The Silver Tide (The Dorset Squirrels)

by Michael Tod

  A storm with thunder

  Follows three hot summer days –

  Then clear air again

  So ran the old Kernel. But it had been ‘lots’ more than three days of unusual heat. Burdock wished the storm would come soon.

  Oak visited her drey to ask about the red thing that has looked like a Sun.

  ‘It can’t have been the Sun down here,’ she said to Oak. ‘That was still in the sky when I first saw it.’

  ‘It was round and red just like the Sun,’ replied Oak. ‘Smaller, though, perhaps it’s the Sun’s child. Does the Sun have youngsters?’

  ‘I don’t know, but it was like a little Sun. Why would it come here?’

  ‘Maybe it was about to tell us before we caught squirrelation and some Sun-damned dreyling scratched it and it died.’

  ‘We won’t ever know now,’ Burdock said slowly, dredging an old saying up from deep in her memory.

  The Sun will prevail

  Greyness eliminated then.

  Even a little Sun

  ‘I never knew what that meant. Do you think the Greyness could be referring to those grey animals that were here yesterday? And that round thing could have been ‘a little Sun?

  ‘Perhaps you’re right,’ Oak replied, with his usual caution. ‘It was just like a little Sun.’

  ‘Burdock said hopefully, ‘Maybe the Sun sent its youngster to tell us not to take any notice of the Grey Ones.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Oak, mentally clutching at a leaf.

  The squirrels drifted apart to forage, each occupied by their own thoughts and fears. Only a pensive Juniper knew whose claws had done the fatal act.

  The storm, so long in coming, broke over the Great Heath soon after nightfall, the wind raging in the tops of the pine and fir trees, whistling through the needles and penetrating into the usually cosy, warm centres of the dreys to chill the uneasy squirrels huddled inside. Flashes of lightning tore open the night sky, each branch silhouetted blackly against the intense light beyond. Squalls of rain lashed the heather and churned the surfaces of the pool into a confused mass of rings, ripples and bouncing droplets.

  By morning a new Kernel was circulating, though none could say where it had originated.

  The Sun sent its child

  To protect us from the Greys –

  And we all killed it.

  The Sun’s-child Legend had been born, sending a sense of collective guilt throughout the community.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When the sun rose the next day over the damp and storm-damaged woodland, causing the bracken and pine needles on the ground to steam in the early rays, a group of bedraggled red squirrels, who has obviously spent the night without proper shelter, appeared at Humanside and asked the resident guardians of that area, Juniper and Bluebell, for permission to pass through.

  Throughout the morning ‘lots’ more squirrels appeared, some singly, some in couples and some in small family groups. Most bore bite-marks on their legs, some had patches of fur missing and many were limping, unable to leap from tree to tree and having to travel, fearfully, on the ground

  They were all escorted by Juniper and Bluebell to meet Oak and Burdock, to whom they told harrowing tales of their homes being taken over by advancing waves of Greys calling themselves the Silver Tide and claiming possession of whichever areas took their fancy. Any Reds who resisted had been savaged and harassed until they gave way to the larger and more aggressive invaders.

  Oak offered hospitality to the refugees but they would not stay and, after sharing a quick meal, they moved on westwards, urging the locals to get out before it was too late.

  ‘Leave while you can, they’ll be coming here soon, Oak-Friend.’

  Oak replied that he and his community had been Guardian and the Blue Pool for longer than any squirrel could remember and he could not desert his trust. He would talk with the Greys when they came and ask them to move on and look for uninhabited territory to settle in.

  ‘They won’t listen.’ He was told. ‘They just take what they want. You mustn’t stay. Come with us while you can. Didn’t you have a visit from some missionaries?’

  ‘Do you mean the two who showed us what they called Stone force?’

  ‘There are lots of missionaries, they all use different methods. The ones who came to us told us all about the Sunless Pit and how we would all go there if we didn’t obey their instructions. When we said we didn’t believe them, they attacked us with their teeth’.

  Oak and Old Burdock conferred and decided that the threat had probably been exaggerated and that it was their duty to remain at the pool.

  A Guardianship

  Means responsibility.

  Defend at all cost.

  Oak, however, remembering the effect of Marble’s Power Squares on him, was apprehensive, and he was relieved when night fell with no further alarms.

  Early next morning another party of ‘lots’ of squirrels arrived and were offered hospitality. Their Leader, Alder, had a broken tail, the result of a ‘lesson’ from a grey.

  With the exception of Bluebell and Juniper, who were entertaining the human Visitors, all the squirrel community gathered to greet and assist the refugees.

  Clover looked at the mud-caked remains of Alder’s broken tail, which was obviously causing him considerable pain as it dragged along the ground, his suffering evident in his drawn features and the way he winced whenever he moved his rump.

  ‘That’s going to have to come off, Alder-Friend,’ she said gently, ‘or it will go bad. Would you like me to do it?’

  Alder considered for a moment. A squirrel without a tail would feel like half a squirrel, but his tail was worse then useless as it was, and without it he could lead his party away from the danger faster.

  ‘Yes, please do, but spare my whiskers,’ he said, trying to make a joke of it. A tail is important to a squirrel but without whiskers one comes a bumbling idiot.

  Clover passed him a large pine cone. ‘Hug this,’ she told him. ‘Shut your eyes and count to eight.’

  Alder gripped the cone and started to count. At ‘two’ Clover severed the tail quickly and cleanly with a single bite. Alder hardly felt a thing and went on counting, ‘three, four, five…’

  ‘Works every time,’ said Clover, slipping away to bury the scraggy tail in a disused rabbit hole.

  When she came back, Alder, surrounded by the rest of his party, was licking away the blood oozing from the stump. His life-mate, Dandelion, whose skin had several bald patches and the signs of recent scars, was comforting him.

  ‘It’ll stop bleeding soon,’ Clover told Alder, ‘but lick it clean several times each day and I’ll give you something to put on it. Now you must rest.’

  A youngster, Tamarisk, already tagged the Tactless, kept asking Clover what she had done with Alder’s tail, until Heather led him away.

  Alder wanted to press on with his group, but Clover and Dandelion persuaded him to stay for at least half a day and to make the others with him rest too.

  ‘He’ll get the shivers in a few minutes,’ Clover told them. ‘We must help him to the Strangers’ Drey.’

  Dandelion took charge, and despite Alder’s protests, led him away to rest.

  Clover slipped off to find a plant of woundwort, whose healing properties had been known to Caring squirrels since the days of the first squirrels in the world, Acorn and Primrose.

  Rowan had been watching one of the younger female squirrels, a yearling like himself. She seemed not to have a mate with her and was looking tired and forlorn. He introduced himself. ‘I’m Rowan the Bold.’

  ‘You are that,’ she said smiling. ‘I’m Meadowsweet. Alder is my father.

  Rowan asked about their journey and their home Guardianship. ‘It is … it was, a place called Wolvesbarrow, Rowan-Friend,’ she told him. ‘We’ve been following the Leylines.’

  Rowan briefly wondered what a Leyline was, but was more interested in the fascinating way she twitched her whiskers at him and us
ed her paws and tail to emphasise what she was saying. This is a very special squirrel, he thought to himself and, to prolong their meeting, he took her to view the pool. He thought that he had never seen a squirrel leap with such style and grace.

  Later, returning to the rest of the group, she thanked him. ‘I really forgot our situation for a few hours,’ she said. ‘I feel much stronger. We are leaving now – I must go and help my father. Perhaps we shall meet again some day.’

  ‘I hope so, Meadowsweet-Friend,’ aid Rowan.

  Rowan sat on a high branch, eyes moist with the tears that squirrels cannot shed, flicking the ‘fond farewell’ signal with his tail. So engrossed was she with her father that Meadowsweet did not look back until the very last minute before they disappeared from sight. Although by then they were a long way apart, Rowan was sure that she returned his signal and he turned sadly away. He would have followed had he not felt that he was needed here at the Blue Pool.

  That night he dreamt of living on a beautiful Eyeland in a lovely pool with an even lovelier Meadowsweet beside him as his life-mate.

  Love conquered duty.

  At first light he left without even telling his sister or his parents of his intentions, and hurried off in the direction of the Clay-Pan, only to find that a shower in the night has washed away any traces of footprints or scent. By High Sun he was forced to give up the search and return to his family.

  If only I’d asked about those Leylines, I might know which direction they had taken, he thought ruefully.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Over the course of the next few days the flow of refugees slowed to a trickle, then died to nothing at about the time of High Sun on the third day. Late that afternoon, just after the last of the human Visitors had left, the first squirrels of the Silver Tide arrived at the Blue Pool Demesne.

  Two male and two female Greys appeared at Humanside, found Juniper the Scavenger living up to his tag, and demanded that he take them to see the Senior Squirrel. With arrant discourtesy they marched through the Humanside, Deepend, and Steepbank Guardianships, tails high, ignoring the watching natives as they followed Juniper to where Oak was waiting, warned by the turmoil in the community that something was amiss.

  Oak greeted them formally.

  The male Greys introduced themselves as Flint and Quartz, the females as Chert and Granite. Oak thought that the foursome looked as hard as their names sounded.

  ‘We have come to arrange territories for our use,’ said Flint.

  ‘I’m sorry but this demesne is fully guardianed,’ said Oak. ‘You must seek elsewhere.’

  ‘I said – we have come to arrange territories for our own use,’ repeated Flint, slowly. ‘Marble, the missionary whom you have met, has told us that the humans’ side of the pool would be very suitable. We’ll take that. From now on it will be known as New Connecticut.’

  The four Greys left, tails high.

  Oak was bemused and angry. Nothing in his experience not in any of the Kernels he could recall, fitted this situation. He followed the Greys to protest, but they were gone, heading in a group back through Deepend, watched from a distance by other anxious Reds.

  On reaching Humanside the Greys located the guardians’ drey in the oak tree and destroyed it twig by twig, ignoring the furious protests of Juniper and Bluebell. The four built two new dreys in a beech tree nearby and one pair moved into each.

  Juniper and Bluebell spent a cold night in the open, watching, until the Greys emerged at dawn to forage on the ground. It was then that Juniper, his tail raised defiantly, climbed the beech tree on the side away from the Greys and began to dismantle one of their dreys, throwing the twigs to the ground.

  His gesture did not go unnoticed for long.

  Together the four Greys climbed the smooth-barked trunk and surrounded him, then just sat staring at him as though he was the slimiest piece of fox-dropping ever seen. Soon his tail sagged and hung limply over the branch on which he sat.

  Flint lunged at him and he drew back startled, only to flinch again as Quartz made a similar move from his other side. ‘Look out, Brown Job,’ called a female voice from behind him and he turned to face Chert, who crept forward menacingly, then sat grinning at him.

  Juniper looked round desperately for a way of escape, saw a chance and dropped on to a branch below. Quartz and Chert followed. He ran along a limb and leapt into the next tree, then the next and the next, the Greys effortlessly staying a few squirrel-lengths behind him.

  In his anxiety to escape, Juniper did not plan his route and, perhaps because he was looking over his shoulder frequently, he found he was back in the tree from which he had started, face to face with Flint and Granite. Every breath was hurting him and there was a painful pounding in his chest.

  He turned along a side branch and leapt into another tree. When he next looked over his shoulder there were he faces of the two rested Greys close behind. He caught a glimpse of Quartz and Chert sitting in the beech tree, grinning as they watched the chase.

  Juniper was tiring rapidly and making ill-judged leaps, but the Greys seemed in no hurry to catch up with him. His progress became more and more clumsy and soon he was having to pause before each leap to gather his breath, while the Greys also paused and called insulting remarks at him. He leapt again and realised that once more he was back in the beech tree.

  Quartz ran at him and he lost his hold and fell to the ground with a bone-shaking impact, too tired to turn gracefully in the air as he would normally have done.

  Sick and tired, he lay there panting and terrified as all the Greys came down the trunk head-first, sneering at him.

  ‘We’re not finished with you yet, Brown Job,’ Flint hissed in his face. ‘Get up and run.’ He nipped the exhausted squirrel’s tail painfully.

  ‘Now run, I said!’ He nipped again.

  Juniper ran, they Greys keeping pace on either side of him, nipping at his legs and tail. The harassment continued, his retreat being cleverly guided along the ground under low bushes towards a tall tree, its upper branches overhanging the pool.

  Here the Greys allowed him to climb before following, biting at his tail and forcing him ever further out along a branch which spread over the water.

  Juniper turned to face his tormentors but was driven back down the thinning branch in mounting terror.

  An uncontrolled fall and deep water are two of the things a squirrel fears most.

  The Greys paused to let Juniper feel that full horror of his situation. Then, slowly and deliberately, they began to gnaw at the branch, tearing off great splinters and letting them drop, to splash in the water below. Juniper hung on desperately as the bough began to sag downwards. The Greys paused again, prolonging his agony. They knew other Reds were watching and that this was to be a lesson to them all, once they would never forget.

  Juniper clung to the branch, now hanging only by a strip of bark. He was paralysed by water-dread, his eyes swivelling around in terror searching for a safe place to leap to, yet knowing he had no strength to make such a leap.

  Then Flint bit through the last strip of bark.

  The branch fell, Juniper clinging on, chattering with fear.

  Hitting the water, the branch was submerged, dragging the squirrel down with it. Then it rose slowly to the surface. Juniper, coughing and spluttering, held tight to the wet bark, his body racked with spasms of paint, until the breeze eventually blew the branch to the shore.

  He crawled on to the sandy beach, bedraggled and sodden, and lay there gasping.

  The Greys went off to forage as though nothing had happened.

  Later, much later, Juniper and Bluebell sought refuge with the Deependers.

  ‘Greetings to you Chestnut the Doubter, and to you Heather Treetops,’ Juniper began formally. ‘We, Juniper and Bluebell, tagged the Scavengers, seek sanctuary in your Guardianship. As I am sure you have seen, the Greys have taken over Humanside. Temporarily,’ he added, with unconvincing bravado.

  Chestnut looked at the fo
rlorn squirrels on the trunk below him, then at Heather. He had no cause to doubt what he had been told, as he had witnessed the chase himself. Heather flicked her tail as if to say, ‘You decide if you want these two in our area,’ and went into their drey.

  He looked again at the pathetic pair, pictured himself harried and homeless, and said, ‘Yes, my friends, choose a tree, I’ll get some others and we’ll help you build.

  Soon, in a show of community spirit, a new and comfortable drey had been assembled in the fork of a Deepend pine, Heather herself collecting the moss for the lining, and Fern ensuring that, even if it was for the Scavengers, it was tidy and respectable.

  That evening, an emergency Council Meeting was called.

  Greetings were quick and formal and the Protection Kernel was said for the first time that most could remember.

  Great Guardian Sun

  Giver of all life and warmth

  Protect your squirrels.

  The Bright One wondered if the Sun included grey as well as red squirrels, but did not ask.

  ‘Do we just let them take what they want?’ Heather Treetops asked scornfully.

  Marguerite had once asked her mother how Heather had earned her tag.

  ‘She is very proud of the fact that her grandfather was the last of the hereditary chiefs of this demesne and believes that places her above all of us,‘ Fern had told her. ‘It is one of Old Burdock’s best and truest tags. I wish I could have a new tag, I’m sure that ‘the Fussy’ isn’t really appropriate to me.’