by Michael Tod
‘I am disappointed,’ he announced. ‘Not one of you has passed the Sin-test. Each of you must have sinned grievously to be so affected. This is why the test is special. It finds out not only the squirrel who has sinned openly, but also those who have sinned in their hearts. All those who are impure will now be experiencing the horror of the Sunless Pit. Falling in darkness forever. He paused. ‘But I, Crag the Temple Master, can give you hope. All those who truly repent and vow to serve the Sun in any way I direct will be forgiven and have a second chance. Think on what I have said.’
He climbed out of the hollow and up one of the dying upper limbs of the oak. Ivy followed him.
‘You misserable crooked worm and tricksster,’ she said, the words hissing savagely past her broken tooth. ‘I know that you made them eat poissoned leavess and that iss why they are all sick. Even your own mate. I don’t whether to kill you mysself or tell the otherss what you have done and let them do it.’
She looked at Crag in contempt, then spoke again. ‘There iss, of coursse, one thing you could do.’
Crag looked up at her. She suddenly seemed much bigger than he was.
‘You could tell the otherss that I have not sinned and because of thiss I am to be in charge of all the Greyss.’
Crag hesitated.
‘Right,’ said Ivy. ‘I will denounsse you for the tricksster you are.’
‘Wait,’ said Crag. ‘Tell me just what you want. I am sure that we can work together for the glory of the Sun.’
‘Ressponssibility,’ said Ivy, ‘and a chansse to prove mysself to otherss.’
On the third morning after the Celebrations Juniper wriggled out of his drey in a pine overlooking the Blue Pool and started down the trunk to forage for his breakfast. He stopped, head down. The ground below him was covered with grey squirrels, scratching and digging where he and Marguerite had buried their winter reserves. He went carefully on down the tree to investigate, pausing a few feet above the scattered pine needles covering the earth.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, the formal greeting seeming inappropriate.
The Greys ignored him. He asked again, and was again ignored as the intruders dug up nut after nut, eating some and preparing others to be carried away.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked loudly, for the third time.
None of the Greys so much as glanced in his direction. He looked round for support, but no other Red was in sight and he felt the same frustration that he had known when, as a dreyling, his companions had ‘sent him to the conker tree’ for some misdemeanour or other. Juniper went back up the pine trunk to alert Marguerite
Other Reds were now coming silently through the trees, warily watching the activity below. Soon Alder the leader arrived, leaping across the last gap and landing awkwardly, having no tail to balance himself with. The others looked to him for guidance.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
Juniper explained what little he knew.
With Juniper and Marguerite beside him, Alder went down the trunk and asked the Greys why they were digging up all his community’s nuts. Alder too was ignored; the Greys just carried on as if the Reds did not exist. Not knowing how to stop them, Alder, after a minute or so, led Juniper and Marguerite back up the tree and they watched the raiders depart, all carrying nuts in their mouths.
An hour later the Greys were back, collecting more of the Red’s precious Harvest, not even leaving the sacrosanct eighth nut as required by the Kernel:
One out of eight nuts
Must be left to germinate.
Here grows our future.
Alder was on the trunk, raging at the Greys, when Marguerite noticed a Red whom she recognised as the father of Chip. He was directing the foraging party. She slipped away through the branches and came down behind him.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked angrily. ‘Those are our reserves!’
Crag turned to her scornfully. ‘You deserve to have nothing. You are all Blasphemers, story-tellers and pleasure-indulgers – you don’t even collect metal! And you’ve corrupted my son!’ he added, venom in his voice.
‘At least these nuts will feed Sun-fearing squirrels even if they are grey. If you get your lot to repent and help us fill the Temple, I will consider sharing this bounty with you.’
‘That bounty, as you call it, is ours,’ Marguerite retorted. Then, noticing that Crag was looking over her shoulder, she turned to see that there was a group of Greys close behind her.
‘Shall we remove her, Temple Masster? Asked a grey female with a broken tooth.
‘She’s just leaving,’ Crag replied, as Marguerite leapt from the tree-trunks. ‘Carry on collecting the bounty. Don’t talk to the Blasphemers.’
Marguerite rejoined her family and companions, and told them what had occurred. When she had finished, Chip slipped away to speak to his father. He found him as Marguerite had, organising the Greys and directing their plundering.
‘Father,’ he said hesitantly, ‘these are nice squirrels. They are what they call ‘friendly’, and they do respect the Sun, only in a different way from us. Why don’t you talk more with them?’
Crag glowered at him. ‘They really have got you in their paws, haven’t they? You always were weak. Well, they won’t have you much longer!’ He nodded to two Greys who had come up behind Chip, and they seized his forelimbs and dragged him, scratching and chattering in fear and anger, towards the North-east Wood.
Tansy had trailed Chip, or Chipping as she usually called him, when he had gone to speak to his father, and had seen him being taken away by the two Greys. She was annoyed because Marguerite, though always agreeing that they must take the Woodstock to Ourland, appeared to be doing nothing about it. She had vague hopes that Chip might, in some way, be able to help her. Tansy followed them quietly, through the treetops, wondering what it was that one of the Greys had said to the youngster that made him stop calling out. Crag and the laden Greys were coming along the ground below her in a group, hampered by their loads of nuts.
When in sight of the Temple Tree she stopped, hid herself and watched what was happening. She saw Rusty run down the trunk and across the ground, hug her skinny son to her and then, seeing Crag approaching, push Chip away and begin to scold him unconvincingly. ‘Why did you go away with those Blasphemers?’ she asked. ‘Your father and I were most upset. Come on into the Temple and repent of your sins.
Chip, now alert to such things, had detected a note of warmth in her voice and followed her meekly.
As he went he heard his father issuing instructions to the Greys that ‘the chit’ was to be watched at all times. The broken-toothed female appointed guards.
Inside the Temple Chip could see that there was much more metal than when he had last been here; the main trunk was nearly full and the hollow secondary trunk, which grew away from the main tree like a squirrel’s tail from it’s body, was also being filled. There were many more Greys too; others must have arrived from the north. They were all busy, either bringing in metal or stowing the plundered nuts in the hollows and crevices of upper limbs. Ivy offered him a nut, but he refused it.
Later, when it was dark and Crag had said the familiar words of the Evening Prayer, Chip tried to slip away, but every exit was blocked by an alert grey squirrel.
He sought out his mother’s sleeping place and tried to join her, but she pushed him away. He could sense his father’s disapproval.
‘None of your blasphemous behaviour here. This is a Temple of the Sun,’ the harsh voice came out of the darkness. Chip went back to his sleeping place and lay there, rigid and cold, thinking of the warmth of his friends’ dreys. He yearned to feel Tansywistful’s warm body snug against his.
Tansy was awake, wondering what her young friend was doing. She knew from her own experience and from Chip’s descriptions just how it would be in the Temple Tree. She tried to think of some way of getting him back. In the morning she would have another look at the Temple Tree, if she could avoid Crag and the
Greys. As she lay there, thoughts of her family and her friends on Ourland crept up on her and she again felt an agonising guilt that she had not been able to do more to get help to them. There was nothing she could do, she told herself, Unless Marguerite and the others could be persuaded to assist her. In the meantime that funny youngster needed her.
Eventually she fell asleep, to awake in the darkness, overcome by marten-dread, and she lay shivering until dawn.
Neither Spindle nor Wood Anemone had slept, each sure that the indiscretion had resulted in the raid by the Greys, but neither could speak of it to the other.
Marguerite was trying to find some way of reconciling her desire to help Tansy with her duty as a parent and as Tagger to the Blue Pool community. She had discussed her dilemma with her friend Dandelion, who told her that her life-mate, Alder the Leader, was adamant that Marguerite must put her duty to the community first. He had led them all to the Blue Pool and they needed to stay together as a strong unit, especially as there was now an obvious threat from the unpredictable Greys and the strange Red, Crag. Should she insist on a Council Meeting to discuss it all openly?
The following morning was clear and bright, with frost crystals sparkling on the pine needles as Tansy slipped quietly through the branches towards the Temple Tree. A party of Greys passed under her, noisily heading for the pool and more ‘Bounty’. She crouched on a high branch until they were out of sight, then went on even more cautiously.
Greys were leaving the Temple Tree, each group heading in a different direction. These, she assumed, were metal-hunting parties.
When she reached a pine tree where she could overlook the clearing in which the Temple Tree stood, she could see that some Greys had been left on guard. Seven or eight of the biggest were either patrolling the ground near the tree or were in an upright and alert stance close to the entrances to the hollow. She settled down in a dense clump of pine needles to watch.
As the sun got higher, the patrolling by the Greys slowed down, but she saw the activity intensify when Crag the Temple Master appeared at one of the holes and came down the trunk, followed by even more Greys. They left, heading eastwards, Crag dominating the larger and more powerful grey squirrels. Another party left, heading north, led by the broken-toothed female.
Tansy continued her silent watch.
It was nearly High Sun and several parties of Greys had come and gone when she saw Chip emerge from the highest of the holes in the Temple Tree, with a red female that she knew must be his mother. She watched as the two climbed one of the spiky dead top branches of the stag-headed oak. They clung there, whispering to one another.
Tansy in the pine and the Greys on the ground were watching them and listening, trying to overhear what was being said, but Chip and Rusty kept their voices low.
‘Your father will be furious if he knows that we have been talking like this,’ Rusty whispered, looking fearfully down at the patrolling squirrels.
‘That’s just what I mean. We can’t live our entire lives in fear of what Crag-Pa will say.’
‘But if we don’t do as he says, it will be the Sunless Pit for us both – for ever.’
‘Do you really believe there is such a place?’ Chip asked. ‘Tansywistful’ doesn’t. She says it was invented in the old days by the ‘Nobles’ to make lesser squirrels obey them.’
‘How would she know?’ Rusty asked, ‘She’s only a young squirrel herself.’ She was about to tell her son about the dreadful night and the day of darkness when he interrupted.
‘At the Blue Pool they – we – they all discuss things, you can say anything you want to and the others will listen to what you say and tell you their ideas. It’s ever so interesting. Everything is shared.’
‘What does ‘shared’ mean?’ Rusty asked, keeping a watchful eye for Crag’s return, hoping he wouldn’t come back for a while.
Chip explained this concept as best he could, then tried to explain ‘Love’.
‘All the squirrels ‘love’ one another. They help each other whenever they can. Even when they disagree about something and quarrel, they soon make it up because they don’t like seeing their friends upset.’ He had then to explain ‘friends’ to a puzzled Rusty.
‘But what about sins?’ she asked.
‘They don’t have them. All the things that Crag-Pa calls sins they do all the time, and they don’t feel bad about them.’ He described snuggling up and comfort and warmth to his increasingly perturbed mother.
‘Don’t you think that their way seems more natural?’ Chip asked.
‘I don’t know about this ‘natural’. We’ve always done things the way your father told us to.’ However, she let her mind relax enough to remember the feeling of warmth and rightness she’d had when she’d cuddled her young son when he was a dreyling, so long, long ago.
‘What about these untrue stories that they tell, that upset your father so?’ she asked, after looking round the clearing again.
‘Tansywistful says that stories don’t have to be true as long as every squirrel knows them to be ‘stories’. They are sometimes just for fun and sometimes they have messages in them which you have to work out.’ He tried to explain ‘fun’.
‘We’d better go down,’ Rusty said. ‘Your father will be back soon.’
Entering the hollow of the tree by the highest hole, Rusty allowed her paw to rest momentarily on her son’s shoulder. He was right, it did feel natural
Tansy, across the clearing, watched them go in out of her sight, waited a little while longer and then went back to the Blue Pool.
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
Old Oak was feeling nauseous. There was an overwhelming scent of decay filling the Bunker. Each squirrel knew that it came from the decaying body of Fern, buried In the powdery punkwood at the back of the hollow, but, out of respect for Oak’s feelings, none had openly remarked on it. Now, with the temperature rising whenever sunshine heated the hollow tree, it could no longer be ignored. Oak called a Council Meeting.
‘My fellow squirrels,’ he began, ‘we have been through much hardship and danger together and I have valued your support. Now, though, since my life-mate Fern has gone Sunwards, I am increasingly feeling my age and do not believe that I can give the leadership you all deserve.’
He paused and there was a murmur of concern from the others.
‘We are virtually out of food, the air in the Bunker is getting sour and soon we will have to leave, despite the danger from the marten outside. I just don’t feel up to taking the responsibility of leading you; my brain is tired and I can no longer think as clearly as I used to. I propose to stand down and help you to select a new Council Leader.’ He slumped back, exhausted by the strain of this long speech and the relief of having at last given up what had become an impossible burden to him.
The squirrels waited. There were no real precedents for a Leader standing down. Clover the Carer and Tagger fumbled in her mind for a Kernel to help guide them. All she found was:
In any crisis
A Leader’s first duty is –
To keep hope alive.
But this did not seem appropriate, though the need to keep hope alive was apparent enough. Could I be Leader? She asked herself, then dismissed the idea. It was hard enough combining the duties of Tagger and Carer. She was training the two ex-princesses Voxglove and Cowzlip to take over the Caring role and they were learning fast, but it would be a long time before she could let them carry on without her help.
She looked around at the assembled squirrels sitting expectantly in the dim light waiting for someone to propose something.
Chestnut the Doubter for Leader? she wondered. If they appointed him, he wouldn’t believe it and his attitude was always negative anyway. A Leader must be positive!
His life-mate - Heather Treetops? She would like the honour, as she always boasted that her ancestors were noble squirrels, but she had never shown real depth and, though prepared to criticise others, she had few ideas of her own.
; What about her own life-mate Larch the Curious? She smiled to herself. Fond as she was of him, he was far too impetuous, and his insatiable curiosity often overtook caution. That wouldn’t do in a Leader.
She ran her eye round the circle of squirrels, dismissing the ex-zervantz; they had little concept of action other than doing what they were told.
Ex-prince Fir was sickly, probably as a result of the inbreeding of the Royal family, but Just Poplar looked strong enough. Of course. He was the natural choice!
Without further hesitation Clover said, ‘I propose Just Poplar to be our new Leader.’
Poplar looked uncomfortable and said, ‘It’z lezz than a year zinze uz became King and uz gave that up at wonz, not liking the thingz uz would have to do. Uz don’t think that uz’z a zuitable squirrel to be a Leader.’
Each squirrel remembered how Poplar had abdicated and given up all his titles, privileges and duties to become Just Poplar and how relaxed he had seemed after that. But then they thought how helpful and friendly he had been to every squirrel then and his Royal background still gave him an air of authority. Looking at each other, they seemed to decide, as one, that he would make an excellent new Leader and there was a clamour of approval.
‘Poplar for Leader, Poplar, Poplar.’
One of the ex-zervantz called, ‘Long Live King Poplar’, but was glowered into silence by the others.
After listening to the acclaim, Poplar raised his tail. ‘If it iz the wish of yew all, then uz acceptz. However, there will be no talk of ‘King’ Poplar. Uz do not care for titles, uz do not even want a tag other than the won uz have been comfortable with. Uz’ll only agree if uz can continue to be ‘Juzt Poplar’.’
A little forest of raised tails indicated unanimous acceptance.