Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  ‘Rebecca,’ he whispered after them. And he trembled, because he knew he would never see her again.

  ‘I’ll go to the Stone,’ he told himself, ‘that’s the best thing. I’ll go there now.’ But he did not set off at once; instead he hesitated, going back down into his tunnels first and tidying up a bit, and sniffing a herb or two. Then, when at last he felt he was ready, he went.

  * * *

  Bracken and Rebecca climbed on steadily up to where the hill levelled off among the beech trees, the leaf litter between the trees rustling with the strengthening storm wind all about them. As the sky began to darken, brambles that had glowed with the early morning sun now rasped against each other restlessly. They turned towards the Stone clearing without pause, then across it to the great beech whose roots encircled the Stone, among which Bracken had spent his first night near the Stone with Hulver.

  Branches had fallen from the tree since then, and some had rotted. Among the gnarled convolutions of the roots he found a pool of rainwater and drank from it. Rebecca looked into it, but didn’t drink.

  The wild sky seemed suddenly to be below them, in the reflection on the water’s surface, with a rising of interlacing dark branches and the twists and turns of the ancient tree trunk.

  Bracken looked about them, thinking that apart from Rebecca’s words of love there was never, ever any sound he loved more than the sound of the wind in beech leaves. Well, it was too early in the spring for beech leaves, but Rebecca was there near him.

  She watched him turn away from the tree roots, his old fur now the colour of the lighter parts of their bark, and she followed him back out of the clearing without looking at the Stone. A single rush of wind caught the trees over near the wood’s edge and then ran high through the trees and into the branches of the tree by the Stone as they found an entrance to their tunnels and went down it.

  But neither paused or hesitated. They turned back towards the ancient tunnels as one, taking the route Bracken himself had burrowed long before and that led, finally, to the circular chamber around the Chamber of Echoes. They were old now, but moved with the grace of tall grass before a full wind and with the simple purpose of two mallards rising over a desolate marsh.

  From beyond the Chamber of Echoes they could hear the massive sounds of the beech roots, sliding and trembling with the tensions of the mounting wind over the wood, but they turned without thought towards it, in among the confusing tunnels that were no longer confusing but simple as trust itself. No need to remember a way from the past or a way for the future; they could see a glimmer of light ahead of them, growing brighter as they went towards it, showing them the way forward.

  Then, when they were beyond the Echoes and into the Chamber of Roots themselves, it seemed to them both that the terrible sound of the roots began to die away before them and another sound grew in power and strength—the sound of the Stone’s silence to where the light was leading them.

  They ran on towards it, not even noticing the huge roots above them that pulled and plunged and yet seemed to make way for them.

  On through them they travelled, the light ever brighter, their fur growing whiter with it, until they were past the roots and into the tunnels that led through the roots of the beech near the Stone, around whose hollow centre they pattered, their paws almost dancing, as they got nearer and nearer the glimmering of white light that came from the seventh Stillstone.

  Then it was there and they were back, under the buried part of the Stone which rose above them and tilted down ahead of them as they ran on towards its centre to the glimmering whiteness of the Stillstone itself.

  * * *

  Sighing and roaring amongst the dry grass of Uffington, pulling at tunnel entrances, winding down in scurries into the burrows themselves, a wind prefaced a storm. Such a long winter, such a long time, such a long wait since Boswell had left them; so many prayers said, so many whispered hopes.

  Below the hill the wind twisted and blew around the Blowing Stone, which began to moan softly with it as the grass at its base swayed back and forth in the lengthening darkness. A light kind of darkness, the kind a mole finds on some stormy nights in March when the days are beginning to lengthen. The wind grew grimmer and stronger, battering now against the Stone, pushing at it, taking it and shaking at it until the moans ceased, the humming stopped and the Blowing Stone at last let out a great long vibrant note as the wind finally conquered it.

  Every scribemole heard it and all stopped to listen. Waiting.

  Then a second note came, more powerful than the first, and then a third, clear and strong, vibrating down into the Holy Burrows themselves and shaking chalk dust off some of the walls.

  As the third note came, Medlar began moving up through the tunnels towards the surface, while from all over Uffington moles were moving, trying not to run but starting to all the same, moving up to the surface as the fourth note of the Stone sounded. While the chosen moles who were still alive, those who had sung the secret song before, wondered if theirs was to be the honour, theirs now the moment, as the fifth great note came from the Stone, and moles snouted out in awe on to the grassy surface of Uffington Hill, facing the northeast where the Stone stood, listening through the wind that tore at their fur and the grass around them.

  A sixth note came, stronger than any had ever heard, and in Medlar’s eyes a look of certainty began to form, a look of joy. He began to say a blessing on his moles, on all moles, his words rising into the wind. As he did so, there came at last a seventh great note from the Stone. As its sound carried about them the winds suddenly died and the grass fell still. Then quietly, here and there, each one of the chosen moles there began to sing the sacred song, its sound faint and disjointed at first, a scatter of song across an ancient hill. Until its rhythm and melody began to become established as other moles began to whisper the words and then to start singing them—young and old, novices and scribes—until they were all singing the ancient song of celebration and exaltation which told that the seventh Book was coming to Uffington and that the seventh Stillstone had been found.

  * * *

  Boswell finally and slowly turned in his burrow and looked across it to Tryfan. The angry wind of a storm on the surface sounded about them.

  ‘Go to the Stone now,’ he said.

  Tryfan did not want to leave Boswell, who had been weak and restless all day, refusing to eat his food and saying hardly a word. Tryfan had watched over him troubled, knowing that something was changing and that what they had waited for for so long was here; troubled by not knowing what it was.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked Boswell. ‘What are you going to do?’

  Boswell went over to him. ‘Have trust in the Stone, which will tell you what to do,’ he said. ‘I must go to the centre of the Ancient System where the Stillstone lies and to where Bracken and Rebecca have at last found the silence to return. Pray that the Stone will give me strength, pray that it will send the help I need. Trust the Stone.’

  Tryfan watched Boswell turning down towards the Ancient System to where the Chamber of Echoes was, and then turned himself up on to the surface, unhappy to let Boswell out of his sight. He looked so frail as he entered those great tunnels by himself, as if the wind that was growing in strength by the minute would blow him away.

  Above Tryfan the beeches were now swaying massively in the wind, and the surface of the Ancient System reverberated to the creakings and knocking of their branches against each other.

  The noise was even louder by the Stone, and the wind so wild that it was some time before he saw that Comfrey was crouched before it. He was weeping.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Tryfan. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘I d-don’t know,’ said Comfrey. ‘I’m sure I saw Bracken and Rebecca going to the Stone just like Rose the Healer went to the Stone when I was a pup.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Tryfan.

  ‘I d-don’t know,’ said Comfrey. ‘I’m not sure.’

  Tryfan s
tared up at the Stone, the only still thing on a wild and stormy night. He was in awe of it, and afraid now for Bracken, for Rebecca and for Boswell.

  He repeated Boswell’s words to him over and over again—‘Trust the Stone, trust it’—and then he began to pray, his words lost in the wind as Comfrey sat waiting beside him and the trees began to sway back and forth and against each other and there were sounds of falling branches and a whining and howling as the wind was whipped and cut by the leafless branches in the terrible darkness about them.

  The tree by the Stone pulled and stressed above them, even its massive trunk beginning to move before the power of the wind, so that the ground beneath them began to shake and shudder with the stress of the roots pulling through it.

  In among the roots of the beech by the Stone, the surface of the pool of trapped rainwater where Bracken had taken a drink earlier that day began to shake with the straining of the tree in the mounting storm.

  * * *

  Boswell approached the Chamber of Echoes slowly, feeling the power of the storm above shaking the tunnel walls all around him. The sounds from the Chamber of Roots were so massive that they drowned out the patter of his paws on the tunnel’s floor but he went calmly, now at peace with himself.

  When he stood on the threshold of the Chamber of Roots, which was in violent and dangerous motion everywhere, with crashing of chalk subsoil from the roof above and tearing and crunching across the floor as root fissures heaved and widened before him in clouds of dust and soil, he felt nothing but peace.

  The light of the Stillstone led him through the roots safely and beyond to the buried part of the Stone itself.

  Down into the depths beneath the Stone he went, the roots of the tree now pulling and straining about him, some twisting under windstress off the tunnel floor and then whipping or crashing down again, while others, enwrapped about the Stone, were pulling at it, pushing it under and around so that the very Stone itself was beginning to shake and move, the tilted end now rising higher above Boswell and then sinking ominously down towards him.

  Deep under its lowest part crouched Bracken and Rebecca, the light of the Stillstone filling their fur with brightness and turning everything it touched into white.

  As he went forward to this most sacred of places, Boswell sought to see what he had looked for for so long: the seventh Book. The Stillstone was there, but where was the Book, where was it hidden? His eyes cast about into the shadows caused by the Stillstone among the shifting roots and into the recesses of the burrow in which Bracken and Rebecca crouched together.

  Rebecca turned to him and looked as if she expected to see him there with them both, as if she could read his thoughts. There was no need for words, even if words could have been heard in the increasing sounds of rootstress and strain as the very world they were in seemed to be swaying and pulling and collapsing, and they were the only still things in it.

  She looked at him as he at her and knew he was wondering where the Book was. ‘Don’t you know?’ she seemed to be saying without saying a word. ‘Oh, Boswell, don’t you know?’

  Bracken turned to him, a look of unutterable joy about him as the Stillstone glimmered and shone brighter about them and cast its light on to Boswell’s fur. ‘The Book’s here, you have it, you have it,’ Bracken was thinking, and Boswell had no need to hear the words; he knew them. You have it, it is yours already.

  The light from the Stillstone shone fully now on Boswell, whose fur seemed as white before it as that of Bracken and Rebecca.

  The Stone above them began to move more and more, pulled and pushed by the roots of the tree that, high above where Comfrey and Tryfan waited and prayed in the storm, was caught more and more strongly by the wind, and its aged roots began a battle through the night against the storm’s might.

  Now the Stone moved on the surface. A gap between its base and the surrounding soil appeared that widened and narrowed to the swaying of the tree above it. The ground began to tremble and Comfrey began to pray aloud.

  Among the roots beneath the great Stone in the silence created by love, Bracken turned to the Stillstone and took it up. Its brightness did not fade nor did its glimmering cease as it had when he had touched it once before. Now its light travelled into his paw and from there to his body and over his fur and into his eyes, and where his other paw touched Rebecca’s its light travelled on until both seemed aflame with the Stillstone’s light and there were no words, they were beyond words as Bracken joyfully passed the Stillstone to Boswell of Uffington.

  As Boswell took the Stillstone he saw that its light stayed on with Bracken and Rebecca, for it was in them now and shining from them as their love had done, growing stronger and stronger every moment. Above them, the Duncton Stone’s tilted base began to rise and fall, and fall further, and rise and fall further again, and Boswell could only see them vaguely now, in the light of their love where they seemed to be dancing before him, laughing and dancing and singing ‘You have the Book, you have the Book’ as the Stone was pulled at by the tree roots out on the surface, tilting first towards Uffington and then away from it up towards the storm-filled sky, back and forth as the beech tree began to lose its battle with the wind, its roots growing weaker and weaker as the Stone swayed and pulled itself more and more upright, more towards the sky.

  But underground Boswell could only see the white light of the Stillstone and feel the joy of holding it as he watched, or felt, the dance in its light of Bracken and Rebecca. Oh, he wanted to join them, to dance with them, to cast off the weight of his old body as they were doing and dance where his crippled paw would not slow him, nor his age, nor the cold, nor the wind that was straightening the Stone and making its base fall blissfully upon them.

  Did he want any more to find the seventh Book? Did it matter, when the dance in the light was such joy? As he started forward towards them he saw, from the brightness of where Bracken and Rebecca had been crouched together so peacefully, Rebecca’s smile coming towards him and love and trust for him in her eyes. He heard her voice with Bracken’s as they said, or called, or sang, ‘Not yet, not yet, go back, beloved, for yours is the task of the seventh Stillstone. We give you the Book, Boswell beloved, beloved mole who has loved us, we give you the Book that you may inscribe it, the great Book of Silence, the lost and the last Book, for you who have lived it are its author-protector scribe and creator and the Stillstone will give you the strength for the scribing, beloved Boswell, White Mole of Uffington.’

  Boswell reached a paw forward to touch his Rebecca, to feel the fur of Bracken, for he wanted to join them and not take this burden, for who was he before their light or before the Stone? ‘Help me,’ he called out. ‘Help me!’

  And the light from the Stillstone travelled into his paw and from there to his body and over his fur until it shone from his eyes so that he had the courage to turn away from their light into the sound of the wind and the cold, and feel again the weight of his frail body. But he knew that their love was within him and that he would scribe the great Book of Silence. The lost and the last Book.

  Above him the great mass of the Stone’s base began finally to sink down upon him and behind him upon Bracken and Rebecca, roots breaking about him as it crashed down through them, but holding the Stillstone he ran from under the Stone’s base as his old limbs raced to escape the cracking roots and shattering soil; he heard the thump of the Stone behind him and he began to turn back up the tunnel to the hollow of the tree, which swayed and shook before him as he picked his way around its edge, limping and hobbling with great difficulty because of the Stillstone, trying to get away as the tree began to pull out its roots from beneath the Stone and started to sway and to crash and to fall.

  As the tree began its final descent he called out, ‘Tryfan, Tryfan, help me. Now you can help me. Tryfan, yours is the power.’

  * * *

  Mole upon mole had come to the circular chamber around the Chamber of Echoes, from which the fiercest sounds came, drawn by a sense that a g
reat moment of change was taking place in the system, fearful of the sounds and awed by the majesty.

  They chattered and stamped their paws with fear, for somemole had said he had seen Bracken and Rebecca go into the Chamber and that Boswell was there as well and all moles could sense that danger and great joy were there together.

  ‘Should we go in, should we help, can we do anything?’ they whispered and muttered to each other, looking fearfully at the entrances to the Chamber, not one there with the courage to enter in. Some braver moles wandered from entrance to entrance, passing by all seven of them, still unable to find the strength they needed to risk going in. Most just stared.

  But all of them agreed afterwards on one strange and mysterious fact. As they watched and trembled they seemed to hear the singing of a sacred song whose words they knew but which they had, until then, forgotten. And all began to sing it, a song of hope and exaltation that spoke of the coming of a White Mole.

  Then suddenly, as their song gained strength, Tryfan entered the circular tunnel, the only completely calm and silent one among them. He stared for a moment at one of the entrances into the Chamber of Echoes by which so many of the moles had been crouched hesitating. He was strong and purposeful and, moving without pause or apparent hesitation, he boldly entered into the echoing tunnel from whose darkness the sounds of stressing destruction were coming. He did it so naturally that, seeing him, a mole might have thought he had been that way before…

  The strange thing is that afterwards each mole in the circular tunnel swore, and would have sworn by the Stone, that it was the entrance that they were standing nearby which Tryfan entered—which is impossible, for how could Tryfan or anymole enter all seven entrances at once?

  As he disappeared from sight the song fell away from them and they waited in terrible fear as the root-pulling and stressing reached a climax of destructive sound. Yet although many of them wanted to run away to a place of safety not one moved, for they sensed they were witnessing a moment of profound change, a moment of wonder.