The Second Wave (10 page)

Crag, arranging metal in the hollow trunks, looked up as they entered in a flurry of snowflakes.

‘Where’s your offering?’ he asked coldly.

Chip diverted his attention by introducing Tansy.

‘Father, this is Tansywistful.  I met her on the track.  It is freezing cold and ‘snow’ outside.’

‘So, you abandoned your duty for a female and because you are a bit chilly.  Huh!’ Contempt sounded in every word.  Crag turned away.

Soon, however, the Temple filled with cold grey squirrels who had returned with Rusty when conditions outside had made it impossible for them to ‘work their service’.  Tansy sat in a dark corner behind Chip, watching the Greys eating their meagre rations and rubbing their paws together to warm them.  Crag and Rusty ignored her, but Chip fetched her two hazelnuts from the store area.  Ivy watched.

As it got completely dark inside the tree, Tansy heard Crag call for silence for the Evening Prayer.

‘Invincible Sun,

Forgive us, your poor squirrels,

For always failing.

Tomorrow, we will,

If you will give us the strength,

Try to do better.’

Tansy thought that his voice was colder than the snow outside.

‘Do you snug with the Greys?’ she whispered to Chip.

The word was new to him and he savoured it – it had a warm, soft feel.  ‘What is ‘snug?’ he whispered back.

‘You know, cuddle up in the dark.’

‘Cuddle up’ sounded even nicer.  He thought he knew what she meant.  ‘No, we must all sleep apart,’ he told her.

‘Nonsense,’ she told him, putting her paws around his shivering body and drawing him to her in the darkness.  Then she settled down to cuddle him through the night, her tail fluffed and warm over them both.

They were still like that when Crag found them in the first thin light of a bitter winter’s day.

‘Out, out,’ he raged.  ‘Sinners have no place in this Temple.  The Sun will never, never forgive such behaviour.  You, you squirrabel you, corrupting my son!  Out, out!  It’s the Sunless Pit for you both.  For ever!’

The confused female and the frightened young male were jostled and hustled out of the relative warmth of the tree into a cold white world outside.

‘Follow me,’ Tansy said, hopping across the frozen crust of the snow which had hardened in the night.  ‘We will go and find my friends.’

‘What are friends?’ Chip asked.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

On the island Blood had scented the snow on the wind.  In Scotland, where he had been captured the previous winter, he had often experienced snow and knew that the best thing to do was to eat well and lie up.

The smell of peafowl drifted up from the nave below him, but he wanted
squirrel
.  It had been a few days since he had outwitted the silly creatures when they had tried that same trick again.  Did they think he was a stupid fox or something?

He came down the rope eagerly, snatched at the peacock’s tail feathers in passing, just to remind him that he was not to be ignored, and, as the frightened bird screeched in terror, slipped out through the door and up into the trees.

Once again there were no ruddled squirrels at the leaf-pile and he was pleased.  Squirrel tasted much better when its blood was really warm from a good chase, and the hunt itself would be exhilarating.

He leapt from tree to tree, sniffing at the air, but even at Beech Valley there was no recent scent.  He went along the Man-track up the centre of the island without even a glimpse of a squirrel’s tail, and then, as the snow came drifting in on the north-east wind, he gave up the hunt and turned for home and peahen.

After Maple had been outwitted, and eaten in full view of the squirrels of Beech Valley, despair had overcome them.  Oak the Cautious, feeling his age in the cold wind blowing in from the sea, had called a Council Meeting, sensing the need to provide stability and purpose in the shattered community.

In any crisis

A Leader’s first duty is -

To keep hope alive.

They met in the pines well to the west of Beech Valley, which they now felt was unsafe and dangerous.  Watchers were set out and the wary animals discussed ideas to counter the threat posed by the pine marten and enable them to survive.

‘It could wipe uz all out,’ Just Poplar said.  ‘Then there would be no zquirrelz to bury the nutz to make treez to feed future generations of zquirrelz.’

‘There wouldn’t be any generations to feed,’ said Clover the Tagger and Carer in a despairing voice, and the bleakness of a squirrel-empty island overcame them all.

They sat silently, the chill wind tugging at their tails.  Then Just Poplar, remembering his Royal days, said, ‘The Bunker!’

They turned to face him for an explanation.

Uz don’t know if it’z ztill there, but there uzed to be a hollow willow in the deepezd part of the Zwamp with one zmall entranze.  It wuz known only to uz Royalz and won or two very truzded zervantz.  It wuz where uz Royalz wuz all to go if the zervantz revolted.  Uz wuz shown it only wonz.’

‘Could you find it again?’ asked Oak, eagerly.

‘Uz could try, but uz wuz zhown it only wonz.’

‘Let’s go now,’ said Oak, uncharacteristically, and the meeting broke up without even asking the Sun to bless its deliberations, the squirrels streaming off behind Just Poplar in the direction of the Zwamp.

They searched every mature willow, working their way through the trees above the black pools of water, until Poplar, with an urgent flicking of his tail, signalled success and the others, seeing this, joined him.

It was a perfect hiding place.  The old tree leaned out across a pool and high up on its underside was a hole just big enough for a squirrel to enter.  But, to get to it, the animals had to climb upside down along the trunk, clinging to the bark, with a drop into the pool below for any that lost a claw-hold.

Just Poplar went in first and flushed out a family of wrens who had regarded it as their winter home.  They flew into the ivy covering a nearby alder stump, complaining amongst themselves in their thin voices.

Just Poplar hung his head out of the hole.  ‘Come on in,’ he called.  ‘Thiz iz the Bunker.’

It was warm and dry inside, with plenty of room for the entire community.  At the back of the hollow they found the old store-pile of nuts that the Royals had prepared for emergency use.  Oak tried one – it was stale but edible.

They set a guard at the entrance and relaxed for the first time in a moon.  They were even more glad of the protection of the Bunker when the east wind swirled the snowflakes past the entrance hole.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Chip followed ‘Tansywistful’ across the snowdrifts in the Lightning Tree clearing.  The night wind had whipped the snow into fantastic shapes and had hardened and compacted the surface, before dropping to a whisper and fading away with the dawn.

The two squirrels travelled mostly through the treetops but, when they had to come down, they hopped around the great banks and curls of snow which sparkled and twinkled as the light from the rising sun coloured the drifts first pink, then gold.

Tansy showed Chip the marks left by the night animals – the fine footprints of a fox and the yellow spots where it had marked its passage across its territory.  She showed him the splayed wing-marks where a heavy bird had taken to the air at the end of a line of backward-pointing arrows, and the golden feather with the dark band that identified it as a pheasant.  All across the snow were the marks of two long and round footprints.

‘What made these?’ Chip asked her.

‘Rabbits,’ she told him.

‘What are rabbits?’

Tansy looked at him in surprise.  ‘Brown-furred creatures with long ears that live in holes in the ground.’

‘So that’s what they are called.  My father would never say their name.  On Portland he said it was a Sun-cursed word and must never be spoken.’

‘What did he call them then?’ Tansy asked.

‘Brown-furred creatures with long ears that live in holes in the ground,’ he replied, and they both laughed, their breath white in the air.

‘Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits.  What a funny word,’ he said.

The two went on together, each comforted by the other’s presence, the snow-crust supporting them easily.  Chip poked at his ears as they seemed not to be hearing properly and Tansy pointed out that this was the ‘snow-silence’ and all sounds would seem muffled.  They came to the top of a bank and looked down on to the pool, not blue that morning but covered in windswept grey ice, and they skirted it, keeping in the treetops.

‘I’m expecting Marguerite to have a drey somewhere about here,’ Tansy told Chip, and they searched each likely tree.  She was right.  A snug drey, nestled in a dense mass of pine branches and twigs, showed signs of habitation.  Tansy called from outside,

‘Hello and greetings.

We visit you and bring peace.

Emerge or we leave.’

She used the ancient Calling Kernel which enabled any squirrel inside to greet or to ignore visitors to the drey, according to that resident’s mood.

‘Who calls?’ a sleepy voice responded.

‘Tansy the Wistful,’ she replied, a slight catch in her voice, ‘from Ourland, and Chip Who Has No Tag.’

‘Tansy!’ An excited voice came from within the drey and Marguerite pushed herself out and instantly brushed whiskers with her old friend and year-mate.

‘Tansy!’

‘Marguerite!’  They were hugging and whisker-brushing in a display of emotion never before witnessed by the shivering young male beside them.

‘I’m sorry,’ Marguerite said at last, remembering her manners, and she made the formal greeting to him, adding, ‘Come in out of the cold.’  Then she said to Tansy, ‘meet my youngsters and Juniper.  You’ll remember him, of course.  Come on in, both of you.’

Chip followed them into the cosy warmth of the drey and met Juniper the Steadfast, Marguerite’s life-mate, and Oak and Burdock, their youngsters.  It was crowded inside, each squirrel closely in contact with the others, but with no sense of sinning in the contact.  In fact Chip was overwhelmed by the cared-for feeling – the whole drey was filled with it.

He thawed out in the semi-darkness as he listened to Tansy tell of the reason for her journey.

‘Marguerite, have you still got the Woodstock?’ she asked as soon as it was decently possible.

‘Not the original one, but yes, there is still a Woodstock.  We keep it hidden.  Why do you ask?’

‘There’s a pine marten on Ourland killing all the squirrels.  I have come to get the Woodstock to kill it.’

‘How did you cross the sea from Ourland?’ Marguerite asked, remembering her journey in the rubber boat and the help the dolphins gave when she and her companions were in trouble amongst the rock-towers.

Tansy told Marguerite of the stag, and of being caught and held in the cage.  ‘But I’m here now, thank the Sun.  All I’ve got to do is get the Woodstock back to Ourland and kill the pine marten.’

‘That’s a big ‘all’,’ said Marguerite, thinking as she said it that she sounded like her father, Oak the Cautious.  ‘Have you thought how you would get it there?’

‘No, not really.  I had to get
here
first,’ Tansy replied bleakly, and added, ‘but I’ll find a way.’

Marguerite pressed Tansy for details of her own family on the island.  Chip could tell that she was astonished to hear of the death of Next-King Sallow and the abdication of King Willow and his other son, Just Poplar.

Then it was Marguerite’s turn to tell of her adventures after leaving the island, of the friendly dolphins, and of meeting the refugees at Worbarrow.  Then of the destruction of the Greys’ Power Square in the Clay-Pan.  This brought them to the ‘Grey’ situation, and Tansy asked what Marguerite knew about them now.

‘A plague that they called the Grey Death killed all of the ones that were here at that time, except Marble, and he died nobly trying to help us destroy the Power Square.  Then, in late autumn, more came, very polite and friendly, but we sent them to the North-east Wood for the winter.  They said that they wanted to live with us and learn our customs, but we didn’t trust them, and winter was nearly here.  If they come back in the spring, we will talk with them then.  You didn’t meet them when you came through there?’

Tansy told of meeting Chip near the Lightning Tree and of the Greys, and finally about being ejected by Chip’s father, Crag, for snugging with Chip.  The Reds were aghast at this, so Chip tried to explain the Portlanders’ customs.  He was hesitant in the company of so many others, and their proximity troubled him a little.  Their body contact and ease of speech seemed to him to be wrong in some ways, but right, oh, so beautifully right in others.  Finally he asked the question that was troubling him.

‘What is this feeling here?  Every squirrel seems to care for every other squirrel.’

Marguerite looked at the youngster, pathetic in his concern.  She leaned over, brushed whiskers with him and whispered, ‘We call it Loving.’

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Crag was fretting.  The sun was shining and he knew that he should be out with his team of Greys getting more and more metal for the Temple.  Yet the whole of his world was covered in the Sun-damned snow.

He sent for Hickory and Sitka and instructed them to organise the greys in rearranging the offerings in the hollows of the tree.  Then, dissatisfied, he had them put all the pieces back where they had been before.  The Greys grumbled amongst themselves and he had to threaten the Sunless Pit to keep them active and Sun-worthy.  Rusty was as silent as usual, but Crag could sense her resentment at the way he had treated Chip and that female who had spent the night with the youngster in the Temple Tree.