich colors of her own whimsy the scene when the hero mole returns from his quest across the wood to fight owls, or outfox foxes, or find worms to save the system. This would move Bracken deeply, for he wished he might return home one day as his heroes did, to a snug burrow, warm with love, friendly and wormful. Wanted, not an outcast.

It was from these beginnings that Bracken’s fascination with the Ancient System grew, and when he ventured onto the surface, he would often stop and stare dimly up in the direction of the top of Duncton Hill far beyond his sight and hopes and wonder if he might ever climb there himself. One day Aspen told him about the Stone that was said to stand there, “though it’s a long time since anymole but the elders went up there, and then only at Midsummer and Longest Night. It’s probably just legend, but a nice one, don’t you think?”

The idea of the Stone fascinated him so much that he gathered his courage and dared ask Burrhead about it one day when he seemed in a mellow mood. To his surprise, Burrhead was very ready to give an answer: “Aye, the Stone’s up there right enough. I’ve seen it myself, though I don’t suppose that’ll happen much more because, if I have my way, we’ll stop the Midsummer trek.”

“Why?” asked Bracken tentatively.

“Owls and worms, two words you should get into your head, my boy. Owls is dangerous up there and worms is scarce. No point risking ourselves for some ancient ritual which no one but old stick-in-the-muds like Hulver can remember.”

“What’s the Stone like?” demanded Bracken, encouraged by his father’s unusual willingness to talk. And noticing that Aspen was listening too.

“It’s nothing, really,” said Burrhead, “just a stone. Well, a big stone. Tall as a tree, shoots straight up into the sky. It’s gray. It turns dark blue as night falls and then pitch black, blacker than night itself, except where the moon catches it and it’s silvery gray.”

So there were moments of stillness for Bracken in his burrow, when Aspen would talk to him and even

Burrhead would tell him things, and he was unmolested.

But as May advanced and Root and Wheatear gained in strength, such moments became rarer, and he had to use all his ingenuity to avoid being hurt in their rough-and-tumble fighting, which always had him as the butt.

There came a time, at the end of May, when Root would seek him out and deliberately intimidate him, trying to make Bracken raise his talons so that he would have an excuse to fight him.

“He started it,” Root would tell a despairing Aspen, faced once more by a bewildered, hurt Bracken.

As the days wore on. Bracken began more and more to spend time by himself, exploring away from his home burrow, finding he had farther and farther to come home again for sleep or worms. In this way he made his way to Barrow Vale one day, but found it too full of other moles, curious about who he was, as he turned away and tried other directions. Another day he went right to the edge of the wood and looked out for the first time onto the pastures, frightened by the open space and massive sky beyond the trees, terrified of the cows who hooved and pulled at grass beyond the fence.

But Burrhead did not call him cunning for nothing. Bracken quickly realized that his timid appearance and obvious youth allowed him to cross the tunnels of moles who might otherwise be hostile to him. He developed various ways of approaching them, finding that even if they started hostile, he would usually disarm them by asking a simple question which established his inferiority and their importance.

“I’m lost,” he might say. “Can you tell me where the Barrow Vale is from here?”

Or, if he knew their names (which he would try to find out from the preceding mole he had encountered), “I was looking for Buckbean because he knows an awful lot about the system,” and Buckbean suddenly did, indeed, feel he knew an “awful lot” about the system, and would feel flattered and retract his talons – though still standing his ground until quite certain this youngster was safe.

Bracken was to use this approach later and more effectively with the eastsiders, who were more willing to pass the time of day talking than the westsiders. But even so, many westsiders yielded to Bracken’s combination of youthful vulnerability, innocence and flattery to answer his sometimes spurious questions and let him continue his explorations.

The more so because, as Mandrake’s power had increased, he had let it be known that he preferred moles to stay in their territory and not wander around without reason, so a safe stranger like Bracken was welcome for the interest he could bring. It was true, in fact – though the Duncton moles didn’t know it, since they kept to themselves – that there was traditionally more mixing and visiting in Duncton than, for example, out on the pastures.

Mandrake himself came from a desolate system where individuals kept themselves to themselves, but his reasons for encouraging isolation in Duncton were not nostalgic: he knew that the more isolated each Duncton mole was, the better could he control them. And he seemed to have a peculiarly deep-rooted aversion to the Stone.

This all being so, a visiting youngster was more welcome than he once might have been. He could pass on a bit of gossip, he was safe, and Mandrake’s rule didn’t apply to youngsters.

In this way. Bracken was able to learn a great deal about the westside and something about the system, too. He would hear gossip about the elders, news of the havoc and deaths caused by Mandrake’s henchmoles, among whom his own father was a leading member, and stories of Mandrake himself.

Of all things that he heard, it was these that made the biggest impression on him, for there seemed no end to Mandrake’s strength and power:

“He’s so strong he’s been known to destroy an oak root thick as a mole to make a tunnel.”

“He’s the best fighter the system’s ever seen and ever likely to see, if you ask me. Do you know, my boy, when he first came to Duncton he killed twelve of the strongest adults before he even set paw in a tunnel? Twelve! Mind you, I wasn’t there myself.”

“They say the first time he went down the Marsh End he stopped a group of marshenders from attacking him by just pointing his huge snout at them and staring. Didn’t say a word; just crouched ready and stared. They backed away, tearing at each other to escape.
That’s
how powerful Mandrake is.”

Mole after mole, females and males, came out with stories like this, so that soon Mandrake assumed terrifying proportions in his mind.

Indeed, Mandrake might well have taken on the mantle of powerful protector of Duncton and its moles in Bracken’s mind had it not been for the fact that his own bullying father was one of Mandrake’s henchmoles and forever going on about the fact. So Mandrake took on a dark and sinister role in Bracken’s imagination rather than a benevolent one.

It was for this reason that Bracken was both surprised and fascinated when, one day toward the end of May, he heard a westside female say, with the indirectness of a gossip who deliberately invites a follow-up question by the mystery of what she says: “Mind you, there’s one mole who can stand up to Mandrake and there’s nothing, I tell you, absolutely nothing, he can do about it. Not a single solitary thing.”

“Who’s that?” asked Bracken, amazed.

But she continued her train of thought, piling on the mystery for her own delight: “Yes, he can huff and puff all he likes, but I don’t think he can do a thing.”

“But who
is
it?” asked Bracken, eaten up with curiosity.

“Why, Miss Stuck-up-Rebecca, that’s who. His darling daughter. Twists him round her talons
she
does. Mind you dear,” his confidante placed her snout close to his ear and affected to look down the communal tunnel in the direction of Barrow Vale, “mind you, all that won’t last much longer, if you know what I mean,” digging him in the ribs.

Bracken didn’t know what she meant and wanted very much to know. “Do you mean.. He hesitated encouragingly, and she obligingly continued.

“Yes, you know I do. We all know she was an autumn-litter mole, which means she’ll be nearly ready to leave her home burrow by now. What’s more, it wouldn’t surprise anymole if Sarah, Mandrake’s socalled mate, had another litter this summer. Mandrake’s not one to hang about, is he? And Sarah isn’t going to want Rebecca round with another litter of her own to bring up.”

So, piece by piece. Bracken built up a picture of the system and its leading moles. He learned about Rune – “cunning as a stoat”; he heard about Bindle – “sulking over on the eastside now”; he delighted in the stories about Dogwood and Mekkins; they told him about Hulver, about how the owls were most dangerous on the edge of the wood, and about how dangerous the pasture moles were.

He often heard about Rebecca as well, especially from the males, who reveled in the scrapes she got herself into, causing Mandrake to tear a strip off her again and again, so they said.

She was, so he was variously told, wild, nearly as big as a male of her age, an autumn mole (which meant that she was tough), obstinate, always laughing, inclined to dance about Barrow Vale
on the surface,
the bane of her brothers’ lives, and frequently punished by Mandrake.

Bracken, who naturally grew increasingly curious about Rebecca, might have been tempted to go and find her had she been any other mole’s daughter and had he himself been more sociable. But despite his ability to wheedle his way into other mole tunnels and occasionally even their burrows, he was rather shy of his own generation. Talking with adults was one thing, consorting with his peers was another, and much more difficult. Still, for a while he looked out for her in the communal tunnels and ventured once or twice onto the surface at Barrow Vale thinking he might see Rebecca there, but nothing ever came of it.

Soon, other things about the system caught his interest. The stories Aspen had told him about the Ancient System and the occasional mentions it got as a long-unvisited place fascinated him. Also, there was something about the way moles talked about the Duncton Stone, and the mystery of why they mentioned as something separate from it, “The Stone,” which was powerful and held all moles’ lives in its power. Was there, then, a Stone a mole could never see?

“Where
is
it?” he would ask, “What is it?” But no mole gave him an answer. He thought he might find it if he went to the Ancient System, but as yet he didn’t actually,, want to try to go there – it was far too dangerous – but he did want to meet a mole, apart from Burrhead, who had been there.

It was this interest and the fact that he had exhausted the exploration possibilities of westside and Barrow Vale that led him to strike out toward the slopes one day.

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