There he found himself shaking and sweating and running all at the same time, desperate to get away from Rune, who put the fear of diseased darkness into his soul. He had never been so frightened in his life, not by Root, not by the wildest noises on the surface out of reach of a tunnel entrance, not even by Burrhead.
Only when he was down below the slopes again and well into the oaks did he pause to think. He couldn’t go back to the Westside, because he would almost certainly be killed by Burrhead or Root; he couldn’t hang about around Hulver’s tunnels. So he didn’t know where to go. Having reached this cul-de-sac he moved on to thinking about Hulver.
If Rune was here and Rune was an elder, the elder meeting must be over. Which meant that Hulver must also be on his way back. Hulver would be able to tell him what to do or where to go, so he turned away from the route back to the Westside, cutting off towards the Eastside, contouring round the slopes. He would try to locate the main tunnel Hulver had headed down when he had gone to Barrow Vale and which, presumably, Rune had come up. With luck he might reach it before Hulver passed by on up to his burrow—and Rune. Rune! It occurred to Bracken only then, after running so far and fearing so much, that Rune was the danger Hulver must have sensed would come. Rune had come to kill Hulver.
An urgency now came to his progress through the wood, for he speeded up, not bothering to run from cover to cover and shadow to shadow as any sensible creature normally does. No time. Not bothering to avoid the dry leaves because of the noise they made. No time. Dashing, running, scampering along the contour. Against time. His fear of Rune was replaced by an urgent desire to reach Hulver and warn him.
Strangely, as he ran through the wood, aware of direction, aware of scent, feeling the dangers, head clear as air after rainfall, an excitement he had never felt before crept over him. He felt more in control of himself than he had ever felt. All the skills he had added to his basic gift for orientation and exploration were now working together, taking him towards the tunnel he knew must be there to find. Probably no other Duncton mole but Rune and one or two of the Marshenders could have found their way across the system to the communal tunnel with the concentration and skill that Bracken, still a youngster, was able to muster. He knew where he was going. And he found the tunnel as surely as a wasp finds its nest or an owl its prey. He knew it by temperature change, by smell, and by location; he knew by instinct. He lay above the tunnel for a moment or two and then ran up it towards the slopes, realising that if he went down towards Barrow Vale it was just possible that Hulver might pass him. So he ran back up towards Hulver’s burrow and the danger of Rune until he found an old, barely discernible entrance, and went down it. He crouched low and silent. There was no vibration in the tunnel at all, not a mole for miles. If Hulver had passed by, he was now far on and there was no chance of catching him. So he waited, snout on his paws, just as Hulver sometimes lay in the wood, eyes closed. Above, on the surface, the midday sun shone down poised for its downward arc to the west.
Not long afterwards Bracken felt vibrations and the briefest rush of air as a mole approached. He waited trembling, for if it wasn’t Hulver he would have to do some fast talking. He decided to claim that Rune had sent him down this way on his way back to the Westside. As the mole approached, Bracken decided to save time by announcing himself.
‘Hello! I’m Bracken!’
The mole stopped, and Bracken heard a gentle laugh.
‘Are you, indeed! Always finding your way into tunnels you shouldn’t be in!’ It was Hulver, and Bracken felt relief rush over him. ‘There’s little time, Bracken, very little,’ said Hulver quickly, ‘and there is a great deal to do. I assume that Rune found you in my burrow and sent you packing?’
Bracken nodded. ‘Whether he has gone there to kill me or simply to warn me for a final (and fruitless) time, I cannot say,’ said Hulver. ‘But I’m not going to risk going back now that you are safe here with me. There are nine days left before Midsummer Night. We cannot return to my tunnels and so must hide somewhere else. I think the best thing is to head up towards the Stone and rely on its shadow to hide us for the days that remain. You have much to learn, more than you can know.’
Bracken felt, or thought he felt, alien vibrations far down in the tunnel. Hard to say, but he wanted to get away as fast as possible.
‘There may be other moles coming,’ he whispered. ‘I can hear something, or rather feel it.’ Hulver looked at the youngster who crouched still before him, his head and snout on one side, body tense and ready; feeling fear for him. For himself he felt nothing; he had little time left now. But this youngster had so much to do, so much, and Hulver trembled for him.
‘We must go,’ said Bracken urgently. ‘Please may we go?’ Hulver nodded and turned up to the entrance and out on to the surface into the afternoon sun.
Hulver led the way, taking the circular route below his own tunnels that Bracken had taken, then up towards the beech trees. At last the beech wood lay directly ahead of them, familiar to Hulver but as terrifying to Bracken in its tall silence as it had been when he had been alone by Hulver’s burrow. Each step they took left the friendly oak wood further behind, with its bird chatter and song, its scurrying blackbirds searching the leaves, its squirrels starting and champing among the oak branches.
‘We had better stop for a while,’ said Bracken, his natural tracking instinct giving him a sense of command he had not felt before. ‘We’ll wait for the evening wind to give us noise cover before we climb on.’
Hulver smiled to himself. Just what he would have done—had he thought of it. Bracken certainly seemed to know his way about the wood. Yet, at the same time, the youngster was very nervous, jumping at every shadow and making Hulver himself start more than once. It was time to stop.
He let Bracken dig a temporary burrow, watching him tunnel away at the mould. The youngster looked vulnerable against the massive oak root that plunged into the ground beyond him.
He had a strong feeling that his long wait since the previous Midsummer, a wait that had often driven him to despair and doubt, had not been in vain.
Often on a dark night he had tossed and turned over in his mind why he, of all his generation, was still alive after six Longest Nights. Six! He shuddered at the number. When the long moleyears of winter had given way finally to the earliest stirrings of spring, the worst time came when the air was chill as ice and he knew he would not mate. Often, then, he would go to sleep in his burrow and wish that he might not wake up. He wanted never again to rise to the aches and pains, fears and doubts that had come upon him in old age. But as spring advanced, the feeling that Rebecca the Healer was there had come over him and gradually a tiny hope had come back that something might happen. Something might happen. He had remembered the stories about her which they had told him as a child when he was sure she was real and walked the tunnels when nomole was there. Now he saw she was real after all, but had gone away for most of his life, only to come back at the end. ‘Old foolish mole,’ he scolded himself. ‘Living in the past.’
‘The burrow’s ready, Hulver,’ Bracken said, breaking into his thoughts. ‘Best go down it until the wind rises.’ Hulver did, meek as an old mole. What could he give the youngster in the time he had left?
Well, he could tell him the old stories and instruct him in the rituals to pass on the heritage that is everymole’s, though so few want to honour it.
Seeing that Bracken was jumpy with waiting for nightfall, Hulver decided to start his education there and then by recounting the tale of Merton, chosen mole of Uffington, just as it had been told to him by his father, and to him by the very last scribemole ever to visit Duncton Wood.
It was a tale that recalled the mole whose task in life had turned out to be to save the secret song of Uffington, which only chosen moles sing and then only once in a cycle of seasons. How Bracken shuddered to hear of the plague that wiped out most of the scribemoles back in the distant past when Merton had lived. How his heart stirred to hear of Merton
’s escape from Uffington, and his survival, and his remembrance of the sacred song he had learned in secret and never forgotten. Then of his return, when his days were nearly over, so that he could pass on the song for other younger moles to sing so that it might be known to future generations and perhaps, if the Stone permitted it, finally be sung by all moles and not just a chosen few.
‘Will that ever happen?’ asked Bracken, breaking the silence that followed the end of Hulver’s long tale. ‘And do they still sing the secret song in Uffington?’
Hulver shrugged, for how could he know if the song still lived? Had not most of the rituals in his own system died, and that within living memory?
‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ he said, ‘but I remember one thing my father told me, though blessed if I can make much sense of it. He said there was a special Stone nearing Uffington—the Blowing Stone, I think he called it—which sounds in the wind sometimes. He told me that the scribemole said that when that Stone sounded seven times, then the secret song would be sung by all moles.’
It was just the sort of story to stir a youngster’s heart and Bracken asked the question any youngster would have asked: ‘What’s the song about?’
Hulver stayed silent; he had often pondered the question himself. He had asked it of his father, and got no clear answer. He could only answer in terms of Duncton Wood, where he had spent his entire life, and think that perhaps there were times when belief in the Stone and celebration of its life becomes a hidden secret thing, carried forward to new generations by those few who are foolhardy enough, or brave enough, to trust in a power they cannot see, and believe that it is worth far far more than the comforts of food and shelter that a system like Duncton offers.
He was confused about it, so how could he ever hope to pass on anything useful to this youngster? All he could do was to try, and to believe that tales like this one carry truth forward in their own way.
This was the story a long-forgotten scribemole brought to Duncton Wood. It was handed down through the generations as the song it is about was handed down. Until one fraught day it was Hulver’s task to hand it on to young Bracken to carry it in his heart all his life, as Hulver carried the song.
Although Bracken appeared half asleep as Hulver finished the tale, he had never been so awake. The tale had the effect of carrying him far beyond Duncton Wood and making him see again, as he had seen before, that Duncton was just one system, one place, one corner of the world. He wondered where his task lay, for he supposed he had one.
Above them, on the surface, the wind stirred and a beech leaf tumbled noisily against their temporary burrow entrance. It settled for a moment and then scurried off a moleyard or two before eddying to a stop against a beech-tree trunk, joining the others already there.
The evening wind had come and the light was beginning to lose its shine as the sun settled down towards the distant hills no Duncton mole could ever see.
‘It’s time to go,’ said Bracken. ‘Show me the direction, but let me go first, for I’m used to sensing danger and can find my way very quickly.’
* * *
They trekked up to the southwest, away from Hulver’s burrow and the danger of Rune. Bracken had imagined his first climb up into the Ancient System, thinking that the sun would be high in the sky and he would walk boldly upwards. Instead, here he was with very real danger about, skulking his way through the twilight. But there was something sweeter than his most delightful imaginings in having as a guide and friend this old mole for whom he was beginning to feel such deep affection and reverence.
It got darker as they rose higher, yet the further they went, the stronger did Bracken feel the pull from the top. He felt it as a good wormhunter feels his prey. They scurried from tree to tree, from root to root, always seeking the darkest shadow. Here and there they came across a bare patch of chalk, white in the evening gloom, and they avoided it for fear that their movement might be seen against it by any predators that lurked in the trees above. Once they passed by a massive tangle of roots rising starkly into the air, the bowl of a tree that had toppled over in some storm. They steered well clear of its long trunk and shattered branches on the ground—what mole could tell what might be nesting there.
As they rose higher, Hulver suddenly stopped and put his paw on Bracken’s shoulder, bringing him to a halt. ‘We are on the Ancient System,’ he whispered. ‘From here it runs upwards and across the hill.’
But Bracken knew it already, for he had sensed they were crossing old forgotten tunnels lost deep beneath the mould and debris of ages. His heart was beating with excitement for he felt as if, after a very long time, he was coming home. He knew the Ancient System was around him, he could feel it. It lay beneath them waiting, as it had waited for generations. And he could feel more than ever the great Stone which they were getting nearer and nearer.
‘We’ll go right to the Stone, now,’ he said quietly to Hulver, ‘and from there we’ll know what to do.’
It was at that moment in the evening when an eyeblink separates day from night. In the moment that a mole might wonder if it is still day, the question is answered by a sudden pall of purple in the sky. Bracken’s snout pointed up through the wood directly towards the Stone, although he had never been there. ‘There is nomole here,’ he told Hulver, certain of himself, ‘and there is none on the Ancient System. Can’t you feel it?’
Hulver couldn’t feel it, didn’t like it, and couldn’t understand Bracken’s certainty; but he followed after him, for as he watched Bracken’s flanks disappearing upwards into the dark and looked about him at the black tree-shapes with the wide open spaces in between, nothing else seemed as safe. He could feel that Bracken was gaining strength with each moment that passed. There was a power about him that swept Hulver along and he had the feeling that through this mole the Stone was revealing to him a tiny part of its pattern, the whole of which he could not see or feel, although he knew it to be there.
With this feeling, a slow calm fell over him that was never to leave him again. In some way he was watching a battle start, an enormous battle, a terribly dangerous time. It would happen, whatever happened, and his own part in it, if part he had, was best played by his being at peace with himself and the world about him.
‘Hulver!’ The whispered urgency of Bracken’s voice struck Hulver as comic, but with compassion for the youngster he restrained himself from laughing happily. Instead he watched with love as Bracken ran back towards him, to hurry him up, no doubt.
To Bracken, Hulver looked so gentle in the soft night, he expressed such peace and love, that his nerves were suddenly calmed within themselves and his fear and nervousness became as easy to brush away as dust on his fur. ‘Come on,’ said Bracken softly, ‘come on, Hulver!’ But there was no need, for Hulver was already starting up the hill again, and for some reason was chuckling quietly to himself.
As the hill levelled off and they reached its summit, Bracken slowed, almost afraid to advance, for he knew they were now very near the Stone. The windnoise in the trees was high and strong, swinging back from one side above them to the other as the wind billowed from one group of trees to another. It was a mass of great, invisible waves rolling across the top of the wood and way beyond it. ‘There!’ said Hulver, pointing a talon forwards into a clearing ahead of them. ‘There is the Stone.’
And it was, huge and massive, towering upwards, solid in the windy night. Ten or twelve moleyards from it stood an ancient beech tree, its roots plunging along and into the ground, across the clearing’s floor to the Stone itself. From where Bracken crouched, the roots appeared solid waves that had rolled and heaved against the Stone, so that it tilted a little from the tree away towards Uffington.
There was no other tree near it, for the clearing was quite wide, and as they ran across towards the Stone, the windnoise above them fell quieter, staying with the trees at its edge, and Bracken had the impression that he had come into somewhere very quiet and still. But he felt the thunder of the generations and k
new that all around him and beyond the clearing the Ancient System stretched forth, its lost tunnels hidden beneath the ages of leaf mould on the spare surface of the hill. He was at the heart of the Ancient System, but more than that; he was home, at the centre, at the true centre of the system into which he had been born.
* * *
Hulver crouched down before the Stone and Bracken followed him. Up here the wood defined itself by windnoise. Off to the west lay the pastures, the wind running up off them and then through the massive branches above them. To the east was the escarpment where upward eddies of air met the wind in the trees and the wind tumbled above on the edge of the void. Below them were softer noises of the main wood itself, quieter than this, deeper. By the Stone there was silence, and a calm Bracken had never known anywhere in the wood.
He got up and ran to the edge of the clearing in the direction towards which the Stone tilted: ‘How far is Uffington, Hulver?’ he asked.
Hulver came to his side, both their snouts pointing out through the trees towards the west. Hulver was still breathing heavily from the long climb up from the slopes. ‘A long way, a very long way, but not so far if you have the Stone behind you.’
‘No, it’s not so far, not too far,’ said Bracken to himself, for he could feel Uffington pulling him. ‘It’s not that far, Hulver,’ he said quietly, ‘I can feel it.’
When Hulver used the words ‘not so far if you have the Stone behind you’, he was giving the standard reply senior moles used to give to youngsters who asked the once inevitable question about Uffington. But as Bracken crouched there, Hulver saw it differently from the way in which he had seen it before: perhaps it meant exactly what it said: perhaps Uffington was in some way nearer if you kept the Stone always directly behind you as you progressed towards it. Well, it made sense, didn’t it? And he had been struck by the way in which Bracken had run exactly to the point on the edge of the clearing that lay nearest Uffington, without having been told.
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