Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  * * *

  Up on the pastures, Stonecrop resolutely continued the search for his brother which he had started in the afternoon, calling Cairn’s name softly into the wood. Cairn had been gone too long and there was a smell of danger in the air that worried Stonecrop. He had delayed, not out of fear of Duncton Wood, for Stonecrop had little fear of anything, but out of affection and reverence for his brother’s privacy.

  But finally he had gone into the wood and found the temporary burrow where he could tell his brother had been, and where there were signs of fighting. There was fear and terror in the air of the burrow that put a dreadful urgency into Stonecrop’s search.

  Indeed, the stench of fear was so unpleasant in the abandoned burrow that he could not stay in it and ran out on to the surface. He moved carefully about the area of trampled vegetation around the tunnel entrance trying to work out what had happened. He had no fear at all of Duncton moles discovering him there, for he was powerful and strong, bigger and more solid than Cairn. So he searched the little clearing without fear, working out where Cairn had gone.

  He must have been injured, or he would have returned to the pastures. He would not have gone deeper into the woods, for fear of other Duncton moles. Stonecrop searched the area between the tunnel entrance and the wood’s edge and finally found a clue of disturbed and bloodied vegetation that suggested that Cairn had been that way, keeping to the cover by the wood’s edge and heading uphill.

  Stonecrop’s progress was slow, for he stopped every few yards to call and shout about, knowing that his brother might be so injured that he was unable to respond to his call. So it was that the evening was late, the night had come and Bracken was long gone, before Stonecrop finally found Cairn’s body.

  Even in death he recognised his brother’s beloved scent, the scent of openness and freedom and of running through sparse earth and fresh grass. He was shocked by how terribly injured Cairn had been and dazed by the fact that he would never play and mock-fight and laugh with Cairn again. He looked out at the dark pastures, so overcome by a sense of unreality that he almost expected Cairn to come running over to him and say, ‘It’s all a joke. That’s not me.’ But it was, and at last he sank down into a crouch, too full of grief to move, or think, or do anything.

  Much later a chill breeze made him shiver and he got up stiffly. He snouted at the long grass and fence that formed an immediate backdrop to where his brother lay, and heard the rustlings and swayings of the great beech trees above, now lost in the darkness, and anger began to overtake him at last. He hated the dark wood where so much evil seemed to happen and he now hated everymole within it. Nothing, not even the beguiling Rebecca mole, was worth his brother’s life. His breath came more quickly, he seemed to grow even bigger in his anger, and had anything moved before him at that moment, he would certainly have attacked it. But nothing moved and only his brother was there, still and cold. And not his brother any more.

  ‘You should have called for me,’ he whispered. ‘I would have come. I would always have come.’ Then he did what seemed a strange thing—he took one of his brother’s front paws in his mouth and dragged the body out on to the pastures. It was no longer stiff; that stage had passed, and its limbs and head flopped in the grass as he dragged it along, moving with some difficulty as he was going backwards. At last he seemed satisfied with the distance he had gone and let the paw drop, looking up in the direction of the treetops he could not see. ‘Better to be owl fodder on the pastures he loved than prey to some skulking scavenger in the grass,’ he was thinking.

  He looked again at the injuries and thought bitterly, ‘He must have been killed in a mating fight, but by two moles from the look of it. We don’t fight like that on the pastures—we don’t need to.’

  With that he turned back down the hill, keeping very close to the edge of the wood and moving as fast as he could. He had one last job to do before he returned to the Pasture tunnels.

  He made his way back to Rebecca’s temporary burrow and went straight down it again and crouched there very still. He breathed in the sickening odour left there by Cairn’s attackers—it was so unpleasant that it made him a little dizzy—until the fear it had initially put into even him was replaced by the anger he had felt up on top of the hill. He breathed it in so that he would never forget it, for he knew it was the scent of the Duncton mole who had killed his brother.

  ‘I’ll know you for a Duncton mole if ever I meet you,’ Stonecrop whispered menacingly into the tunnels, ‘and I won’t forget the smell of this wood either. I hope neither was the last odour that my brother smelt but I won’t mind if they are mine, so long as my talons first reach the mole whose stench this is.’

  When he was quite sure he would know the smell again, and that it would cause him anger and not fear, he ran as quickly as he could out of the tunnel, across to the wood’s edge, and out into the fresh air of the pastures.

  * * *

  Rue laughed a little laugh of pleasure when she realised it was Bracken from the Ancient System hesitating about outside her tunnels. She recognised that he was not dangerous from his noisiness and diffidence about entering her tunnels, and the fact that he had approached from the direction of the pastures suggested who it might be. She went up to one of the entrances and the sight and scent of him confirmed it. So she laughed, because she was more than glad to see him. But she wouldn’t make it easy, oh no! Not she!

  In the three days since he had left, she had been ever so busy. Scurrying about cleaning the place of dust and old vegetation, and finding the best place for worms—just as she had in the adjacent Hulver’s tunnels. She sang songs to herself that she had not sung since puphood and which she had forgotten that she knew. She shored up one or two tunnels, sealed all the entrances that lay towards Hulver’s tunnels and started to extend the system on the other side. She made her burrow in the tunnel that Bracken had burrowed for her because it had such a lovely quality of sound to it—just as he had said it would have—and then she slept in it long and peacefully, like a log. When she awoke it was a lovely misty September dawn and as she poked her snout out of one of the entrances and looked about, and then came back into her tunnels again, she asked herself, ‘What’s it all for? What do I want such a well-burrowed system for?’

  She answered herself as quickly as a September mist clears on a sunny morning: ‘For mating. That’s what!’ She fancied having an autumn litter. She fancied hearing pup cries up here on the slopes where those old stick-in-the-muds down in Barrow Vale said nomole ever had litters. Too ascetic and dangerous, they said.

  So when she heard Bracken snouting about outside soon afterwards, she could not help laughing for the pleasure of it and with delight that her life seemed to be taking a turn for the better at last. So she started the pretence that she didn’t want to see him by running up to an entrance where he was wondering whether or not to enter and saying, ‘It’s my system now, Bracken, so even though you did stay here once, you can’t anymore.’ She even pretended to snarl a bit and scratched the wall with her talons.

  Bracken crouched out on the surface listening to these goings-on in some puzzlement. He could hear what she said but it didn’t match up with the nice way she smelt. He had been near plenty of hostile systems in his time and none had ever smelt quite so welcoming as these tunnels of Rue’s.

  Bracken hesitated at the entrance, not quite sure of himself, but not so dim as to think that he could really be hurt by Rue. ‘Hello!’ he said, in as friendly and open a way as he could muster when Rue reappeared. ‘I was just passing!’

  At this Rue laughed out loud, scratched the side of the tunnel a bit more, than backed a bit down the tunnel snarling and growling in a delightfully pathetic way that invited Bracken to follow her down the tunnel, which he did.

  ‘Um,’ he began, ‘what a lot you’ve done here!’ This turned her snarls into giggles and he laughed, too, and soon they were playing such a delicious game of scratching, snarling and talking nonsense that Bracken beg
an to enjoy and relax into it. He wasn’t quite sure of Rue—he thought correctly that this was her system now and that he must not take liberties with it—but he knew that for the time being at least she wanted him to be there.

  Suddenly Rue ran off, and Bracken heard her crunching away at a worm. He stayed where he was and soon she came back, bringing one for him. They ate in silent intimacy. When they looked at each other again, she was a bit meeker and her eyes were shiny and her mouth open. She crouched still and he came up to her, snouting around her, diffidently at first but then more boldly, more deeply. He liked the delicious moistness of her, he liked her snouting at him, under him, over his soft parts that grew harder, he liked her smiles as if she knew a delightful secret that she wasn’t going to tell him, but much, much better, that she was going to show him. He scratched her with his paw, nuzzled hard into her, pressed himself closer and closer to her, as she twittered and champed and swung her back round to him and then back-quartered into him and he into her.

  ‘He’s like a pup,’ she thought delightedly, because she had never mated before with a mole who was barely an adult. But when he finally understood what it was about, and was on her and taking her, she was surprised at his strength and laughed with pleasure at his delight in her and at the shuddering way he relaxed into her.

  Afterwards, he didn’t want to leave her at all and they went into the main burrow and snuggled into a dreamy sleep with hardly a word spoken between them. Sometime, when evening had come, she awoke to find him deliciously snouting at her again and pushing a little clumsily at her so that, half asleep, she swung back into him and he into her, and with his last shudder in her, he was snuggling back to her and asleep again. Oh, he was so simple and young!

  Sometime later in the night he again woke up, this time properly, and lay with her fur warm on his, giving him the illusion that his whole body was cocooned into her. He thought of the things that had happened in the last two days and simply could not believe, in the total comfort in which he now lay, that they had happened.

  When they finally awoke, it was dawn again and the magic and amusement of the mating with Rue was quite finished.

  He sensed that she wanted him gone, so that her tunnels were hers alone once more, and so was any litter that she might have. But he didn’t mind. The pattern of the last few days had fallen into place and as he left her burrow and headed off down the tunnel he himself had burrowed, he found he was at last looking forward to going back to the Ancient System where he would enter the Chamber of Dark Sound again, and explore the seventh tunnel if he could and whatever secrets lay at its end.

  Chapter Eighteen

  With Cairn’s death, the shadows that had been looming so long over Duncton Wood began, one by one, to fall. Spirits crept lower, danger seemed to lurk in every shadow, the chatter in Barrow Vale fell muted, and even the weather deteriorated into a succession of cold mists and rain that robbed the autumn wood of its colour and turned the falling leaves into a dank mess.

  Few moles travelled, fewer smiled. It was as if the wood was waiting for the fulfilment of a curse. While even those visits which might normally have been a source for cheer turned out, for some moles at least, to be the harbingers of doom.

  Just such a visit was made to Mekkins in the Marsh End in mid-October by Rose the Healer, whose normally cheerful face had not been seen in Duncton for several months. When Mekkins saw her, he guessed why. She looked as if she had been ill, for her face was drawn and her flanks thin and only her eyes, warm and gentle, though touched now, it seemed to Mekkins, with a hint of sadness, had anything of the old Rose in them.

  ‘’Ello, ’ello,’ Mekkins greeted her, hiding his alarm and sounding as cheerful as he could. ‘And ’ow ’ave you been keeping?’

  ‘A little tired, my dear, I’m afraid,’ she said.

  They talked a little about the Marsh End, and two or three moles that Rose liked to keep an eye on, and then Rose came straight to the point.

  ‘It’s you I’ve come to see, Mekkins,’ she began.

  ‘Why? Nothing wrong with me, is there?’ he laughed.

  ‘No! No! Not that I can see. You only ever needed me when you were a pup, my love, and that was from sheer overindulgence in worms, as I remember!’ She paused, looked at him with a great deal of affection, and then fell serious again.

  ‘No, it’s not that. Mekkins, I have come to warn you of a danger in which the system is going to need your help and all your skills. I have seen it coming for many years from before Mandrake came, from even before you were born. I experienced something of the power of the darkness to come in August, when I was summoned to help a certain mole up in the Ancient System…’

  ‘Bracken?’ asked Mekkins quietly. ‘Is he alive?’

  ‘You know something of this, then?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Well, I know something’s going on like, I mean you can feel it in the bloody trees, can’t you?’

  Rose smiled bleakly at this. She hesitated about coming to talk to Mekkins, for no healer likes to talk of his or her own fears, or of other moles they have treated. But now she was glad she had, for however cunning he was in his handling of the Marsh End, and however much he had enjoyed the power of being an elder, she sensed that he could be trusted.

  ‘Bracken carries a secret, but I doubt very much if he knows what it is. Perhaps he will never know and has no need to. Don’t ask me what it is because I don’t know myself. But whatever it is, he carries with it a burden the size and pain of which neither of us will ever comprehend. When I went to help him, I felt the force of its darkness sapping me of strength. I have been ill because of it and I doubt that I will ever recover the strength I once had. There is such fear about, Mekkins, of a kind you perhaps do not know. May the Stone help you never to know it.’

  Rose shifted wearily in the burrow where they crouched and then asked: ‘How well do you know Rebecca?’

  Mekkins told her, describing how they had got to know each other in the summer and how fond of her he had become. Rose could hear from his voice, and see in his eyes, that his affection for Rebecca ran far deeper than fondness.

  She saw with relief that she had done the right thing in talking to him.

  ‘Much is going to depend on these two moles, Bracken and Rebecca, and neither of them may ever know it. Somehow you will have to help watch over them until they are strong enough to stand alone, though what you must do I cannot say, but I suspect it will need great courage, which I know you have. But, most of all, you must trust them both, hard though it may sometimes be. In a pup trust is the most natural of emotions; in an adult it may often be the hardest. Without it, nothing can be healed.’

  They talked on a little, but Rose had said the most important things she wanted to say and she was tired, so Mekkins saw her back towards her tunnels, as far as the pastures. When she had gone, he wasn’t sure if he knew exactly what it was she had said, but he understood enough to know that he must watch over Rebecca and, if the opportunity ever arose, over Bracken as well. He would go to Rebecca now.

  But he was too late. Try as he did in the next few days, Mekkins could get no nearer to Rebecca’s tunnels than the henchmoles who guarded each exit. The most he got from one of them was that Rebecca was being kept in her system by order of Mandrake until she littered.

  ‘So, she is going to ’ave a litter, is she?’ he said, surprised.

  ‘Oh, yeh,’ said the other. ‘There’s no doubt of that. She’s already big with it. But it’s more than my life’s worth to let you near her. Well, you know how it is with Mandrake’s orders…’

  Mekkins did, but he didn’t like it. There was trouble in the air, and foreboding, and it seemed the worse for hanging about the tunnels which had been so full of life and joy in the summer.

  ‘Fair enough, mate,’ said Mekkins. ‘But if you get to see her, you tell her there’s Mekkins has been by and that ’e’s always down the Marsh End if she needs ’im. Right?’

  ‘If I can, I will. I don’t l
ike it any more than you do, chum. Now, you get goin’, Mekkins, because our orders are to keep everymole away, even elders.’

  * * *

  Rebecca lay on her side, trembling in her burrow. She could feel her young moving inside her and sometimes now even see their sudden movements as some tiny limb or embryonic head pushed against the tight soft fur below her belly.

  ‘Oh, my loves,’ she whispered to them. ‘Oh, my darlings, my wildflowers, may I have the strength to protect you.’

  Two henchmoles crouched by the entrance to her burrow, silent, morose and pitiless. They had been specially picked for the task by Rune, acting on Mandrake’s orders.

  They had come unexpectedly several days before, just when Rebecca was beginning to rejoice in her litter to come and make the delightful preparations of nesting a new burrow that she had so long looked forward to.

  She had tried to fight with them, angry on behalf of herself and her young, but one of the henchmoles had cuffed her so hard across the snout that she fell back into her burrow almost unconscious. She had not been allowed out of the tunnel since, and food was brought to her. She was angry, she demanded to see Mandrake, or even Rune; she begged to be allowed to see Sarah. But it was useless and nomole came to see her. Faced by the henchmoles’ silence and ignorance of her, she was overtaken by a creeping loneliness, and with it a terrible fear for her young.

  The most they would let her do, and only because the unpleasantness was too much for them, was to switch to another burrow while hers was cleaned out and new nesting material put there. ‘And this is doing you a favour, lass,’ said one of them unpleasantly, ‘because Rune said to keep you where you were. But I’m buggered if I’m going to crouch in the way of your stink.’