Duncton Quest

by William Horwood

  “What system is this? Tell me its name, and I will try to get there. Tell me...” There was a yearning in Alder’s deep voice, a yearning whose origins lay far, far back before he met Tryfan, before even he left his beloved Northern system. A yearning for love, and light and harmony that deep down a mole feels, however hurt or angry or corrupted he seems to be. “Tell me its name,” whispered Alder.

  “Its name is Duncton Wood, and there a great Stone stands, ancient and good. Tell other followers of it, Alder, tell them to seek it out. And when you yourself reach Duncton, ask for a mole called Comfrey. He is my half-brother and nomole is truer, or braver, or has more trust and faith than he. Find him, tell him what you know, and he will teach you to hear the Silence of the Stone.”

  He spoke softly with Spindle supporting him on one side, yet his voice was certain and strong.

  “And if,” he continued, his voice still more quiet, and faltering a little now, “if you find that we are not there and do not come, if you find that, tell Comfrey that I thought often of him, and I loved him, and tell him to touch the great Duncton Stone for me. For there my parents lie and such a touching and thanksgiving I would have done myself.”

  He stared at them both, Alder and Spindle in turn, and they could at first find no words to say.

  “Duncton Wood!” repeated Alder at last. “I have heard of it. It is not yet taken by grikes.”

  “Nor will it be; or if it is its spirit for the Stone will never die, and will remain a light for other followers who seek the Stone, and a star that one day all of moledom will see once more. So now, Alder, will you tell Comfrey what I have said if you should be there and we should not? Wilt thou do this?” asked Tryfan in the old way.

  “You will do it before me,” whispered Alder.

  “And if I do not... if I do not, tell Comfrey his name was the last I spoke before we entered this dread place called the Slopeside,” said Tryfan.

  “I know not how to pray to your Stone, but I will try, and my prayer will be for thee and thy companion Spindle.”

  At which the other guardmoles came up, and drove Spindle and Tryfan upslope, into the dark and narrow tunnel from which a foul air came, and an odorous threat, and they were gone from Alder’s sight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The tunnel twisted and turned and at times the air was so foul that they might have tried to go back, but behind them was the sound of the guardmoles, heavy of talon and paw.

  But before long the tunnel turned sharply into a deep, dark chamber with a single shaft up towards the surface which cast grey light, across which from time to time moved the shadow of a mole: one of the surface patrols which Alder had warned them of. At the far end of the chamber was a blocking stone in front of which a mole squatted, scabby and malevolent, his face ravaged by some disease that made his eyes seem large and staring and pulled back his mouth in a rigor of pain. He said nothing, but seeing them, came forward and peered at them and grunted to himself with some kind of twisted satisfaction.

  He then turned from them a little upslope and called up the shaft. Immediately two more grikes came down, huge and fearsome, their grimy talons worn and stubby.

  “New clearers,” muttered the scabby mole.

  “Two,” said the first grike.

  “Yeah,” said the second. “Males more’s the pity. Nice welcome you’ll get, scum.”

  Tryfan and Spindle did nothing and said nothing.

  “Right,” said the scabby one, indicating the blocking stone. “When we roll it, you go in. Don’t go in, you’re dead. Got it?”

  Tryfan nodded.

  “Your pal got it?” said the second grike. “Okay? Don’t go in and you’re dead as a crapped fly.”

  Spindle nodded, eyes wide, flanks shaking.

  “Right, roll ‘er,” said the second grike.

  They did so, and as they did the tunnel ahead revealed itself. A musty gust of air came into the chamber, hot and dankly vile like the breath of a dying stoat.

  “Ready? In you go!”

  One of the grikes grabbed Tryfan’s shoulder and pushed him forward and the other took Spindle and shoved him along behind so that, however deep the instinct of both moles was not to enter the tunnel, whose very air was like disease itself, they were forced forward, tumbling against each other, and before they knew anything more the blocking stone behind them had been rolled back into place, and a murky darkness was on them, and a crawling fear. All about them was a stench, enough to make a mole retch, and a sense of darkness and death.

  What is evil when it is unseen, and dread when it is invisible, and apprehension when tunnels give no immediate cause for it? Fear.

  Fear that eats at a mole’s insides and has him cowering at himself as if a low snout is the best protection. Fear that drives from a mole’s heart consciousness of the things which he loves and for which he might, at another time, have thought he lived: the warm light of a good day, the comfort of friends, the dreams and desires that come with spring....

  Spindle felt such fear now.

  Tryfan, too, was touched by it.

  But after a few moments crouched still they mastered themselves and became aware that a little ahead was the dim light and echoing sound that heralded a chamber of some kind. They started forward and, silhouetted there briefly, saw the form of mole. Then it was gone.

  Tryfan instinctively moved in front of Spindle, though he himself was weak, and crouched still watching, ready to fight if need be. Fighting might not be a scribemole’s way, but Tryfan had learnt much on his journey with Boswell and knew that the best way to guard oneself is to look confident.

  Ahead, the murk did not lighten; and nor did the stench in the tunnel improve. There was something sharp to the thick air that made a mole’s eyes water, and it was hard to make out if that shape they had seen – if they had seen one! – was moving once more. Wait! Spindle’s paws gripped Tryfan’s flank. They heard a stealthy sliding followed by a scamper of talons across a floor.

  “He’s watching us,” whispered Spindle.

  After a moment more of this waiting and holding breath, Tryfan stepped forward and said, “If you’re there, show your snout and give us some guidance where to go.”

  Appraising silence greeted this, and the peering of a mole from one shadow or another.

  “Come on, Spindle,” said Tryfan losing patience. “If the mole ahead can’t speak or come to us, we’ll go to him.”

  “Oh bold, very bold, bold indeed,” said a voice from the murk, and a good way to the left of the spot where Tryfan had been looking. Thin it was, male, young, rather whining, anxious to please. Yet quick and clever in a way.

  “Show your snout, mole,” said Tryfan more fiercely.

  “Very, very bold now! Positively plucky!” said the voice with a sudden laugh. It seemed to have changed location and was now to the right side of the chamber ahead. “Not craven, cowardly or timid, no. Not those. So... welcome, oh yes, most welcome, brave Sirs, here, right here to the Slopeside.”

  Then more softly, “Don’t be afraid!”

  The mole ahead moved a little, a slinking touch of a move, and a thin paw came into view and beckoned them.

  “Yes, yes, yes, this way,” said the mole.

  “Come, Spindle,” said Tryfan, “we will die if we stay here, for surely there is no more wormless tunnel than this. This mole ahead is —”

  “Yes?” said the mole ahead. “Worthy, honourable and utterly brave, Sir. What is he?”

  “Harmless,” said Tryfan.

  The mole ahead was silent. Thinking. Then he whispered, “Harmless? Harmless! How very amazing. I have been called everything but that, everything, oh wise Sir. Never harmless. I will think about it and let you know.

  Meanwhile, I repeat, good Sirs, that most welcoming word: come!”

  But as they approached the mole retreated, slinking back in the shadows, reluctant to let what dim light there was fall across his face. So, moving ahead of them in the very crevices of the tunnel
that went on beyond the chamber, the mole led them on, keeping up his unctuous chatter as they went.

  “Not so bad this place, once you know it, Sirs. No, not so bad. Got you some food, always do that, least I can do. Burrow-cells was it? Nasty. Long, lonely solitary confinement, I know, I know. I have heard others, dear Sirs, who have known it. Well, we’ll look after you here – if you let us, we will, and your strength will return phenomenally and most brilliantly. Yes....”

  There was about his voice, as there was about what little of his stance they could see, a quality of both eager and pathetic, as if, like some guilty creature that has lost its parents and found them again, he wanted to run forward and show himself but dared not for fear of punishment or rejection.

  “Pause, stare, snout, look, and eat, Sirs, I am privileged to know and serve,” he said suddenly. And there on the tunnel floor before them they saw some food.

  “Eat, crunch, chew, relish and swallow,” said the mole gaily. Which they did.

  When they had eaten the little there, the mole said, “Please to be kind and generous enough to follow me, yes, as quick as you are able to; yes, please to follow.” And with that the mole turned and led them into another tunnel, his meagre shape scurrying ahead of them, but pausing sometimes, a snout peering round, as if he doubted they were following him. Yet still they could not quite see him.

  The tunnels were old and ruined, patched here, half blocked there, sealed off elsewhere. The atmosphere was poor, the air currents weak and confused, and the smell fetid and filled with decay: a sweet, sick smell of death and putrescence.

  Ahead there were sounds of mole, but not the cheerful sound of talk and chatter, or the run of paws of busy mole, or the song of a female whose work is done: rather the forlorn dragging of tired mole, mole of sickness and lost hope, abandoned mole driven by fear and the desire mixed with the one hope that all moles cling to until the end: that change will come, that life is better finally than death. Such dragging, moaning, suffering sounds came to them from tunnels or burrows ahead, but living moles they did not yet see.

  They had drawn a little closer to their guide, but still he contrived to keep his face and most of his body in the shadows, and some natural sense of propriety prevented them coming closer. He paused suddenly and they saw that a few yards ahead the tunnel they were travelling crossed a much bigger one, from which most of the sounds of other-mole they had heard so far came. The mole crouched down and politely asked that they did the same.

  Now they heard nearer sounds, of a mole coming. A female, for they could hear her voice moaning or humming in a bereft kind of way as she approached. She was panting, too, with effort and fatigue, her breathing raspy and difficult. Then they could see her passing from right to left down the big tunnel. A terrible sight. No fur, just grey-pink skin, all hanging and worn. She was old, and sometime in the past had pupped for her teats hung sacky and low, dragging on the floor, and one of them was no more than a suppurating sore. She seemed to have an affliction of the neck, because every other step or so she flicked her head nervously back, as if to lick or dislodge some irritation which she could never quite reach. Her paws were cracked and her talons broken. The strangest – and most frightening – thing about her was that she carried in her mouth, its teeth pointing up the wrong way, the upper jawbone of a mole, all white-yellow. It was as if, moleyears before, a mole had attacked her and they had locked jaws and he had died, leaving this final relic of his assault. Where her mouth clenched round this terrible thing she dribbled and sucked occasionally.

  “Who is she?” whispered Tryfan.

  “Kind Sir, caring Sir, there is no need to whisper,” said their guide rather loudly. “She cannot hear you!” he added, shouting it in her direction. Yet she paused for a moment as if hearing some distant thing that she yearned and she snouted around, the bone still in her mouth. As she did so they saw her eyes were red raw flesh, but before they could say or do more, she moved on down the tunnel and was gone.

  “Apologies and commiserations, splendid moles, for this brutal sight of ambulating sickness,” said the mole. “Yes it is shocking, and yes it is terrible, and yes it would be nice to do something about it. No cure here, no hope, no chance of anything much but lasting longer than they expect you to. I know, oh yes, very much I know that! So, now, that promising word: come!”

  But Tryfan did not move. Instead, as the mole started off once more, Tryfan called out, “Mole, what is thy name?”

  “Oh! Kind it is, thoughtful, most meaningful to ask,” said the mole, half turning. “Thee, thy, thine: “I’ve heard of it but never heard it used. Very pretty, very ancient. You must be a learned mole. Yet you are right, learned brainy Sir, yes: even a mole as humble and unimportant as I has a name, yes, he has. Do you want to hear it? It’s a good name and it is mine.”

  “Yes, mole, we do,” said Tryfan, “so that we may thank you for the food you gave us and the guidance you are giving us.”

  “Oh!” said the mole again, stopping quite still and sounding pleased. “Wish to thank me, they do these good Sirs, these excellent kind moles. Why now, that is something to remember, something to think about, something to be thankful for!”

  As he talked like this, half to himself, it seemed, they caught up with him, though he still kept his back to them, and huddled his frail body in the deepest shadow he could find.

  “Thy name?” said Tryfan gently.

  “My name? Yes, my name. Well it’s not much, not really... I...” And he sounded timid, and afraid.

  “Show us thy face, mole,” whispered Tryfan.

  “I... well... you don’t want....”

  “Be not afraid of us, mole, we will never harm thee.”

  Then as they waited, with the terrible sounds of sick and defeated moles about them, the mole timidly turned round, his body and face still in shadow, so that they caught only the glimpse of eyes in the light, humble and wary, and teeth, yellow and bent, and talons, thin and worn as if the mole was old.

  “Show us thy face,” said Tryfan again.

  But the mole shook his head and retreated into the shadow again, snout low.

  “You are afraid, mole,” said Tryfan.

  “Yes,” the mole said.

  “Of what?” said Spindle.

  “That’s my secret, special and strange. My own, nomole knows. Indulge me, Sirs, just for now.”

  Tryfan stared at him, or at his shape, and said softly. “I think I know thy secret.”

  “Yes? Really? Incredible Sir, most extraordinary intellectual Sir to deduce such a thing, what is it? Most interested am I since I barely know it myself.”

  “Do you greet all newcomers to the Slopeside?” asked Tryfan.

  “My privilege to do it, my great pleasure.”

  “And because they have not met you before they have no opinion of you.”

  “Clever, Sir, most alarmingly clever.” The eagerness had gone from the mole’s voice, and he sounded tired.

  “Then you want to keep your name from us, and the sight of your body from us, to preserve for as long as you can your sense of our good opinion of you,” said Tryfan calmly.

  “I... Good Sir... I —” and the mole was stuck for words.

  “Is that your ‘secret’, mole?” asked Tryfan.

  They heard him come forward fractionally again.

  “Well, Sir —” he began.

  “Is it?”

  “Yes, Sir,” said the mole simply.

  For a long time there was silence between them as some sense of trouble or emotion seemed to afflict the mole until at last Tryfan said once more, and so gently it might have been a May wind across a field of buttercups: “Thy name?”

  Then the mole came forward, and he looked at them as if he was ashamed of his very being and he held his snout low and was unable to face their gaze longer.

  As he crouched down, in the light before them they saw that his face was bare of fur, and that his sides were hollowed and pock-marked, and his paws scabbed a
s the grike guards’ had been. His flanks were red raw as the female’s eyes were, though not diseased. Like wounds that had never healed.

  If ever a mole was ashamed of himself it was the mole they saw before them now: but not ashamed of an act he had done, but rather of his whole self, inside and out. And yet there had been in his voice, before he allowed them to see him, some other sense of self that was confident and intelligent as if, behind that absurd and flowery use of words, which was so obviously a front, there was a mole of confidence, though he did not seem to be before them now.

  “Why mole —” began Tryfan, shocked, and instinctively going forward to touch him.

  But the mole retreated immediately and said, “You mustn’t touch me. No, no, no, you must not. You don’t want this,” and his right paw waved with utter resignation over his flanks and furless skin.

  “Thy name,” said Tryfan firmly.

  “They called me Mayweed long ago,” said the mole, “and that’s my name forever.”

  He cowered away from them even more but Tryfan would have none of it, and reached forward and touched him.

  As he did so Mayweed looked down at Tryfan’s talons and uttered a soft “Oh!” in wonder and then “Oh!” again, and he looked up at Tryfan and then at Spindle.

  “Not good to touch me, kind Sir,” he said. “No, not good.”

  “Who called you Mayweed?” asked Tryfan.

  “I – I don’t know. I don’t remember now... I —”

  “Who gave you your name? whispered Tryfan, his paw on Mayweed’s shoulder.

  “I... she... he... they, Sir, but it’s a long time ago and I don’t want to remember. Not that. Don’t touch me like that, Sir, it puts me near my tears.”

  “You’re a mole, aren’t you?” said Tryfan.

  “Oh, very good that, “You’re a mole aren’t you?” Very good!” said Mayweed, recovering something of his former confidence. “There’s moles and moles, aren’t there?” Well, Mayweed is a mole of sorts, he supposes, but moles don’t usually touch him, in fact never do, except to hit and that’s not the same thing as a touch is it, Sir?”

  “No,” agreed Tryfan. “Then why do they hit you?”