Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  “No moule, yow yav done as much as any moule and yt ys enough. Go nu, moule, lev me her for Tryfan myn luv to find me.”

  “I wanted to see the Stone Mole, Feverfew, I wanted to scribe of him. I have scribed the rest, as best I could, all that happened.”

  “Oon moule aloon cannot mak that,” she said softly.

  “I wanted to tell of my coming here today, through the Eastside, up the slopes, the light over the trees, wanted them to know. I felt pain, Feverfew, but he called me to come on, he....”

  “He caled yow to holpen me, Spindle moule, to brynng me for the laste. Yow hav, moule, nu rest, lat me be, I am moste safe hyre... go nu and see youre sonne Bailey for he ys cumyng. Telle hym wat alle moules sholde knawe, that he ys muche luved.”

  Then Spindle understood something of the wonder that was coming and that his task was nearly done. He left Feverfew safe in the protection of the Stone and went back through the woods towards the east, staring beyond the great trees with wonder in his eyes, and then ahead the south eastern pastures lay.

  There, on the edge of the wood and staring downslope towards the distant roaring owl way from where he sensed Bailey must be coming home at last, he crouched down low. He whispered his son’s name, and that of Thyme, as above him, very slowly, the sky began to darken and from out of its deepest depth a star began to shine.

  His talons fretted a little as if he wished to scribe, but then they were still. He whispered Tryfan’s name and, with difficulty, turned to stare through the gathering dusk to the north where Tryfan must be.

  Behind him the High Wood stilled and its trees filled with the light of the brightening star. He had been witness to so much, and now he knew he was witness to the light and the Silence that heralded at last the new beginning that was coming to Duncton, and to all of moledom.

  Yet even then it was finally to his friend Tryfan that his mind turned.

  “I would see him once more, as I would see my son,” he whispered aloud. “Grant it Stone,” he prayed.

  His paws felt cold, and his flanks as well, and where they were the light of that star began to shine.

  Then, slowly, a sense of wonder crept as subtly as starlight across all Duncton Wood and to the tunnels where Tryfan scribed restlessly, struggling with the final folio of the Way of Silence, a hurrying mole came.

  “You must go to the Stone, Spindle says it! You must....”

  The mole told him how he had met Spindle, and what he had said, and that he had not had strength to come and get Tryfan himself so sent that mole.

  Tryfan went to the surface and saw that the sky was light with a rising star, and dusk had come, and was deepening.

  “I shall go to the Stone, now I shall go. Tell Hay, tell others, for surely this night he comes. Now tell me where you saw Spindle...” and as the mole did so, and described how Spindle seemed weak and troubled Tryfan became deathly still and he knew this was the ending and the beginning, and that in this hour he must find his friend and be with him, just as soon he would be with the one whose coming they had waited for so long.

  So Tryfan departed to find Spindle as word went out that the Stone Mole was come, and to Duncton Wood, for the star shone a third time, and it was rising above their Stone. All sensed it, all snouted out onto the surface and knew it.

  But fast went Tryfan, urgently, knowing in his heart that Spindle had fulfilled his task and that now his time was coming. As Tryfan’s paws raced, so his mind did too...

  Feverfew. Yes, yes. Now she would come, as Boswell had told him. He could sense her, a mole he now barely seemed to know. Yet he knew she was here, and had been with Spindle when he, Tryfan, might have been and had touched her as he would have done. Feverfew was of him and he of her, and that had already begun. And the Stone Mole too....

  So in wonder and dread for Spindle Tryfan ran, by routes he had learnt as a pup, seeming not to need to see, the wood lightening even as it grew dark, that light which the stars give when prophecies and tasks enter into their moment of fulfilment.

  He wanted to go straight to the Stone, but his heart and his paws led him another way, across the High Wood, towards the east until he reached the wood’s edge and there, by the starlight of that great night, he found Spindle.

  His friend crouched still, leaning a little to one side as if to ease a pain he felt, and though his snout was low yet his eyes were open, and expectant.

  He stirred as Tryfan arrived at his side, and even tried to get to his paws, but his old friend stilled him and settled at his side.

  “Bailey’s coming,” said Spindle, looking downslope towards where the gazes of the roaring owl ran. “I can feel him coming back to me, but I have not strength to wait. I wanted to see him once again, not as he was at Whern but as Boswell would have taught him to be. I... will you tell him of me Tryfan?”

  “May the Stone grant that you tell him yourself Spindle.”

  “Will you?” said Spindle.

  Tryfan looked with love at his friend and saw that he was weak, and that words of promise or false hope were not what he wanted nor what he, of all moles, deserved. The truth was Spindle’s only way.

  “What will you tell him?”

  “I shall tell him that his father was a mole of great courage and great faith, and one whom all moles might have been proud to have at their side. I shall tell him that Spindle was a mole who loved one female alone, and was as true to her as he was to the Stone in all he did. I shall say that this mole was one whose paws, though thin and weaker than some, yet held on more strongly than any other mole I ever knew to two things of which others too easily let go – faith in the Stone and truth to other moles.

  “But most of all I shall tell him that Spindle was a mole who gave others strength, and one who through the scribings he has left will give strength and knowledge to moles for generations yet to come.”

  The light of the star rose brighter each moment, and it seemed to shine down on Spindle from almost directly above, and in it he seemed to see now more than Tryfan could, for his eyes were alight with joy and pleasure, as if he knew what was to be and that it was good.

  “Do you remember when we first met at Uffington?” whispered Spindle.

  Tryfan nodded.

  “I remember your courage not your nervousness,” he said, “and I remember Bos well saying that you were a mole of faith, I remember so much... so much that we have shared Spindle.”

  Their flanks were touching and now they were paw to paw as well.

  “I’m not nervous now Tryfan, but...”

  “Yes Spindle?”

  His voice was weakening and his flank was cold.

  “I’m... I’m curious!” he said, and even at that moment Tryfan could have sworn that in his friend’s eyes there was that look that ever there had been, of a mole who with intelligence and humour, purpose and delight, is curious about the world about him, as a pup is.

  “Tryfan,” said Spindle after a pause, “I have scribed as much as I could, set it down, stored it away. I have left clues for you to where the texts are and how moles may one day find them. And Mayweed knows many of the sites. I think... I think I never dared tell Mayweed I loved him, but I did. Nor Bailey. But I did. I... was not good with words that way Tryfan... even with Thyme I found that hard. Remember how you and Maundy made us go to Barrow Vale?”

  Tryfan nodded.

  “Tryfan... I wanted to say to you that I did not follow you as a duty or a task, though it was my task. I followed you... because I learned to love you. The Stone is in you and a Silence you cannot always see yourself. I... but now you must go to Feverfew. I left her at the Stone. Go...”

  His pain seemed to return, and yet the light in his eyes suddenly brightened, and his gaze turned eastwards and then to the sky, and his eyes were full of wonder as he whispered, “Look! Can you not see him coming Tryfan. Look!” And Spindle’s eyes seemed like stars themselves as his paw slipped from Tryfan’s and his body was still, and over the High Wood of Duncton the star of th
e Stone Mole shone yet brighter on the moles who came up the slopes to see it.

  Then Tryfan, whispering a final avocation of love and the Stone’s blessing, left his friend where he lay, and did as Spindle had finally bid him do which was to go to the Stone and be with Feverfew at last.

  As he crossed the wood once more Tryfan saw other moles approaching, but many grew timid the nearer to the Stone they got, and many were in awe and much afraid.

  “Tell them all to follow!” he shouted at a group who crouched hesitant, for the night was strange and awed a mole. “Tell them to come to the Stone!” Then they looked at one another and knew it was Tryfan himself who told them, and that they must follow him.

  The old, the blind, the slow, the ill, the diseased; unsure moles, frightened ones, despairing and forlorn, they all came, making their trek that night of nights, up towards the Stone. From the Marsh End, from the Eastside, from Barrow Vale and the Westside they came in wonder. They sensed this was a night that would always be, it was the beginning, and the light they saw and let into their hearts was more than a star that shone a single night and then went out. It would be a light lit forever in moles’ hearts, endlessly lit, endlessly there and always waiting for each mole to find the courage to make the trek to find it.

  So those moles went, and at their head was Tryfan, the first to the circle of trees, the first to see that star’s pure light shining down from above upon Duncton’s silent Stone.

  There, at the base of the Stone, where good Spindle had led her, lay Feverfew and she called out for her love to come near now. He who had encouraged others to come now hesitated, watching where she lay, afraid of the light by the Stone. “Go to her mole,” an old female said gently, and so he went. Feverfew whispered of a silence that had been between them in the Wen, not one of the Stone but one of loss; she said that soon it would be filled with the coming of the Stone Mole.

  She sighed and shifted, and felt pain, and sighed again.

  “Tryfan,” she whispered.

  “Yes, my love?”

  “Owr taske is grete.”

  “Not so great that the Stone does not trust us with it.”

  “Yt ys hys sonne.”

  “I know it,” said Tryfan.

  “Myn luv, I am afeerd.”

  “And I, Feverfew, but the Stone is near.”

  “Of Boswell wyl I tell myn der, he is the Stane yn moledome furste cum, hys sonne the seconde her, that Silence wyl be laste and alwey... I am afeerd, myn luv.”

  “And I.”

  What words did those two then speak. None knows. What touches of comfort did they make? None knows. What prayers of welcome and invocations of joy did they whisper? None knows.

  But where they were together by the Stone moles watched from the shadows of the circle of the trees. For none but those two dared enter into the full gaze of that light.

  Yet at the very base of the Stone, to which Feverfew now moved with Tryfan at her side, was a kind of gentle shadow, a softness of the light, as when on a bright day the branches of beech tree spread out and shelter from the fullest light that place directly below. So the Stone seemed to shelter Feverfew now.

  There in that dappled starlit place, beyond which the full light of the star beat down, Feverfew let out her first birthing cry. A cry not like that of an ordinary mole confined to some secret birth burrow in the dark, but one that came out strong, over the pupless system of Duncton, among the trees, about the starlit vales, as wide and great over Duncton as the night sky itself.

  And it was answered!

  By moledom’s faithful it was answered.

  Starting with those females who witnessed that first cry and who had longed for young themselves. They now took her cries as their pain, her love as the love they always had to give, her strength as theirs to give and more; and as that fabled birthing at Duncton’s Stone began it seemed to cast its cries across the sky, and all of moledom stopped and heard; and knew the Stone Mole was near, so near at last.

  Alder knew, up in the high reaches of Siabod once again; Wharfe and Harebell at their secret place in Beechenhill, and Squeezebelly watching over them; so many knew and heard the birthing across the sky beyond the star they saw.

  Starling knew, where she turned to stare towards where Duncton lay, and Heath. So many knew, and many whose names in time we will know. Moles like Troedfach of Tyn-y-Bedw, who gazed at the strange arcing skies that night and knew to where his way was set. The sideem Lathe knew, as he stared bewildered at a sky whose light seemed thwarting to the greatest beauties Whern might have. Lorren knew, and Holm; and others born since Duncton’s flight, whose heritage was a system whose tunnels they had yet to know: they knew. Their eyes lit up to know the Stone Mole came that night.

  And Henbane. She knew. And her one remaining young.

  Dark he was, of the seed of Tryfan but with the mutant nature of warped Rune. His name? Lucerne.

  “What is it?” he asked when Henbane took him out of the High Sideem to see.

  “It is your challenge, Lucerne my sweet. It is the light of your life! Look at it. It is for that light to darken you were made. It marks the coming of the Stone Mole.”

  Lucerne looked at that same sky that moles like Lathe stared up at, but he was not awed.

  “I like that I like it not,” he said.

  “And I too, my love,” said Henbane. “Now come, my dear..., for despite his age yet still she suckled him, for so can a mole be to deviant darkness bound. Then Lucerne turned and took her teat, but his eyes turned to the sky to stare at that star while he suckled Henbane’s teat with dark joy in his heart.

  Skint and the others knew even as they made their way up in to the system’s Woods. They knew, and came. Earlier all three had gone along the edge of the roaring owl way, but though there were ways up they were all guarded. They might have killed a guardmole or two but somehow that evening killing was not in the air, and Skint was concerned that they got into Duncton unnoticed.

  So stealthily they went, too stealthily perhaps, for in staring over at where the guardmoles were they stumbled straight into the path of grike. Hiding grike. Dangerous grike.

  Smithills reared up in the gloom, and the grike reared up too, large and formidable.

  “Whither are you bound?” he said, which was a strange thing for a grike to say. Too polite by half.

  Skint came forward.

  “We travel in peace, mole —” But if he was about to say more he did not do so because the mole ahead gasped, dropped his talons and came forward with relief and delight.

  “If it isn’t Skint then I’m not Marram!”

  “Praise be!” said Skint.

  They quickly exchanged their news and circumstance, barely surprised anymore at the wonders of that night. Marram, like the others, was trying to get across the roaring owl way.

  “Well, you look like a grike, you are a grike, so behave like one. Go and order those guardmoles back to the cross-under and we’ll just slip up the embankment and none will be any the wiser,” said Skint.

  And so it was. The guardmoles argued only briefly when they saw Marram’s size and heard that he spoke with authority, and back towards the cross-under they went. Then Marram went straight up the embankment and Skint, Smithills and Bailey followed him, to the noise and roaring owl fumes. It took a long time before they reached a place where Skint sensed they could cross. Already the owl’s gazes were on, and they knew they must not stare into them as they crossed the way or they would be struck and crushed to death. Nor must they let the fumes dizzy them.

  “Run,” said Skint, “don’t stop.”

  Which is what they did, two by two, over that fumey way and into its central part where rubbish was. Then on to the far side with the roaring owls thundering past from the other direction, and their gazes terrible.

  Then down the far side and by a pipe over the culvert and then at last on to the south-eastern Pastures of Duncton Wood.

  “Which way, Skint?” asked Marram.

&
nbsp; But it was Bailey who led them now, up the slope towards the High Wood.

  It was as they reached the very edge of the great beeches that mark the start of the Ancient System that Bailey stopped and saw a thin mole, dead. But his fur caught the light of the stars and his eyes were open as if he saw beyond them all.

  “Why ’tis Spindle,” said big Smithills gently.

  “Aye,” said Skint, looking at Bailey.

  “I know this mole,” said Bailey. “I saw him in Whern, but he talked to me once in Barrow Vale.”

  Smithills and Skint stared and said nothing. They knew the story of Bailey’s parenting.

  Then Bailey turned to his companions and whispered as if he already knew the answer to what he asked, “What mole was this Spindle? He was in Whern, he was at Tryfan’s side.”

  It was Smithills who spoke, his great face wet with tears.

  “Why lad, ’tis your father. Did you not guess it might be so?”

  As Bailey nodded, it was Marram who took a firm and comforting stance at his side as that mole, lost so long, who had suffered so much, began to cry.

  But it was sturdy Skint who spoke for them all when Bailey’s first tears were done.

  “He looked as if he knew you were coming home, mole. Aye, and he looked as if he knew he would have been proud of you. He knew a good future was yet to come, and he would have guessed his Bailey, born of Thyme, would be worthy to be part of it. So leave him where he proudly lies, mole, and come with us, for there’s one born this night who will lead us all to the Silence which Spindle of Seven Barrows has surely already found.”

  Then all four turned towards the wood and were lost among the trees, and made their way to the Stone itself.

  So the last moles, or almost the last, came near Duncton Stone that night, and as they did one final cry rose up over Duncton as Feverfew gave birth to the Stone Mole.

  So tiny he was, mucky with birth as all pups are, but born in the Stone’s shadow cast by the light of his own star. A pup for allmoles’ joy. A pup to pay homage to. A pup born in a dark turbulent time to bring Silence and light.