Duncton Wood

by William Horwood

  Of them all, Tryfan was the most independent and yet the most loved. He had grown into as fine a mole as a mole who is not yet adult can be: strong, ready to laugh, well enough able to look after himself not to need to be unnecessarily aggressive; and able to spend long periods alone, as anymole must.

  Early on, he had taken to wandering off by himself, spending whole days on the slopes, or exploring bits of the Ancient System that other moles did not bother with—though like everymole in the system, he kept away from its central core, for that was a special place where a mole had best tread carefully.

  But for all his disappearances, Tryfan had a way of turning up in the right place at the right time. There had been an occasion, for example, when a pack of youngsters from the far side of the system had taken it into their heads one day to intimidate Rose and Curlew—still smaller than other females born that spring. But intimidation sometimes escalates into roughness, and roughness into hurt—so that Rose began to cry and Curlew to try to hit out at the bigger youngsters, who started scratching and lunging at them in earnest.

  Eventually, Rose and Curlew shivered and trembled with fear, not sure what to do except cry, and the other youngsters jeered and hit out at them even harder until Tryfan quietly appeared and crouched, looking at them all.

  ‘Leave them alone,’ he said.

  ‘And what are you going to do about it, mate?’ one of the biggest youngsters said, coming aggressively forward. Youngster males liked a good scrap, the rougher the better.

  ‘Yeh, why don’t you go and scratch yerself?’ said another male, ganging up with the first.

  As Tryfan came forward to protect his two sisters, who now stood wide-eyed in alarm and fear, the pack went for him.

  ‘He was super!’ Curlew told Rebecca later. ‘Gosh, he was amazing. They all went straight for him and he sort of smiled at them, and calm as you please, he raised one paw and hit the first one, then the second, then the third, and the first one fell back and hit the fourth one and then they were all crying and it was fantastic!’

  ‘Then Rose started crying again,’ added Curlew disdainfully.

  ‘Why?’ asked Rebecca.

  ‘She said because she was so proud of Tryfan but I said she was being stupid. Mind you, he was pretty good!’

  There was another occasion, too, more dangerous and more mysterious, when Tryfan appeared when he was needed, but the truth of which neither Bracken nor Rebecca ever got at, and even then they only heard about it from Comfrey, to whom Tryfan went afterwards.

  It seemed that Beech and Rose had run into a pack of weasels one day on the wood’s edge, when they were exploring a tunnel they shouldn’t have been in. Perhaps they were not used to weasel scent. What happened wasn’t clear, but Beech and Rose came back to Rebecca’s tunnels frightened out of their lives and had nightmares for a long time afterwards. All they could say was that weasels had attacked them.

  ‘Nearly k-k-killed them, more like,’ Comfrey told Bracken later, when he reported how Tryfan had come to him with vicious cuts and bites on his shoulder and forehead. ‘He wouldn’t say anything to me, but I’m pretty certain he came just in t-t-time to save them both and must have fought off the weasels single-pawed, b-b-because I doubt if the other two were any good.’

  But try as they did, they could never get Tryfan to tell them what had happened. He liked to keep his silence.

  He grew very close to Comfrey, and the two of them would spend days in silence together, or Tryfan would ask Comfrey to explain things about plants and show him where he got them.

  Tryfan took to spending long periods by the Stone, both at day and night, and would ask Bracken and Rebecca to explain things about it to him which the others never asked. What was it for? Were there others like it? What was inside it?

  He was fascinated by Uffington and by the stories of scribemoles, just as Bracken had been, though Bracken could never tell him enough about Boswell and the things he had said. Yet strangely, from Bracken’s point of view, Tryfan never wanted to go down to the Chamber of Dark Sound, or be shown—or even told—anything about the Chamber of Echoes or the Chamber of Roots. It was the one thing that seemed to upset him.

  Then, one day in mid-August, he was gone, just like that, as mole youngsters will. And soon the others left as well, Rose and Curlew to the slopes and Beech over to near the Eastside where he had found friends. But they did not know where Tryfan went and of them all they missed him the most.

  Yet it would not be true to say that Bracken and Rebecca were sad to see them go. For Rebecca especially, their departure marked the start of a period of great quiet and contentment. She had nurtured her young, cherished them through illness and growing up, and seen them leave in August as fine a quartet of youngsters as any mother could wish to have borne.

  But she wanted, and no longer felt it wrong to want it, the peace of long days of solitude and the love that Bracken, living so nearby, made with her.

  As for Bracken, he had watched over the raising of his young from a distance as male moles always must, but had taken care to protect Rebecca if she needed it, showing that he was always there.

  It was a time in which he grew closer and closer to the Stone, as things that Boswell and Hulver and so many other moles had said to him began to fall into a kind of pattern, whose shapes were finally as simple as the way in which he now began to live.

  He still loved to explore, only now it was to the Old Wood he went, where the system had been in his puphood; retracing old tunnels, seeing how the burnt wood was beginning to grow alive with saplings and birds once more and wondering about things he had done and not done.

  Yet, quiet and nearly anonymous though Bracken and Rebecca now became, it would be wrong to think that they had no influence on the system. No conscious influence, it is true; but their love, or the sense of it that pervaded all of the system, now began to work a slow miracle in Duncton Wood. Without knowing it, they created an atmosphere in the Ancient System and in the slopes and beyond, where the wood was beginning to be recolonised, that moles from other nearby systems seemed to sense and came to, as they might to untunnelled, worm-full soil.

  In the wake of the plague, whose worst horrors were now beginning to be forgotten (or turned into a tale of the past), litters had been especially large—and a relatively moist summer made it easy for youngsters to burrow and find new territory in the devastated systems, so that survival rates were unusually high. Which made it more curious and more magical that so many youngsters, and some older moles from nearby systems, made the trek over to Duncton, perhaps sensing the great peace that was coming, and about to come, to the Ancient System of Duncton Wood.

  The fame of Bracken and Rebecca and their loyalty and love seemed to have spread far and wide, though as August crept into September and then on towards the tail end of autumn, they were seen less and less, as they kept to their tunnels beyond the Stone and to themselves.

  * * *

  It was in December, when a cold and chilly winter had already set in, that Tryfan reappeared. They heard of him first from Comfrey, to whose burrows on the slopes he had gone, and then, one evening a few days later, he came to Bracken’s burrows. He had been down to what had once been the Marsh End, he told them, and then over to the pastures, living alone and ‘thinking,’ as he quietly put it.

  He had changed. The last of his puppishness had gone and Bracken saw that he was now large and powerful—larger than Bracken himself—and that his unusually dark coat was full and glossy, while he had about him a calm that Bracken had never had at his age.

  Yet he seemed to have suffered. There was a restlessness in his eyes, and a searching, and Bracken knew that he had come back to seek answers to those questions that may be raised in a moment and yet not answered for a lifetime.

  ‘Why do you believe in the Stone?’ he asked Bracken after they had greeted each other and eaten food together.

  ‘I can’t give you a reason, Tryfan, or reasons, for that matter, and I know it won�
��t be enough to tell you that I simply do. I remember moles saying that to me once, and not being satisfied. But you know how Rebecca and I love each other…’

  Tryfan nodded. He knew.

  ‘Well, you know how that “feels”—you can’t give it reasons but you know it’s there, as solid as rock. That’s how my belief in the Stone feels as well. I know it’s there. My belief in the Stone started when I began to see that really I’m nothing at all against the flow of life into which I was born and that will continue after I’ve gone. Yet I felt its wonder in me, not any other mole, and without me the flow of life is nothing, as well. This feeling gave me a sense of wonder which we say comes from the Stone and is part of what the Stone is. Each of us is nothing—and everything—and only believing in the Stone makes sense of it.’ Bracken sighed with frustration; he had never been much good at talking about it.

  ‘Rebecca might be better than me at telling you about it, though I doubt it. You’ve missed your chance! She hardly says a thing these days!’ Bracken laughed and ran down his tunnels towards Rebecca’s, calling out her name.

  ‘Look who’s here! Come and see!’

  Rebecca looked at Tryfan for a long time, almost drinking in the sight of him before she smiled and came forward to touch him. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked, in a way that said, ‘There’s no need to tell me, my love, I think I know.’

  The three of them talked for a long time, over several moledays, and they told him things they only half remembered, or had never spoken of before. Both of them felt it was right to tell him of the seventh Stillstone and the wonder of what they had seen together, and he listened to them in awe, for as they spoke he felt he had been there before… and knew that he would go there again.

  He asked about Uffington, and Boswell, and scribemoles—just as he had when he was a pup. And one day, finally, he told them he wanted to be a scribemole like Boswell had been and that perhaps he should try to make his way to Uffington.

  They nodded, though Bracken warned him that winter was not the time to travel so far and that if he was going to go, then there were things about travel, about fighting, about route-finding that perhaps he ought to teach him.

  But Tryfan shook his head, and looking at them both where they crouched close together, said: ‘You’ve both taught me more than all those things, and surely the Stone will teach me the rest. The Stone will show me the way and it will protect me if I need to fight.’

  How big he was now, how strong and young, and Rebecca could not help smiling with love at the contrast he made with Bracken, whose face and sides were scarred with the fights he had been in but whose eyes held the clear light of peace Tryfan’s did not yet have. But how hard-won had Bracken’s peace been, and how much courage a mole needed to hold on to it! Rebecca knew that the times Bracken spent with the Stone were not always easy for him. They weren’t for her.

  It was at that moment, as Tryfan gazed on their love together, and perhaps with their words during their long conversations about the Stillstone still in his mind, that the first definite memories of the Midsummer Night when he had got lost began to stir in his mind.

  Soon after, he went up to the Stone and crouched by it in silence as the cold evening darkened about him and wind stirred at the leaf litter, wet from afternoon drizzle, as those memories became clearer and he saw again, in his mind, the glimmer of the Stillstone. Then he began to talk to the Stone, seeking its guidance and help, as so many moles of so many generations had done before him. He trembled to think of Uffington and the difficulties of becoming a scribemole, feeling how unworthy and ignorant he was to crouch here before it and to seek for so much. He thought of Bracken and Rebecca, and of what Comfrey had told him about the wonderful things they had done, and then of the increasing simplicity of their lives so near each other back in the system from which both, at different times, had roamed so far.

  ‘Why does a mole have to travel so far just to find himself back in the same place?’ he asked the Stone. ‘Where should I turn?’

  Light spots of rain began to mix in with the chill, blustery wind, pattering weakly here and there. How miserable the wood seemed. How desolate he felt. How much in need of help.

  * * *

  From the shadows around the Stone clearing, the eyes of an old mole watched him gently and smiled. Here he was in Duncton Wood after all this time and what did he find but a mole before the Stone, worrying himself as he had done so many times and by so many different Stones!

  Boswell raised a paw and said a blessing on the mole, but he did not step forward. There are times, many, many times, when it is better not to speak or interrupt another mole but to leave him to work out for himself what questions to ask. It was one of the things these great Stones were for. But the answers! Ah—so simple, all so simple in the end!

  So Boswell watched Tryfan and blessed him, moving out into the clearing only when Tryfan left it to make his way down towards the slopes to find Comfrey.

  Boswell crouched beside the Stone for a while. He had no expectation at all in Duncton Wood—he had, indeed, been personally reluctant to make the trek, for it was a long, long way, and he was getting old. And everywhere he went, moles sensed his holiness and flocked to him to touch him and to ask his blessing and see him on his way. It had been all he could do to stop a whole host of them following him on his way here, but somehow he had managed to make them understand that this was a solitary journey. Yet now he was here, how different it seemed and how weak he felt—and how surprised young Tryfan would have been had he known that moments after he left the Stone, a mole from Uffington had crouched where he had and asked himself just the same question he had asked: ‘Why does a mole have to travel?…’ But Boswell’s answer to himself was a smile and a sort of nod to the Stone. Then he asked, ‘Why have you sent me back here, what do you want me to find?’ And he smiled at that, too: for the Stone gave its answers in its own way and the best thing a mole can do is to trust that it will do so.

  ‘Now by the Stone’s grace, I’ll find Bracken and Rebecca and I hope that they’ve found themselves some sense at last!’ He laughed with pleasure to think of seeing them again, and knew—or suspected—where they would be.

  * * *

  ‘Why did Tryfan come back?’ Bracken wondered aloud.

  ‘Perhaps he needs to see and feel, once again, the love that made him,’ said Rebecca.

  ‘What love?’ asked Bracken. And Rebecca nudged him and he mock-fought her, and they giggled like their pups had, rolling about the floor, each feeling that they were playing with the most beautiful pup in the world.

  It was Bracken who heard it. Laughter like their own, from down the tunnels towards where the entrance up to the Stone was. Laughter he knew and had heard so many, many times and thought he would never hear again; laughter he loved and that had him still as roots, eyes wide, and reaching a paw out to touch Rebecca to share with her his wonder. Laughter and polite burrowing noises, the kind of noise a courteous mole makes to announce his arrival.

  ‘What mole is it?’ asked Rebecca.

  Bracken answered, not with a word but with a laugh and a shout, a cry of joy and a bounding forward from his burrow and out into the tunnel and the speaking of a name that made Rebecca gasp and smile at the pleasure she knew it would bring them all.

  ‘Boswell! Boswell!’ And so it was. His eyes bright as they had always been, his limping walk just as she remembered, but his laughter more gentle, even more full of joy.

  ‘Oh, Boswell,’ said Rebecca. And what brought tears to Boswell’s eyes was not her nuzzling and love so much as the fact that it was him she loved, and always had, and not the fact that he was a scribemole.

  ‘Rebecca!’ he said, ‘Rebecca!’ She was as beautiful as love. And then, turning to his old companion, he started, ‘Bracken, Bracken…’ And it was a long, long time before they stopped talking and touching.

  What a time then came to Duncton Wood! What excitement! For when the news was out that a scribemole had come
, and none other than Boswell himself, how they all came flocking to the tunnels of Bracken and Rebecca to see and to touch him!

  What excitement there was in the preparations before Longest Night that December! How especially thorough were so many of the moles in cleaning out and tidying their burrows! How full of hope that Boswell would go their way in the ancient tunnels and crouch near their burrows and talk softly to them as he answered their questions!

  Never was there so much song and chatter, laughter and games, both on the surface and below it, as there was that Longest Night. Never did moles revel so much in the old tales, telling and retelling again the stories of Ballagan and Vervain, the first moles, and Linden, the first scribemole, and the stories of the Holy Books.

  And, of course, it soon got out that there was a possibility, just a possibility, mind, that the seventh Book, the lost book, was, of all places, here, in Duncton!

  ‘No!’

  ‘Aye, that’s what they do say… you don’t think somemole as important as Boswell himself, who’s one of the most important moles in the land now, would come all this way just to say hello to his old friends and touch the Stone. No! If you ask me, what they say about this Book is right, and it is here.’

  Once this was established, it was a short step for the Duncton moles to start debating where the Holy Book was—and that wasn’t hard to guess. ‘Under the Stone, that’s where. Beyond the Chamber of Dark Sound where nomole goes if he’s sensible, because there are charms and spells to protect it, and strange sounds that frighten the fur off a mole! Oh, yes! You’d be daft to try it!’

  But being crazy never stops some moles from trying, and more than one sneaked his way past the Chamber of Dark Sound and into the Chamber of Echoes in search of the Book. Most got no further than a snout’s length before turning back from fear. But one did go further and got lost, and he was saved only because he had a friend with him who had the sense to summon Bracken for help—for everymole knew he knew the system like no other mole. He had to go in and rescue the explorer, who got a good many cuffs and curses on his way out—and a pat or two of encouragement as well, for Bracken knew better than most what courage he must have needed, even if he had got lost.