The Golden Flight (2 page)

Another dreyling, Elm, Larch’s son, called up from the ground, ‘When you get caught and nipped, it’s like a fly’s sting.’

‘Uz father wuz ztung by a wazp onze,’ another youngster volunteered, his accent showing that his father must be one of the original islanders. ‘Nazdy, him zaid it wuz. Him taught uz to zstay away from yellow thingz that flyz.’

No other comments were offered and Marguerite thanked them politely and as she went back along The Wall, she heard the game restart.

‘I honour birch-bark…’

What could it mean? she wondered.

She had recently abandoned her attempts to make sense of humans’ name shapes.
 for Acorn was fine, and she had always used
 as her special mark, so
 must be for Marguerite – but after this she could get no further. Here was a new challenge!

I honour birch-bark

The Island Screen. Flies stinging –

A piece of the sun.

She repeated it several times to herself. The Island Screen was the name that the squirrels called the ring of trees which surrounded the open areas and the woodland, protecting them from the gales and the storms, but the Screen was mostly pine with only a few birches. Why should
their
bark be especially mentioned?

She climbed down The Wall, and wandered aimlessly towards the meadows to the south. Much overgrown from many years of neglect, the meadows were host to a variety of fungi in the autumn and a few of these grew right through from spring. Even now there were rings of small buff-coloured mushroom shapes pushing up through the rank grass. Marguerite had often wondered why this kind grew in rings and why some squirrels called other kinds, toad’s stools. Although Chestnut the Doubter wouldn’t call them that.
He’d
never seen a toad sitting on one.

She nibbled cautiously at the edge of a small one, it was not unpleasant though the cap was quite tough. It would probably store well for winter food, she thought. One had to be very careful with tasting, especially fungi, she knew that some could be deadly poisonous and should be avoided.

Curiosity

Drives discovery. Beware –

Daring fools may die.

Another Kernel of Truth. Her mind went back to the chant. If the
chant
was a Kernel, she was thinking, it should not be obscure –
Clever wraps obscure
. One could equally say
Clumsy wraps
obscure.
Kernels should be clear and easy to understand!

Nearing the Zwamp, she decided to call on Ex-Kingz-Mate, Thizle, who had lived there alone since the deposed King had been killed and eaten by the pine marten. She knew many of the old island customs.

Thizle was pleased to see her and welcomed her in the island dialect, ‘Greetingz to yew, Marguerite-Friend. What newz do yew have fur uz? Uz do mizz the Pozt squirrelz.’

Marguerite could just recall the smart Royal Post Squirrels who used to sit on their posts at Dawn, High-sun and Dusk waiting for messages to be given to them. These they would relay faithfully and accurately to other squirrels all over the island. How proud they had been and how accurately they had reported. But with the abolition of the Monarchy, the Post Squirrels’ role had also disappeared.

Marguerite sat with the old squirrel in the sunshine outside her drey and told her of many things that were happening on the island. How, with so many squirrels, it was no longer possible for all of them to put their views at Council, so attendance was falling. There was talk of having to have two or even more Councils covering different parts of the island.

‘Uz can’t zay uz’z happy about that,’ the old Ex-Kingz-Mate told Marguerite. ‘Yew can get each lot quarrelling with the otherz, and Zun-knowz where yew endz up then.

‘Uz do mizz the Old Dayz – uz loved the ceremoneez. There wuz Vinding the Verzd Veather – the Monarch’z Moon Mushroomz – Greeting the Geeze – uz loved all of thoze.’

Marguerite smiled at her, then asked about the Birch-bark Kernel.

‘That’z one of old Wally’z prophezeez,’ she was told. ‘Wally’z real name wuz Walnut, and many squirrelz thought he wuz not quite right in the head. He wuz alwayz coming out with zum prophezy or other. Rubbizh, mozt of it.’

‘Do you know what the Birch-bark one means?’ Marguerite asked again.

Thizle recited it.

‘Hie Honourz birch-bark

The i’land’z zcreen. Fliez ztinging –

The pieze of the zun.’

Marguerite noted that Thizle had said
Hie
instead of
I
or
Uz,
and had used
The piece
instead of
A
piece
.

‘Isn’t it
A
piece
?’ she asked.

‘It used to be
The pieze
but uz mate, King Willow – Zun rezd hiz bonez – changed it. He said that a fly’z zting iz hot like a pieze of the zun, zo it zhould be
A pieze
. It made more zenze, he said.’

Marguerite still could not make sense of it and so changed the subject. ‘Do you think this fine weather will last?’ she asked.

CHAPTER TWO

Chip took the sloe that Caterpillar handed him. It was warm from the heat generated inside the leaf pile, and it smelled over-ripe and rotten.

‘Try it, it won’t hurt yew’ Caterpillar told him.

Chip hesitated. He knew that Marguerite would not approve, and that eating the ruddled sloes was only permitted to the three ex-zervantz who had successfully pleaded to the Council that they would be ill if they did not have one regularly.

‘Are yew frit?’ asked Caterpillar.

‘Of course not,’ said Chip, looking about him before biting into the wrinkled black skin. The taste was not unpleasant and he swallowed the mouthful, feeling a warm sensation as it passed down into his stomach. He took another bite.

Caterpillar was already eating his third when Chip’s legs tangled with each other and he fell forwards on to the moist warm leaves.

Word passed round the island as quickly as the scent of gorse on a summer’s day. Chip, Marguerite’s protégé, had been found ruddled at the leaf pile and had been summoned to appear before the Council. It would have to be a down-tag for him. Every squirrel knew the rule about the ruddled sloes. Would Marguerite stand by him?

The Island Council met in the tree above the pond in Beech Valley to hear the case against Chip. Though recently few squirrels had been attending meetings, so many squirrels were present that day that some had to sit in the next tree, straining their ears to hear the proceedings above the gentle rustle of the wind in the beech-leaves.

Clover the Tagger was in charge. Chip, his head thumping, sat, tail low, on the branch near her. Marguerite was at his side.

‘Chip Who Seeks Love,’ Clover began sternly, quoting the tag Chip had earned the previous year. ‘It has been reported that you have been eating ruddled sloes, although you know this to be forbidden. Is this true?’

Chip looked at Marguerite, who nodded her head. ‘Yes,’ he replied, his tail dropping even lower.

‘Why did you do this, when you knew it to be wrong?’ Clover asked.

Chip looked around at the mass of squirrels but could not see Caterpillar. ‘Just did,’ he replied sullenly.

Clover waited, but Chip rubbed his paws together nervously and said nothing more.

‘Does any squirrel have anything to say before I consider a new tag for Chip?’ Clover asked.

Marguerite stepped forward and quoted the Understanding Kernel –

‘If you could know all

Then you could understand all

Then you’d forgive all.’

Clover looked at her old friend and recalled how the year before they had stood against one another for the position of ‘Tagger of Ourland’ and knew that Marguerite was doing her best for Chip. However if
he
would not explain his actions, there was no other choice but to down-tag him.

Clover waited, looking expectantly at Chip. He sat very still until she ordered him to leave the Council whilst they discussed his action. He moved to a tree out of ear-twitch.

There was little discussion. The offence was clear, the offender had admitted it, and had been given the opportunity to tell his story. As it said in the kernel–

Squirrels have the right

To explain their own actions,

Fully – in silence.

Called back, he was given the tag ‘the Ruddled’, and, feeling ashamed of himself, Chip the Ruddled left in disgrace, his tail trailing.

As for Caterpillar, he seemed to have important business that kept him on the far side of the island for several weeks!

Across the waters of the harbour, on the Mainland, Lord Malachite woke in his bachelor drey in one of the Scots pines on Tanglewood Knoll. He looked over to the next tree where Lord Silica had a similar establishment, and then across the sunlit glade to where Lord Obsidian lived, also on his own.

‘What are we doing here?’ he thought, not for the first time. Two, maybe even three, winters have passed since we set up that Power Square to protect us from the plague of the Grey Death. We’ll all die here forgotten in this foreign wood unless we get out there and do something.

The thought disturbed him and he recalled his ambition.

As with all the male grey squirrels in New America, he had cherished the idea of becoming the Great Lord Silver. Like his two companions, he had earned the first rank of Lord through his ruthless treatment of the native Reds. Then the Grey Death came, forcing the three of them to flee and hide here on this knoll in the Great Heath. Humans never came to this wood, the storm-felled tree trunks on the knoll having made an effective barrier.

‘Lord Silica,’ he called across to the next tree, ‘are you awake?’

‘I am
now
, damn you,’ a voice growled from the next drey. ‘What is it?’

Taken aback by the gruffness of the response, Lord Malachite did not answer, but came fully out into the sunshine and sat on the branch listening to the soft ‘coo-coo, coo-coo’ of a wood pigeon on the other side of the wood.

‘What is it you want?’ Lord Silica had emerged from him drey and was looking across at Lord Malachite.

‘I was just wondering if we were going to pass the rest of our lives here, that’s all. I’m bored and was wondering if the Grey Death had gone yet?’

A rustling of pine needles betrayed the approach of Lord Obsidian. ‘What are you two plotting?’ he asked.

‘Not plotting anything. Just wondering if it was safe to go and see if the Grey Death has gone.’

Malachite noted that Obsidian was looking older. So was Silica. Paunchy, too – the living here on the knoll was easy, with plenty of nuts and pine cones for just the three of them.

‘If we ever mean to leave, we’d better make it soon,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we go as far as that Blue Pool place nd see if any squirrels survived there. If they did, they probably can’t pass the plague on to us after all this time.’