Duncton Stone

by William Horwood

  That began towards the end of May.

  She had slept, and dreamed a dream of Whillan as he once was in Duncton Wood, running from her up into life... up into the moors, where he never was.

  “Not there, my love, never there...”

  But when she reached him it was Wildenhope they had come to and he was laughing, but with terrified eyes, for Chervil had hit him and he wanted to tell her he was not hurt, he...

  But she saw his blood and pain and saw the river, and how it took him powerless in its rushing grip: “Whillan!”

  When she woke she knew he was lost to her for ever and it was then she began to die, which is to say began to give up hope.

  How strange the things a mole says and does when she begins to feel forsaken.

  “He is not dead, not him, not my Whillan, no no, no...” she sang, her voice cracked and crooning among the shadows, “he cannot be.”

  “Chervil killed him,” her own voice replied.

  “Chervil is no son of mine; Whillan is, and that pup I knew is not dead, no, oh no...”

  No, of course he could not be. He was waiting for her in Duncton Wood, up there among the great trees, where on a summer’s day the sun came filtering down and lit the dappled path that lay ahead. The same sun which shone that day on the structures far above, and the elevated way along which, day and night, the roaring owls ran eternally unseen, but for their starting, slipping, shooting yellow gazes in the night, and reflection of red lights, receding.

  Down in the shadows, unlit by the sun, Privet, too ill and desolate now to recover without help, floundering towards death, sang of lost Whillan’s life and began to let him go.

  “You didn’t, Chervil. Not him. He was your brother in a way, he was your kin at least. You didn’t do what I saw you do on Wildenhope Bluff.”

  So Privet turned a corner in her new world and began to face death itself, knowing that in facing the death of Whillan she faced something of her own.

  “Stone, guide me,” and now her prayer was uttered in the voice of one in mortal pain who saw that it was not only Whillan who had died, not only part of herself as well, but all the moles she ever loved and knew, all dying from her, all gone, and all leaving her. And if she was to know Silence, she knew she must finally let them die.

  Shire.

  Stour.

  Rooster.

  Fieldfare.

  Chater.

  Pumpkin, even him.

  One, by one, by one they were leaving... No!

  “I am leaving them,” she whispered, “I, the Privet they knew and perhaps thought they loved, I... am... leaving... them.”

  Why did she find comfort in saying that? She did not know. Why did she sleep deeply then, and wake to see the night-time gazes of the roaring owls and think to herself, amazed, there was a kind of beauty in them?

  “I am leaving them...” and she saw, beyond the two-foot things, the bright stars at deep of night, and the sky in which they were set; not quite black, not quite dark blue, but so beautiful.

  “Has it always been there, Stone?” she wondered aloud, breaking the Silence she rarely broke and never with other moles.

  “Was it always there?”

  When she woke again it was day, and though still ill and in pain from sores that seemed to emanate from her very heart, she was not so ailing that she could not see the beauty in the untidy ragwort, its rich yellow reaching for the summer sky, which clung to the walls of the ruined place where she lay.

  She was still alive, that could be said, and there was a beauty in the flowers above her, as great as in the night sky she had seen. She looked at her paws. Grubby, thin and torn; but hers.

  Privet wept for something different than before, something simpler; something which had always been and of which, weak though she was, and lowly, she was still a part.

  “Stone,” she prayed, “you know which way I must turn; lead me there now. Lead me on.”

  So simple a prayer as that had taken all her life to journey to, and she lay her head along her front paws and thought of all those moles she had left behind. Would they be waiting for her already along the way – was that the mystery of community? Or would she one day pause, as now, and wait for them? Was that a choice she had?

  “Stone,” she said. “Stone,” she whispered.

  “I will lead you on, mole, for I am here.”

  And though aware that the voice was hers she knew it as another’s too, the voice of all she had left, and all she would find, before and here and all ahead of her, and she felt the mystery of the Stone, and was touched for a moment by its healing joy.

  “Whillan...”

  “Gone.”

  “But I loved him so much..

  “Gone.”

  “Rooster...”

  “Gone, now, mole.”

  “Yes, he has gone. And Fieldfare...”

  “Gone.”

  “Chater.”

  “Gone.”

  “I felt him die; I held him as he died.”

  “Gone.”

  As the leaves of a tree blow and scatter away before the autumn winds of change, Privet let go so much she needed no more. Gone, all of it gone, and she feeling light and frail where she lay.

  “The wind might take me up as well, and to where would it carry me? Where leave me be?”

  “The Stone has taken you up, mole, and here you are, now.”

  “Now...” repeated Privet, with a sigh, for it was time to find the energy to move on once more. But she did not need to pray, for now she felt the Stone guiding her paws, and they were light, and the going easy, and she did not need to wonder where she went for she would get there whether she wondered or not. So she left, with a last glance at the yellow ragwort against the sky, knowing that when night came again, there would be the stars.

  But there did come a night when there were no stars, for she was lost for days after that in rank, dark tunnels made by two-foots; and she found places where flowers grew pale and deformed, and the only sign of the birds she could no longer hear were their grey and rotting defecations amidst whose foul piles and pools she had to find a way.

  “But there are stars at night above, and there are the yellow flowers of ragwort,” she could whisper now, for she had passed beyond the vale of tears to somewhere where hope had been reborn and present trials could be accepted for exactly what they were: reality. Now this moment, without the need to cling to hope, or strive for changes. Now!

  Noise. Places of dripping water. Sudden lights. Hiding from the fetid rats, and the black-pawed dog, and Stone knows what fat greasy thing that moved nearby in the dark. Then risking the stagnant orange water whose liquids clung to her fur and made her know she would die if she could not wash them off in a clean brook such as once...

  Rain did it instead. Sudden, thunderous from the square of grey-black sky high above, pounding, flooding all about her and she out in it to clean herself.

  “Thank you, Stone,” she said ironically, grateful for small mercies.

  She journeyed on, and on, each day, each hour melting into the struggle and vileness that was the previous one, and that into the one before, until the day of the rain seemed long ago; it had happened to another mole, and would not happen to this one ever again.

  A running brook; first the scent, then the sound, then the clambering over broken confused two-foot things and then... grass, reeds, and above her, swaying, the delicate yellow petals not of ragwort, but of yellow flag. Real water in a real brook and the scent it carried of real life, and somewhere far away, the countryside.

  She bathed, and for days she gloried in the place, especially when the sun shone, a little natural world hemmed in by structures and the noise and lights of roaring owls. Then, recovered a little, the sores healing, the throat less tight, she journeyed upstream, hopeful.

  A huge, arcing portal whence the stream issued, and suddenly no way through, none at all. No strength. All suddenly gone. Back, back to depression, back the way she came, back to the s
ores, to the drifting, back towards the place she thought she had escaped from: back along the way she had come with such difficulty. Back to the beginning again, and she dying now.

  “The final test, Stone? One I shall fail? Are you disappointed in your Privet now? Stone? Stone!”

  The Stone loomed over her, out of the darkness of her fevers and distress. The Stone moved. The Stone was living after all.

  “Mole? Mole!”

  It was mole, come to help her alter so long.

  “Mole?” she wanted to whisper, but must not from out of her great Silence. She reached a paw and touched the mole.

  “Try to follow me. It’s not far. Not too far. Try to follow...”

  Privet had followed into a void of tiredness, letting go her frail strength, letting go any strength she ever had.

  When she woke from that last stumbling part of her great journey through the Midland Wen, Privet found herself in the Community of Rose. Its moles talked to her, fed her, tended her with touch and healing herbs; but most of all they let her be; they simply let her be. There was no yesterday nor any tomorrow where she was, only now and today. A today which had a night with stars, and a day with nodding flowers, and a night again, and another slow day, an eternal now in which she found her health and mind again. A time of respite, not escape, from the journey she was on.

  Sister Caldey, the community’s leader, put her to help with an elderly male called Meddick, who understood her silence. To Privet, Caldey felt like a mother, and Meddick seemed a little like a father who had helped her in the past, but who now needed her care. Privet knew that in one way these were only imaginings, but that in another they were much more. As pups, everymole takes what they can, or as much as they are given; as a parent a mole should give freely, expecting no return. But as a mature adult, a mole is free to receive and to give, and as such is the medium through which the Light and Silence of the Stone may flow, from one to another, a never-ending cycle of life, belonging and apart, individual and apart... giving and receiving, the true sacraments of life.

  So now, in this time of respite and renewal, Privet understood that she needed Sister Caldey for a time, just as

  Brother Meddick needed her.

  “He is ailing now, Sister,” said Caldey quietly, “he is approaching Silence.”

  Privet nodded, her paw on Meddick’s flank as it trembled and fluttered with his breathing; his throat rasped sometimes, and his eyes opened a little while he slept.

  “Midsummer is almost on us, Sister,” continued Caldey, “but I did not think he would reach it.”

  “No,” Privet’s look seemed to say, “Midsummer is the time to celebrate the new, and Meddick whispered to me days ago he did not want to stay until then. And anyway, your Community has no young to give meaning to the speaking of the Midsummer rituals.”

  “I would like, just once, to have heard you talk, Privet of Duncton Wood. I believe that apart from Meddick here, none in the Community has guessed who you are.”

  Privet sighed. She did not know herself any more, or much care! It was a burden being who she was – the retreat into Silence was far harder than she had expected, though she had guessed it would be difficult. It was the hardest way she had ever been on. Oh, she was glad the Stone had guided her to Sister Caldey and Brother Meddick. With them she could express her fears and doubts, not by speaking but by being.

  “You will soon need to journey on, Sister,” said Caldey. “I feel it coming.”

  Both knew when it would be, and so perhaps did Meddick, for he stirred, and woke, and coughed in a frail and wheezing way.

  “Let her stay,” he muttered, pushing a paw fretfully towards Privet. “Not long, thank the blessed Stone. Know that now. You will go then, eh, my dears? Both of you.”

  Privet moved a little to one side as Caldey reached out her paws and held her old friend close.

  “You’re weeping, Caldey. Unlike you!”

  “It’s not,” said Caldey, almost aggrieved, “and I do. You can’t know everything about a mole.”

  “Where did you find her, eh?” whispered Meddick, perhaps thinking Privet could not hear, or wasn’t there.

  “Where you found me, I think,” said Caldey. “Nomole brought her here. She came across the Midland Wen all by herself, except for the Stone that is.”

  Privet heard this, and wondered at it. A mole had brought her here, of that she was sure.

  “Rose!” muttered Meddick matter-of-factly, eyes closing.

  “Rose?” whispered Privet to herself. Such strange things happened in the world of Silence, but they were real, more real than anything she knew. Rose had been her guide in the last part of her journey.

  Two nights later Meddick died, with Caldey and Privet holding his paws and other members of the Community nearby – all of whom had come close in the hours before and touched him, and whispered their names, for he was of them, and their own. Three deep breaths, a pause, and a frail sigh, and Brother Meddick left his old worn body and journeyed on. All in their gentle way seemed to accept it as entirely appropriate that the two with Meddick when he died were Caldey, with whom their Community had started, and the new sister, with whom they were beginning to sense it might end in its present form. It was as if there was a consensus that change was now of the essence, and they must all accept new challenges ahead.

  Two days later it was Midsummer and members who had been out and about visiting other communities all came back for the occasion, and brought with them much news. The story of Wildenhope first brought to them by Hibbott on his way through was now confirmed, and some of the brothers and sisters surely guessed who Privet really was. Certainly she herself felt they did, though nothing was said, and most treated her as they had before. A few did not, but their curious glances or outright questions she found did not much worry her: or, if they did, it was only briefly, for that world of Silence, so wild and desolate in places, once so full of tears, now provided her with certain vales of peace, and glades of sunlight into which she could retreat, to be still, to pray, to work at the Silence, and glory that it was available to mole.

  “She’s so peaceful, that one! So graced by the Stone!”

  “She’s gifted with a wisdom altogether different from Sister Caldey’s, but quite evident all the same. I’m sure she is.”

  “She’s...”

  “Privet.”

  Privet heard their whispers, and supposed it might be true. If only they knew the turmoil she still often felt, and how the dark voids suddenly seemed to suck her in. Silence was not, could never be, vales of peace and glades of sunlight all the time. Their comments, entirely well meant, made her feel alone, the more so now that Brother Meddick had gone and she realized how deep and gentle his unspoken guidance had been.

  “I must leave them soon, just as he said, just as Sister Caldey said. After today, after Midsummer... Oh Stone, grant me this last day of rest.”

  And restful it was in some ways, that Midsummer Day. The Community of Rose all complete for once – and for one last time. Until dusk came and Sister Caldey addressed them, saying, “On the morrow some of you will leave us, and in the days that follow more will go. Until, at last, all of us will be gone, for as our Community here had its beginning, so now it has its ending. Brothers, Sisters, be of good heart, be of good cheer for the glories to come, even if we shall grieve at our parting, as we grieve already for beloved Brother Meddick.”

  Here she was responding to the tears and sighs of many of the Community, who, as was their way, cried openly, or held each other for comfort.

  “Those who have recently returned tell us that great changes are apaw in moledom. I believe we must be part of them, and give our help where we can. You know a little now of the Order of Caradoc, and the Newborn moles led formerly by Thripp of Blagrove Slide, but latterly by Brother Quail. Against him great resistance has begun, and there is a mole called Maple of Duncton Wood...”

  Here she paused involuntarily, and glanced at Privet, as well she migh
t. Though Privet’s face was impassive, how her heart had leapt at mention of Maple’s name! The Stone had guided him, he was doing what he had long been destined for, but... “Wisely Stone, I pray it is wisely!” she whispered to herself “... who is leading the resistance against the Newborns. It is not our task as healers to side with any faction or sect. The healing arts we have learnt together here are for allmole, without fear or favour. Therefore we shall go out as I have said, and the Stone will guide each of us to whatever task or tasks is best. I fear there will be fighting, and suffering; I fear we shall be greatly needed. I pray the day will come when peace returns.”

  “When it does, Sister Caldey, can we not form our Community here again?” called out one of the brothers.

  Speaking slowly now, Caldey said, “I have thought of this, and prayed about it, asking for Rose the Healer’s guidance on the matter. I believe we will form a community of moles again... but time must pass, and we must learn new things separately to bring back to teach each other. Perhaps we have become inward-looking... perhaps. Therefore let those of us who are still alive next spring, almost a full cycle of seasons away, make our way to the Redditch Stone, where Brother Meddick and I first met, and form whatever community then seems appropriate. Meanwhile... oh, do not weep, my good friends... or, at least, not for too long! This evening the sun sets on Midsummer, and we celebrate what is new. And we are new, all of us. We shall go forth, all of us. To serve, to heal, to love our brothers and sisters across moledom, as they may need us...”

  The following dawn Privet and Caldey embraced, and Caldey wept.

  “Sister, dear Sister, I wish I could have talked with you with words, though in spirit we have been, and will remain, closer than words could make us. I wish you well, my dear. Your task is a heavy one, and more than I guessed until I talked with the Brothers and Sisters fresh-returned from communities nearby. There is talk that you are taking the Book of Silence itself to Duncton Wood. Rumour no doubt, wishful thinking at a time of strife. After all, I see no Book. But Sister... I feel it may be true that you are seeking it, and will find it!