Duncton Tales

by William Horwood

  Gasping as Pumpkin had before him, he carried the Book to the others and placed it thankfully with them to almost complete the circle. A gap for only one book, the seventh and last, remained.

  “Now we wait on

  For the last Stone

  Without which the circle gapes;

  And the Seventh

  Lost and last Book

  By whose words we may be blessed.”

  His voice was shaky as he quoted the famous poem of holy prophecy whose striving for fulfilment the modern history of moledom had been about.

  “Well, the last Stillstone came back to Duncton Wood a century ago, and all the Books but the last are here. The time is coming when we must risk all in striving to complete the circle, and discover and bring home the missing Book of Silence.”

  They all stared at the patch of earth where the circle was incomplete.

  “You cannot leave them here, Master,” said Privet, “hard though they are to carry. Let us stay here in the Ancient System with you to help.”

  As she spoke the rumbling of Dark Sound grew louder still, seeming like a tidal wave that was already gathering in the unvisited tunnels of the Ancient System that lay darkly beyond the chamber.

  “No, Privet, that is not your task but mine. Now moles, place your paws in turn on the ground where the circle gapes, and vow in your different ways to give what you can of yourself towards the discovery of the Book of Silence. There is little time — begin!”

  Then one by one they came forward to the gap, and placed their paws in the dusty earth, each paw making a print that melded with the previous one so that the paw mark they made together seemed to grow bigger and ever more powerful, though each found it hard to keep a paw there for more than a moment, and the Dark Sound began to surge and mount in the very chamber itself.

  “Maple … Fieldfare … Chater …” cried Stour as in turn they filled the gap with their right paws; ‘Pumpkin … Whillan … good Drubbins …”

  Only Privet hesitated, eyes wild and looking round in fear as the Dark Sound came on them, dangerous and seeking to sweep them up and batter them against the walls of the chamber, and subsume them.

  “Privet!” ordered Stour. “Do it now, it is your turn. Place your paw where the others placed theirs. Do it, mole!”

  Gasping, sobbing, her whole body seeming to be struggling to stay on the ground against the terror all about, Privet reached her paw out and fought to place it on the earthen floor. Then she screamed, a desolate scream, which was taken up into the sound and twisted and turned into a thousand screams.

  “I cannot touch the ground!” she cried out.

  “Mole, you must!” cried old Stour still louder.

  With another scream she tried again and as she did the first of them turned and began to run from the place, the sound unbearable in their ears, its pain and suffering and confusion overtaking all else they felt.

  “Help me,” she cried out. “Help me, Stone!”

  Then for a moment, brief as first light of dawn, there came from beyond the Dark Sound something different. A cry as of a mole that sought to help, deep and inarticulate, distant, beyond giving help yet striving to come nearer; then beyond even that, and briefer still, a moment of pure Silence, the voice of the Stone.

  The effect on all of them of this moment of soundless sound was great, but on Privet it was the greatest of all.

  While the others suddenly stilled into quietness, she seemed almost to become pale or light, as if caught by some errant ray of the sun across a way that had until then been dark. More than that, it seemed to those around her as if she danced, or moved with a grace that was Stone-given.

  As they watched she went from one Book to another, touching each as if to take in what they were and pass on to the next. Their names she whispered wonderingly.

  “Earth … Suffering … Fighting … Darkness … Healing … Light …”

  But the last, Silence, greatest of all, she could not say, but hovered in that strange light that was an aura about her and held them all so still before the gap where that lost Book should have been.

  Then, from out of the place to which the sound of Silence had removed her, so near to them and yet so far, she called their names, much as she had spoken the names of the Books. It was a call for help.

  “Fieldfare, Chater, Maple...” so that their names seemed to echo and meld into one name, the name of allmole, of which each of them was one part of the greater whole, essential yet not entire, while she was beyond them, on the way towards the Stone. It was no longer Master Librarian Stour who was apart from the Seven Stancing, and she who was of it, but he who was of it, and she apart.

  Yet she called out from the Silence for their help, like a mole with courage and strength and purpose but who yet needs help from others who have not quite the strength and grace she has.

  “Help me,” she called, as her dance in the light began to falter, and the sound of Silence terribly to fade. “Help me now …”

  Which one moved first to help her? Which next? Which last?

  Nomole knows for certain, though historians have argued, most convincingly, for one, or yet another of the moles who were there, so that all of them have followers.

  One thing is certain, one thing most appropriate: it was good Pumpkin, Library aide, who, prompted perhaps by one or all the others, and stirred out of the stillness into which the Silence had cast, turned from the circle, took up the broken fragments and folios of the rescued Book of Tales, and placed them before Privet most reverently.

  Then she spoke, and though it was softly her words carried a compelling authority.

  “Now,” she said, “now is not the time for us to leave. In that moment we heard the sound of Silence, and I heard in it a warning against leaving before my task here is complete. Now I must begin …”

  She seemed then to lull into a half sleep, a half stare, as they stared in awe at her and she, seeming not to know they were there, began to go through the Book of Tales, bit by bit.

  As she did so the last moment of the Silence faded away and the Dark Sound returned, louder and more virulent than before. Yet, perhaps because they too had been touched by Silence and had now in their hearts a memory of its sound, they were able to withstand it better than before.

  Master Stour, who understood better than the others that the Stone’s power was profound among them then, signalled to Fieldfare to come and watch over her, while Pumpkin, understanding that Privet might have need of him as aide, stanced before her, ready to help with the folios. Whillan watched nearby, still affected it seemed by the Silence they had heard, and glancing sometimes, half in awe, half in fascination, towards the arched entrance to the tunnel that ran deep into the Ancient System from where the sound had come.

  While they did so Stour quietly ordered Maple and Chater to go back through the tunnels to his study cell and look down into the Library to see if there was sign of danger there. This they quickly did, and on their return reported that they had been able to see from the secret gallery tunnel that ran from it across the high end of the Library’s Main Chamber a great mass of Newborns, waiting and watching.

  “But they seemed afraid to come up the slipway to the study cell, Master, though we could not tell why,” they whispered, their voices quiet because of the sense of awe and reverence surrounding Privet where she stanced. We saw Snyde there, looking as hateful as only he can, and that mole Bantam who terrorized Fieldfare, she’s there too; and with them is a third more powerful, more dangerous-looking mole, one of their Senior Brothers perhaps. Then behind them there’s more, as if they’re massing ready for assault. We feel we should go back in case they summon up courage to ascend and attack. They …”

  “Moles,” said Stour, “your thoughts are worthy but I doubt if you can defend us as well as the Stone is already doing! Perhaps it was the power of the Seven Stancing, perhaps the Dark Sound delved so many generations before in this ancient place to protect moles whose tasks are for the Stone aga
inst such forces of darkness as now linger and hesitate beneath the portal of my Study cell.

  “Stay here quietly, do not disturb Privet, and if the Dark Sound begins to fade, and our protection to weaken, then go back to the portal, see what you can see, and let me know if the Newborns come closer, and endanger all we do. I sense there is but little time for Privet to complete her task.”

  As he gave his quiet instructions, and Maple and Chater took up a discreet stance near the entrance to the chamber, Privet ended her examination of the Book of Tales, if so ragged a thing could be called ‘book’ at all, and asked Pumpkin to put out the cleanest folios from amongst the discards that he held separately.

  “They’re all scored and marked, just as you picked them up,” he said.

  “Find the clearest ones you can. Hurry, mole, hurry while I have the strength for this …”

  Quickly he found a half-used folio and proffered it to her, and she nodded her thanks, and indicated he should sort the rest into what order of possible usage he thought best. Then without more ado she placed the folio before her and began to scribe the last tale of Husk’s great work, the lost tale called ‘The Sound of Silence’.

  For those who witnessed that great scribing, there in the presence of the six Books of Moledom, with the ever-present roar and shattering, fading and swelling, calling and screaming, pattering and sliding of Dark Sound from the Ancient System, there could be no forgetting.

  Here was the making of a final tale of Tales, a tale which told of Husk, and Husk’s father’s father’s making of a collection of tales; a tale whose tunnels and labyrinths explored the laughter and the tears of a generation of moles who had lived in the long shadows, and the new discovered light, after the war of Word and Stone.

  Not only Husk was there, young once, eager, determined, growing old as his great Collection grew more jumbled and chaotic, but Cobbett too, whom Privet herself had once known. He was there, and looming near but not yet come, the shadow of Rooster, Master of the Delve, for in that tale there were beginnings in the endings, just as in the seasons’ turn at Longest Night, the distant call of spring may be heard beyond the approaching thunder of the winter.

  Of these things Privet scribed, and something, too, of the moles who gathered round her in the chamber as she fulfilled her promise to Husk, and her task. Of Fieldfare and her life in Duncton Wood, of Chater, and the love he had for the mole who was his home; of Drubbins, wise old mole, and Maple, whose destiny was yet to come. Of all their story.

  Of the Master Stour she scribed, for his tale wound its way amidst the others, leading them all towards that sound of Silence which Husk had sought so long, and then seen just beyond his living grasp.

  Until, as she took up the very last folio of those discards Pumpkin had offered her one after another with increasing doubt, for he wondered how she could find space to scribe at all so great a theme on so ruined a set of folios, she turned by that infallible instinct all scribemoles possess to the last and most mysterious part of her tale, which would — though she could not yet guess how — take it to its ending, and a beginning once again. She began to scribe of Whillan.

  Of him she scribed, of what she knew of his coming, and of his puphood, and his first exploration of the wood alone which took him — truly, how tales encircle on themselves and like the seasons come back to where they first began, beginnings, endings, and beginnings once again! — to Husk’s tunnels, and his discovery of the mysteries of Rolls, and Rhymes, but most of all of Tales.

  “Whillan, my dear …” whispered Privet, looking up at him as if to help with this last effort she must make.

  But if Whillan was there a moment before, he was not there a moment after. For while the others in the chamber has found their tasks, Whillan had stayed in a state of seeming quiet, unnoticed by the others, or ignored.

  Yet when Privet came near the end of her scribing and began to recount his part in the last tale, he grew suddenly alert and restless, his eyes first on her and her scribing paw as if he felt in pain that she might try to put him into the ordered eternal place of a told-tale, out of which he had first come.

  Then, “Whillan …?” she whispered, and on impulse, as it seemed to Stour who was watching, he was suddenly gone through the portal at the end of the chamber and into the tunnels of the ancient system.

  “No, mole, not there … no!” cried out Stour, disturbing the strange quiet that had survived amidst the sound about them.

  His cry echoed harshly all about, breaking the fragile peace and bringing forth a renewal of Dark Sound such that all of them but Privet and himself cowered once more, distraught.

  The fearful sound swelled, and thundered, so that the chamber they were in seemed to shake and threaten them; but then the thunder became the sound of distraught running paws, and the crying of a mole, a mole in mortal danger, a mole whose cry Privet knew as that of a pup, long before, called Whillan.

  A pup who ran back down the south-eastern slopes beyond the wood towards the place of darkness from which Stour had rescued him, a pup whose Dark Sound was the beating rooks’ wings, and the pointing and the tearing of rooks’ beaks and the shadows of a cross-under, where no hope was, where no light could be, where death was when a mother began to die, and a father was not.

  Up and up around them the Dark Sound mounted, and somewhere beyond the dark portal, not far but too far for them to reach, Whillan cried out he was lost again, lost as he had seemed to be at birth, lost as, at some time in their lives, some soon, some late, all moles are; lost in the darkness from which they reach out blindly to touch the Stone and know that they are safe to be that part of themselves that lives on still, at peace beyond the dark sound of it all.

  Then, threatening, sensing weakness and distress, the Newborns found their courage and, their cries, mounted up the nearby slipway towards the Master’s study cell and so towards where the moles tried to hold on to their Seven Stancing, and see a way, if only for a time, to fill the gap that broke the circle of the great Books of Moledom.

  Strength magnificent and courageous — is it only when moles are tried their farthest that their greater selves are found, touched, never quite lost again?

  Maple rose through the Dark Sound to turn towards his task, putting out a great paw to pull Chater with him, that together they might go and face the Newborns and stop them, or hold them, or merely slow them for a time, time before which the Dark Sound was taking Whillan into death.

  While in the chamber where the Books lay still, and Fieldfare was huddled and mute, and Pumpkin dumb, and Drubbins’ paws could not move themselves … there in the swirl of pain and loss that once was long before, and was now a pup’s nightmare once again, an old mole slowly moved.

  Master Stour, Librarian, doubter, scholar, friend, put a brave paw forward into the darkness about them, and then another, and so on until he reached poor Privet’s flank, where she stared at the dark portal, her scribing forgotten, the last folio of the ruined folios incomplete, hearing her Whillan’s dark flounder into death.

  “Come,” commanded Stour, “together we shall find the strength.”

  Then, as Maple had taken Chater from the Chamber towards the world of day and physical danger, so Stour took Privet through the portal into night and the void of spiritual death, where moles see their own weakness and know not where to go.

  Into the Dark Sound they went, down a tunnel of delved carvings and indentations, all ugly and strange, to a mole who floundered now, blinded by sound, deafened by dark light, his paws reaching vainly across the walls in panic and desperation as with his last strength he sought a way back out of the darkness into which his own fear, his own birth, had put him.

  Towards him they struggled, each holding the other knowing that if they let go of each other perhaps their last touch on the world beyond themselves would slip away and they too …

  “He’s searching for something,” cried out Stour as they neared Whillan’s wild form, though Stour’s cry seemed no more than
a whisper.

  “Do not lose touch with me, Master Stour,” Privet sobbed, reaching to the walls as Whillan wildly reached, searching amongst their dark delvings as he searched, and then, with a cry, finding what he did not find.

  “I cannot keep in touch with you more,” cried Stour as she moved beyond his paw as if she saw the beginning of something high, high up in the deep-delved wall, a line, a hint of light, the merest scratch of a talon in that place that so long before only a Master of the Delve could have made.

  As Stour, unable to hold on to her, himself began to fall into the void of Dark Sound, and Whillan uttered his last despairing cry, as he had once before beneath the cross-under beneath the slopes south-east of Duncton Wood, Privet put the talons of her right paw to the beginning that she found, and began to find again the line, gentle and soft, sinuous and subtle, that a Master had made that another mole might find. A line made centuries before for this moment.

  With increasing certainty, and with another cry as if to welcome once again the touch of a mole she had loved and lost, Privet began to sound out the delving just as Rooster had so long before showed her against just such a moment as this, and about them all the sound of Silence sounded out again.

  Light was there! The void in retreat! The shadows in disarray … and Stour stanced down and staring, not at Whillan who had turned back to them and was safe again; nor at Privet, whose kenning of the delve was nearly done and the sound continuing to swell magically about them, healing and good; oh no, not at them did wise Stour stare.

  But beyond further down the tunnel, to where the shadows fled far away, and where too, turning and staring for a moment, was the form of a great mole who once had been and might yet be again: a Master of the Delve. His brow was furrowed, his eyes askew, his head nearly monstrous, and his paws both huge, yet one more huge than the other, whilst his roar, like his tears, was silent. Then, as Stour reached for him, almost it felt to help him, he was gone …

  “How did you know?” whispered Stour as, together, the three retraced their steps through the new-found light back through the dark portal. “How did you know where the delve might be?”