Duncton Found

by William Horwood

  “Well, of course I’ve learnt something....”

  “Ah!” said Mayweed, interrupting him. “Say no more muddled and confused novice, pubescent pupil, difficult dolt. Humbleness’s talon positively itches to scribe, and will now do so!” Then, with a flourish and a wild look to his eye, Mayweed scribed rapidly on the ground in front of him, his script as thin and ill-kempt as his body, and his scribing extremely fast so that dust and soil seemed to fly in all directions as his talons moved.

  When he had finished he crouched back and frankly admired his own work. Then, with one of his widest and most ghastly grins, he said smugly, “Nothing much, but ’tis mine own! Now, as the enthusiastic and good-natured Hay would put it. ‘Press on, lad! Keep at it! Do not give up!’ All of which me, Mayweed, heartily endorses. So farewell!”

  When Mayweed had gone, Beechen was left staring after him, a little irritated and frustrated it is true, for a mole never quite seemed to catch his breath and say what he had meant to when Mayweed called by, but also feeling a great deal more cheerful than he had.

  He reached out a paw to the route-finder’s scribing, and then snouted along it as well. It said, “The mole Beechen confessed today that he learnt something yesterday. What may he learn tomorrow? To concentrate on the task in paw, perhaps, and talk to mole of things that matter. Thus will he find his way ahead. Signed: AN HUMBLE MOLE OF NOWHERE IN PARTICULAR.”

  Beechen laughed and, feeling better and even more determined than he had before, he returned to his burrow and resolved to work even harder at his scribing, to be obedient and do his best to ignore the difficulties of living with Tryfan.

  But even so, his patience was sometimes sorely tested, as when, one day, Tryfan summoned him to his burrow and told him to stop whatever he was doing and contemplate worms.

  “Worms?” said Beechen in disbelief.

  “I do not like having to repeat myself.”

  “But why worms?” said Beechen, “I want to scribe, not look at worms.”

  “I did not ask you to look at worms, mole. I asked you to contemplate them. But of course if that is not to your liking...” Tryfan shrugged and began to turn back to his own work.

  Remembering his determination to be obedient to Tryfan’s will, however difficult it seemed, Beechen hastily said that he would contemplate worms but would Tryfan mind explaining why, and how, if only briefly...?

  “How? With effortless effort, mole. Trying without trying. Thinking without thinking. Being without....”

  To Beechen’s surprise Tryfan was suddenly expansive and in good humour as he described, somewhat cryptically, how a mole should best contemplate worms.

  “... being. Your father Boswell told me that novice scribemoles at Uffington were advised to get a worm, stare at it, close their eyes and then imagine it, open their eyes and... well, it’s obvious enough, I suppose. To contemplate the worm, by all means place one in front of you and look at it. But in the end you must wean yourself from the need to have real ones before you, as a pup weans himself from the need for his mother’s teat. He still loves his mother though he is teat-less and can gain comfort without it; so you must still love the worm, and find ways of knowing the worm without the worm being before you. But, you wonder, why bother? Worms are life, that’s why. Can’t think of anything better to contemplate, can you? Without worms we would not be. Life, you see!”

  To Beechen’s astonishment Tryfan laughed aloud, a rich deep laugh.

  “I remember once Spindle and I were contemplating a worm after having found one with great difficulty. He had asked me to explain the very point of Boswell’s teaching as I am trying to explain it now. He was making one of his records, you see – no doubt you’ll find it somewhere or other. We got the worm and I stared at it for a short time and suddenly, impulsively, I ate it. Spindle was outraged. “Why did you do that?” he asked. Ha!” Tryfan laughed again and turned back to his work.

  “Why did you?” asked Beechen, puzzled.

  “To contemplate it all the better. The stomach is a better thing to contemplate with than the mind. I’m sure you’ll agree with me in time.” As Tryfan continued to chortle to himself until the sound of his renewed scribing overcame his laugh, Beechen was forcibly struck with the sense of what his relationship with Spindle must have been like. Two very different moles, sharing so much. Two friends.

  Later that day Beechen noticed that Tryfan had fallen silent in his burrow, and his scribing had stopped. Sensing that he needed comfort and cheer, Beechen went up to the surface and gathered some food.

  He quietly took it down to the threshold of Tryfan’s burrow and laid out a worm there for him.

  Tryfan looked at Beechen silently, and Beechen said, “You miss Spindle sometimes, don’t you?”

  “I do, mole,” said Tryfan thickly and then, crunching at the food, he continued: “When you grow old the early times sometimes seem more real than the present. I find myself looking round the corner of a tunnel and expecting to see Bracken there, or Comfrey, whom I loved very much. On the surface I... I look to my right flank, where Spindle so often was, and am surprised he is not there. And often, lately, I have missed Boswell. I think Spindle suffered much in my early years with him because I missed Boswell. I am not an easy mole, Beechen. I... I fear you may have suffered too these last weeks, but you see I miss your mother and those others I have known.”

  “It’s all right, I can cope,” said Beechen, disturbed to see how distressed Tryfan had become.

  “I wish it was all right, mole! But life is hard and moles try too much to make themselves secure in a world of change. Did you know that your mother and I had young once? No... they died and some things are hard to talk about. It is no secret, I think, that the only young I ever had that survived were by Henbane of Whern, and I never saw them. My good friend Mayweed and his consort Sleekit reared the two they were able to get free of Whern. Likable pups they have said, named Harebell and Wharfe. There was a third... but he was left behind in Henbane’s care. I would like to think that one day you will at least meet the two who got out, and tell them of me....”

  “I will,” said Beechen.

  “... and if you do, tell them that whatever stories they hear, whatever moles may have said, their mother was... was...” But poor Tryfan could not continue and for the first time in his life Beechen saw him weep.

  Beechen stayed close to him, and though he said nothing he knew his presence was a comfort.

  “I knew happiness with Henbane of a kind I have not had with any other mole. Deep and passionate. Your mother knows it, so I am not being disloyal. If you ever meet Wharfe and Harebell tell them that in the short time I was with Henbane, their mother, I felt that a part of her was more truly of the Stone than anything I have ever known. Moles have often asked why I went to Whern. I believe it was for those few hours with Henbane, from which I hope one day moledom will see some good come.”

  Tryfan made a clumsy attempt to wipe his face fur dry of tears, and then smiled ruefully.

  “You see, Beechen, when a mole grows old it is of such strange things he thinks... As for you, why mole, there are times when you quite remind me of Boswell. Not in size (you’re bigger), nor in fur (you’re darker), nor in nature (you’re more patient)... but in understanding. You have listened to an old mole ramble on, you have known how to comfort him, you have known that bits of what he has said have made good sense. You have known what to do and when, all without thinking much about it. That’s what being a scribemole is, you see. But more than that; it’s what being a mole should be. You have learnt much. Well done!”

  Beechen did not know whether to laugh or cry at this, but much later, when Tryfan was asleep and Beechen had woken in the night, he smiled, for he saw that by saying what he had in the way he had, it was Tryfan who had known what to do, and when; and that Tryfan’s teachings were wise and rich. In seeing that, Beechen understood much better what a scribemole was and must be, and how it might be that he would scribe all the better for liv
ing through the difficulties of this time with Tryfan.

  We do not know, and it is vain to guess, the many ins and outs of the deep meditation that Beechen entered into at this period of his life. As the days advanced a kind of slowness came on him, and peacefulness, and his desire to leave the tunnels and do other things was nearly forgotten.

  His consciousness of what he saw in the scribing he made as well as in the worms he brought down into the tunnels deepened, until he saw quite suddenly what might have been obvious all along to anymole that knew it: that the basis of scribing was the sinewy form of the worm, and the more a mole was at one with himself and what gave him life, the easier and more natural did that scribing become.

  “But why didn’t you say?” he sometimes wanted to ask Tryfan, but he knew in his heart what the answer was: a mole learnt little by being told it, most by experiencing it, whether of scribing, of worms or of life. It was a lesson Beechen never forgot.

  Now at least Tryfan was willing to answer questions, though his impatience and preoccupation with his own work, and his ruthlessness in cutting Beechen short if he felt he was wasting his time, soon deterred him from asking anything but what he considered was important and essential.

  As Tryfan said in various ways more than once: “A mole who asks another a question without thinking first, or offers another his opinion without thinking first, or seeks to describe a feeling before he knows truly what it is, is a mole who does another a disservice and discourtesy. Why should your confusion become another’s, whose own may already be bad enough? Why should you ask another to think for you when, by doing so, you demonstrate that you are not ready for the thoughts he may provide? Laziness is as much a destroyer of communication between moles as the fear of truth, and since they usually go paw in paw with one another, conversations die many deaths. Remember this, mole, and you will learn the truth of it as you come to meet other moles in the years ahead, especially those beyond Duncton Wood who do not know you so well.”

  So it was that one day, and only after much thought, that Beechen went the few moleyards to Tryfan’s burrow and there waited in respectful silence until the scribemole seemed ready for him, which he indicated with a sigh at his own work, a relaxation, and then a friendly glance.

  “Yes, Beechen?” said Tryfan.

  “Would you show me the correct scribing for ‘soil’?” asked Beechen doubtfully. It was a scribing that seemed to have no logic, and to come in many different forms.

  Tryfan thought for a moment, and seemed pleased by the question.

  “You won’t find any absolutes with soil,” he said, “for not only does it change its nature constantly, but the way a mole perceives it changes as well. Moles adapt their feelings to where they are and so naturally their scribing changes too, as your voice does if you’re nervous or your snout if you’re unhealthy.”

  “So there’s no right way to scribe it?”

  “No, no, mole. There’s always a right way, but it’s always changing. The problem is to know the right way at the time you’re scribing it, and that may change from the beginning of a sentence to its end. You will find that in Spindle’s scribing ‘soil’ does not much change its appearance from one place to another. He was not interested in such ideas. But in Mayweed’s scribing the word changes halfway through itself. A mole of the soil, you see, a mole whose whole life is soil. He’s always been a better judge of what’s right at a particular time than I am. Perhaps you should ask him the same question. The trick with such things is to know which mole to ask. It’s a rare mole that is not better than anymole else at something, and a scribemole does well to remember it. Nomole has nothing to offer.”

  “There’s a lot of variation as well in the word ‘tunnel’,” observed Beechen.

  “Well, there would be, wouldn’t there? Be a strange world if tunnels were all the same. Mind you, Spindle once told me that the Holy Burrows had a book in its library-devoted entirely to local variations of the word ‘tunnel’ compiled by a librarian after eighteen years of research through the Rolls of the Systems. This was one of the books lost when the grikes came but not, I think, one of the greatest losses....”

  So it was that the earlier sense of frustration and anger that had overtaken Beechen’s mind now began to lift, and he felt as if a storm of rain had passed that leaves the air and land cleaner. There was a shared sense of excited endeavour in the tunnels as they continued their separate work and Beechen now began to discover more and more about the texts around him, and about the nature of scribing.

  Sometimes Tryfan would volunteer a thought or make a suggestion about how Beechen should approach it. Stance, he said, was important, for a mole cannot scribe well if his back paws are not firm, and his breathing is not good.

  By “scribe well” Beechen understood him to mean scribing words worth scribing, rather than script that simply felt good to the touch.

  “I fear my own scribing is not of great elegance, but I never had the training, you see. Spindle’s talon is a neater one than mine, but then he was a neater mole. Neither of us, I fear, have that grace and beauty which it was our privilege to discover in many of the texts in the library of the Dunbar moles. The mole who combines grace of form in his scribing with grace of thought will always make scribing that brings a blessing to moledom.”

  Beechen did not notice the way Tryfan gazed at him as he said this, the gaze of a scribemole who knows well the strength of the mole he teaches, but is pleased to see his modesty. If Beechen ever gave thought these days to being the “Stone Mole” he did not show it.

  All he said was, “I’d like to see some of those ancient texts which Spindle refers to in some of his scribings, and which you’ve mentioned.”

  “Perhaps one day you will, if you don’t waste too much time dreaming! The texts Spindle saved at Seven Barrows, some of which are earlier than the Wen texts, are certainly memorable and include all six of the Books of the Stillstones. I think that perhaps they are moledom’s greatest scribed heritage. Even so, always remember that it is the thought behind the scribing that matters, not the text itself.”

  “But are there not seven Stillstones?”

  “There are, but the Book of Silence, which must accompany the last Stillstone, has never been scribed. Most of us believed that Boswell would be the mole to do it but it was not something he talked of on the journey I made with him back to Uffington, nor when he might have done later with Spindle and myself at Seven Barrows, where we cast the Stillstones for safekeeping.”

  “Whatmole will scribe the Book of Silence?”

  Tryfan shrugged.

  “Not I, that’s for certain. I’m having enough trouble scribing the paltry thing I’m about at the moment. No, Boswell was the mole to do it, and I sometimes think he may have done already and it is but waiting to be found as the Stillstones are! One day they shall be recovered and placed together, and when that day comes then Silence shall be known and perhaps its Book as well. I shall be long gone by then, and maybe you as well, Beechen. Now, mole, I hope you have no more questions for I’m tired and still have work to do....”

  “Just one more!”

  Tryfan laughed, and settled down. The difficult days were indeed over, and a pleasant companionship and respect existed between the two moles now.

  “Spindle mentions “dark sound” occasionally, and your texts do as well.”

  Tryfan’s brow furrowed, and his face became grim.

  “Aye, there’s a form of scribing called dark sound. Its masters have always been the grikes, though Dunbar himself was adept at it as well, but he used it for good and for prophecy. We’ve a Chamber of Dark Sound in Duncton, though few know it now for ’tis lost high in the Ancient System near the Stone. My father knew it well, and had the strength to go there.”

  “What is dark sound exactly?”

  “A scribing that gathers sound to itself which a mole makes and sends it out again perverse, so a mole hears the worst side of himself but alluringly well. Hearing dark sound
he seems to see himself do evil things and survive, which makes him all the more eager to do them for real.”

  In that way Beechen gradually learnt of the light and shadow of moledom, and of the Stone. Yet Tryfan could still sometimes be perverse....

  As relations between the two had improved Beechen had taken to lingering rather longer on the surface than Tryfan liked him to, but he enjoyed the fresh air and bird-song, and missed the visits of Mayweed and the others which, lately, had tailed off.

  One bright morning, at the end of July, he was very late returning, and when he did Tryfan was waiting for him, eyes narrow.

  “Feeling like a change of air, mole? Finding my company tedious, eh?” the old mole said.

  “Er, no. I... well... no! I want to learn scribing.”

  “Good,” said Tryfan approvingly, “real dedication. A pity, though, for I’m off to the surface myself. Some moles to meet, some matters to attend to.”

  “But I...” began Beechen, wondering how he could take back the hollow and over-earnest protestation he had made just before.

  “Another time, then!” said Tryfan, stretching his paws out with a contented sigh and then setting off. “On a summer day like this one a mole feels he has done enough work to last a lifetime. I shall enjoy the break!”

  With that he was gone, leaving Beechen feeling as frustrated as he ever had and wondering what interesting moles Tryfan was to meet, and what exciting business he was seeing to.

  But the mood passed, and Beechen found himself wondering, not for the first time, about what it might be that Tryfan had been scribing with such difficulty and for so long. All Tryfan had ever mentioned was a “Rule” but what that was he did not know.

  By the time Tryfan came back, darkness had come and Beechen was half asleep in his own burrow. He did not stir when Tryfan peered in at him and softly spoke his name, but he was touched that Tryfan should whisper a blessing on him before retiring to his own burrow.