The Farthing Wood Collection 1 (6 page)

The stoats and weasels were astir soon after the foxes’ attack. Sly Stoat found Smooth Otter’s carcass and sniffed at it inquisitively.

‘Your arrogance put paid to you,’ he murmured to the dead animal. ‘You wouldn’t be told. What’s your so-called superiority worth now?’ He laughed a stoat laugh. ‘A feast for the worms, that’s all.’ He trotted away, his movements brisker than for a long while.

Quick Weasel had attracted a mate and was oblivious of anything that happened around her. The male weasel was dark and quicker even than she: lightning-fast. He circled her and chased her and they ran through the flower carpet, tumbling and sparring like two kittens. In places the ground was tainted with blood. Where the weasels rolled it flecked their glossy coats with dark spots. They groomed themselves and continued their courtship, forgetful and careless of others’ dramas. Life and its continuation was all that mattered to them.

In the badgers’ ancient set Kindly Badger spoke to his son. ‘The foxes reacted as I feared,’ he said. ‘The otters were too clever for them and they resented it.’
He pressed down some fresh bedding and lay on it. ‘We had no part in it and yet.…’

‘Yet what, Father?’

‘And yet we
are
part of it,’ Kindly Badger seemed to contradict himself. ‘We’re part of Farthing Wood, just as they are. We can’t remain unaffected.’

‘Didn’t you always believe animals can get along together if they … if they …’ Young Badger groped for the words.

‘If they respect each other? Yes,’ Kindly Badger mumbled. He was feeling drowsy. ‘But it doesn’t always work out that way. You can’t respect a creature who is’ – he yawned widely – ‘taking the food from your mouth.’

Farthing Wood warmed itself in the spring sunshine. The night creatures had gone to their rest. Nervous Squirrel called to his family, ‘S-strangers in the Wood! Take care!’ as he always did when humans approached. The squirrels leapt through the tree-tops, pausing to squint down at the two people who were bending over the remains of Smooth Otter.

‘Four,’ one man said to his companion. ‘What’s been happening here?’ His distress was unmistakable. The other human shook her head and the two trudged on, systematically searching the Wood bottom.

‘Slaughter!’ Jay screeched at them but the startled bird was ignored.

By the stream-side the naturalists loitered, vainly waiting for a reassuring appearance of a bobbing head and whiskers in the water or a frisky somersault amongst the reeds. They stared long and hard, never talking and barely shifting their limbs. There was no comfort here. The stream was barren except for a
skulking moorhen or two. They walked along its banks, then the woman grabbed the man’s arm and pointed at the muddy ground. Fresh tracks, otter tracks, made by several animals led away from the stream and away from Farthing Wood itself. They followed them where they could, but the tracks were soon lost amongst rank grass. Even so the naturalists were left in no doubt that some serious misfortune had overtaken the protected animals. It was now their prime objective to discover their fate.

Seven animals, including Sleek Otter, had fled the foxes’ wrath. At first they had run in a blind panic. Then, with distance behind them, they eased up and listened for sounds of pursuit.

‘It’s quiet,’ Sleek Otter whispered.

‘Shall we go back?’ another female suggested, gazing forlornly across the grassland.

‘To certain death,’ Slow Otter told her bluntly. ‘The big dog otter, the smooth one, brought havoc among us. He courted danger and thought himself invincible. But he put the foxes in a frenzy.’

‘Where shall we go then?’

‘Why ask me? My world, like yours, was small. I know nothing else.’

‘We should head for a waterway,’ said Sleek Otter. ‘Our stream wasn’t isolated. It must empty into another.’

‘But where?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘We should search for other otters,’ another animal urged.

‘There
are
no other otters,’ she was told. ‘We’re the
last for miles and miles. We grew up knowing that. How can you have forgotten?’

‘I hadn’t forgotten. But – but – what else can we do?’

‘Go on until we find somewhere bearable,’ said Sleek Otter, ‘or … or … die in the attempt.’

They ran on, close-knit, not daring to stray. The grassland gave way to empty fields, then roads, the smell of smoke, moving lights and frightening sounds.

‘We’re lost,’ shrilled a youngster.

‘Of course we’re lost,’ said Slow Otter. ‘From now on, we’ll always be lost.’

It became apparent eventually to the inhabitants of Farthing Wood that the otters had vanished. There were few regrets but some misgivings.

‘What will it mean?’ Wily Stoat asked her mate.

‘Only that there’s more food for everyone,’ Sly Stoat answered cynically.

‘But they were always full of such tales.’

‘Tales of their own importance, yes. Well, we can get along without them. All in all they were a tiresome bunch.’

The wise hedgehog was troubled by more dreams. Once again the vision of the white deer disturbed his daytime sleep, now with more urgency. The deer had advanced and seemed larger and more distinct. Sage Hedgehog knew then that it fell to him to impress on the other animals that some menace hovered over Farthing Wood; that in some way they must make changes to avert an awful fate.

The other hedgehogs heard him out. ‘There are no changes we can make that would make a jot of difference to Farthing Wood one way or the other,’ commented
one. ‘We cause no disturbance. We take what we need and don’t interfere with the lives of other creatures.’

Sage Hedgehog said, ‘None of us can escape the doom that threatens us, from the smallest to the largest. Unless.…’

‘Unless what?’ an elderly hedgehog asked. ‘Unless we sprout wings and fly away? Your riddles are of little help.’

‘Unless,’ Sage Hedgehog murmured, ‘we somehow pull together to – to –’ he screwed up his eyes as he struggled to find words to interpret what seemed to him a message from some mystical source – ‘to save ourselves,’ he finished in a burst with a long sigh of relief.

‘It’s the larger animals who can affect what changes take place here, and only they,’ another hedgehog said. ‘The foxes are the most powerful animals as they’ve already demonstrated. Take your tale to them. I doubt if they’ll listen, but if
they
don’t, your breath is wasted on any other creature.’

‘I shall speak to the foxes,’ Sage Hedgehog confirmed. ‘I shall speak to everyone.’

As before, few of the Wood’s inhabitants were inclined to listen. Sage Hedgehog persisted. It was his role to warn others and not to be defeated by apathy or scorn.

‘You were wrong to make war with the otters,’ he told the foxes. ‘You will rue the day you drove them out.’

‘On the contrary,’ Lean Vixen corrected him. ‘It’s the best thing we ever did. Look how we’ve benefited.’ She and her mate had filled out considerably, and
their coats had a healthy sheen. ‘We’ve taken on a new lease of life.’

‘A lease that will end abruptly in disease and panic,’ Sage Hedgehog predicted.

‘You dotty old ball of spikes,’ Lean Vixen scoffed, half angrily and half in amusement. ‘You come to us with this nonsense and expect us to take you seriously?’

‘A threat to the Wood is surely serious?’ Lean Fox cautioned.

‘What threat? There’s no evidence –’

‘There have been more humans in the Wood of late,’ Lean Fox interrupted.

‘Oh, we pay them too much attention,’ the vixen dismissed his remark. ‘We always have. But why? They never do anything. They walk, they look … what sort of threat is that?’

‘Human interest can always be a threat,’ Lean Fox muttered sullenly. ‘I’d prefer to be ignored.’

Sage Hedgehog said, ‘If the human eye is on us, we’d do well to look out for each other.’

Meanwhile the otters, torn between their fear of the unknown and their horror of returning to their homes, made makeshift dens under a hedgerow and ate vegetation, snails and slugs to avoid starvation.

Sleek Otter determined to look for water. She knew that without it their lives were worth nothing.

At sunset one dry evening, four days after their flight, Sleek Otter set out. She slipped away while the others made their weary and fruitless search for nourishment. She had eaten almost nothing since abandoning her holt. She knew that the best way to find food was to find water. The memory of her cubs’ deaths after eating unsuitable prey remained with her.

The air was balmy and still. She loped across a field. On the far side a road loomed – for the moment quiet. Sleek Otter sprinted across without pausing. Her heart beat fast. She sniffed the aroma of human food and human bodies hanging thickly in a cottage garden. Her nostrils twitched. Her whiskers brushed a wall as she ran along its length, then she slipped through a gate into the garden and trotted noiselessly to a garden pond. Her eyes widened. The scent of water lured her like a magnet. Noises from the house – a televised voice, the laughter of a viewer – made her hesitate. Then silence resumed.

Sleek Otter dived joyfully into the pond. It was tiny and clogged with weed, but the feel of water over her back and head was exhilarating. A terrified frog leapt for safety on to a water-plant. In a flash Sleek Otter
seized it and her teeth crunched on her first real prey for days. The frog tasted delicious. The otter’s eyes closed in sheer enjoyment, but her hunger was merely irritated by this mouthful and seemed greater than ever.

And then she found them. Nestling nervously amongst the weed and trying to stay hidden: goldfish. Sleek Otter whistled with excitement. One, two, three fish about the size of carrots and with no escape route.

‘There’s only one place you can go,’ Sleek Otter told the luckless goldfish as she savoured the moment. ‘And that’s’ – crunch – ‘in here!’ She gulped them down and then searched the entire pond for anything else that was edible. There was nothing more.

Reluctantly she pulled herself out and shook a fountain of spray from her coat. She thought of the six other otters scratching for morsels along the hedge bottom. The goldfish had put new heart into her. Perhaps there were more fish to be found nearby?

Slow Otter had hardly bothered to look for food at all. He was the most pessimistic of the seven and already believed that death for all of them could only be a matter of days away. He watched the only other male grimly chewing an earthworm with an expression of distaste on his face.

‘You can’t put off the inevitable,’ he told him. ‘Bird food won’t keep us alive.’

The other male limped from a wound sustained in a fight with a young fox. ‘Maybe,’ he grunted. ‘But we can’t simply curl up and die.’

‘Might as well,’ was Slow Otter’s opinion. ‘Oh,’ he moaned, ‘my stomach’s as hollow as a rotten log.’

The four bitch otters had scattered on their own
quests. One still had thoughts of returning some day to her deserted holt by Farthing stream. ‘I could slip in unnoticed,’ she told herself. ‘A single otter doesn’t make much of a splash. No-one would suspect.’ Then she thought about what an endlessly solitary existence would be like and shuddered. ‘No. That’s not sensible,’ she said mournfully. ‘I can’t go alone. I must have a companion.’ She turned to glance back at the two males. There was not much encouragement to be had there. She sighed forlornly and turned again to her foraging.

Sleek Otter left the cottage garden and found herself in a wide muddy expanse planted with vegetables. She threaded her way through these, turning every so often to make sure she wasn’t observed. Another field stretched ahead. There was no sign or smell of water in that direction. She paused, reminding herself of the little pond and its situation near a human dwelling. Perhaps that was the key to other stocks of fish. Sleek Otter decided to seek out similar habitations.

There was a collection of buildings comprising a bungalow and various outhouses within easy distance of the vegetable field. Sleek Otter ran determinedly towards it. Desperation made her bold. She pattered cautiously into a yard. Everything was quiet enough. In the darkness the unmistakable sound of swishing water reached her ears. She trotted swiftly forward to investigate. She found six huge, round metal-sided vats spaced around the yard. These were sunk deep into concrete so that the tops were about a metre above ground level. Hosepipes ran to and from each, draining and replenishing water in a continual cycle. Every so often a splash or a plunge could be heard in
one of the tanks. There were things moving in them – living things. Sleek Otter was filled with excitement. She ran to the nearest container and leapt up, balancing herself on the tank’s rim.

‘Fish!’ she whistled. ‘Hordes of them!’ She watched the writhings and weavings of hundreds of plump silver trout. There were so many fish, there scarcely seemed to be a space unfilled. The water was literally alive with them. They were feeding from the remains of a scattering of pellets thrown in earlier by human hand. Sleek Otter’s hungry eyes almost popped out of her head. Here at last was real prey – unlimited prey – for the taking. She watched the trout’s darting movements as though mesmerized. She knew she must inform the other otters about this miraculous find. First, however, she meant to taste the trout for herself.