Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  ‘The only thing that kept me alive was the knowledge that I alone knew the full Midsummer ritual and although Mandrake said he would kill me’—here Rebecca gasped lightly, and Hulver put a paw on her shoulder for a moment—‘if I went through with it, yet I knew I had to.

  ‘Then one of the old legends came to me; you know it, I’m sure—Groundsel the Owlkiller. You remember how he saw that it was better to die than to live in the thrall of fear? I began to feel the same. I went out on to the surface and looked up at the great trees above me, listening to the wood all around and waiting for first light. June! What a time! How happy I suddenly was as the light overtook the dark wood, cutting away its darkest patches, turning black into grey and then grey into the colour of summer! When night came around again, I climbed the hill to celebrate Midsummer. The fear that had been hanging about seemed to have gone and, of course, I wasn’t killed by Mandrake. As I set off I knew I wouldn’t be killed, even though I was followed from the moment I left my burrow. I’m not sure by whom, but seeing how things have gone since in the system, and who is Mandrake’s most active henchmole, I think it must have been Rune. He probably thought I didn’t know he was there, but you don’t live as long as I have without knowing what or who is nearby—especially somemole as unpleasant as Rune!’

  Here Rebecca sighed and nodded. She knew what he meant.

  ‘Anyway, I went through the ritual carefully, not missing out one bit. I also said a special prayer and I said it in the direction of Uffington—I asked that Duncton might be visited once more by a scribemole. There was something funny about that prayer, something powerful that made me know that the Stone does listen. One day you’ll understand what I mean.’

  As he said this, Hulver looked full on Rebecca and into her eyes, which were alight with life and love, and for a moment it was as if his old body had stopped and was hung suspended in a place of wonder, for he knew that this mole, this female, was special and that in some mysterious way the Stone was speaking to her through him. And that thought caused him to think of Bracken, who had looked so frightened when he left him up on the slopes, and made him see that there was a connection between the two. He felt as if he were crouched between them and that there was a power, a force, an enormous, troubled strength that was coursing unknown between them and taking its path through him! He shook himself and continued his story.

  ‘When I had finished making this prayer, I turned back to my burrows on the slopes, feeling, I must admit, somewhat cast down. I felt Rune’s evil presence near me and this time I couldn’t resist it in the way I had when I went up the hill. Perhaps the ritual had drained me: such things are very tiring, you know. I could feel his evil coming into me as fear, as aching, as ageing.

  ‘Now what has all this got to do with Rebecca the Healer? Listen carefully. As the days went on, I felt sure that Rune had put some kind of curse on me, or left something of himself about my tunnels. Yet, though I felt tired and ill, my old head began to see things more clearly than before. What did I see? I can’t possibly explain it all—I forgot things that ran so clearly before me almost as soon as I saw them. But the most important thing I saw, or rather felt, was that Rebecca the Healer was in the system: she was here. Now that’s different from hearing a tale told, and enjoying it, about a mole who once stayed in the Ancient System. I knew she was here. What’s more, I could feel she was still here—I should say is still here. I lived totally by myself for molemonths on end, or perhaps it was moleyears—I’m not quite sure—but I wasn’t alone. Rebecca was there as she is with you, her namesake, or up there,’ he waved his paw in the direction of the slopes, ‘with… with Bracken!’

  Before Rebecca could ask who Bracken was, which she was about to do, Hulver interrupted her and himself by touching the side of her head with his paw and saying, ‘I don’t think I will see you again, my dear, so remember what I say, however strange it seems.’ He was conscious again that the elder meeting was going to start soon, also that time was running out and he was sorry, so sorry, that he had not met Rebecca before.

  ‘You see, my dear,’ he said urgently, ‘Rebecca the Healer was up on the slopes with me, or rather her love was, which is more or less the same thing. Often in the silence of my burrow, or crouching still on the surface, I would hear her in the wind or see her in a beech leaf or a root, and my old pains and aches would be gone. I’m an old mole and have had many mates, but I’ve never felt such a love as Rebecca seemed to fill me with. She loved Duncton Wood once, or the moles in it, and left her love here always. You only have to reach out a paw to touch it.’

  He stopped suddenly. He had to go. He wanted to get the elder meeting over and done with, because there was so little time. ‘Does any of that make sense to you?’ he asked Rebecca gently. He knew it didn’t matter whether she answered or not but, in fact, she was so involved with what he was saying that she said nothing at all. It didn’t make much sense to him, come to think of it, so quite what he could expect Rebecca to say he didn’t know. But after all this time away from friendly moles—his only appearance at Barrow Vale in the last few moleyears had been at elder meetings—it was a pleasure to be talking to a mole who listened to him with affection. So young, so much to live through that he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—be able to help with. He thought of Bracken again suddenly, up there in his burrow waiting for his return. He remembered the sad fear in the youngster’s face as he left him there.

  ‘Do you know a mole called Bracken, from the Westside?’ he asked Rebecca. She shook her head. ‘A strange thing,’ he went on, half to himself. ‘I was drawn over to a part of my tunnels which I had more or less abandoned by… well… a feeling. A “Rebecca kind of feeling”, as I call them. And there was a mole, bold as you please. A youngster looking as if he was hardly weaned. Not much to look at, inclined to complain about his home burrow, also inclined to steal other moles’ worms. Be that as it may. Since Rebecca seemed to have led me to him, it seemed the least I could do was talk to him, which I did, though I was tired.’

  Hulver did not elaborate. It occurred to him that the fewer who knew Bracken was still in his burrow, the better.

  ‘Please, Hulver, did you tell him the story about Rebecca, I mean your story?’

  ‘No, no, he wouldn’t understand. He was more interested in adventure and fighting and exploring the Ancient System. Oh, and in scribemoles, though I couldn’t tell him much about those!’

  ‘Well, I want to know about the Ancient System, too,’ said Rebecca, pretending for a moment to be just a youngster who has to be humoured. ‘And about scribemoles as well.’

  Hulver ignored the sudden childishness in her voice and continued to speak to her as he had already—as if she were an adult.

  ‘This Bracken,’ he said, ‘there’s something about him… I don’t know what. Perhaps I’m getting old. I wish I was young again so I could help him…’ He stopped, his snout lowered, and Rebecca wanted him to go on. He was trying to say something to her, but he didn’t know the words.

  She looked at his old face and watched the struggle for words go across it and understood suddenly, in the way that often comes to youngsters, a truth she was still too young to articulate. She understood that a mole, even a wise one, may often not know what it is he is trying to say and that one who is listening to him must help, by being silent, and by listening to the silence between the sometimes stumbling words.

  ‘This Bracken, he’s a strange mole. He has given me hope, but I don’t know why. He really isn’t much to look at at all and certainly doesn’t look as if he could defend himself. And yet… well… Rebecca…’ He looked at her again, struggling for the words, caught between these two youngsters, unable to express the power and relief they unwittingly gave him. ‘Rebecca, sometimes you’ll find there are moles you can help who don’t seem worth the trouble. You wonder why you tried. They may be weak, or selfish, or stupid, or lazy. But you’ll find that if you give such a mole your help, or in other words your love, they will often repay y
ou in ways you could never have dreamed of. That’s how the Stone works, do you see? That’s it. These moles will pop up years later and suddenly the mystery of why they crossed your tunnel, and came briefly into your life, is solved. And then you know that there are powers beyond yourself over which you have no control and before which a mole should feel awe. That’s something many moles have forgotten. Don’t you forget it. Never forget it!’

  He looked at her intently and she was wide-eyed before him and wanted, oh how she wanted… and she did! She went up to him and nuzzled him and held him for an instant, her young glossy fur mixing with his own. Oh, she felt such love for him, such awe for his wisdom and the simple way he held his old body. ‘Oh, Hulver,’ she whispered, oh oh oh.

  A great sweetness came into Hulver, who had not been touched by another mole for moleyears, and never with such love. Never, ever. Why, she was beautiful—had it taken him so long to see that the only beauty is love? And then, once again, an image of Bracken came into his mind and he found himself saying—or rather whispering, because she was so very close—‘You keep an eye out for Bracken. There’s more to him than a mole might think when they meet him. Much more. He may need your help, Rebecca.’

  He broke away from her and they smiled into each other. ‘Perhaps you’ll need his help,’ said Hulver, ‘because that’s how the Stone works, you see. All of us need what you can give, especially you yourself.’

  And with this last mysterious comment, Hulver left her, and she found herself full of the strangest love and joy. ‘Oh,’ she sighed, oh.

  Chapter Seven

  Bracken stayed fast in Hulver’s burrow for two days after he had gone. There was a good supply of worms, and Hulver’s warning had frightened him enough to make him stay where he was. Indeed, it had put such a fear in him that for those two days Bracken expected some terrible danger to manifest itself at any moment, even in the burrow itself. So he started at every sound and worried at every silence.

  By the third day the worms were running out and, anyway, he was getting restless. Even fear can be overtaken by boredom. He could feel that the weather was warm and June-like on the surface, so he went there, never straying far from the tunnel entrance. The entrance nearest Hulver’s burrow was among the beech trees themselves; only below it did they disappear into the oaks and mixed wood that formed the level part of Duncton Wood.

  Among the beeches the wood felt different, and he wasn’t sure if he liked it so much. They were lighter and cleaner than oaks and no vegetation grew under them nor cluttering hazel, hawthorn and holly about them. There was a purity in the air and a lack of distracting vegetation on the ground that made a mole think. ‘If the top of the hill is like this,’ Bracken thought, ‘then no wonder the ancient moles were different from us.’ He explored Hulver’s tunnels in all directions and found, as he had suspected, that the system was too large for the old mole to maintain and in places was falling into disrepair.

  He noticed that on the east side of Hulver’s system the tunnels were older-looking, less straight and not in such good condition. He deduced from this that Hulver had tied his own tunnels on to another long-abandoned series of tunnels he had found a little higher up the slopes. Bracken was intrigued by this and sought the central home burrow this older system must have had, but he couldn’t find it. Here and there, where tunnels rose up the slopes, he found they were blocked—and blocked a very long time ago, for the barriers looked like tunnel ends rather than mere walls of soil, but by tapping them with his talons he could tell there were more tunnels beyond. He was tempted to burrow a way through, but this would have been discourteous to Hulver.

  As his explorations continued (and they spread over several days because he still spent a lot of time in silence in Hulver’s home burrow) a gradual reorientation about the shape of the whole Duncton system took place in his mind. He had, of course, not yet been to some key areas—the Ancient System, the Eastside and the Marsh End. But he became much more aware of them and their relationship to each other than he had been before. As a mole pup sees his own burrow in a different way once he has been outside it into the tunnels, and those differently when he has been on to the surface, so Bracken now saw that the Westside was only a part of the system, and a peripheral part at that.

  These thoughts struck him with particular force one morning, the seventh day of Hulver’s absence, as he crouched up on the surface again enjoying the June sun. He had found a few worms, and having eaten them, was ‘listening to the wood’ as Hulver himself often did. The wood was exciting and very alive. Much more sound came from the lower part, where the oak trees started and there were more birds. Up here on the slopes the air seemed clearer than he had ever known, and everything seemed possible. Everything. Bracken crouched facing south towards Barrow Vale far below, his back to the Ancient System above.

  The sun shone through the shimmering young beech leaves from the east to his right, while down to his left lay the Westside and Aspen and Root going about… and Burrhead must be straight ahead down there at the elder meeting, talking talking… and above was the sky bigger than everything, arching away, far beyond even the Marsh End. Bracken saw then, for the first time, how the Duncton system was just a system, not the world. One day he could go beyond it like the sky did, for everything was possible.

  He felt a surging pull above and behind him from the Ancient System, whose edge he was on. He felt for a moment like one of the ancients, looking down on the new system. He saw that Hulver’s system was superbly placed in the system as a whole, poised as it was on the edge of the ancient and the modern, the Eastside and the West. Bracken’s heart raced as he felt an urge to run off through the wood, all over the wood, for everything was possible and must be explored.

  He might well have done so had not a familiar scurrying sound warned him that a mole was coming up from the oak wood below. Bracken knew it was not Hulver when the sounds veered off to the west and disappeared below ground. Hulver would never enter his own system so stealthily. At this point Bracken was wary rather than frightened, and ran back down into the tunnels, crouching quietly in a side tunnel near the home burrow from where he would hear everything and be able to escape in several different directions. He knew the system well enough to be able to elude any alien mole if necessary.

  The mole moved about here and there in the system but finally went up to the surface again, searching back and forth until he found the main entrance. This was only a few moleyards from where Bracken crouched and he waited tensely.

  It was a strange position to be in—defending a system not his own. Suddenly the mole came boldly and resolutely into the system and stopped still as death in the main tunnel. Bracken shuffled about a little to establish his presence, for he had no intention of either waiting to be found or running off and leaving Hulver’s burrow to the care of a stranger.

  ‘Who is there, and what are you doing here?’ the alien mole called in a commanding voice that took Bracken by surprise. He might have expected to ask the same question himself but had neither the presence of mind nor, perhaps, the courage, to do so. The mole was obviously tough and mature, and Bracken quickly persuaded himself that there was no possibility of fighting successfully, even if he had wanted to, which he didn’t.

  He had no sooner poked his snout out of the side tunnel, than the stranger was coming towards him—bold, calm, dominant.

  ‘My name’s Rune,’ said the mole, ‘and you had better tell me what you are doing here.’ He advanced the last few steps menacingly. For the first time in his life Bracken was faced by a mole he knew, with absolute certainty, would kill him if he felt like it. There was such indifferent power in Rune’s gaze that what little courage Bracken felt inside him shrivelled up, to be replaced by a desperate clutching in blackness that simply wanted to escape. Rune seemed huge and all-powerful and, for all Bracken knew, might continue his menacing walk right over him, leaving him like a squashed moth that has happened into a hurrying mole’s path.

  �
��Oh, Rune, sir, my name’s Bracken and I came too far from the Westside,’ he whined, his voice high from the tightness and constriction that, in his fear, had invaded his throat. He looked at the terrifying Rune, waiting to do his bidding. If Rune had said ‘Turn on your back and scratch the ceiling’ Bracken would have done it without question. But Rune said nothing, simply gazing searingly at Bracken who, had he had sufficient wits about him to consider the matter, might have concluded that it would be better if he had been asked to scratch the ceiling. Instead, he chose to fill the silence with another catchphrase from his stock of ‘little mole lost’ excuses for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. ‘I also ran out of worms and this burrow was deserted so I stayed here.’

  Rune knew perfectly well that Bracken was Burrhead’s son, and though the lad was by all accounts an idiot (a good reason for killing him there and then) he had no wish to aggravate Burrhead and the Westside needlessly. The time was not yet ripe. Though as he watched the stuttering youngster making his excuses, Rune was inclined to think he would be doing Burrhead a favour by getting rid of him.

  ‘Well, it’s not deserted, because I’m here now and I suggest you return to the Westside fast,’ he said slowly. ‘Moles shouldn’t leave their territories and it’s only because you’re a youngster that I’m making allowances. If you get stopped on your way back to the Westside you can tell them that I sent you back. But don’t try this kind of exploration again; it’s not safe. Now get going.’

  ‘Yes, Rune, sir, thank you, sir,’ said Bracken, adding with the effusiveness of a mole who has been let off the talon, ‘thank you, sir, I will go straight back now. Thank you, sir.’ And he dashed away, up into the fresh air.