by Michael Tod
‘That’s true.’
People puzzle us
With their strange actions. But then
They’re only human.
‘We often feel like that. So, on balance, we felt it was not wrong to listen.’
‘Have you learned anything important?’ Marguerite asked.
‘Much of interest, and we will tell you some of it when we return. Time is short for us now, and dolphins must never be late. I think we have told you our little reminder on this.’
Punctuality
Is vital. Others’ time wasted,
Is stolen by you
And can never be returned.
Lost minutes sink forever.
‘Shall we swim in and tell you about the humans on our way back?’
‘Yes please, if you would,’ said Marguerite; any new ideas thrilled her. She wished the dolphins farewell, then watched their black heads seem to get smaller as they swam for the harbour entrance and the open sea.
A sense of loneliness enveloped her as her sea-friends disappeared around North Haven Point.
Marguerite fed alone, then slept in one of the palm trees in the valley. The coarse fibres around the base of the leaves made a snug nest, but the unusual sound of the wind rustling the great flat leaves bothered her, and she slept badly. She dreamed of watching her friends, both squirrels and dolphins, drowning in nets. Waking from that dream, she drifted into another where the island was so densely populated with squirrels that several families had to share each tree,
She awoke shivering, even though the sun was above the horizon and the dawn air was pleasantly warm. She came down the trunk of the palm to forage, instinctively stopping well above the ground to look out for predators, before remembering that here on Ourland there were none.
Realisation hit her like a peregrine falcon striking a pigeon.
As there were no predators on this island her second dream was likely to become reality. Squirrels would multiply with no natural checks, and there was nowhere for the extra ones to go. Even if they could find a way to get back to the Mainland, that was effectively grey squirrel country now, so was not an option. She went down to the Zwamp to find Chip.
He was rethreading a bark-ring to replace one that had broken, and, after the formal greeting, she asked him to re-do the calculations that they had done the previous day.
If each pair of squirrels…
They did many calculations before resting at High-sun, and by then Chip was sharing Marguerite’s concern. After her rest she went to find the Council Leader, Just Poplar.
He was at the Council Tree in Beech Valley with his life-mate, Rush the Kind. Rush had borne three dreylings that spring, two males and a female, half-brothers and a half-sister to Chip, her first son. The youngsters were off with the others, probably playing the Wall-game.
After greeting and brushing whiskers with her friends, Marguerite tried to express her concern.
‘Chip and I have been working out how many squirrels there will be if we all breed at the rate we are now. With no predators, the island will soon be overrun.’
Just Poplar did not share her worries.
‘Zumthing ztopz it happening,’ he told her. ‘In the old dayz uz Royalz wuz alwayz trying to have lotz of dreylingz but they moztly died and the zervantz never had too many. There always zeemed to be about the right number of them. Don’t yew worry now.’
Rush offered Marguerite a piece of her favourite dried fungus and changed the subject.
‘Lots of squirrels have stopped coming to Council Meetings,’ Rush said. ‘They all seem to be doing other things. We – Just Poplar and I – we don’t know all the odd things that are going on.’
‘That’z true,’ Just Poplar added, ‘Uz’z zuppozed to be Leader and uz doezn't know if uz zhould encourage it or zupprezz it.’
‘What zort, sort of things?’ Marguerite asked.
‘Well, uz’z heard that Larch and hiz family are biting into a zquirrel zhape over by Pottery Point, and that Chezdnut and Heather have got their clan growing Woodztoockz. But Uz don’t know how true it all iz.’
‘You sound like Chestnut the Doubter himself. He never believes anything unless he has seen it – at least twice.’
They all smiled.
Marguerite bade them farewell and went through the trees to where Chestnut and Heather had their home near he ruined Man-dreys of Maryland. She found three generations of their family in a hazel copse digging up honeysuckle seedlings and replanting them at the foot of small hazel saplings.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, though she could see for herself.
‘Hello Marguerite,’ said Heather Treetops. ‘Chestnut doesn’t believe that we and our family are safe here and so we are making sure we have plenty of Woodstocks to defend us all if Greys come here, or if a pine marten gets to the island again.’
Marguerite looked at the young honeysuckles. Some were already reaching up and twisting round the hazel stems. She knew that in a year or two, a silent battle would commence between the encircling bine and the host sapling.
If the hazel grew fastest it would break the creeper, but the honeysuckle bine could strangle the sapling if it was the stronger. In either case the Life Force would be trapped while this was happening, forming the twisted whorl the squirrels knew as a Woodstock. It has been Marguerite who had learned how to release this trapped force with devastating effect, as many a Mainland Grey could tell.
She thanked Chestnut and Heather for showing her their plantation and headed for Pottery Point.
When the island’s screen of protective trees loomed up ahead of her she remembered Wally’s prophecy.
I honour birch-bark
The Island’s screen. Flies stinging
The piece of the sun
Or should it be A piece? Either way it still seemed to be a nonsense.
Marguerite found Larch the Curious working with his sons, daughters and their youngsters, biting at the wood of a broken tree and she stood and looked in amazement at what they had created.
The pine that had been broken off in the Great Storm had been chiselled by many teeth into the shape of a giant squirrel, staring out over the sea towards the Mainland. The face of the great animal scowled threateningly and it held a carved Woodstock diagonally across its chest.
Larch saw her, came over and brushed whiskers. She waited for him to explain.
‘We got bored,’ he said, slightly embarrassed. ‘There is such a lot of food here, we don’t have to spend much time foraging and we don’t have to watch for predators, so we thought we’d make something. At least this should frighten any invaders away.’
‘Sun rule that no more come,’ Marguerite replied. ‘But this, this is…’ she struggled for a word, 'magnificent.’
Larch stood proudly, his back to his creation.
‘Where’s Clover the Tagger?’ Marguerite asked, looking round for Larch’s life-mate.
‘She’s busy somewhere else. She doesn’t really approve of all this.’ He added, waving a paw at the huge stump outlined against the setting sun. She thinks it’s all a waste of time, but what is time anyway if you have plenty of it?’
‘A bite more off there,’ he called up to one of the busy youngsters, as Marguerite turned back along the shore towards the eastern end of the island.
CHAPTER FIVE
Marguerite spent several days in the South Shore area eating and sleeping alone. Twice she returned to the screen of trees above Pottery Point and from a distance watched the shaping of the giant squirrel progressing, but did not make contact with the chisellers. Her mind was busy with a web of ideas, trying to untangle thoughts that were hopelessly intertwined.
Early on the fifth morning, as the sun lifted over the eastern horizon and the tide surged in from Poole Bay, she knew, by the tingle in her whiskers, that the dolphins had come again. She went down to the low bank at the water’s edge and projected her thoughts across the rippled surface of the harbour.
‘I am h
ere, my friends, I am here.’
Three heads lifted above the wavelets in the quiet dawn-light and the two large ones surged in towards her, while the smaller dolphin moved slowly up and down the waterway farther out.
Malin and Lundy rested in the shallows a few feet from Marguerite. She had never seen a dolphin at rest before and they looked huge, much bigger than a human.
‘Hello, squirrel-friend,’ they said together, followed a moment later by a shyer greeting from Finisterre as he swam in.
‘We promised to tell you what we learned from the fishing-men and we don’t have be back on patrol until tomorrow,’ Malin told her. ‘We decided to come early before any humans were about.’
Lundy sent her thoughts up to Marguerite, ‘We told you that we often patrol just off the Chesil Bank and there are nearly always fishing-men on that beach trying to catch cod and conger eels. When we learned how to pick up their thoughts from the taut-lines, we were surprised to find that most are not even thinking about fish at all. Some come there just to get away from unhappy situations with their mates and others to relax and let their minds go blank. One was hiding his face behind a flimsy sheet of what they call paper, all day, and his mind seemed full of nothing but enormous mammary glands. Then he stared out to sea, as if expecting a dugong to swim by.’
Marguerite wondered briefly what a dugong was, but suppressed the thought. She was having a little difficulty in understanding, but wanted to know more.
‘Why can’t you just know what they are thinking, like you do with me?’ she asked.
‘You have an open mind,’ Lundy replied. ‘Humans try to keep their thoughts in a shell as though each was hiding some terrible secret. Only when they are alone on the beach do they relax and then their taut-lines convey their thoughts down into the sea like a trickle of water down a pipe.’
‘What else do they think about?’ Marguerite asked.
Malin’s thoughts washed in, ‘One was excited about things he was studying called ‘computers’. You may know that humans in this part of the world do something called work which most don’t like, for five days out of every seven and then they have two days for doing other things they do like, such as fishing. Then they do five days more of work.’
‘What is a computer?’ Marguerite asked.
‘It was hard to read that. I could only get a picture of a box, but it used numbers inside to find out all manner of things. That human was convinced that within a few years the computers would be doing much of the work the humans have to do now, and then they would spend only four days doing work and have three days for fishing.’
Overhead Marguerite heard the W-wow, W-wow sound of a swan’s wing-beats and looked up as the great bird flew over. Finisterre’s thoughts reached her. ‘I wish I could fly,’ he was thinking.
Malin said, ‘There will be humans about soon. We must go now.’
‘Are you going back out to sea?’ Marguerite asked.
‘I’ve a friend I would like you to meet. Like me, he is interested in numbers.’
‘We plan to show Finisterre around Poole Harbour today – we could come back at dusk.’
‘I would like that,’ Marguerite said, and the dolphins wriggled backwards into deeper water and swam away up the harbour on the rising tide.
It was to be a long day for Marguerite. First she sought out Chip and tried to explain all that she had heard from the dolphins. She had told him before how she could communicate with them without actually speaking. Now she reminded him.
‘I seem to be the only squirrel who can do it,’ she said.
‘Not so,’ said Chip. ‘You remember when we were in that boat last year? I knew all that the dolphins were saying to you, but I couldn’t hear what you were saying to them. Your mouth was shut all the time.’
‘You never told me this before,’ said Marguerite.
‘I was always a bit scared of you then. You know – Tagger and all that. He smiled at her. ‘Now I know that you are just an ordinary squirrel like the rest of us … ordinary, but special,’ he added.
Marguerite smiled back. ‘I often wish I could be ordinary – it’s just that extra-ordinary things seem to keep happening to me.’
Chip hung the latest version of the Bark-rush on a twig and sat back to listen to Marguerite’s tale.
She told him, not only about the human’s computer-box but also about Chestnut and Heather’s plantation of Woodstocks and the tree being made into a huge squirrel shape. ‘Sun knows what’s going on in other parts of Ourland. We never get together as we used to, there are just too many of us. And since there’s no danger now, it doesn’t seem so important.’
Chip looked grave. ‘I’ve done some more calculations,’ he told here. ‘In a few years time there will be more squirrels on this island than it can possibly support. I’ve tried to see what would happen if we increased the Sun’s tithe and, even if we left half of the buried nuts to grow, there wouldn’t be enough room on the island for all those trees. We’re going to have to slow down our breeding rate, or get the extra squirrels to the Mainland.’
‘As far as we know, the Mainland is all Grey territory now. I don’t know how they would react to us coming back,’ Marguerite said. ‘I often wonder how my brother Rowan and his party are doing. Only a squirrel as bold as he is would have dared to stay on and try to teach them our ideals. I worry about him a lot.’
‘He’s got Meadowsweet, Spindle and Wood Anemone and all their youngsters with him; he’s probably all right.’ Chip comforted her, but he knew from his own experiences that the Greys were unpredictable. Their morals and actions seemed to depend on who the Great Lord Silver was at their Woburn Base, and what the Great Lord believed was right, or expedient, at the time.
Marguerite’s thoughts had moved on. ‘If we’re going to get over to the South Shore in time to meet the dolphins, we’d better leave,’ she said.
Chip hid the Bark-rush and together they rushed through the treetops in the gathering dusk, enjoying the activity and forgetting their worries in the pleasure of judging and executing graceful leaps between the trees.
The dolphins were waiting just off the beach.
‘I’m sorry we’re late,’ Marguerite panted, speaking the words out loud so that Chip could hear them as well as the dolphins. ‘I know that time is important to you. I remember you saying, Lost minutes sink forever.’
‘We have only just come ourselves,’ Lundy told her.
‘We waited until we could be sure that there were no humans about. They make such a fuss if they see us too close. Is that the friend you told us about?’
‘Yes, like me he can understand your thoughts. I told him what you told me this morning. We both wish to hear more.’
Marguerite and Chip settled in a tree near the shore. From there they could just see the shapes of the three dolphins in the water as the evening light faded and the tide started to ebb.
‘We will have to move further out as the tide falls,’ Lundy told them, ‘but darkness makes no difference to our conversation. Was there something you especially wanted us to tell you?’
‘It’s about the human’s computer. Does it have rings of bark that move backwards and forwards on rush stems?’
‘Not as far as we could tell. But the human only pictured the box that covered it. There might have been fish swimming backwards and forwards inside it for all we could tell.’
Chip looked disappointed. ‘Do you think it will do what the humans want it to do?’ he asked.
Malin appeared to be discussing something intimately with Lundy, shutting the squirrels out of their thoughts. Then he came back to them. ‘I once told you that dolphins can sometimes Look Forward but we don’t often do it. I looked forward /2 years to see if the human’s predictions were correct.’
Marguerite interrupted, I’m sorry, but how long is /2?’
‘It is I who must apologise, I forgot that you count differently to us. is our symbol for what the humans would call sixty, so it would be one h
alf of that. Thirty years to them.’
Marguerite was about to interrupt again to point out that squirrels counted in eights, not tens as humans did, but suppressed the thought. She was far more interested in the dolphins’ ability to Look Forward. Was this what Wally had been able to do?
‘Was the man right about only four days or work and three for fishing?’
‘Sadly, no. He was right about computers taking over much of the work but the humans had not shared out what was left. Most were still working for five days out of seven and others were able to fish on all seven days. Our fishing man was one of these, but he was not happy about it. Odd creatures, humans.’
‘I’m hungry,’ Finisterre’s thoughts reached the squirrels. Marguerite smiled. All young males must be the same.
‘Thank you, my friends, she said. ‘This has all been most interesting. I think your youngster wants to forage. Farewell and thank you again.’
The dolphins turned in the darkness and swam for the open sea. Marguerite was glad that Chip was with her and the two of them climbed higher into the tree and settled down in a fork to discuss what they had learned, before drifting off to sleep, each enjoying the warm comfort of the other’s body next to theirs.
CHAPTER SIX
Marguerite had been glad of Chip’s warmth. The night had been cold for sleeping alone in the open, and the sun was hidden behind low clouds when they woke and foraged together in a chill breeze from the sea.
They moved through the screen of trees, finding morsels of food here and there and, by the time they reached the old meadow they were comfortably full. Only occasionally did they sit up and look round, an unnecessary but still instinctive action, as they knew there were no predators to harm them. At the edge of the meadow they stopped.
