“Whatmole is he, Romney?” said Mistle.
“Just a mole I’m saying you should see.”
“Why?” She peered at him, half sceptical, half amused. It was not often he told her what to do, and this was the nearest he ever came to it.
“Because,” said Romney with a smile. “Because you trust me.”
“All right, all right, I’ll meet your mole, but first tell me what you know of him....”
Woodruff came to see her that same day and stanced down close by her. Like so many before him he was struck by the beauty of her eyes, and the grace she had. But she was old now, older than he expected.
“Why have you come to Duncton Wood, Woodruff of Arbor Low?” she asked. Her gaze was direct and clear.
“I wanted to see the system that most in moledom say is its greatest glory now,” he said.
She gazed on him more and said nothing.
“I wanted to know about the past.”
Still she said nothing.
“I wanted to know about my past,” he said.
She nodded, satisfied, and thought. Then she said, “And what were you afraid of that it took you so long?”
He stared at her and she at him, and he felt that his heart and mind were plain to her.
“What is it you hope to find here, mole?” she asked.
“I... don’t know, but I know I have been much afraid of coming.”
“Well, that’s plain enough.”
“I was hoping that you might tell me how you began here...” he said.
She laughed gently.
“Yes, Romney said you’re good at making other moles talk, but I have a feeling that the story of how you began might be more interesting than our recent history,” she said.
He smiled but said nothing.
“Whatmole are you?” she said suddenly, and quite fiercely, her gaze on him all the time.
“I... don’t think I know,” he replied very quietly. “I’m not sure. I...” His snout lowered.
She reached an old paw to his, and waited until he was ready to look at her again. Her eyes were wise, and he saw there was good light about her, and peace.
“You can tell me,” she said, “and Romney here.”
Then Woodruff knew he could, and for the first time in his life he began to tell the tale of how he came to be, and all his story after the deaths of Lucerne and Henbane at Arbor Low, and how he had travelled moledom in search of an understanding of his past.
At its end he said, “When I was young, Henbane often told me that I should go to Duncton Wood. But I was reluctant... and yet wherever I went, whatever stories I heard or moles I met, it seemed to me that the story of these times started from here and points back to here.”
“And now you’re here?” she said at last, her paw still on his.
“If Harebell was my mother then Tryfan was my grandfather....”
“And Henbane your grandmother....”
“And perhaps here I’ll find a sense of peace I’ve never found elsewhere,” he said.
“Perhaps,” said Mistle thoughtfully. “Or perhaps you’re the mole to find much more.”
“Well, I came here by way of Seven Barrows in the hope that I might find a Stillstone but instead, like others before me, I am sure, came to see that what I had carried for so long was but vanity, and I discarded it before entering the High Wood.” He smiled ruefully.
She was silent for a time, not interested in his stone it seemed, but when Woodruff offered to leave her and let her rest she shook her head.
“No, mole, there’s a task I think I have for you. If you’ll consider it. Yes, a task....”
Romney smiled. He had heard those words before. How many times had wise Mistle said them to moles who until that moment were floundering in life? How many moles had found their life’s way directed by Mistle’s infallible sense of what their task should be? Romney should know. She had found his task for him.
“Yes?” said Woodruff.
“From what you’ve said you know as much of the history of recent times as anymole I’ve ever met. Much more, perhaps. How many moles can say that they were raised by Henbane herself? How many moles saw Lucerne die? How many moles have trekked as you have to Whern, to Caradoc, and to many places in between?
“Not many, Woodruff of Arbor Low. How many have talked with moles, as you have, who heard the Stone Mole speak, and saw him barbed? Not many. How many know so much of the Word and can scriven as you say you can, and yet have faith in the Stone, and can scribe as well? Not many.
“I am old now, and tired, and cannot tell the tales I’ve told much more. Nor can Romney. But when we hear others tell them, they change them, and put into them stories of their own. I’ll be a myth or legend in my own life if that goes on and our history will be lost.”
“You’re a legend already, Mistle!” said Woodruff. “So what would you have me do?”
“You said that all the ways you went, and all the moles you spoke to, seemed finally to point to Duncton Wood. You said that here you believed the Silence might be found. Do you know what that Silence is?”
Woodruff shook his head.
“Have you heard of a mole called Glyder?”
“I have. And I’ve heard what he said at the Conclave of Siabod.”
Mistle looked surprised, and pleased.
“What did he say?”
“I heard it from Gareg of Merthyr, and it was confirmed by Gowre who was the last mole who saw Glyder alive.”
“You are thorough, mole.”
“It is the only way to be with truth.”
“Aye, it is so. And what was it you heard that Glyder said, that you remember?”
“He saw a twofoot die and it much affected him. He broke out from his retreat solely to tell moles that we should contemplate the twofoot if we would know Silence.”
“Aye mole, so I’ve heard, so I’ve heard.”
“But now, what task would you have me do, Mistle?”
“Those that follow us shall need to know what happened here, and the story of our times. Bailey, son of Spindle, made a library here and had begun to collect texts from other places.”
“Aye, there’s some I know hidden here and there which I’m sure nomole has seen.”
“Well mole, collecting texts is one thing, scribing them another. I would like to die knowing that a mole I trust shall scribe with truth the history of our times, and of this system here. Will you do that, mole, for me?”
Woodruff was silent and thinking.
“Will you help me, and ask others to help me?” he said at last.
“I will.”
“Will you and others trust me to scribe as I judge best?”
“We shall.”
“Will you tell me all you know of the Stone Mole, for he is at the heart of Duncton’s story and I know too little of him. I have heard you never talk of him and yet you loved him as mole, not Stone Mole.”
“You try me hard, Woodruff of Arbor Low, grandson of Tryfan, but I will, I will.”
He smiled.
“And how do you know for sure I am Tryfan’s grandson, after all I’ve told you today?” he said lightly.
“As I remember Tryfan, you have his eyes. And his paws as well perhaps. They are a scribemole’s paws,” she said. Then turning to Romney, she said, “This shall be a great task he does. Help him in whatever way he needs. But for now, leave me, for I am tired.”
All summer and into the autumn Woodruff wandered around and talked to the moles of Duncton Wood. When they knew what his task was and that he had Mistle’s blessing, they helped him all they could; and more so that he willingly talked to them of the many things he knew of moledom’s history. So it was that slowly he became the mole to whom all moles turned when there was a dispute about the past. His knowledge was so great, his judgement so sound, and the love of mole he felt beneath his sometimes awkward manner was so plain that soon he was as much a part of the system as anymole.
They would welcome
him where he went, and tell him of old moles here and there who might know things he would find interesting for the history he was making, and he would seek them out and talk to them for hours, and sometimes days.
Mistle too he spent time with, though with the colder autumn weather she ailed still more, and there were days when she did not speak clear at all.
Yet she seemed to like him and since he was strong, and Romney was ailing too, it was Woodruff’s paw she took when she wanted to go across the High Wood onto the slopes to watch the roaring owls.
“The Silence is there, isn’t it?” she would say.
“Somewhere it is, but I’m not sure where.”
“Not sure of anything anymore, not. even...” she would mutter to herself.
“Not even what?” he would say, unable to stop himself asking questions of moles, even old ones whose minds wandered.
“But I am sure! He is coming back. You ask... you ask...” and then she would clutch fearfully at his paw.
“Romney?” he said.
“I forgot his name,” she said in distress. “I forgot Romney’s name.” But then, growing more confused....
“Is Romney coming back?” she might ask with sudden fear. As if....
“You mean Beechen... Oh yes, he’s coming back,” said Woodruff, “he’ll come back one day.”
“He said he would,” she whispered. “Oh dear, he said he would.” Then she cried and needed comforting.
As October came again and the beeches began to shed their leaves these wanderings and tears increased and it became harder for her to go to the slopes at dusk and watch the roaring owls. Then, at last, she was confined to her burrow for most of the day, able only, with pain and difficulty, to climb up to the surface and go to the nearby Stone.
Yet sometimes she was coherent, and with Woodruff and Romney at her flank would ask how Woodruffs history of Duncton was coming along, and when it would be scribed.
“It’s still the years before you came that I cannot fully rediscover,” he would say, repeating names that were all but lost in the hope that she might know them: “Mekkins, Hulver, Rue, Rose, Mullion, Cairn....”
But she only shook her head and fretted her talons.
“When I know a little more I’ll be ready to make the Chronicles of these woods.”
“Go and watch the roaring owls,” she would say suddenly, “and he’ll be there.”
“He’ll come back, my dear,” said gentle Romney.
“Who?” shouted Mistle. “Eh? Whatmole’s ever coming back to me?” And she laughed in a wild old way that tilted now towards bitterness and made them want to weep.
It was plain to the moles of Duncton Wood that Mistle had lived almost past her time, for she was sometimes senile now, and slipped into a strange savagery which was not Mistle at all. Whatmole would have thought it would happen to her? A mole must hope the Stone would take her soon, in her sleep perhaps, for she did not deserve to be what she was becoming. Not that for Mistle, whom they loved.
“He’s coming, my dear, I know it’s so,” Romney would still say, though she seemed not to know what he meant and if she did, and was her coherent self again, she denied that she knew who he was talking about.
But when she was young, and much in love and had faith in a mole she called Beechen and others called the Stone Mole, a mole with whom she stayed awhile in lovely Bablock Hythe, Romney had promised that to his dying day he’d tell her that her love would come back home to the system she had remade with such love for him, and so he told her still.
There came a dawn in November when the air was cold and clear. The sky was light blue, and the sun began to catch the last of the colours among the trees – a clutch of beech leaves upon a graceful branch, dew on a half-brown bramble leaf, and red berries up on the dry Eastside.
Woodruff was about early, for he had spent the night at Kale’s place, talking, as ever he did, about the Chronicles it was his task to scribe. Now, this morning, he was almost ready to start scribing at last, wishing only that he knew, he really knew, just where the task began.
“The beginning’s here in the wood, Kale,” he had said, “waiting to be found. How often I wish the tunnels and trees could talk!”
Kale had agreed, as he always did, about the elusiveness of the past, and how a mole could never quite reach back far enough to know what his true beginnings were.
So, like the good friends they had become, they had talked, and then slept, and Woodruff awoke refreshed, and ready for the day. Ready indeed, to begin. Though where...? Well, the Stone might help!
So he had said farewell to Kale and come out into the wood, just as the sun was rising and giving everything a last autumnal glow. He was going upslope, when, on impulse, he turned back the little way to Barrow Vale, a place to which so much of Duncton’s history was tied.
Here Tryfan died, and before that had made his stand against moles who sought to kill him in the time the system was outcast. Here the plagues had hit hard, and once fire had razed the trees nearby.
“But what else?” he muttered to himself. “What else happened here that I don’t know about? If only...”
“If only what, mole?” an old mole said to him.
He turned towards the morning sun and saw a mole there he had not seen before and said, “If only I knew more about the history of the wood.”
“Well, I can tell you one thing about where you’re stancing now.”
Woodruff stilled. He liked to hear a titbit or a tale he had not heard before.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It was just there, or very near by, that Mandrake first stanced in Barrow Vale. That was a to-do, that was! He charged in from the pastures killing moles left, right and centre, stanced where you are now and roared a bit, then found an entrance and went down and challenged the whole system at once!”
“They must have been wild days,” said Woodruff.
“Oh, yes, I think they were! You know about his daughter?”
“Rebecca?”
“Yes. She was actually raised in a burrow not far from here.”
“Could you show me?” asked Woodruff.
He did not need to ask, for the old mole was already up and off and Woodruff had to hurry after him.
“There you are, just down there, that’s where Rebecca was born. She used to come at dawn to Barrow Vale and dance, which Mandrake did not like. Her mother...” Then he talked and talked about the past telling Woodruff things he had so long sought to know, only ending with a sudden: “But look, come with me, there’s somewhere I’ve not seen for a long time... yes, let’s go there.”
“Where?” said Woodruff, finding it hard to keep up, hard even to quite see the mole, for the sun was clear and strong and dazzling all over the tree trunks and shining on the ground.
“Mekkins” tunnels in the Marsh End. Now, there was a mole. Which reminds me, did you ever find the Marsh End Defence?”
“The what?” asked Woodruff.
“The Marsh End Defence, delved by Mayweed and Skint, I believe, and lived in for a long time by Tryfan... it’s on the way, more or less, to Mekkins’ place, so let me show you. It’s easy enough to find when a mole knows how.”
“Whatmole are you that you know all this?” asked Woodruff, but the mole went ahead of him in the light, and seemed not to hear, and to Woodruff it seemed suddenly best not to ask, but to listen to all the mole told him about Duncton Wood as it had been before the Word came south, before the plagues, just at the time that Bracken was born....
So Woodruff listened and let himself be led through a system that was filled with light that morning by a mole who seemed to know and love all the moles of Duncton Wood, every one.
Through the Marsh End they went, across to the Eastside, and thence to the slopes and into the Ancient System, which did not seem quite the same as the Ancient System he knew. Yet what stories Woodruff heard then and how much began to fall into place as he learnt about Bracken’s love for Rebecca, and was show
n the places where so much had happened in the past.
But then, gradually, the old mole began to tire and slow, and his memory seemed to slip and his paw to falter.
“There’s so much, so much...” he said, his voice a little cracked. “Yes, yes, so much for mole to remember, so easy to forget. Now you help me along here, Woodruff, and I’ll see if I can’t show you, since we’re not far from it here, where Comfrey was born. Not many know that now! Why, I might be the only one, and you now! It was here, and his mother’s name was Rue, and she was a love of Bracken’s. Yes, that was it.
“You know, I’m getting rather old for this, rather slow, and I’ve got to go back upslope and that’s a long way.”
“There’s one other place I’d like you to show me,” said Woodruff, wondering why after so long the sun was still barely risen in the sky.
“What’s that?” the old mole said.
“I’d like to know where Bracken was born, because I think a lot began with him.”
“Yes, yes it did. But it’s right over on the Westside and I don’t think....”
“I’ll help you there, and help you back. I’d really like to know.”
“Well, come on then.”
So, slowly, helping the mole along, his weight leaning on Woodruff’s strong paw, the mole took him to a spot on the Westside.
“There! Delve down there and see what you find.”
So Woodruff did, delving down and down, until he found himself in an old and musty tunnel.
“Yes,” said the mole from the surface, “that’s the place. That’s where Bracken was born, and I think you’re right: that’s where it all began.”
Woodruff bent his head and went along the tunnel and found a family chamber and some burrows off it. So, thought Woodruff, Bracken was born here, and from here he set off when he was older for the Ancient System, and began a quest for Silence that Tryfan had carried on, and then, and then....
He paused suddenly. There was silence. No sound of mole at all.
He turned and hurried out, anxious not to lose touch with the old mole, but when he surfaced he saw that he had already gone off limping through the wood upslope. How old he looked, and how the light seemed to shine in his fur.
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