So it was that Tryfan soon turned north and away from the east, to take a route that lay on the periphery of the Wen itself and give them an opportunity to study its nature, and understand its sounds and traps.
More than that, it was a chance for the four to learn to travel as one, for Tryfan had no doubt that in the moleyears ahead times would come when they would need to know each other’s thoughts without speaking, if they were to survive.
So as June passed into July, and July into August, they had travelled here and there, using concrete tunnels such as the Wen is riddled with, finding new sources of food in places they never knew existed, and teaching each other what they could.
Tryfan taught them much of Duncton’s history, and the legends of old mole, beguiling the rest times with his stories and memories of what he had been told. From Mayweed came knowledge of route-finding which, Tryfan was quite sure, would in time help each of them. From Spindle came a curiosity to know what the world about a mole could teach him or her, for there was much of mystery where the Wen was concerned. Perhaps nomoles ever were so close to twofoots for so long, unseen of course, for the twofoots are blind at ground level and rarely see a mole; unscented too, for the twofoots have no snouts though they odour well enough. But dangerous, yes, for they are clumsy and crush whatever may be in their way.
Of that other mystery to mole, roaring owls, they found things out as well. Very dangerous to mole when not asleep, yet when asleep the only creature known to moles that makes no noise at all. Silent as death. Then roar! Bang! Hoot! Howl! – and roaring owl wakes. No stretching, no thinking on the day to come as sensible mole must do, but roar and off! Oh yes, dangerous to mole. But for all their clumsiness twofoots seem to understand the roaring owls and live with them amicably enough, though whether one fed on the other from time to time Spindle was never sure.
The fourth of their party, Starling, reminded rather than taught them. She reminded them of life and growth, and her good spirits and young laughter brought a smile to each of them at times; and her absolute confidence that all would be well was a strength that kept each going.
Yet, by October, when the weather was worsening and a mole thinks of planning to deepen his tunnels and make his winter quarters, a new excitement had settled on Tryfan’s group. They had seen, they had learnt, and now they were eager to get on. Most significantly, and mainly with Mayweed’s guidance and Spindle’s deductions, they had made sense of the new tunnels they had found. Some, like those smaller ones that ran beneath the roaring owl way near Duncton Wood were for drainage of rain, and though they scared a mole at first, once the run of them was understood, and the weather known, a mole was safe enough in them. Others were for drainage too, but were much bigger, deeper, and awash. Here a mole might have to swim, and here too a mole had best be careful, for other creatures use them, especially voles and rats.
A third group of tunnels were deeper still, and evil of nature, for they carried filth and effluent, and the spoor of twofoots, and disease.
Each one of them, in the initial period of their journey had been struck down by illness if not quite disease. Runny snouts, painful eyes, bowels uncontrolled, no appetite, and dizziness. Spindle and Starling had been most hard hit by this. Tryfan had been ill for a time, but not badly, while Mayweed, though he never suffered the fever and runs the others did, cut himself in dirty water and the cut had festered. Starling cleared it by biting and cleaning, brutal, but it worked. After that the moles were careful of wounds, and very careful in the filthels, as they called them.
These tunnels, the filthels, which were bigger than any they had ever seen, were difficult to navigate at first because their sounding qualities were so different from the earth and chalk tunnels they were used to. They echoed, they were filled with strange noises of falling water, metal on stone, distant roaring owl hoots and even what they took to be twofoot shouts. The air currents were confusing too, and often, in the bigger ones, were much stronger than any they had ever known, driving them backwards and tugging their fur almost off their backs and making them shout to be heard. The light was different, and cold, for such places were always wet and much of the light was reflected. Its sources were high above a mole’s head, from apertures that went up into day, or from other tunnels at the side.
Most strangely, at night the light did not go away but changed, being often brighter and from different places so that a tunnel by day might be very different at night. Mayweed explored these things, teaching them to be still in a strange tunnel and use their paws and snouts and erect tails where the walls or ceiling were reachable, to first feel the tunnel, then scent the air, listen for a sound ahead as guidance across great chambers whose sides disappeared in the murk, and, difficult though it was at first, he made them all learn to use wind direction. Mayweed was careful, too, to teach them to memorise the route they were taking so that they could find their way back if they had to retreat.
Moles generally live in one place and forget how they learn their routes, even more so when they have delved the tunnels themselves. It was Mayweed’s great art to develop a way of learning new tunnels, and to do what few moles ever needed to: to relate one part of a tunnel system to another and guess how he might make passage in between without becoming disorientated.
All these skills they taught each other slowly through that summer, finding more familiar places of fields and trees and using them as a base from which to venture into Wen tunnels and learn to survive in them.
Food was plentiful, though the worms were thin, red and sparse of taste. But there were plenty of them, and a cache of thicker lobworms was sometimes found and, as summer advanced, an aging beetle or two turned up to add variety. To find such food, though, they had to turn up the strange objects they found in those tunnels, objects for which Spindle furnished the names from a medieval text he had had the fortune to hear discussed by Brevis once, entitled Joumaye Forbode and scribed anonymously by a mole travelling near Alban, an ancient and long abandoned system, who had ventured beneath the twofoot ways.
He described obstacles he had to negotiate made of material nomole had ever seen before, and since then had only found on ploughed fields and by roaring owl ways: pieces of wood but with straight edges and right angles; fractures of what in that old text is called glas, which is sharp and dangerous and what Mayweed cut himself on. Yet glas was also the material from which round objects were made which were usually bigger than moles with a hole in at one end, inside which earth collected where moles could sometimes see worms but not reach them. Then there was what Spindle thought must be “clathe”, soft coloured stuff, usually wet and stinking, made in strange shapes that stretched here and spread there, and sometimes had round shining objects attached to it.
There was also much metaille, hard sharp material, often rusting, which mole found from time to time everywhere, though never so hard and shining as they found in the Wen. Strangest of all, and quite unfamiliar, was what they called thinbark, which was nearly as thin as silver birch bark, usually white or black, and waterproof. Yet easily punctured.
Starling knew that well enough, for one object like it she found, white and curving above her and unstable, which she talon-thrust, and water poured out and nearly drowned her. But “thinbark” came to mean anything to the moles that was waterproof, smooth, and had no odour at all but that which other substances gave it.
Sometimes they found these materials in bits no bigger than a mole’s paw, sometimes as objects far bigger than a mole could contemplate. Their uses they could only guess at, and hope that in time, as their journey proceeded, such things might make sense.
As for predators, there were so far very few. Rats they scented but never had to confront; bank and water voles there were aplenty. Weasels and stoats they came across, but not many.
Foxes were plentiful, but for mole always easy to escape by burrowing. In any case, fox do not like mole’s flesh and the danger was being harried rather than killed. Worse were the dogs, of which t
he Wen was full, and cats which only Tryfan had ever seen before. Dangerous indeed.
But these were cautious times, and such dangers as they came upon they were able to watch from a distance to learn about, in preparation for the time when Tryfan decided they must turn south and then east once more, and start their journey in earnest....
Spindle has left an account of what Tryfan was like at this historic moment when the moles finally headed on into the heart of the Wen.
He worries for us all, fretting when one of us is absent, concerned when another is uncomfortable, determined when one of us weakens. He has kept us from the Wen until now, using one excuse or the other, but mainly I believe for fear that we were not ready. But now, even if we are, he will worry still.
Tryfan has been much silent of late, and taken time to be by himself on or near the surface. I watch close by him, and sometimes, if there is sound of predator or doubt, I will disturb him. At such times of prayer and meditation he seems to notice nothing, and sighs when I approach him, and is ever good to me, asking me to spend less time with him and more with the others, lest they feel isolated. I assure him they do not. We all of us know how much Tryfan has suffered from the departure from Duncton Wood, the sense of failure he has that so many moles died, and he was much affected by the deaths of Maundy and his half-brother Comfrey. Starling’s continuing faith that Bailey is alive gives him comfort, and makes him believe also that some of those we parted from at Comfrey’s Stone will survive.
Sometimes we ask him to tell us of the Stone but he says he knows little of it yet, pleading that he is too young, too inexperienced, too... he says his time will come to talk. Boswell told him to spend time thinking, meditating, and this is what he is doing. Yet though he says he is young Tryfan has aged this summer. His face is lined now, his body strong but leaner, his eyes concerned. He begins to look as the celibate scribe-moles look – strong yet needing to be touched more than they ever were. Yet he is a touching mole, and the four of us are often close. A mole meeting us might think we were all moles in love! I hope that the Stone may grant Tryfan of Duncton the love of a female he desires, though I doubt that he would wish me to make such a prayer! Well I, who knew such love with Thyme, desire it for him. I cannot but think that it brings a mole closer to the Silence.
Yet sometimes, for a little he will speak, as once he did on Harrowdown when he healed Smithills and Mayweed, and Brevis knew that this was a scribemole whose memory would live....
There are other things in Spindle’s famous account of Tryfan’s life, among them his sense that the scribemole was beginning to suffer then that sense of being alone which plagued him through his life, a shadow that few other moles were able to see but Spindle, for they saw only their own need to be led and supported, not the needs of the scribemole who leads them.
Two days after Spindle wrote that part of his account and buried it, they were back near their original point of arrival at the Wen and Tryfan decided the time had come for the entry into the centre of the Wen.
The tunnels where they had taken shelter when Tryfan told them of his decision continuously shook and shuddered with the great way which rose to the east of it. It was a massive thing that rose on great grey legs from the ground and ran through the air far beyond a mole’s sight, and where at night lights raced and shone violently. While at ground level there was a maze of impassable conduits and walls which stank with the smell of rat and rubbish and dogs, and where twofoots went, heavy and quick.
The sound there was strange, echoing and confused, roarings and shakes, screeches and lulls. But by the water course that Mayweed soon lighted on as the best way under the way, the air was still, the sounds muted, and above them the walls rose high so that the sky seemed shaped into a thin line as when a juvenile’s tunnel breaks the surface and reveals the sun. It felt dangerous because nomole likes a route that is overlooked, where a predator can wait above unseen and attack when he will.
So quickly along this route they went, moving forward in stages between safe stances such as they could find. Some stances were drainage pipes from the wall towards the water, others less reliable – a wooden square beneath which was the stench of dog spoor, a white shapeless heap of rubbish where rats had gnawed and left their greasy stench upon the ground; weak metaille, rusty metal, so thin it caught the vibrations of the roaring owls above.
To each of these points the moles travelled in turn, one waiting for another and then the first leading on. Few words were spoken as they made fluid progress, as each covered for the other, listening and feeling out for threat and sound. By shadows they moved, by dark surfaces, that they might the less easily be seen.
To their right, over a wall that prevented view, they could smell the water flowing eastwards, deep and dark, in a tunnel carrying the vile stench of twofoots. It was a filthel.
Above them the concrete columns to the way rose high, and strange winds blew grubby paper and thinbark round corners and eddied it into piles at wind-dead places. They pressed on, disciplined and determined, until they passed under first one way and then another and then a third and ahead there were no more. Just tunnels, and apologies for grass, and filth, and as dusk fell, the roaring of owls and the shaking of them all about, and lights most strange and dazzling.
“Twofoot!”
The warning came down the line from Mayweed, and each took stance and froze. Then a high irregular sound as the twofoot came by, the ground too hard and stable to carry much vibration, but the sweet sick smell clear enough. A great grey thing bigger than a mole came down on the wet dust near Starling, who snuffled at the impression it left soon after the twofoot had gone.
“Its paw,” said Spindle.
“Didn’t see us!” said Starling.
“Don’t. Blind. Stupid,” said Spindle with unusual passion. He had been near enough to twofoots this past few weeks to know they must be blind, for sometimes his cover had been thin indeed and they had passed him by undisturbed. Mayweed was even more contemptuous of them, saying they were too high up to see low down. Not like cats, especially Wen cats, which could see through stone and against which a mole had little protection except to make a tunnel that was too deep and small for cat’s paw to reach. Rats and weasels were different again.
When the twofoot had gone Tryfan said, “Well, we are in the Wen. Every day we spend here is another day of danger. So we will travel fast with our minds and bodies always alert.”
“What are we looking for?” asked Mayweed.
“Where are we going?” asked Starling.
“We are looking for mole, or sign of mole. I believe we will find it. We have got here without trying too hard – but with initiative and courage. Others may well have have done the same in years past. The question is how far they had got, and, should any still be alive, what they may tell us if we can contact them.
“As for where to... well, I believe there will be Stone guidance here. I cannot feel it because the Wen is too confusing for a mole easily to feel a Stone’s guidance. But I believe we will find help, for the Stone is everywhere, and so it will be in the Wen. And where it is then there will the moles we seek be. We must each of us try to find peace and stillness.”
“In this place!” said Spindle as the tunnel they were hiding in shook with roaring owl.
“In this place,” said Tryfan.
They travelled on then, each watching for the other as they had practised so often, a tight, close group that kept to shadows and shelter, and avoided open places. Seagulls swooped from the concrete heights above them sometimes; once they smelt fox; occasionally they found a run of grass, though always filthy with dog spoor. Once they found a tree, but its surface roots smelt of twofoot and they passed on by.
They travelled as quickly as they could in four-hour bursts, breaking off to rest when Tryfan told them to, maintaining a good speed. Mayweed did all the initial route-finding and, apart from one diversion south, by a concrete tunnel he preferred, they were able to head eastward most of th
e time. They travelled by night as well as day, four hours on, a few hours off, on and on, aware that with each step they took the Wen seemed to hem them in more and more, and the open countryside they knew to seem further and further away, as if they were in deep water, swimming they knew not where, and solid land might never be reached again.
It was in the early afternoon of the fifth such day when they were beginning to despair of ever finding mole, that they first saw the signs of tunnelling. Nothing much, just a surface run and a heap at one end where the mole had gained depth. The tunnels were old and empty, corrupted by vole and scrabbled at by dog, but it was a sign.
Mayweed was for pressing on but Tryfan said, “We’ll make temporary burrows as quickly as we can and rest. Tomorrow perhaps we may find them...” There was an air of excitement about the group, as if all the journeying might finally bear fruit.
An hour later, as dusk was falling, Tryfan asked where Mayweed was. The coming of dusk meant that in the concrete desolation they were in, yellow lights were beginning to spring into the air and shining at sharp angles and across corrugations to where the moles had taken refuge. But the sky was still light, if vivid Wen violet was ever to be called a daylight sky.
“Exploring,” said Starling. “He went off to see what he could find.”
“Well I wish he had waited,” said Tryfan. “This is uneasy territory.”
But no sooner had he said that than there was a scampering out of the darkness ahead, a scurrying, and then Mayweed’s voice.
“Come!” it said, but not to any of them: “Come on, nervous Sir, timid and doubtful mole. Come and meet the friends of humble me!”
Duncton Quest Page 54
