Tilly Mint Tales

by Berlie Doherty

  “Yes,” whispered Tilly.

  “Was he singing, Tilly Mint?”

  “Yes.”

  The queen stopped. “I thought so! I thought so!” she shouted. “He must be punished!”

  “No!” cried Tilly. “Please don’t punish him! It was my fault. I asked him to sing.”

  The queen wasn’t listening to her. She ran to two young mole-rats. “You!” she said. “Go to the entrance and fetch the guard to me. And you! Take his place at the entrance to our burrow. And remember . . . Never close your eyes! Never sing on duty! Let no stranger pass!” The two mole-rats scampered off out of the lit cavern into the darkness of the burrow.

  The queen sighed. “It is a very serious matter,” she told Tilly. “Every second of our lives we must watch out for danger. The only peace we can hope to have is when we’re here, resting in our cavern. What hope for us is there if our guard lets strangers through? Do you understand, Tilly Mint? This is the great hall of the mole-rats. Here are young mole-rats who are learning to hunt and dig and help us all to survive. And here are old mole-rats, who’ve spent their lives in service to the pack, and who deserve to rest peacefully, out of harm’s way. And here are mother mole-rats nursing their young. See the babies, Tilly Mint?”

  In the quiet corners of the great hall Tilly could see mothers bent over little pink bundles, and she could hear the tiny squeaks of the babies as they opened up their mouths for food.

  “Now do you understand, Tilly Mint? I must make sure that they’re protected. I must! I must!”

  Tilly nodded. Behind her, Dodo sniffed into her feathers. “Nobody’s safe!” she said.

  “No,” agreed the mole-rat queen. “Not when man’s around. There’s danger everywhere.”

  They could hear a scampering down the tunnel that led to the great hall, and then behind it a slow dragging sound, like someone limping, and soon into the light the young mole-rat ran, and behind him limped the guard, his head bent, his whiskers trailing in the dust, all the song and the jigging gone from him.

  “Come here, Guard,” said the white queen sternly.

  Slowly the guard walked over to her. “I’m sorry, Queen,” he said hoarsely. He bowed his head.

  “Sorry!” the queen shouted. “Sorry!” Her voice echoed in the great hall, and fled tumbling down all the dark tunnels that led off from it.

  Tilly turned away and buried her head in Dodo’s side. She couldn’t bear to look. “Don’t hurt him!” she begged. “Don’t hurt him.”

  Then she realized that the queen was talking to the guard again, but softly, soft as a cat, kind and sad and gentle.

  “You have failed us, Old Guard,” she said to him. “We could have been killed. Remember the time the hunters came with dogs? Do you remember that time, Old Guard?”

  “Yes, Queen.”

  Tilly could hardly hear him.

  “Tell us what happened, Old Guard, in case any of us has forgotten. I was only a mole-ratling then. But you remember, Guard. What happened?”

  The older mole-rats huddled together and moaned, remembering terrible things. But the younger ones scampered up to the guard and gathered round him, wanting a story. The mothers hushed their whimpering babies so they could listen.

  “It was four or five summers ago,” said the old guard. His voice was heavy and sad, as if he was telling a story that should never be forgotten. “Some hunters came to the island with dogs and guns. They shot many of our fine animals. They put many in cages to take away in boats to distant lands. All the creatures hid where they could, terrified for their lives, too frightened to go out for food.

  “We mole-rats came in our hundreds to this great hall and cowered down in the darkness here. We didn’t dare let the insects light it up for us even. We lay in the darkness for days and days, listening, listening out for danger. We had a guard at every entrance, and all the strong mole-rats were ready to rush out and defend the pack as soon as they got word of danger. Not a sound down here, for nights on end.

  “And then, one night, a dog broke through and came sneaking down one of the tunnel entrances without any of us hearing him. As soon as he got to the great hall he leapt on us with a howling and a lashing of his legs and a terrible clashing together of his great yellow teeth. He killed the queen . . .”

  “I know,” the queen nodded. “My grandmother. He killed my grandmother . . .”

  “And he sent all the mole-rats fleeing for their lives down the tunnels, fleeing in every direction, and outside all the entrances men were waiting with guns to shoot us as we came out . . .”

  “And many of our brothers and sisters were killed that day,” put in one of the very old mole-rats. “I was a baby, clinging onto my mother’s back. She was killed.”

  “Many, many were killed.” The queen nodded. Her voice was very quiet in the tunnel. “You’ve remembered it well, Old Guard. And can you remember one last thing? Can you remember how the hunter’s dog got past the guard?”

  It was a long time before the guard spoke again. He cleared his throat. “Yes, Queen, I can remember,” he said. “The guard was asleep.”

  “Exactly,” said the queen. “The guard was asleep. He had his eyes closed.”

  In the silence that followed, Tilly crept away from Dodo and went over to the old guard. She put her arms round his neck. “I can see that Guard must be punished,” she said. “But if you punish him, you must punish me as well, because I had to get past him to find Dodo. I’d have found a way somehow.”

  “Oh dear,” said Dodo. “Then I suppose it’s all my fault for fainting. And it’s the grey bird’s fault for putting me in the tree. And it’s the hunter’s fault for coming here in the first place.”

  “Yes!” chorused the old mole-rats, who’d grown up with the guard and who’d always been his friends, and jigged to his tunes as well, on their way down the tunnels. “It’s the hunter’s fault. Blame the hunter!”

  “Quiet!” shouted the queen. All the squeaks and shouts stopped. “I must think about his punishment. Quiet!”

  For a long time the queen paced the floor of the cavern while the waiting mole-rats shuffled and coughed and the babies murmured in their sleep. At last the queen stopped. Everyone’s eyes were on her.

  “His punishment,” she announced, “is that he will never, never, be allowed to guard the mole-rats again.”

  Everyone nodded, even the old guard, at the justice of this punishment. He shuffled round to the back of the old mole-rats and stood there, head hung low, ashamed.

  “And what about his reward?” demanded Dodo.

  “Reward?” said the queen. “How can I reward him for what he did?”

  “He helped Tilly to find me again.”

  “And he’s got a lovely singing voice,” said Tilly. “He ought to be rewarded for having such a nice voice. And he sang me a very important song.”

  “Sing it!” demanded the queen.

  So the old mole-rat guard shuffled forward again, and a bit timidly at first, and then growing more confident, he sang the song he’d sung at the entrance to the tunnel. His voice was pure and sweet, even for such an old mole-rat, and all the other mole-rats sang softly behind him, and the queen swayed backwards and forwards, and so did Dodo, still on her back.

  “Beautiful!” they all said, when the old guard had shuffled back behind the line again.

  “Your reward,” said the queen, purring again, “is to take on the important and dangerous task of escorting Tilly Mint and Dodo out through the tunnels and back to daylight, where they belong.”

  The old guard hobbled forward joyfully. “With pleasure, Queen. Queen of the Night. White Lady of the Shadows. Moon of the Darknesses . . .”

  “Now, now,” she purred. “Don’t get carried away. Take great care of them, old friend. Tilly Mint is a special visitor from England. Look after her. And Dodo . . .” She looked at Dodo, who was struggling to turn round onto her stomach, with the help of Tilly and some of the stronger mole-rats. “. . . Dodo is the most pre
cious creature on the island. She may be the last of her kind. Take care! Take great care!”

  Dodo was at last sorted out, and with a lot of fussing and squawking on her part and shouts and shoves from everyone else, she was pushed out of the great hall and into a tunnel that broadened out and up so that she could at least crawl.

  “Goodbye, Queen Mole-rat,” said Tilly. “Thank you very much for your help.”

  “Goodbye, Tilly Mint.” The queen sniffed her so closely that her damp nose touched Tilly’s cheek, and her quivering whiskers brushed her face. “There is great danger ahead of you,” she whispered. “But there’s nothing more we can do to help you. Beware of the pirates, Tilly Mint! Beware! Beware!”

  She stood back and Tilly ran to catch up with Dodo and Mole-rat. “Goodbye, Tilly Mint!” all the little mole-rats called, jigging along the tunnel behind them as far as they dared. “Goodbye, Dodo.”

  “Goodbye!” Dodo called gaily. “Tilly, I can’t tell you how good it is to be on my feet again! And we’re off to the sunshine! Hooray!”

  Old Mole-rat started to sing one of his jigging songs, and Dodo skipped happily beside him, knocking her head now and then on low bits of the tunnel, and tripping over Mole-rat’s tail, and behind them ran Tilly, with the queen mole-rat’s warning ringing in her head.

  “Beware of the pirates, Tilly Mint! Beware! Beware!”

  Chapter Eight

  Beware of the Pirates

  IT WAS A long time before they began to see daylight. For hours they seemed to twist and twine through dark, damp tunnels, and though Mole-rat never stopped singing his voice began to grow weak and hoarse, and he stopped jigging and took up his dragging limp again. Dodo gave up trying to skip, and Tilly trailed a long way behind.

  “I don’t like it here much,” she said. “I don’t like the darkness.”

  That started poor old tired Mole-rat singing his favourite song again:

  “All things begin in darkness

  In shell, in nut, in hole,

  In seed, in spawn, in nest, in soil . . .”

  and it was then that Tilly began to make out the beginning of daylight. It came like a tiny pinprick far away, and then it was like an eye, then a moon, and then the light came bursting through, flooding the tunnel as if it was water rushing through it. The roof of the tunnel grew higher and higher, yet Tilly found she was having to stoop as she ran, and she realized that she could see her own Tilly Mint feet again in their stripy socks and shoes. She was well over the heads of Dodo and Mole-rat.

  At last they were out of the tunnel. They seemed to be standing in a cave, and outside it they could hear the shush of the sea.

  Dodo staggered against Tilly, exhausted. “Phew!” she laughed. “That was fun! Aren’t we having fun these days, Tilly Mint!”

  Mole-rat looked up at Tilly. “You’ve grown a bit,” he said anxiously. “You look a bit like a human now.”

  “I am a human,” said Tilly. “I’m a little girl.”

  “She doesn’t act like one though,” Dodo promised him. ‘She acts more like a mole-rat.”

  Tilly ran out of the cave onto the yellow sands of a beach. “Look at this!” she shouted. “I’m going to paddle!” She kicked off her shoes and socks and waded into the blue-green water, and it lapped round her ankles as if it was trying to lick life back into her tired feet.

  “Just the job!” shouted Mole-rat, and plunged in after her, paddling madly with all four feet at once. “Haven’t swum since I was a ratling!” He bobbed down and flicked over, waving his stubby legs in the air, and bobbed back over again.

  “Come on in, Dodo-my-duckling!” he shouted. “Get those feathers wet!”

  Dodo shook her head shyly. “Can’t swim,” she said.

  “I’ll splash you if you don’t!” Mole-rat scampered out onto the sands and shook himself, spraying her like a fountain. She screeched and flapped her short wings at him.

  “Stop it, now, stop it, Mole-rat,” she scolded. “Act your age! Behave yourself!”

  “I only want you to enjoy yourself, Dodo-of-my-dreams!” he said. “Come and wash your corns! And watch out for jellyfish!”

  He scurried back into the sea, splashing Tilly as he ran past her, and struck out across the little bay, gurgling as he went:

  “Proper little squelchy things

  Blobs of slime

  Pink and purple bubbles

  Dancers in the brine

  Swirling out their skirtses

  Watch them do their curtsies

  Swaying in the waves like washing on the line . . .”

  Tilly started after him. “I know that song!” she shouted.

  “Sing it then, Tilly–Winkle!” he called back to her, but she gazed after his little splashing head, trying to remember where she’d heard the song before, and who had sung it to her.

  Meanwhile Dodo had stepped carefully onto a large knobbly stone that was just at the water’s edge, and sat there preening herself. She splayed out her stumpy wings, shaking the dust off her feathers, and pecked them smooth again.

  “Everything’s all right now, isn’t it, Tilly?” she said.

  “Yes,” said Tilly. “It seems to be.” She lay on her back in the warm, kind water, and looked up at the blue sky with gulls wheeling over her head. It did seem then that everything was all right again. The water rocked her gently.

  Suddenly Dodo shrieked: “Help me! Help me! I’ve been kidnapped!”

  Tilly sat up in the water. Dodo had gone! She ran out onto the shore.

  “Not that way!” Dodo squawked. “Out here! Out here!”

  Tilly turned round and saw Dodo flapping on her stone, which was briskly walking out to sea.

  “I didn’t know stones could swim!” wailed Dodo, as the stone lifted up its leathery flippers and floated off.

  “I’m not a stone, I’m a turtle,” said the turtle. “Can’t sit about sunbathing all day just because I’ve got a bird on my back. You should look where you’re sitting, gurgle-gurgle-gloop.” And with that he dived down and disappeared under the water, and so did Dodo.

  For a moment her head popped out again. “Help! Drowning Dodo!” she bubbled, and was about to go under again when Mole-rat and Tilly splashed out to her and carried her back to shore. They tipped her onto the sand.

  “What a mess I am now!” she moaned. “Just look at my soggy feathers! And I’d just got them looking nice again after being dragged through all those tunnels.”

  “Never mind, Dodo. You’ll soon dry off. Lie down in the sand with Mole-rat and let the sun dry you.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s anything to eat round here, is there?” Mole-rat sniffed the sand. “I’ve left all my food behind.”

  “What do you eat, Mole-rat?” asked Tilly.

  “Bulbs and roots and things, deep in the soil,” Mole-rat sighed, dribbling a bit with hungry memories. “And lovely juicy worms.”

  “I’ll see what I can find,” Tilly promised him. “But you stay here and watch Dodo, won’t you? She looks tired out after all that excitement.”

  She clambered up a steep bank that led out of the little cove where Mole-rat and Dodo had stretched themselves out to sleep.

  “Don’t go away from there, will you?” she called to them. Dodo flapped her wing at her and waved her on her way.

  Tilly went further into the jungle in her search for food. She was very hungry herself. She had no idea what a dodo might eat. The trees were heavy with all sorts of fruit, and as she reached up to pick some, Tilly saw a flying-squirrel leap off one high branch onto another tree.

  “Wheee!” it shouted. “Wheeeee!” Another one cast off after it. “Wheeeeeeeee!”

  They perched together on a branch and looked out across to the little cove where Tilly had been. More and more of them clustered on the branch, pointing to something far out to sea. They seemed to be saying something urgent to each other, and what they said came down like a whisper in the air, and seemed to be taken up again and floated off by humming inse
cts, and drifted down again and whistled softly by slow-flying birds.

  The further Tilly went into the bushes the greater the fluttering and whispering grew, till it seemed that the air of the island was buzzing with the same sad song: “All the poor dodos . . . all the poor dodos . . . all the poor dodos . . .”

  “What do you mean?” Tilly shouted. “What’s happening?”

  A blue-green bird with golden eyes and a voice like a bell flew down and fluttered its wings rapidly so it hovered just over Tilly’s head.

  “Danger around. Danger everywhere,” it chimed. “Pirate ship sailing. Beware. Beware . . .”

  “A pirate ship!” Tilly dropped all the fruit she’d been gathering.

  “Get back to her!” the chiming bird urged. “Back to her!”

  Tilly ran back to the cove, pushing her way through the trailing bushes, her breath throbbing in her throat. Far out on the horizon she could see the riggings of a tall sailing ship. But when she came to the edge of the little bay she could only stand, helpless, staring at the place where Dodo and the mole-rat had been lying.

  Because both of them had gone.

  Chapter Nine

  The World Belongs to All of Us

  DODO HAD BEEN the first to go. As soon as Tilly had gone in search of food she opened her eyes and stretched herself. “Mole-rat,” she said.

  He snored and turned over.

  “Mole-rat. Have all the dodos really gone?”

  He snored again, rubbing his paw across his eyelid as a fly balanced there.

  “I have to know,” said Dodo. “I have to know if it’s really true.” Her voice was low and clucking. She pecked his head to try and wake him up. He tucked his paws round his ears.

  “Then I’m going to find out for myself,” she said.

  She took a run at the bank, wishing she could just spread out her wings and fly up like any normal bird. The sand was soft and deep, and she kept sliding down again, but at last she made it to the top. With her last little flurry the fine sand sprayed behind her and showered like drizzle into Mole-rat’s open mouth.