by Michael Tod
Just after High Sun Oak woke up from a doze and looked down. ‘Lots’ of Greys were fanning out across the dry white clay below, following the footprints and the scents left by his party.
Rowan was also awake. He glanced at Oak, then slipped down the upper side of the trunk, ran along the top of the bank, showed himself as on the skyline and shouted.
‘Flea-ridden tree-rats,’ he called. ‘Sun-damn you all!’ and he disappeared into the heather and bracken, heading westwards.
The Reds, all awake but silent in the leaning tree above, watched the posse of Greys chase after Rowan as he ran along the bank and off into the heather. The squirrel-chatter faded into the distance.
Oak turned to Fern. ‘A son to be proud of,’ he said, his tail high.
Rowan raced on along the dusty heath path, the sun beating down on him. At a crossways he ran a little way along each track, then leapt over a clump of heather to confuse and delay the Greys. He could hear them behind him now and ran faster, leading them away from the vulnerable group in the tree above the Clay-Pan. Then suddenly, a sensation in the base of his whiskers, had said, ‘Turn and stop here.’
He hopped sideways off the path, knocking over the base part of a broken bottle as he did so, and crouched down to wait.
The Greys had paused at the crossways and were arguing amongst themselves, some saying the Brown Job had gone one way and some another. Then he heard an urgent, confident shout. ‘This way, this way.’
Rowan crouched lower, convinced that his hiding place had been found out, then, smelling the terrifying scent of smoke, he turned his head and saw how the rays of the sun were being focused by the bottle-base on to a wisp of dry moss in which a tiny flame was already showing. He crawled backwards away from the miniature fire. The flame grew, caught the bone-dry heather and suddenly and explosively leapt from clump to clump, fanned by a westerly breeze which seemed to have come from nowhere.
The fire, spreading ever wider, swept down on the Greys and he could hear their shrieks and screams as it overwhelmed them. Then there was just the crackling of the burning heather stems.
Rowan waited upwind of the flames, then, as they moved away over the ridge between him and the Clay-Pan, he tried to follow the fire back the way he had come. In his haste he burned his paws badly and, despite repeated attempts, was unable to walk more than a few steps until the following morning.
At the first scent of burning heather on the breeze, Oak had scrambled to the highest branch of the fir. He could see the billowing smoke-clouds, lit from underneath by the red and orange flames, coming downwind towards them on an ever widening front. Coming too fast to race away from, particularly with Old Burdock unable to move quickly. There was a chance that if they stayed in the tree the flames might not reach them, but he had once seen a burning tree and was not going to risk that. There was only one other option.
He called down, ‘Every squirrel. Drop out of the tree and crouch in the centre of the Clay-Pan. The fire can’t reach us there. It has to feed on plants!’ Squirrels fell from the tree like rain and huddled together on the dry clay beneath it as the fire roared past, small pines and birches flaring up as their needles and leaves scorched, shrivelled and burnt. The leaning tree above them, although enveloped in smoke, escaped the flames and gave some protection from the hot embers falling out of the smoke-clouds.
They crouched there for what seemed hours, coughing the smoke out of their lungs, until the air cleared enough for them to look around. They felt very vulnerable in the open, but they had nowhere else to go until the ground cooled. There was no sign of Rowan or the Greys; they must all have died in the fire. But these were unspoken thoughts.
Oak kept testing the ground on the eastern side of the Clay-Pan until, just before dusk, he judged it cool enough for them to cross. Even so there were some scorched paws before they were through the burnt area. They returned part of the way they had come and were relieved to find that the fire had passed to the south of the Little Pool and missed the Blue Pool altogether, but Oak would not let them venture too near. That morning’s posse had contained only a small number of the Greys, and others might be waiting for them.
They passed over an area of open heath dotted with small pines and birches but none within leaping distance of the others, and so the whole party had to stay together on the ground, fearful of being caught in the open by a fox. They need not have worried; the resident foxes had slipped away at the first scent of smoke.
The squirrels passed clumps of gorse, dark and menacing in the fading light, and, in the small boggy places where marsh gentians flowered, they cooled their paws on the damp moss.
It was when they came to the two metal lines across their route that Oak finally called a halt. These needed careful examination. He was not going to risk crossing whatever these were, in the dark.
They climbed a tree and tried to sleep, Marguerite finding sleep especially evasive as she grieved for her lost brother.
Rowan had spent a sleepless night in the open. In the morning, soaked by a shower of rain which also put out the last remnants of the fire, he found he was able to hobble back to the Clay-Pan, passing the burnt bodies of the Greys on the way. Except for the leaning tree, everything there was scorched and black, and finding no sign of his companions in the tree and all scent obliterated by the overwhelming smell of the damp burned foliage, he searched for their bodies, feeling sick with the horror of it all. It was hopeless; too vast an expanse. Hopeless, hopeless. His paws throbbed with pain.
Somewhere out there must be the charred remains of his family and friends, but he might search for days and then never find them.
He thought of his water-flower pool with the dream Eyeland and turned sadly away westwards, alone.
A skylark sang incongruously above the blackened heathland and in the distance a curlew circled over the site of its nest, mournfully bubbling its loss.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
After the shower had passed, Oak looked at the railway lines in the grey dawn light, unable to comprehend their purpose, then, seeing how they continued into the distance to either side of them, touched one cautiously. It seemed harmless enough, so he clambered over one slippery rail and then the other, before encouraging the others to follow him. The youngsters and elderly squirrels were helped over and the party of exiles went on along the side of a field, hearing dogs barking from a Man-drey, but too far away to inflict hound-dread on even the most nervous. Then through a hedge, down into a ditch, up the other side and they came to a roadway, smelling of oil and rubber, familiar to them from the car park at Humanside.
There was no traffic to be seen in the early light and they crossed in single file, wriggling under a gate on the far side into another field with a wood to their right, behind an earthen bank riddled with rabbit holes. The rabbits, nibbling their last mouthfuls before lying up for the day, ignored the squirrels who passed them silently through the cool dewy grass.
The group were moving more slowly now, resting frequently for the sake of Old Burdock and those with sore paws, convinced that there was now no immediate pursuit and intent only on getting to the Huge Pool and finding, with the Sun’s help, some way to cross to the Eyelands and safety.
By evening, after a long rest in a lone pine tree at High Sun, they had reached a stream with willow and alder trees on either side. In the hollow they lost sight of the familiar outline of Screech Hill behind them, and a small wood hid the view ahead. Oak and Juniper climbed a tree to plan a route, the others keeping watch below. They could see the Huge Pool in the distance and how the stream widened into a series of marshy pools with spear-grass growing around the edges.
A woodpecker, glowing green and yellow in the light of the setting sun, flew in to land on its favourite rotten alder, saw the squirrels and turned away, rising and falling through the air with its strange undulating flight. It seemed to be laughing at them in a high-pitched human voice.
In the swamp below were unfamiliar rushes with brown furry
flowers which reminded Oak of the tail of the cat that had once lived around the Man-dreys at the Blue Pool. A wave of homesickness hit him and he turned to look back, but there was nothing to see but the grass-covered rise in the ground and grazing cows on the skyline.
If it hurts too much
Thinking of what cannot be,
Put it out of mind.
He shook his head violently, turned to Juniper and said, ‘We’ll follow the edge of the swamp, keeping near the trees so that we can retreat into them if we need to. I’d like to go through the treetops, but Old Burdock can’t leap for long and the gaps are too wide for some of the youngsters.’
Cows looked up briefly from their grazing as the group passed, some of the squirrels pausing to eat the ripe blackberries and the hips and haws in the bushes around them. Sloes, black, but with a dusty bloom on the drupes, covered the twigs of blackthorn bushes, but the Reds, knowing the dryness these gave in the mouth, ignored them and hurried on. When it was nearly dark, Oak called a halt and they all climbed a friendly alder tree to huddle together in the darkness.
Each night was becoming a little colder than the last and there was a tang of autumn in the air at dawn. One morning there was another scent as well, one that Juniper recognised as salt, and he had to fight to keep the old craving from overwhelming him. He remembered his Bluebell and was determined not to let it dominate him again.
The squirrels fed uneasily on the plentiful food all about them. They saw where bark had been stripped off a number of young trees and there were cones lying about under a pine tree, which bore the marks of larger teeth than theirs. The distinctive scent of Greys was there too. It was only an elusive hint in the air, but to those who had lived in close proximity to them for a while there was also something else, more sensed by whiskers than by nose, ear or eye. A sense of arrogance, contempt almost, possession by right of might.
The Reds looked about them, feeling that this must be a part of some Grey’s territory, then scrambled through the scrubby trees, alert for danger, until they reached a shoreline of muddy banks with clumps of rushes. Water lapped on to the beach. Burdock went forward and tasted it.
‘This isn’t a pool!’ she said. ‘This is the sea.’
Pools have sweet water.
Bitter water makes the Sea,
You can’t get round it.
‘That’s a Kernel for squirrels going on climbabout. I never thought I would see it, though. We have come to a Sea.’
‘Now what do we do?’ asked Chestnut, looking out to where the tree-covered Eyelands appeared to float on the rippling water.
‘Trust in the Sun,’ said Burdock, after a pause. ‘We’ve got this far safely.’ Then, lowering her voice, added, ‘Apart from Rowan, that is.’
The squirrels spread out along the shoreline, where the waster jostled twigs and pieces of broken reed-stem at the very highest tide mark.
‘I think the sea is going away!’ said Marguerite a few minutes later. ‘Look, this stone was under the water when I came past it, and now the top of it is sticking out.’
The squirrels gathered round and watched. Eventually even Chestnut the Doubter was convinced that the sea was indeed going away and soon they would be able to walk across to the nearest Eyeland. Marguerite realised that if they could, then the Eyelands would not be safe havens for them. She spoke her fears quietly to Burdock. ‘Trust in the Sun,’ she was told and had to be content with that, as they watched the sea continue to slide away over the mud-flats towards the Eyelands.
They sat in the short grass along the shoreline, fascinated by the disappearing sea, until High Sun, most of them hoping that a dry path would appear to enable them to cross to the Eyelands. Even Oak forgot the possibility of danger from landwards, until Heather, who had looked over her shoulder, whispered to him, ‘Don’t move suddenly, Oak-Friend, but there’s a posse of Greys behind us.’
Oak turned his head casually as though looking at the sky to judge the time, and saw the Greys, lots and lots, all watching them ominously.
‘No squirrel turn around,’ he said calmly. ‘Just start walking towards the Eyelands where the sea has been. Don’t look back.’
The Reds did as they were told and walked out on to the slowly drying mudbanks, which got stickier and stickier under their paws as they neared the water.
Fern the Fussy stopped to lick some of the foul-tasting mire off her tail and saw the Greys following them menacingly, although keeping some distance behind. With their greater weight they were sinking further into the mud than the Reds.
Ahead, the sea appeared to have stopped going away and the fugitives waited there uncertainly, sinking in the cloying ooze at the water’s edge.
The Greys, also picking their way carefully, were still trying to advance, but without their usual cockiness, their fur becoming covered in a grey slime until they also halted some yards back and stared silently at the Reds on the mudbank below them.
For several minutes both sides crouched, neither moving, the Greys apparently waiting for something to happen.
‘The sea is coming back,’ wailed Tamarisk, ‘it’s all over my feet.’
The Greys laughed and nudged one another. ‘Time and tide wait for no squirrel,’ one of them called out and the others all laughed again.
The sun shone down from a cloudless sky on to the red and grey squirrels, the heat drying the slime on their fur. It also shone on a discarded door floating along on the rising tide beyond the trapped Reds, touching the shore from time to time, then lifting and drifting on as the tide inexorably rose higher. The Leader of the Greys saw it coming and started to move forward but was unable to do so without sinking dangerously into the mud.
Oak, seeing the Greys watching something behind him, turned, saw the door himself and recognised that here was a chance of escape.
‘Follow me,’ he shouted, leaping for the door as it touched against the mudbank, and the others leapt after him, although Old Burdock, spluttering and spitting salty water, had to be unceremoniously hauled aboard. The door, pushed from the shore by the impact of the leaping bodies, drifted away, turning slowly as it did so.
Tamarisk the Tactless, feeling safe now, put his paw to his nose and wiggled his claws at the frustrated Greys, who were retreating in disorder. The Reds did not see the fate of the Greys as the door, its surface now awash with water, drifted around a mud-spit, and caught an offshore breeze. Each squirrel had to dig its claws into the soft wood and cling on for dear life.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘The Eyelands are going away,’ Burdock reported to Oak as they drifted along. The squirrels were getting used to the strange way the door moved on the water; some had even started to scramble about, their bodies adjusting to the movement as they did in wind-tossed treetops. All were wet from the wavelets that slashed over the door from time to time, but the sun was warm and none was seriously chilled. Unfamiliar long-necked black birds flew heavily past and gulls, normally seen only rarely by the squirrels when storms forced seabirds inland, were everywhere, looking down with cold yellow eyes on the door and its unusual passengers, and squawking their disapproval.
Marguerite the Bright One was oblivious to all of this and to the rocking motion under her feet. Painted on the wood where she sat was one of her numbers and one she didn’t know. There was a 4 and then a number with no corners in it at all – 0. What could this last number mean? No corners meant there was nothing to record . A number for nothing? That did not make any kind of sense. She scratched at the figures as if this would make them reveal their true meaning, but the flaking paint came off under her claws, broke up and floated away on the next wave to wash over their raft.
Old Burdock was repeating to herself, ‘Trust in the Sun. Trust in the Sun.’ Marguerite joined her and soon all the squirrels were chanting in unison.
Oak stood precariously, swaying with the motion under his feet. ‘The Eyelands are coming back,’ he said and the chanting stopped as every squirrel turned and looked in
the direction he was pointing. They all agreed that the Eyelands were indeed getting nearer as they watched, the door drifting in towards the shore of the largest.
Finally, to the huge relief of every squirrel, the door grounded and, glad to be on land again, they were able to walk ashore over wet but firm, gravelly sand, from which strange half- buried round and rectangular objects projected. They clustered together amongst the flotsam at the top of the beach.
It was Larch the Curious who made the first move. ‘Come on,’ he said, Let’s go look and see what there is to see.’
‘But we don’t know where we are,’ replied Chestnut.
‘We never will if we stay here!’ Heather pointed out.
Oak, though still feeling slightly queasy from the unaccustomed movement of the door, felt it was time to assert himself.
Firm Leadership shown
Provides other squirrels with
A common purpose.
‘We will go carefully, all staying together. No squirrel is to go off on their own. We don’t know what dangers might be lurking here.’
The beach and the foreshore where they had come aground were littered with broken drainage pipes and misfired bricks, the debris from a pottery which had once occupied the site. Broken shards were everywhere, many overgrown with herbage, and even the large pines behind the foreshore grew out of mounds and banks of soil covering old scrap heaps. The whole area had an unreal and disturbing sense for the tired animals.