Duncton Found

by William Horwood

  When Beechen woke at dawn Tryfan was also stirring, but as if in uneasy sleep. Beechen listened to him for a little time and then, concluding that he was likely to remain asleep for a while longer, rose and went up to the surface to groom and find food for them both. Any irritation he might have felt about not being allowed out with Tryfan the previous day was quite gone, and nor did he feel such a craving this day.

  Dawn was no more than a dim, grey light in the eastern sky, and the air of the wood was still heavy and cold, the shadows dark. But over on the eastern edge of the wood a blackbird sang, and somewhere else a wood pigeon stirred and flapped. Beechen felt joy to be part of the beginning day, and purposeful, and then eager to get back to Tryfan. Leaves scurried as he searched for food, and he drank from one of the pools of water that formed in among the boles of the trees nearby. Dead lichen floated there, and the upturned downy feather of a young bird, pale against the dark water.

  His task complete, Beechen went back underground and, not caring for the noise he made, nor even hearing the normally confusing echoes of the tunnels, he brought himself quickly to the library chamber.

  Tryfan was awake and waiting for him. The light from the hollow trunk behind was already brighter.

  “Good morning, Beechen!” said Tryfan. “Another good day for the surface?”

  Beechen hesitated so long before replying, knowing that whatever he said might go against him, that eventually both moles laughed.

  “If I say one thing you’ll make me do another!”

  “No, mole, I shall not. You decide!”

  “I shall do whatever you would like,” said Beechen, and he meant what he said.

  “Why, mole,” exclaimed Tryfan, clearly much pleased, “I think you need fresh air and company, and to begin once more to learn what you can from the moles in this wood. They each have so much to teach you, and so few of them know it. I have told Hay and Mayweed that you shall be going out into the system, and I’ve no doubt Teasel will hear of it and track you down. Don’t forget to go over to Madder’s patch, for he and Dodder will tell you all kinds of things about plants, and the Word, and much else I dare say.”

  “But you... will you be all right alone here?”

  Tryfan laughed.

  “To tell the truth I need to be alone for a time. I have put off letting you go for a long time now, but only because I’m reluctant to get on with my task. It’s not an easy one! But scribing never is.”

  “What are you scribing?” asked Beechen curiously.

  “It is to be a Rule by which a community might live,” said Tryfan, “such as the moles of the Wen lived by for many centuries. But though Spindle made a record of the Wen Rule, such a thing is not easy to adapt to a different system and different times as we have here.

  “In the months ahead I want you to come back to our tunnels here from time to time and discuss with me what you have learnt. I would come with you but you will learn more without my help now. Sometimes you will need to come back and think and meditate alone, and perhaps I shall need your help as well for certain tasks – I’m not as quick as I used to be, and you know I cannot see very well. My sight is getting worse... but no matter, it serves me well enough for this last task of mine.

  “So off you go and meet some moles. Take my love and wishes with you, mole, and if they ask of me, tell them good things and that I am proud of the community of which I am part!”

  Beechen embraced rough old Tryfan, and said he would come soon to tell him what wisdoms and truths he had learnt.

  “Do so, mole,” said Tryfan. “I shall miss you each day you are gone.”

  “As you miss Spindle?” said Beechen, looking at the neat burrow he had taken over from the cleric mole.

  “Aye, as I miss that great mole, and Boswell, and so many more. But they are here with me, Beechen, here.” And Tryfan waved a paw over his great lined and scarred body, as if to say each sign of age and wisdom marked a mole’s passage through his life.

  Beechen smiled, and gazed on Tryfan, and was gone. And the scribemole watched after him, tears in his eyes, though they were not unhappy ones, and he whispered, “As those moles were to me, Stone Mole, you shall be to moledom evermore.”

  Then he turned back to his burrow, and the deserted tunnels and empty burrows had no sound but that of summer far above, and the scratch of his talons slowly scribing once again.

  Chapter Thirteen

  As Beechen begins to explore summer in Duncton Wood and prepares himself for the world beyond it, other moles, their names, like his, unknown as yet to the resurging forces of the Word, were making preparations and journeys too.

  To each in turn we must soon go, for these are the moles who had made their way that auspicious June day to each of the Stories of the Seven systems, and had been moved to pledge their future to the Stone Mole’s cause.

  Caradoc at Caer Caradoc; old Glyder in the shadow of Tryfan’s heights at Ogwen; Wharfe, Tryfan’s son, in Beechenhill; Wort, vile eldrene and torturer of followers in Fyfield – strange one to count among those honoured to pledge themselves to the Stone...; Rampion, daughter of Holm, courageous and faithful upholders of the Stone at Rollright. They shall find their tasks and we shall come to honour them.

  Which leaves but one of those six: young Mistle, the only one of them born by the light of the same star that marked the night of Beechen’s birth....

  We left her apprehensive and trembling on that June day when she and Violet had stanced before the Stone in Avebury, so close together that their flanks touched. The same day, the same few moments indeed, when Beechen in far-off Duncton had sought help from allmole to touch the Stone and so take up his task.

  The light about Mistle and Violet grew ever brighter, but not so that it blinded a mole, but rather infused all that on which she looked with a glistening or shining quality which brought out its colour and shape. For this reason the Stone, the grass from which it rose, and even their own front paws, seemed more real than anything Mistle had ever known, and for a long time she was conscious of nothing else, except that there was a look of joy and faith on Violet’s face, and from her blind eyes there came tears of growing joy. Long had she waited for such a day, and now the day had come.

  Then they felt a gradual sense of tension and stress about them, and a growing unease, which made them take stance closer to each other, and to the Stone. Yet they were not afraid for themselves, still feeling the protection of the Stone, but rather it seemed they felt afraid for somemole else.

  Violet began making a prayer, and though it was not one Mistle had ever heard her speak before, yet she ever afterwards remembered its words:

  “Great Stone

  Comfort of our lives

  Our good protector,

  Assuage the fear of the troubled one,

  “His name we know not,

  His being we have not seen,

  His love is not ours to share

  But he is of the Stone,

  And our own.

  “Great Stone

  Comfort of our lives

  Be comfort now to him.

  Our good protector,

  Protect him.

  Assuage his fear.

  “He knows not our names,

  Our being he may never see,

  Our love may not be his to share

  But we are one in thee, Stone,

  Tell him that we care.”

  Why did troubled Mistle falter and cry out when she heard Violet speak these final words? And why did she repeat them once again?

  “Tell him that we care.”

  But so she did, and as she spoke Violet touched her paw and said, “Now, mole, now the Stone awaits your touch, and this mole we pray for awaits it too. Reach and touch, my dear, and help me do the same, for I cannot see and it feels so far.”

  Then each helping the other, with the light of the Stone shining in their eyes, and feeling humble and weak, they moved forward, reached up, and touched the Stone.

  We know now
that in doing so their paws joined those of Caradoc, of Glyder, of Wharfe, of Wort, and of Rampion as they, in their own systems, touched their Stones as well. Thereby Beechen, Stone Mole, was given the strength to take up his great task.

  Of that Mistle did not know, nor could she have guessed. Yet as she touched that Avebury Stone it did seem to her that there were others beyond the Stone, in that inner circle of Stones where Violet had said that nomole but a holy mole might go and in the old days none ever had. Yet there moles seemed to be, half visible and calling out to Mistle, and where they were was Silence too.

  She found it strangely hard to touch the Stone, or keep touching it, and both needed to make an effort so great that Mistle began to shake and Violet herself finally fell back, unable to touch for long, and dropped away then from the younger mole’s view.

  There was a crying or a calling sound from out of the light where the stranger-moles danced, like the cry of pups out of a tunnel, and even as Mistle felt her touch weakening yet she knew she had only been able to touch the Stone so long because others were helping her, and she now wanted to know their names. But they too were weakening.

  As they slipped from her ken she felt as if she was losing friends she had sought all her life and yet had never known until then that she sought them or that they might exist; friends who wanted her as well. Yet now was not the time, now they could not reach her.

  So she cried out for their names, and the Stone’s light was bright as they called back to her, but for her name, seeming not to hear her call. They needed her as she did them, and like her could not quite reach out far enough.

  “Mistle, I am Mistle...” she cried after them, but they seemed to despair and slip away at last until she alone was left and touching, but for the one they had all sought to help.

  “I am Mistle,” she whispered again as her touch weakened, “hear my name.” Yet even for him, for whom Violet had said her prayer, and whom they had been helping, she could not seem to call quite loud enough so that he would hear.

  “Mistle,” she whispered, and lost touch with him and with them all, and with the Stone.

  “Violet, help me,” she said, unwilling to turn from the great Stone that rose above her. “I can’t reach them! We must help him but we cannot without each other and we cannot reach ourselves. Violet, help us!”

  But it was not her grandmother’s voice that responded, but a deeper one, her father’s. Warren had come after them and now stanced close, and put his paws to Mistle’s flanks.

  As she turned to him he said, “Shush, mole, the guardmoles will hear you and know where we are....”

  Violet, grandmother and mother, old mole, frail mole, lay weakly now, staring at Mistle and the Stone.

  “Did you hear them...?” began Mistle, unable to find words to express all she had heard and seen.

  “Yes, my love, oh yes I did,” whispered Violet. “Now you must go, my dear....”

  Mistle looked around her wildly, and no sooner had she heard the approach of searching guardmoles than she saw them, running and angry among the other Stones of the outer circle.

  “Make a run for it, lass,” said Warren, “I’m not sure they’ve seen you yet.”

  “But I can’t leave Violet, I can’t...” The thunder of grike paws was in the ground approaching, but behind her beyond the Stone, the sound of Silence lingered, and though only a faint echo of what it had been it was louder to her by far than the grikes’ paws and she was not afraid.

  “You must go now, Mistle,” said Violet. “Warren will watch over me here until I....”

  “Until what?” shouted Mistle, though she knew what well enough. She saw that Violet was nearly of the Stone and very soon would be safe at last.

  “Where must I go?” said Mistle, panicked suddenly not by fear of the grikes but the growing realisation that she was about to leave the mole she loved most in all of moledom, the one who had cared for her and taught her; a panic the greater because moledom seemed to beckon her, and it was large and she so small and uncertain of herself.

  “Go and seek the moles who sought to know your name, my dear, go to them....”

  “Did you hear them, Violet, did you see them?” whispered Mistle in wonder. “They were trying to help the mole you prayed for, as I was, and they wanted to know my name, but they couldn’t hear.”

  Old Violet nodded her head, and she smiled and touched her paw to Mistle with great love, even as grike shouts came near and guardmole voices said, “They’re there, they’re over there!”

  “Run past the Stone, my love, run to the sanctuary of the inner circle of Stones. The grikes won’t find you there.”

  “Go lass, go!” said Warren urgently, moving from her to stand guard all the better over his mother.

  “But that place is not for ordinary moles, Violet, you said it wasn’t. You said...” But the grikes were almost on them and Mistle knew she must run for her life, and that the Stone had ordained this, all of this, and that Violet was safe now, so near her Stone, and could never be hurt or harmed again.

  “Go now, my love, let me hear thee go,” said Violet, her blind eyes full of tears, “and remember through all your fears that you are much loved, so much loved.”

  Then Mistle turned from her, went blindly past the Stone and fearfully began to make her way towards the awesome inner circle of Stones within whose enclave she had heard the sound of Silence, and seen moles waiting.

  “This place is not for me,” she whispered as she ran.

  “It is for thee, it is for holy moles,” called Violet’s gentle voice after her, though now it seemed to come from all the Stones about. “For thee I lived, in thee I have put my love and my knowledge and my faith. Go now and seek the moles who seek you, go now, my dear. One day you shall find them and in their light and love know mine again.”

  These strange words were the last she ever heard Violet speak, but they helped her on her way as from behind her shouts came louder and the angry guardmoles came and Mistle passed beyond their reach into Avebury’s holiest place.

  She must have slept protected by the Stones, for when she woke she was unharmed. But more than that, it was to a night as dark as the day that preceded it had been bright. Through it, as trembling and fearful a mole as there ever was, young Mistle escaped eastward from Avebury.

  Away she went, a shadow in what hidden and secret ways she could find, afraid and yet feeling that she was guided by a power far greater than herself which, though it could not save her from danger and hardship, would at least show her the way she must try to go. If she faltered or slowed it was the hope that she would one day find those moles who had touched the Stone with her that drove her on.

  When a new dawn came she hid herself and slept straightaway, without eating first. Afterwards she remembered only waking as dusk fell once more, and continuing to take what obscure ways she could, and always hurrying on, stopping only to hide from moles she happened near, daring to go near no sound of living things at all lest they were guardmoles or some other danger.

  So, in darkness, for nights without number, Mistle made her desperate escape from Avebury. Friendless, lost, uncertain, weak, guided only by the belief that somewhere ahead, some day, she would reach those other chosen moles.

  The way she instinctively went was eastward, which eventually leads to Uffington and beyond to Duncton Wood, both of which Violet had spoken of as being places of sanctuary.

  The route from Avebury is slow and tortuous for mole, for the ground is often cut across by dykes and streams, and where it is not there are dangerous fallow fields and open pastures for a mole to navigate. But perhaps it was these very difficulties, and the grikes’ reluctance to pursue for long a mole over such ground, that helped Mistle survive.

  So, alone and wandering she went through the dark, lost and lost again, forever hearing danger all about, so tired, often barely able to go on....

  “... Must go on, must push one paw before the other, moles behind now, moles coming to take m
e, great moles... but can’t stop now, stopping so tired, too tired to... and those moles I want to find not yet found. So tired and I am failing them. Must go on, must....”

  “Ah... hem! Er... hello? Aahm... Miss? Are you dead? Praise be she is dead! But no, wait... alas she breathes. She gasps! She mutters. She lives, poor mole. Lives only to die again! Ssh! Stop struggling to live. Lie still. Miss, for the moment die!”

  Mistle woke from whatever nightmare she had been in and black night was gone and a bright sun was on her face. She felt a hesitant paw at her shoulder and through her painful peering eyes she saw a mole, male, staring at her worriedly.

  She started in fear, then stilled in utter fatigue and resignation to have been taken, but he said urgently, “Die, Miss, or play dead!” And before she could summon up energy to say anything his paw was removed from her and she sensed – or rather smelt – other moles near. Large moles, not-nice-at-all-moles: grikes.

  “Sirs,” the voice went on from somewhere behind her, now addressing the arrivals, “it is but I and my poor mother, sadly dead, dead and never saw her only son again.”

  Mistle lay as still as she could, her mouth open, ants and fleas scurrying through her fur and at her snout. Why, she must have collapsed here, utterly. The fleas and ants evidently thought her dead! She did not have to act, she felt very dead indeed.

  “Plague?” said a grike voice.

  “Never, Sir, she was a clean mole.”

  “Looks pretty poxy to me.”

  “Looks dead poxy!” laughed another grike.

  “You insult my family and me by even thinking such a thing.”

  There was laughter, of two or three moles, and Mistle was relieved that they did not seem to want to come near her, but, rather, seemed to have moved away.