Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  And then he was thrown swinging through the air, arcing up into the sky and down, down into a floating sea of pain, down and down and thumping, bumping against one of the great Stones by the side of the field, and he had a moment’s sight of his paw flopping against it, covered in his own red blood, before he felt the pain again.

  The smell of the creature went away. Wind rustled the grass by the Stones. Agony filled him. And all he could think of was the absurd thought, so silly, that he must be dying; and yet the Stone was warm against his paw, vibrating with a life and power that frightened him, but which he could not turn away from.

  * * *

  Comfrey stayed on with Rebecca in the clearing but no longer said her name. He stayed by her to protect her if other danger came, watching as her terrible agony gave way to something which, in some ways, was even worse—the sight of her draining herself away into the Stone with continual, almost inaudible, healing words, each one drawn out from all the agony she herself had known and passed in some mysterious way into the Stone of Duncton which now seemed to vibrate with her life. Until darkness began to fall, and then night came, and then it was dark, and only her sobs and whispers to the Stone sounded among the winter trees, ‘My love I’m here, my love my love my love my love,’ the sounds growing weaker and weaker as the night drew on.

  * * *

  Some time after darkness had taken the light away, Bracken came to again into a sea of pain and found that he was not dead, not dead at all, and that around him the circle of Stones on whose edge he lay was warm and shaking in the night with a power and light that he knew and had seen before. A light of life that was calling him to its centre, a light of love that had a being and warmth and the feel of soft fur as he whispered again and again the only thing that made him feel his way beyond the pain, ‘Rebecca Rebecca Rebecca’… she was there in the centre of the circle of Stones and she, and their power, were calling him, stopping him falling asleep, stopping him drowning into the pain, making him crawl, inch by bloody inch, each inch a mile of pain, into the centre of Rebecca’s healing love that told him she was there alive, waiting, waiting, her healing power a call to him. And feeling her need for him, feeling her love, he crawled through the pain into the healing circle of the Stones and back from the edge of life.

  * * *

  While by the Stone in Duncton Wood, when everything had fallen still and it was nearly midnight, Rebecca finally sighed and took her paws away from the Stone’s face. ‘Oh,’ she sighed, ‘oh my love.’

  When Comfrey went to her, he was astonished to see that she was smiling. ‘Bracken is alive,’ she said. ‘He is, you know, he really is. He may never come back to Duncton but it no longer matters, for he knows the love is there, our love is there…’ But it did matter, and Comfrey saw that it mattered, now more than ever.

  ‘C-come on, Rebecca, you’d better go back to your burrows and get some sleep. Come on.’ And he led her down to her burrow and settled down near her until she slept, and watched over her until her breathing was regular and slow, and peaceful as the Stone.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Rebecca ran laughing down the slopes towards the Old Wood, calling out, ‘Comfrey, Comfrey! See if you can find me!’

  Comfrey chased after her, a little clumsily because he was never much good on his paws, but marvelling at how Rebecca had changed for the better since that terrible night in February. Since then she had shed moleyears, and behaved more and more like a happy-go-lucky pup each day than the female who had seen four Longest Nights through and was healer to the system.

  Healer? Well, no more. It wasn’t that she no longer cared for the other moles, or tried to ignore them, or wasn’t helpful when they came to her: but everymole seemed to sense that Rebecca had changed and no longer had the desire or will to support them when, it must be said, they could so often find support within themselves. She seemed now to see beyond their troubles and into their very souls, and it troubled them that she did, and so they preferred to leave her alone.

  Only a few of the older moles, and one or two of the young ones, came to her—the ones who understood that the greatest healing she could give was the sense of joy and peace she herself now felt in the wood about her.

  So Comfrey now became healer, and it was to him that they mostly went with their troubles, which he was able to help them with in his own eccentric way, giving them herbs that might, or might not, be of practical help.

  But once in a while he would take time off—or Rebecca would come and make him do so—and today, on a clear, misty spring morning in April, she had him grumblingly playing hide-and-seek.

  Down past the slopes she ran, into the Old Wood where a few trees still stood stark and black to remind them of the fire, but where fresh undergrowth and two seasons of leaf mould had made the grey ashes of the wood a memory. But burrow a little way and a mole could still find the ashes—and they were alive with life now as fronds of the roots of a new spring of anemones grew into them, or young sinewy roots of sapling hazel and the suckers of elm pierced up through them.

  She ran instinctively towards Barrow Vale, which she had not found the previous summer but which now, somehow, she knew would be there. The sapling wood was busy and noisy. Birds darted and flitted about the trees, most of which were heavy with bud or catkins.

  Still calling, ‘Comfrey! Comfrey!’ her laugh following the sound of his name, she ran on faster than he could, stopping only for a moment to sigh with delight at the sight of a cluster of yellow celandine.

  As she ran on towards Barrow Vale, it was as if she were herself the plants and trees and every creature, everything, alive with the sunlight that began to clear the mist and the life that the spring always finally brought. ‘Oh!’ she sighed, just as she had when she had been a pup and had first run with such wonder through the wood. Comfrey! Comfrey! And her laughter filled the wood.

  She came to a clearing where the vegetation was lighter because the soil was gravelly, and knew it had been Barrow Vale.

  ‘Shall I burrow?’ she wondered. But though she tried to start, she didn’t finish, because she was distracted by the last of the morning mist swirling away and then by the sound of the first bumblebee she had heard that spring. Then by a distant cawing of rooks in the trees on the east side which had survived the fire. She crouched in the pale sunshine, thinking she should go and find Comfrey or help him to find her, and just a little sad that he couldn’t play with her like a sibling or a lover because, she knew deep down, it wasn’t quite his way.

  But then what mole had ever played with her with the fullness of life that she saw and enjoyed! But her sadness was part of her happiness that there was so much to see and do and enjoy in the wood. So much of the sadness had left her when, on that night by the Stone, she knew with certainty that somewhere her Bracken was alive, even if now he might not come back; and that somehow the love they had known had changed but he was alive, and she had helped him be so. She smiled at the memory of it and laughed aloud again at the distant nervous call of Comfrey, wondering where she was.

  She crouched in the sun that grew clearer by the minute, and said aloud, ‘It’s my wood! My wood!’

  ‘That’s what you always used to say, Rebecca, remember?’ The voice came from the shadows of the roots of a dead oak tree and cast an immediate fearful chill into her heart.

  She looked behind to the darkness of the place where the voice came from. His coat was glossy and his smile bland. It was Rune!

  ‘Hullo, Rebecca,’ he said. She saw that though his face had become lined with the moleyears and his eyes bitter with age, his coat was as unnaturally smooth and glossy as it had always been. His talons were black, there was not a scar on him—face, flank or shoulder—which was unusual in a mole as old as he must be. But then, Rune had a way of avoiding hurt by passing it on to others.

  ‘So you’re all living up in the Ancient System now, are you, what’s left of you?’ he asked. He smiled blandly as he said it, but still his voice seemed t
o hold a sneer.

  She simply stared at him, unable to comprehend that he was there. He had gone off after the fight by the Stone but hadn’t he died after that, in the plague? Or somewhere else?

  ‘No, no, I didn’t die,’ he said, sensing precisely what she was thinking. ‘If you survived, why shouldn’t I? Perhaps the thought of you kept me alive. You know how much I always admired you, Rebecca.’

  She shuddered at the way he said it, an old weariness coming over her as she realised he was Rune, and he was back in the system he had once nearly destroyed. And she wondered if she had the strength for such things any more.

  ‘Well, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. You always had a will of your own, Rebecca, I remember.’ He laughed again, the sound of it like cold grey clouds blocking out the sunshine.

  ‘A good time for an old mole like me to come back, isn’t it? Well, you know, the start of the mating season… a few fights… you know? Now I think I’ll go and explore the system you must all have so patiently been creating… ’ And he slipped away with cruel humour in his narrow eyes, his body lithe as a youngster’s and cunning as evil.

  Rebecca shook for a while in disbelief, then turned away back towards the slopes, towards the sound of Comfrey coming down through the wood towards her.

  ‘Rebecca-Reb-b-becca,’ he said, beginning to stutter as he saw the tiredness that had suddenly come over her. ‘There was a m-m-mole I met who said he was l-looking for you. I told him you were down here and that I was tr-trying to find you…’

  She nodded.

  ‘I d-d-didn’t like him, Rebecca.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘His name is Rune. There was a time when he would have killed you if he could.’

  ‘I d-don’t like him,’ said Comfrey. But his misery was not for himself, because that never worried him now, but for Rebecca, for whose happiness he cared so much and who had lost the joy that shone from her earlier that day.

  * * *

  It seemed to Bracken that the yellow cowslips that shook and waved in the April wind outside the shallow tunnel in which he had first hidden when he had crawled out from the stone circle had sprouted, leaved, and blossomed overnight.

  He looked at them puzzled and felt the warm air about them, wondering where he was and how long he had been there. So late into spring already? But surely, there was a hoarfrost only yesterday…

  Next time he went to admire them, two of the florets were already withering and brown, and there was an unaccustomed blue in the sky, which echoed to the high rise and fall of a skylark’s song. On and on it went, all day long it seemed, on into another day. So whole days had passed by, whole weeks had stolen away, most of which he forgot because he was not conscious most of the time. He slept; he pulled himself into the adjacent ploughed field whose soil was sparse with flints and chalk subsoil but where he managed to find food. He crawled back to sleep away the pain.

  Kestrels and crows had wheeled and dived, suns and moons had come and gone, until, at last, he was all there, and his body ached and throbbed with hurt.

  There was not one wound but two—one at the top of his shoulder where the joints had been broken and ripped, one out of his chest, where the fur seemed to have been misplaced and there was a scar. He could move his right paw, thank the Stone, but two of his talons in it were stiff and would no longer respond as well as those in his left did.

  Then he noticed that another three florets of the cowslips had died, and he knew that spring was passing. What dreams he had had, what nightmares! All so pointless and comic. He saw himself as he had been, different moles at different times, nervous or brave, serious or sad, indifferent or loving. Sometimes one, sometimes another. The mole that left Duncton wasn’t the one that arrived in Uffington; and the one that had left Uffington again wasn’t the same as the one who went up Cwmoer. Each one searching for something Bracken could only smile about now as he looked at the grey earth of his tunnel, thinking there was nothing more real than that.

  One dawn he went back up to the stone circle, just to see if it was as he remembered it. It wasn’t. The stones were smaller and they did not vibrate or become suffused with light. It grew dark in the time he crouched there so he must have been there a long time, since he had come at dawn. Strange… where had time gone?

  Then a day came when he woke up and ran his talons through the soil and saw what magnificent things his paws were, and how wonderful they felt. One sweep and the soil crumbled and broke up before his snout; another, and he thrust it behind him. His body ached and yet he had never in his life felt its power so strongly! He played like this for hours before he knew he was playing, and then he stopped and that was the first moment since he had been caught by the Talon that he had thought of Rebecca.

  He said her name aloud—‘Rebecca’—and nothing happened. ‘Rebecca!’ No reaction at all. That was strange as well. But then later he thought that if a mole said ‘sunshine’ or ‘earth’ or ‘food’, he didn’t normally react in any special way. Those things just were. So was Rebecca. ‘She was. She is. And I am,’ he thought.

  He had never been so peaceful in his life.

  A few days later he remembered Medlar’s advice: ‘Return to Duncton,’ he had said, ‘because that’s your home.’ He wondered if he would be able to find it, and so, when it got dark, he took to the surface and climbed uphill to where it was highest and snouted about to the east. Yes, it was there, he could still feel the pull of its great Stone up on top of the hill where the beeches were. Full of sharp buds by now, he told himself.

  He could feel something else, too, as he snouted eastwards. Something troublesome and tedious: a job that had to be done. But after that he would play like a pup in love with life because finally what other way was there to be? Rebecca? He felt her to be alive, he felt that the trouble he sensed affected her, but he shook his head and sighed. How could she be alive? But the peace her love had brought him, oh! it was all about him wherever he went. Except for something troublesome and tedious…

  Without another thought, he set off for it, not even looking back to the tunnel that had been his home since that terrible day in February or wondering about the cowslip that grew by it and that had given him so much pleasure: another mole would enjoy it one day.

  Strange to be going home after so long. He should have felt old with all the scars and aches he had, but he had never felt more like a pup in his life. Nor had he ever felt so excited at being alive.

  * * *

  ‘He’s changed, you know, so much nicer than what I remember… ’ So said one of the few moles who remembered Rune from the old days.

  He had settled himself down well out of anymole’s way, careful not to trespass on anymole’s territory, not throwing his weight around at all—‘and he used to be pretty important, really he did, but now there’s no side to him at all. He’s a really good addition to the system…’

  So, subtly, did Rune re-establish himself in Duncton. He was never abject in his approach—simply quiet, and always smiling and willing to pass the time of day if a mole wanted to talk to him.

  Which they did, since he was full of knowledge and always pleased to give advice—very helpful advice—and was quite unstinting in the trouble he took. ‘Mind you, he’s not one to take liberties with—you’ve got to respect a mole like him, you know. Oh, yes, he’s the sort of mole to have on your side in a fight!’

  Which was a relevant thing to say since, all of a sudden, there was a lot more fighting in the system than there had been for a long time, and not just mating fights, either. Mole seemed to be set against mole; troubles appeared where no troubles had been; there was grumbling and chatter behind other moles’ backs.

  Mind you, Rune was always there to give advice: in fact, he seemed to be advising all sides at once, trying to be placatory and stop trouble, only somehow, wherever he had been, more trouble seemed to come along.

  Rebecca knew what the trouble was. It was the power of evil. Rune was not evil himself
but he was the catalyst for it, whose every action seemed to generate trouble and suspicion and led finally to a death of spirit, and sometimes a death of body.

  For a long time he left her alone. But then the day came at the end of April when he called by and she knew what he wanted because she had seen him like that before—with a kind of cold lust in his eyes and a terrible desire about his body that made her want to shiver and groan herself clean of it.

  He began to cause trouble for her, though it didn’t seem as if it was him. But somehow other moles seemed to start saying that she was no longer pulling her weight and what was the use of a healer who didn’t heal and hadn’t somemole or another told Rune that it just wasn’t fair being fobbed off with that half-mad Comfrey all the time? Though Rune himself stressed how unfair that was. But then, Rune was too fair for his own good sometimes and not all moles were as thoughtful as he was…

  Now Rune began to visit Rebecca frequently, with that cold glitter in his eyes and sensual insinuations.

  He made her so weary, so tired, that she wondered sometimes if perhaps the best way to combat evil was to face it with love. Was that it? Or was that obscene? She tried asking the Stone, but somehow it didn’t help her, or she couldn’t hear it, and she did feel weary because tomorrow he would come again, and the next day, and the next.

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Comfrey turned away miserably from Rebecca’s tunnels. Rune was there, talking. Always talking he was, and getting near Rebecca, which Comfrey didn’t like.

  But Rebecca seemed tired and when Comfrey asked if she wanted anything, she had looked so sad and lost that he could have killed Rune, if he had known how. But he wasn’t a fighter. He didn’t want Rune to mate with Rebecca, not him. But Rebecca sort of shook her head and looked down at the burrow floor, and Rune looked triumphant and Comfrey knew he would have to fight or go; so he went, because only a potential mate fights.