Duncton Found

by William Horwood

  So Beechen got his name and Tryfan knew that one day, whatever other places the Stone Mole might visit, he would go to Beechenhill. Then Tryfan was thankful that the Stone had ordained that his own pups were living there, and might learn of their father from Beechen while they, in their turn, would be witness to Beechen’s coming, and give what support he might need.

  Beechen’s puphood was as other moles’, and he was raised in the same burrow and tunnels which in long moleyears past had been Rue’s, the mole who bore Bracken’s first litter amongst whom was beloved Comfrey himself.

  In those modest tunnels Feverfew chose to settle, and though the soil was not as wormful as some in Duncton, that mattered less since her need was only for herself and a single pup.

  Despite the public nature of his birth, and the fact that it was witnessed by so many in Duncton, afterwards there was a communal sense that Feverfew and her pup needed privacy, and so, though all longed for the day when Beechen would go among them and be of their life, her tunnels were left in peace. A few did happen by, mainly females who longed for pups of their own and were cursed by the sterility which plague, stress and consequent disease seemed to have cast forever on that system. But none of these few moles got a sighting of the pup, and they were gently deterred by Tryfan from coming yet awhile.

  So Beechen grew unseen, as young pups should, learning what Feverfew told him, her dialect words the first he ever heard. Later, when he was adult, her soft accent and sometimes curious turn of speech stayed as his own, and gave his words a touch of timelessness that ran from the past and forward to the future.

  His eyes opened but a day or two after he was named, and from the first he seemed quick and curious, falling over himself to get at his mother’s milk and then, when full, not sleeping as other pups do but gazing in her eyes and then turning from her to venture from the encirclement of her paws.

  Not that, at first, he dared go far, nor risked going anywhere when great Tryfan was about. Yet Tryfan was gentle with him, and Beechen soon found the confidence to crawl all over Tryfan and tussle with him as that mole allowed himself to be buffeted by the pup’s young paws. His fur then was fair, and Tryfan wondered at its softness, touching it with his gnarled cracked paws, discovering that when life starts it is so soft and tiny it’s a puzzle it survives.

  The cold time of April passed with the pup barely seeing the surface above, nor being allowed to feel the blasting of chill winds upon his fur, or the showering rain that fell so easily through the still-leafless wood.

  But in the first days of May, by which time Beechen was well grown for one of his age, and already talkative, Feverfew allowed him to quest his nervous way out of the tunnels towards the light and bright air above.

  He ventured as far as an exit, poked his snout out, heard a run of wind through budding trees, and rushed back down to safety once again. But curiosity drives a mole up and out, and Feverfew was beginning to want to be on the surface once again, and so as the days went by Beechen was encouraged to venture out with her, and learnt to know the sounds of the wood, and associate them with comfort and not danger, A rustle of leaves was Tryfan coming, a flap of wings was but the harmless blackbird’s way, and the youngster could forget for a little his need of his mother as she groomed and rested in the first warming suns of May. But then strange sounds: the tumbling of a branch, a rook’s rough call, and he was away and down, back to where he was safe.

  Rook? Feverfew told. A rustle of leaves not always stern Tryfan’s paws? Feverfew explained. A hooting owl at night? She warned.

  Yet Beechen’s curiosity overcame his fears and he ventured out again and further still, too far now for Feverfew to leave him be for long before she must follow him, thankful she had not other young to fret over.

  So far Tryfan was Beechen’s only other company, and Tryfan had to serve as a whole tribe of siblings, playful, irritable, generous, silent, always there but different and unpredictable until learned, just as siblings are.

  In those molemonths of May, Feverfew delighted to see Tryfan’s smile and the way that so powerful and strong a mole could be so gentle with one who often tried him hard. For Beechen was sometimes more than boisterous, and as that May gathered strength and he grew more, he was not always easy in his response.

  But Tryfan spoke with him, calmed him, laughed with him and even at him when he must, and troubles subsided and moments of harshness soon went. The youngster learned to listen quietly as Tryfan and Feverfew talked, each weaving stories of the past for the other, and myth as well, for moles like to talk and remember what they have been told and add something of themselves to it.

  Of the Stone they often talked, and to it they spoke and prayed, Tryfan in his Duncton way and Feverfew as Wen moles did, with quiet passion. But neither spoke to Beechen directly of it, letting him absorb what they did and said, and in his own time ask.

  Yet in the end it was to neither of them that he first directed such questions, but to one of those moles who, from mid-May, began to come into the small orbit of their lives. These were naturally all adults, since no other pups were born that spring in Duncton, and mainly those who had been closest to Tryfan and Feverfew at the time of Beechen’s birth and who, by virtue of the Seven Stancing that was then made, were his natural guardians. So old Skint and well-made Smithills came, interested more in talking to Tryfan than to the so-far untried pup. Bailey too, who played with him much in those days, for Bailey was ever a mole who understood the young, and perhaps in his playing came a little closer to the beloved sisters, Starling and Lorren, he had lost. Marram came by too, though he was mainly silent, a mole to trust and respect for the journey to Siabod he had made, but never one to talk unnecessarily. At that time the only female who came there was Sleekit, mysterious Sleekit, Mayweed’s mate, a mole who knew much and in time would impart much. Beechen was a little afraid of her, but curious, and always took stance near her when she came. For he had learned from Feverfew and Tryfan’s talk of the pups by Henbane, and how two of them, Wharfe and Harebell, had survived Whern with the help of Sleekit and Mayweed, and been partly raised by them. When he dreamed of having siblings, as he sometimes did, it was of these two unknown moles he thought; but Sleekit was too formidable a mole for him yet to dare ask her to tell him of those dread days.

  Nor was it to any of these tried and tested moles that Beechen finally put his first serious questions about the Stone, but another. One we know, one we love, one more devoted to Tryfan than anymole alive.

  If ever appearances were deceptive, and a mole looked one thing but in his nature was quite another, this mole was he. Patchy of paw, rotten of tooth, calloused of flank! But intelligent of eye, quick of brain, humourful of nature, great indeed in his lean, slight stature; huge in his humble spirit... He came into Beechen’s life quite suddenly one day, and, as with other moles whose ways he crossed and whose lives he changed, he came at the right time.

  Beechen had wandered further from his home tunnels than Feverfew would have wished, and she, distracted by visitors, had somehow lost sight of him. But the wood had opened out alluringly and he had gone on until it had suddenly seemed to darken with the approach of evening. His natural fear of the unknown caught up with him and he had turned to run quickly back to more familiar surroundings which, to his consternation, he had not found. Instead the wood and its trees seemed to confuse him, the tunnels he ventured down for help scented ominous, and he had tried to keep calm but was failing miserably. It was then, as panic began to overcome him, that from behind and from nowhere, it seemed, an alarming mole appeared.

  Beechen reared up in a not unimpressive stance of self-defence, but one in which he could not seem to prevent his back paws shaking, as the mole raised a paw of greeting and said, “Trembling tot, stupefied by my sudden and unexpected appearance, note my smile: it is astonishingly friendly. Note my stance: it unasserts. Remark upon my pathetic form: not likely to cause harm.”

  “Whatmole are you?” asked Beechen doubtfully.
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br />   “Inquisitorial Sir, I shall tell you. I am a humble mole, a nearly nothing mole, an almost anonymous mole!”

  “You’re Mayweed!” said Beechen, relaxing.

  Mayweed grinned, his teeth livid in the bad light.

  “You’re Sleekit’s mate. You’re Tryfan’s friend. You’re.

  “I’m many things, still-growing Sir, son of fecund Feverfew.”

  “They said you speak strangely.”

  “Who, when, why, and how did they say it?” demanded Mayweed.

  “Well...” began Beechen.

  “Ill!” declared Mayweed, his eyes lighting at the devious possibilities of verbal play.

  “Unwell!” said Beechen.

  “Ailing,” said Mayweed, delighted that Beechen was able and willing to join in his game.

  “Urn... hurt?”

  “Unhealthy,” said Mayweed immediately.

  “Er...” But Beechen stopped, unable to think of another word expressing the same idea.

  “Diseased, injured, harmed, wounded, and afflicted, much-yet-to-learn-but-trying-very-hard Sir,” said Mayweed, beaming with satisfaction and frowning as he thought of a dozen other words he might have added to the list but deciding against uttering them out loud.

  “Well!” said Beechen, smiling.

  “Well indeed this mole me, Mayweed by name, agrees,” said Mayweed finally.

  So the two moles met and became friends, and not for the first time in his life, nor the last, Mayweed guided a mole back to safety who had got himself lost.

  “I didn’t know I was lost,” said Beechen in surprise as they came back to familiar paths.

  “Serious state to be in that, self-losing Sir, very serious.”

  “I’d like to talk again,” Beechen said as they parted.

  “Loquacious lad, this mole will return. He always does. He knows where losing’s to be found, he knows where darkness lurks, he’s been where all moles go if they are to go beyond themselves and helps them through. Mayweed understands. What will Sir wish to talk about?”

  “The Stone,” said Beechen. “And Boswell.” With that he was gone, and it was Mayweed’s turn to look surprised and even perplexed, and then to grin into the fading light and turn away, wandering on the surface for a while, then underground, following the course of his memory of Boswell, and stopping to think in awe of the many uncharted ways of the Stone.

  When they next met Beechen simply asked Mayweed to show him how to route-find, which Mayweed did in his own peculiar way: beginning by getting Beechen completely and utterly lost within his own familiar tunnels.

  “Lost lad, feel it, and enjoy. Being lost is nectar to a route-finder’s soul; being lost, contrary to popular conception, is most enjoyable. Humbleness adores it, loves it, longs for it. Being lost! Too rarely happens to him now, not here in Duncton.”

  “But isn’t it very big?” said Beechen. “You can’t know all of it!”

  “Too-eager youth leaps to his first confusion: ‘know’. For ‘know’ he imagines you mean ‘remembers’. Humbleness remembers more than most and therefore knows more routes than most, but that is not how he route-finds. Most moles never route-find, they go along so desperate to keep their talon-hold on what little they know that they become confused the moment – as you now have, very average Sir – they lose hold. In short, they learn the way, remember it, and inevitably when they put a paw out of line get lost. In fact, humbleness avers that most become so afraid of becoming lost they go nowhere new at all which, he mildly suggests, is far worse than being lost since it is next to being dead.

  “A lost mole, like you, is therefore in a learning situation, as the moles of the Word put it so curiously. A learning situation! Mayweed loves it! Ha, ha, ha! A much better way of progressing is to assume you are lost from the beginning and must deduce each junction afresh. Exciting, that! This way? Or that way? Thinking keeps a mole young! Now... which way? Let us commence!”

  The theory was over, for the time being, and poor Beechen, bewildered by the way Mayweed had got him lost in tunnels he should know, looked around in some panic as Mayweed darted this way and that, round and round, now here now gone, his snout disappearing and reappearing all over the place.

  “Clueless Beechen, a tip. Crouch down. Groom. Ponder the pleasantness of being alive. Forget you are lost. Let your body remind you what your mind has forgotten: you can never be lost, since you are here. Look at your paw! Here. Look at the mark it makes in the dust. Here. Hear your nervous breathing. Evidently here! So you are not lost.”

  Beechen pondered this, relaxed, and eventually said doubtfully, “But I don’t know where I am.”

  Mayweed beamed with pleasure as if Beechen had fallen into a trap he had intended him to.

  “Befuddled Beechen, wrong yet again. Crucially wrong. Think and learn, for this is the only way to become a route-finder. Don’t say, ‘I don’t know where I am’ but ‘I don’t know where this place is’. See? Understand? Appreciate?”

  “Sort of,” said Beechen, who sort of did. Certainly he felt less panic-stricken than he had and, now he saw that his problem was not himself but the place, it was easier to keep calm; and certainly, he realised suddenly, there was something familiar about those walls.

  Mayweed watched delightedly as Beechen snouted this way and that, scratched his head, breathed more deeply and, with the sudden sense that might come to a mole who falls headlong into a void and after whirling about lands safe again on his four paws, he saw where he was.

  “But we’re here!” declared Beechen with a sudden rush of recognition. “But...!” And he felt, and looked, angry at himself and the world for fooling him into thinking he was lost when he was not lost at all.

  “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” Mayweed said, almost shouting the words. “You see, you know, you feel, and marvellous... you’ve found, young Sir.”

  “But...” protested Beechen.

  “Ah! Astonished and marginally annoyed youth wonders how humbleness here got him to feel lost in the first place? Humble he is clever at such things. Humble he has made a study of such things. Humble he excels at it. By turning this way and then that way, by taking the young innocent’s mind off the route he was going, by making what was familiar become so unfamiliar that the bemused youngling could not even see correctly what was in front of his paws. We are in tunnels he has passed many times, but have come from a direction abnormal and stopped in a place and at an angle abnormal. Result? Confusion, panic and a sense of feeling lost. Dear oh dear, now bloodied Sir, and this is but the beginning!” Mayweed laughed again, scratched himself, thought a bit, and finally told Beechen to take him to the surface and find him some food.

  When they had relaxed and eaten, Beechen asked, “Will I ever become a good route-finder?”

  “With persistence and application, and a touch of genius – yes, Sir will,” said Mayweed contentedly.

  “Will you teach me?” asked Beechen.

  “Will you learn?” replied Mayweed, his eyes bright.

  “Yes,” said Beechen seriously. There was a pause, and then Beechen boldly asked, “What exactly is the Stone?”

  “That’s persistence!” said Mayweed. “No sooner recovered from being lost than he rushes headlong into a most existential maze. Modest me had guessed that bold Beechen would soon seek the portal to that arcane world, but had vainly hoped that in the bewilderment of getting lost Sir would forget his interest in such things. Me, Mayweed, is not one to say much of the Stone. Tryfan knows it best. He was taught by Boswell.”

  “Who’s Boswell?”

  “Ah! Quick and speedy brained Sir, the questions will come thick and fast now like sounds in a badly made tunnel, and Mayweed will not be able to cope. Tryfan will give you better answers than Mayweed....”

  “I heard Tryfan say to Feverfew that you know more about the nature of the Stone than anymole alive.”

  “He did?” said Mayweed softly, his bright eyes suddenly moist. “No, no, great Tryfan cannot have meant tha
t, and anyway youngsters had best keep silent on what they hear until they know it to be true for themselves.”

  “What’s scribing?”

  “Sir will never stop now!” said Mayweed with a sigh.

  Then the sounds of approaching mole across the surface relieved him of the need to answer more and instead he asked, “Whatmole is that, young Sir?”

  “Tryfan, and he’s tired.”

  “Correct but incomplete. He comes from where?”

  “Don’t know,” said Beechen.

  “That’s because loquacious lad was talking so much and asking inadequate me so many questions he forgot the route-finder’s cardinal rule, which is to keep half an ear open for sounds and clues, for they help, every one of them. Tryfan comes from upslope, some way towards the Stone.”

  Which, when he reached them, Tryfan confessed he had.

  “But not from it. Nomole’s been there since Beechen was born. They’re waiting. Eh, Mayweed?”

  Mayweed sighed and nodded.

  “This mole asks a lot of questions, peerless Tryfan, and so he should. Indeed, humbleness himself asks lots and will never stop. He’ll die asking questions, for that’s the way of route-finders. However, while he knows whatmole to ask (usually himself), burgeoning Beechen here is asking the wrong mole and should in Mayweed’s judgement direct his questions to you yourself, named Tryfan.”

  Tryfan laughed but Mayweed did not even smile. Then as Beechen, bored by their conversation, turned from them and snouted a little across the surface, Mayweed said quietly, “Mayweed is made afraid by the youngster’s questioning. The nature of the Stone? Who was Boswell? The truth of scribing? The way to go...?” Mayweed looked full into Tryfan’s eyes, wavering. “When I am with this mole I am full of fear for moledom,” he said simply. “I feel I cannot help him or guide him as I can other moles. I feel close to tears.”

  Tryfan nodded and touched his old friend on the flank.

  “You are not alone in that, Mayweed. The mole is growing fast, he questions everything. But if he now asks you of the Stone and Boswell, it is more than he asks myself or Feverfew.”