The Silver Tide (The Dorset Squirrels)

by Michael Tod

  Tamarisk, who had overheard the conversation, tapped the Woodstock and said optimistically, ‘With this we can zap Greys or stones.

  ‘I don’t know if zap is the right word for stones.’ Marguerite said, ‘but with the help of the Sun, tomorrow we’ll find out.’

  Marble was waiting, as agreed, at the edge of the wood and he foraged with the Reds, his tail conspicuously low, and again joined in their prayers, before they all moved off towards the Clay-Pan, the aches in their whisker-roots growing more painful with every tree they passed. They went through woodland and patches of scrub familiar to Marguerite, Juniper, Rowan and Tamarisk, until they came to the edge of the area they had last seen devastated by the fire in the previous year. In place of the blackened, smoking mass of ash and charred heather stems, a forest of the tall, feathery stems of rosebay-willowherb waved in the breeze, releasing their fluffy seeds to drift away and colonise any other newly exposed ground before the native plants could re-establish themselves.

  The squirrels moved through the stems, noting the new bright green shoots sprouting from the bases of the heather plants and the mosses and lichens beginning to cover the burnt-over ground.

  As they neared the Clay-Pan and their whisker-aches grew almost unbearable, they saw how even the rosebay plants were stunted and the heather shoots weaker. The rim of the hollow containing the Clay-pan was barren of vegetation of any kind.

  They flattened themselves to the ground, wriggled to the edge and peered over. Just as Marble had described it, the clay surface was covered with line after line of stones, each one in perfect alignment, and in the very centre of the square were the four keystones, larger than the rest. Next to each corner stone lay the dried-up body of a grey squirrel.

  Waves of sickening Power washed over the Reds and they moved back to crouch I the stunted growth, out of sight of the square.

  ‘Look,’ said Marguerite, ‘all the needles on that tree are withered up.’

  She was pointing to the old fir in which they had hidden from the Grey posse the previous summer. It still leaned out over the Clay-Pan and had been exposed to the Power of the square ever since it had been activated by the deaths of the four Greys.

  ‘Any ideas?’ she asked the nervous squirrels.

  ‘There might be one way,’ said Marble. ‘If I were to run out along that tree trunk and drop on to the keystones, I should be able to disrupt the Power for long enough for four of you to displace the corner stones.’

  ‘It’ll kill you,’ said Marguerite, ‘and the other four.’

  ‘Probably the first and possibly the second,’ replied Marble. ‘Have you got any better ideas?’

  ‘We should try the Woodstock,’ said Juniper.

  The Woodstock was brought up and sighted first on to the keystones and then on to each corner stone in turn. Juniper tried first but, having scratched every number from 2 as far as 7 after the X, there was no noticeable effect. The spiralling power surged from the Woodstock as before, but was deflected upwards and lost in the withered needles of the overhanging fir.

  He tried again and again and then had to retire, vomiting from the effects of the Stone force that he had been exposed to.

  Marguerite tried but was no more successful, then Rowan, who, though unfamiliar with the weapon, insisted on trying until he too was forced back from the rim of the Clay-Pan.

  Tamarisk tried, but he soon reported that the force from the Woodstock must be exhausted as he could get no response, whatever number he scratched.

  ‘Are you really prepared to drop on to the keystones?’ Alder asked Marble. ‘You’ll be Sun-gone in an instant.’

  I’ll kick those stones out of line first,’ he replied. ‘I owe you this for the trouble we Silvers have brought you.’ There was a look of determination in his eyes.

  Alder looked at him, then around the group and said, ‘Now I want three volunteers to help me deal with the corner stones.’

  ‘I’ll be one,’ said Juniper the Steadfast and was immediately joined by Tamarisk the Forthright and Rowan the Bold. Meadowsweet put a restraining paw on Rowan’s shoulder but he turned, brushed whiskers with her and moved over to where Alder was giving instructions.

  ‘Act only when Marble has dropped, then we’ll rush out of cover the kick away the corner stones. Don’t miss. Trust in the Sun.’

  They moved off to get into position.

  ‘The Sun be with you,’ Marguerite called to Marble and he acknowledged this by putting the stump of his paw diagonally across his chest, then crouched and wriggled to the base of the tree trunk. Here be paused, feeling the vibrations with his three good paws as the Power broke down he very fibres within the tree. He raised his head and watched the red volunteers get into their places.

  ‘Now,’ he shouted, ‘now, now!’ And ran awkwardly on his three paws, up and along the sloping trunk before launching himself through the air, to land, kicking and scrabbling amongst the stones below.

  There was no change in the Power waves. He had missed the keystones!

  Alder, crouched as near as he could to the corner stone he was to displace, watched in horror as Marble’s kicking slowed to a spasmodic twitch. He ran forward, signalling to the other volunteers to do the same, but was repelled by the Stone force and rolled back, covered in dry clay-dust.

  The other squirrels were having no more success.

  ‘Again,’ he called, ‘again.’ It was like leaping upwind in a gale.

  After three more attempts, he signalled ‘retreat’; they crawled back to join the others sheltering beyond the bank, and the volunteers lay in the dust retching and vomiting, hardly able to move.

  ‘Is Marble Sun-gone?’ Alder asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Marguerite. ‘A brave squirrel, despite his colour.’

  When they had recovered somewhat they sat in a circle, each trying to think of some new way to destroy the evil thing on the Clay-Pan. It was Tamarisk who spoke out at last.

  ‘There’s nothing else for it. One of us is going to have to scatter the keystones.

  Rowan, without thinking further, started towards the leaning tree, saw Meadowsweet out of the corner of his eye, turned to give her a farewell hug and as he did so collided with Alder who was heading for the tree himself. Both squirrels, disorientated by the effect of their ordeal in the Clay-Pan, fell over and rolled in the dust, which rose in clouds and blinded them.

  Marguerite had been looking at the fir tree as Tamarisk was speaking, seeing its brown and sickly foliage, and thinking of the Power spreading out to destroy other beautiful trees. Would the pool ever be blue again? She stood up and moved deliberately towards the leaning fir trunk.

  Juniper, who as usual was watching her, realised her intention and, sick as he was, gathered his strength, ran towards the tree, shouldered her roughly out of the way and leapt for the leaning trunk.

  He scrabbled to hold on, a piece of rotten bark turning to powder under his claws as he dug deeper, searching for firm wood. It was as though the whole tree was punkwood and would give him no grip. Marguerite was on the trunk behind him. Juniper tried to kick her away.

  Then, as though the tiny additional weight of the squirrels was too much, the ancient tree, rotten through from the continuous Power waves, with no sound other than the rustling of the dead and dying needles, collapsed and fell on to the clay.

  Juniper and Marguerite jumped clear as the trunk shattered on the hard-baked ground, brittle branches breaking off and, in falling, sweeping away and destroying the pattern and the Power of the stones for ever.

  The force died with a whimper, more felt than heard, and in the silence that followed a skylark sang high over the Great Heath.

  Marguerite stood up, and embraced Juniper silently.

  ‘Now to the pool,’ she said, dusting the clay-dust from her fur. ‘Faith can fell fir trees.’

  Later, on the sweet-scented pine needles below the Council Tree at Steepbank, she spoke to the squirrels at a special meeting called by Alder, the pool a brig
ht sapphire blue below them.

  ‘We all have a job to do. We must repopulate this lovely land. Each pair of you can choose a Guardianship. Go now, there is some serious mating to be done.’

  She turned her rump to Juniper the Steadfast, who, scenting her readiness, needed no second bidding as she raced away through the treetops, closely pursued by him.

  1, 2, 3…

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  On Ourland, Fern had wanted Oak to take over Ex-King Willow’s drey in the magnificent Royal Macrocarpa Tree behind Brownsea Castle. Oak had refused, even though Ex-King Willow and Ex-Kingz Mate Thizle had move out themselves to a more humble drey near the lagoon.

  ‘It wouldn’t be right, my dear,’ he explained. ‘All that kind of thing is past. We’ve quietly got to change things to a more sensible arrangement. But we do need a new drey in a more central position. Let’s go and find a site near the pond in Beech Valley.’

  The Royal Macrocarpa itself, now abandoned by the squirrels, possibly just being over-mature, or perhaps sensing the shame of the injustice witnessed in its branches, was in decline and losing its foliage in showers with every breeze. By the Longest Day it was a bare skeleton of a tree.

  Oak and Burdock were together in the new Council Tree near the Beech Valley pond. The tree was a full grown beech, rooted on the very edge of the pool which, though smaller by far than the Blue Pool, still sent up a delicious water-scent on hot days. The clicking and whirring of dragonflies’ wings below reminded them of home.

  The water-lilies in the pond they had recognised as being the kind of flowers that Rowan had described as being at the Eyeland pool he had found while on climbabout, in those peaceful days before the Greys had come to spoil it all.

  Burdock was a very old squirrel now.

  ‘You have so many grey hairs I though it was Marble come again,’ Oak had ‘pulled her paw’, as she hauled herself breathlessly up the trunk to stretch out on the wide branch, shaded from the sun by the canopy of glossy green leaves.

  ‘We must appoint a new Tagger,’ she told him, looking down at the water and the lilies, I’ll be Sun-gone soon.’

  ‘We’ll all miss you,’ Oak told her warmly. ‘I can’t imagine not having you about, with a Kernel for every occasion.’

  ‘My time is near and I’m ready for when the Sun calls me. To be honest I’m so tired nowadays I’m quite looking forward to the rest. It’s nice to know that my old body will be feeding the trees that I have fed from for so long. It makes a sort of circle. A kind of fair deal.’

  She spoke slowly now and when a Kernel was needed, it seemed to come from way, way down in her mind.

  ‘I must train a successor,’ she said, after a long pause. ‘I had been hoping that Marguerite would come back. She was a natural Tagger, but Sun knows where she is now.’ She paused again, looking round wistfully as though expecting to see the Bright One appear.

  ‘Clover the Carer is my next choice; one learns a lot about squirrel-nature looking after the sick ones.’

  ‘Is there a lot to teach her? Oak asked.

  ‘Well, she knows all the Basic kernels, but the skill is in recalling the right one at the right time, and saying it with just the degree of confidence for the others to be strengthened or guided by it. I think I’ve nearly got it right myself at last,’ she added with a modesty that made Oak, himself an elderly squirrel now, smile affectionately. ‘But I do wish I knew if Marguerite was all right.’

  ‘She will be,’ Oak assured her. ‘She’s a survivor, that one. And she’s got that old reprobate, Juniper, looking after her. She’ll be fine. Probably made me a grandfather by now, if I but knew it.’ Oak, in his turn, looked wistful.

  Oak was right. Marguerite, more to her own surprise than that of companions, had accepted Juniper as her life-mate and they had destroyed the abandoned dreys in the Deepend Guardianship and together had built a new one where they could look out over the Blue Pool.

  Juniper had a favourite lying-out place from which he could see the beach where Bluebell had died from her injuries the previous summer. Marguerite was wise enough not to resent this, and was pleased that he never ventured near the Man-dreys and the temptation of the salted nuts, though she could sense that even now he sometimes craved them.

  She, in turn, had a favourite lying-out place at the eastern side of the Guardianship, in a high Look-out Pine where she could see over Middlebere Heath to Poole Harbour and Ourland. She would lie in the branches for hours thinking of ways to send messages to her family there.

  There must be a way. Dolphins could send messages into her mind through the air as well as through the water, she was sure that the great ship that passed them at sea had been sending messages and Dandelion had told how, long ago, men had sent messages along the Leylines. Even squirrels, if she could believe the legend, had once used the Leylines at dawn in a similar way.

  She had asked Dandelion to sense for a Leyline which might lead from the Blue Pool to Ourland for there were dreylings stirring inside her and she wanted to tell her family.

  Dandelion, herself heavy with young, was unable to find such a line, sitting in the Look-out Pine and turning her head slowly from side to side, sensing with the utmost concentration, aware of the intensity of Marguerite’s desire.

  ‘Trust in the Sun.’ she reminded her friend. ‘Faith can fell fir trees,’ she added, putting a comforting paw on Marguerite’s shoulder. ‘We know that is true.’

  Marguerite gave life to two new squirrels a week later, one male and one female. Juniper had waited all night in the warm summer darkness outside the drey. Now as the sun rose, she called him in. ‘Names first,’ she said. ‘Tags when they’re older.’

  In the dim light of the drey they looked at the bald pink creatures squirming blindly on the soft mossy lining, and saw handsome youngsters running and leaping with joy in the sunshine.

  Juniper looked at the tiny female, opened his mouth to suggest Bluebell, thought better of it and said, Oak and Burdock.’

  ‘That would be my choice too,’ said Marguerite.

  On the same day Rowan came proudly and breathlessly over from Humanside to tell Juniper and Marguerite that his Meadowsweet had borne a female dreyling and that they would like to call her Bluebell to honour the squirrel who had given her life to save the whole colony from the Greys; and would Juniper mind?

  Juniper looked as proud as he had earlier, when he had looked on his own first-born.

  Soon afterwards, news came from Steepbank that Alder and Dandelion were also parents again, and the next day Spindle the Helpful came to see if he was needed for anything and after a while, casually told them the Wood Anemone had also borne twins on the previous day.

  Tamarisk, unmated that year, raced around the pool visiting each drey as proudly as if he had been responsible for all the new lives. It was remembered as a High-Tail Time for them all.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  Marguerite’s duties as a parent and as the Tagger kept her mind off the desire to contact the Ourlanders for a whole moon, but then the urge to communicate came back with even greater force than before. Her mind constantly reviewed everything she could recall about signals, messages and forces. She awoke one night with a picture of the Woodstock before her and at first light she slipped away to the Clay-Pan to find it.

  She found the weapon, near to where they had discarded it, half sunk in a puddle of slimy clay from overnight rain, and dragged it out to dry. The sky was still heavily overcast but a light breeze eventually turned the slime on the wood to a smooth white covering through which her numbers were still visible, but as she had feared, there was now no power in it. Try as she would with any combination of figures following her X, no force of any kind was left. It was all expended when we used it against the square, she thought, and, abandoning the exhausted Woodstock amongst the scattered stones and the crushed branches of the fallen fir, she set out to return to Deepend through the hazel copse.

  The green-fringed nuts were filling but
were not yet ready to harvest, and, as she assessed the likely crop, the sun broke through the clouds as it had done for her one before, a single ray of sunshine again lighting for a moment the hazel sapling being strangled by the honeysuckle bine.

  A new Woodstock! The message was clear. With her strong white teeth she cut through the bitter-tasting stem of the woodbine and then into the hazel bark, tasting tantalisingly of the developing nuts themselves.

  When the distorted, tortured stem had been dragged to the ground, she trimmed it to the same length as the first Woodstock, feeling, as she did so, the power-tingle in her whiskers that she had always felt when handling that one.

  Marguerite looked up through the leaves at the sun, now shining brightly from a clearing sky.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, ‘thank you.’

  High in the Council Tree in Beech Valley the United Ourlanders were gathered for that day’s study of Kernels, Traditions and Manners. Old Burdock was speaking slowly, ‘ Every squirrel should know…’

  She stopped, as though listening to leaf-whispers from far, far away, then in quite a different voice said, ‘Marguerite is talking to me …Marguerite is talking to me…She… and Juniper are life-mated and have borne two dreylings.they have named them…Oak and…and…Burdock…’(her old face lit up)’…Rowan is alive…as Bold as ever…he has life-mated with Meadowsweet…they have a dreyling named…named…Bluebell…Spindle and Wood Anemone…Zpider and Woodlouz…have borne twins…There are no Greys at the Blue Pool…Tamarisk is on climba…’

  Old Burdock’s voice was failing, she was using every last remnant of her strength to catch the whisper in the air. Then as it faded, she turned towards the tiny clump as trees on the far-away skyline, focused her entire body-energy into one concentrated thought, magnified by the love she and all those around her felt, and sent it leaping out of her body and across the water to the distant heathlands.