The Golden Flight (The Dorset Squirrels)

by Michael Tod

  Squirrels have the right

  To explain their own actions,

  Fully – in silence.

  Called back, he was given the tag ‘the Ruddled’, and, feeling ashamed of himself, Chip the Ruddled left in disgrace, his tail trailing.

  As for Caterpillar, he seemed to have important business that kept him on the far side of the island for several weeks!

  Across the waters of the harbour, on the Mainland, Lord Malachite woke in his bachelor drey in one of the Scots pines on Tanglewood Knoll. He looked over to the next tree where Lord Silica had a similar establishment, and then across the sunlit glade to where Lord Obsidian lived, also on his own.

  What are we doing here? He thought, not for the first time. Two, maybe even three, winters have passed since we set up that Power Square to protect us from the plague of the Grey Death. We’ll all die here forgotten in this foreign wood unless we get out there and do something.

  The thought disturbed him and he recalled his ambition.

  As with all the male grey squirrels in New America, he had cherished the idea of becoming the Great Lord Silver. Like his two companions, he had earned the first rank of Lord through his ruthless treatment of the native Reds. Then the Grey Death came, forcing the three of them to flee and hide here on this knoll in the Great Heath. Humans never came to this wood, the storm-felled tree trunks on the knoll having made an effective barrier.

  ‘Lord Silica,’ he called across to the next tree, ‘are you awake?’

  ‘I am now, damn you,’ a voice growled from the next drey. ‘What is it?’

  Taken aback by the gruffness of the response, Lord Malachite did not answer, but came fully out into the sunshine and sat on the branch listening to the soft ‘coo-coo, coo-coo’ of a wood pigeon on the other side of the wood.

  ‘What is it you want?’ Lord Silica had emerged from him drey and was looking across at Lord Malachite.

  ‘I was just wondering if we were going to pass the rest of our lives here, that’s all.’ I’m bored and was wondering if the Grey Death had gone yet?’

  A rustling of pine needles betrayed the approach of Lord Obsidian. ‘What are you two plotting?’ he asked. ‘Not plotting anything. Just wondering if it was safe to go and see if the Grey Death has gone.’

  Malachite noted that Obsidian was looking older. So was Silica. Paunchy, too; the living here on the knoll was easy, with plenty of nuts and pine cones for just the three of them.

  ‘If we ever mean to leave, we’d better make it soon,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we go as far as that Blue Pool place; see if any squirrels survived there. If they did, they probably can’t pass the plague on to us after all this time.’

  ‘We’ll go tomorrow,’ said Silica, ‘or maybe the day after.’ He yawned and went back into his drey.

  Malachite was half watching an ichneumon fly probing through the pine bark with the long spike under her tail, seeking wood-boring grubs in which to lay her eggs. The other half of his mind, preoccupied with his ambition, ranged across New America to the Oval Drey at Woburn where the leader of all the Silver Squirrels lived and ruled by edict. One day I will be the Great Lord Silver, he was thinking. One day!

  Near the Blue Pool, in the woodland that the Greys called New Massachusetts, but was known to the native Reds by the more prosaic name of the North-east Wood, a middle-aged squirrel known as Rowan the Bold was preparing the last teaching session for the batch of Greys that had formed his Early Spring class. These had arrived soon after the storm had blown itself out and, finding most of the old dreys had been torn down, eagerly began building new dreys to replace them. Rowan had noticed with interest that they built to a new design, more basic than the traditional ‘family’ ones. Their new dreys had room only for a single squirrel, although two Reds, being smaller, might just have been able to share. The Greys had a new name for them too – dreytels.

  Rowan was joined by his life-mate Meadowsweet, their daughter Bluebell, and the ex-zervantz Spindle and Wood Anemone together with their twin daughters, Rosebay and Willowherb.

  After greeting one another, Rowan asked Spindle if he had seen Hickory and Sitka.

  ‘Them’z probably zeeing that the coloniztz have left the dreytelz tidy; them’ll be along here zoon.’

  Spindle replied, his accent giving away his island origin.

  Hickory and Sitka had been the leaders of the greys who had been misled by the Temple Master the year before. After losing the battle at the Agglestone Rock, they had stayed here with Rowan and his party, helping to teach new batches of colonists the ways of the natives, as directed by their leader, the current Great Lord Silver, from his base at Woburn.

  The Early Spring class had learned well and were now moving on to colonise lands to the far west, though one pair, Sumac and Tumbleweed, had decided to make their home on Screech Hill across the Great Heath to the south-west.

  The session that Rowan had prepared for this last teaching day was mostly revision of the more important Kernels of Truth and, by High-sun he could sense that the Greys were all eager to leave and put some of these teachings into practice. He dismissed the class and the Reds brushed whiskers with their ex-pupils and watched the new colonists troop excitedly off across the Dogleg Field, heading westwards.

  ‘Do you know when the next batch is due in?’ Rowan asked Hickory.

  ‘I would think that they’ll be here with the first showing of the New Moon,’ he replied.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Sumac, with his mate Tumbleweed, had been among the new graduates when they had crossed the Dogleg Field and the humans’ roadway. On the far side of that they had waved farewell to their class-mates. The mass of Greys had headed west, seeking lands to colonise.

  Some of the ideas these friendly Reds had introduced him to were very different to the traditional concepts of the Greys. Guardianship, for instance; being responsible for an area instead of owning and defending it against all comers. Then there was this idea of Life-mating. He looked at Tumbleweed as she sat watching the others going out of sight. Did he really want to spend his whole life with her, rather than ‘play the wood’ as Grey males had traditionally done? Did she share his views on all the things they had been taught?

  Sumac had decided that they would not travel with the others but would see if he could find a vacant territory to look after on Screech Hill which he could see forming a hump on the skyline to the south-west. Supposing that any Greys he encountered were not friendly or still practised the old ways?

  ‘Wait here,’ he told Tumbleweed, ‘I need to go back and ask Rowan something. I won’t be long.’ He checked that there were none of the humans’ travelling boxes coming along the roadway from either direction, and then scurried across.

  The horses that lived in the Dogleg Field were down at the far end of the field and did not see him as he hopped across it, avoiding the piles of dung that littered the cropped grass, sun, rain and beetles breaking each down to return the borrowed nourishment to the soil below. Soon he was with Rowan.

  ‘Hello, Sumac-friend,’ Rowan greeted his star pupil. ‘I thought you had left.’

  ‘I had, but there is something I needed to ask you.’ Rowan raised an eyebrow and waited.

  ‘It’s about the Sun. I’ve listened to all you taught us and everything makes sense to me, but most of the other Greys were not so convinced. How can I tell whether or not any Grey I meet is a true believer?’

  ‘As you are obviously a Sun-squirrel, I will let you into a secret.’ Rowan replied. ‘What does this mean to you?’

  He scratched in the dirt where they were sitting.

  ‘It looks like a fish to me,’ said Sumac.

  ‘Right,’ said Rowan. ‘That’s what it is. Marguerite, my sister, learned the shape from some dolphins – you remember I told you about them. We Sun-squirrels use it to let others know what we are.’

  ‘But what has a fish go to do with being a Sun-squirrel?’

  ‘Nothing, that’s why we use it. If we used a
symbol like this it would be easy to guess its meaning. So, if you are not sure of a squirrel’s beliefs just idly make the fish mark and any Sun-squirrel will recognise it and identify himself.’

  ‘Thank you my friend.’

  The Red and Grey squirrels brushed whiskers.

  ‘The Sun be with you.’

  ‘And with you.’

  Sumac was about to hurry back to Tumbleweed when he remembered a kernel that Meadowsweet had taught him.

  Squirrels do not live

  By nuts alone. Take time off

  To seek out beauty.

  He changed his direction and set off to circle the Blue Pool for one last time, relishing the bright azure colour of its still waters where it lay deep among the green of the pines and the banks of purple rhododendron flowers, flamboyant against their glossy dark leaves.

  Tumbleweed was waiting impatiently. ‘Where in the Sunless-pit have you been? She snapped.

  Sumac decided that it was not the right time for him to explain about symbols and Sun-squirrels.

  Larch the Curious looked at the tree that had lost its top in the Great Storm. The splintered trunk was silhouetted against the dawn sky and he thought it looked like a giant squirrel; two spikes of torn wood fibres forming its tufted ears.

  He ran up the scaly bark and bit at some of the exposed wood, then came down for another look. It was even more like a squirrel now, only the nose was wrong. He went up again and gnawed at that area. By the time the sun was well up, his teeth and jaws were aching from his efforts and he climbed an unbroken tree to rest. It was too early in the year for the boatloads of human visitors to arrive, but he always enjoyed this daytime snooze in the high branches. He wished that his life-mate Clover would join him, but knew that she was off somewhere with the two ex-princesses, Cowzlip and Voxglove.

  Clover had told him that she had been planning a special kind of drey with them. Cowzlip and Voxglove had taken over her role as Carer and had suggested that they ought to have another drey near their own for sick squirrels to use. A further drey was to hold a selection of healing herbs.

  This was all very well, thought Larch, but with Clover doing her best as Tagger for the increasing population of the island and this involvement with the Carers, she had little time to spend with him.

  Larch admitted to himself that he was bored. Making that broken tree look like a squirrel had been fun; it had certainly made the time pass more quickly.

  He was waking from a lazy afternoon’s dozing when his son and daughter joined him.

  ‘Greetings, Larch-Pa,’ they said together and he greeted them in return.

  ‘Come and look at this,’ he said, leading them to where they could see the shape of a squirrel’s head against the sky.

  ‘That’s great, Larch-Pa,’ Elm said, glancing at his sister and trying to keep a straight face, ‘but its forepaws are wrong.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything to those,’ Larch said.

  ‘It looks as if it’s holding a Woodstock,’ said Trefoil. ‘With a bit of careful shaping it would scare off any pine marten.’

  Larch looked round apprehensively. It was only the year before that the pine marten which had terrorised the island squirrels had been killed. Sun, save us from any more, he thought.

  Trefoil and Elm were already up the broken tree biting at the flaking bark and trimming off some of the dead twigs and small branches which were sticking out.

  ‘A bit more off that one,’ Larch called up to Elm.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Marguerite was concerned about Chip. Since he had come to Ourland he had outgrown a lot of the shyness which had, without doubt been caused by his fear of his father, the dreadful Crag. The young squirrel, for whom she had a special affection, had proved to be very clever, but since he had been down-tagged, little had been seen of him. She asked other squirrels if they knew where Chip was and one told her that he was twisting rushes together down near the Zwamp. It was here that she found him, engrossed with something that he had made and, so as not to frighten him, she called, ‘Chip, it’s me,’ as she approached.

  The young squirrel looked up, apparently pleased to see her, and held out the thing he had made. ‘Look at this,’ he said proudly.

  Marguerite reached out and took the square of woven rushes from his paws. Across the hollow of the square were single pithy stems of reedmace and on each were threaded several rings of cherry bark. Marguerite had often seen hollow reddish-brown tubes of bark on the ground beneath wild cherry trees where the tough outer coverings of fallen twigs and small branches had been slower to rot than the softer wood inside. Chip had evidently bitten one of these tubes into rings. She counted eight rings on each rush stem.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked him.

  ‘I haven’t given it a name yet, I just call it a bark-rush thing. Do you like it?’

  ‘Well, it’s very neat and well made, but what’s it for?’

  She tipped it sideways and all the rings slipped to one end.

  Chip reached out and took it back. ‘It’s for counting on,’ he said, his tail rising with pride. ‘Look.’

  His paws moved the rings back and forth along the rush stems so fast that Marguerite could hardly follow the action.

  ‘There you are,’ he said, ‘that’s a hundred.’ He shuffled the rings back and forth again. ‘And that’s a thousand.’

  Chip passed the bark-rush thing to Marguerite. ‘You try,’ he invited.

  By High-sun she was using it to count nearly as fast as he was, and each was trying out new ideas.

  ‘Supposing we have a pair of squirrels,’ Chip said, ‘who have four dreylings each year for four years, we would have that many squirrels.’ He held the Bark-rush out to Marguerite.

  ‘No we wouldn’t’ she told him, ‘each of those would be breeding, so we would have that many!’ The rings few backwards and forwards under her busy paws.

  ‘Wow,’ said Chip. ‘That’s a lot of squirrels!’

  ‘Of course it’s not true,’ Marguerite told him. ‘Foxes and other predators take many of us, that’s a fact of squirrel life. Others will go off and live elsewhere and some may not have four dreylings every year. Even so, that’s an oak-sized figure. Has any other squirrel seen this?’

  ‘Not yet,’ he told her, ‘only you and I can count above eight, so it wouldn’t mean much to them.’

  Marguerite went away, unable to get the picture of all those ‘calculated’ squirrels out of her head. Chip was shuffling the rings again.

  Marguerite wandered through the valley, past the broad-leaved palm trees, the last relics of some human’s attempt to create a sub-tropical garden on the island, and up to the pines on the cliffs beyond. Here she lay out on a resin-scented branch enjoying the cool breeze coming in from the sea.

  It was late afternoon and, just as she was thinking of going down to forage, her whiskers started twitching with the feeling that she now knew signalled that dolphins were near. She sat up and looked out over the harbour.

  She could see three black heads and backs curving up out of the water and sliding down again, effortlessly keeping away from the few human boats that were sailing in on the tide. Then the thought-voices that she loved filled her head.

  She heard Malin first. ‘Are you there, squirrel-friend?’

  Marguerite thought back, ‘Yes, I am here,’ and the three heads immediately turned towards where she sat high above the beach.

  Lundy’s thought-waves reached her. ‘We are on our way up-channel to a school at the Goodwins and decided to swim into the harbour to see if all was well with you.’

  The dolphins and the squirrels exchanged pleasantries, then Lundy said, ‘We have been for a sea-change, down to the Island of Madeira. We could see blue trees on the land there, and I thought of you and how you would love to see them.’

  ‘Was it the leaves or flowers that made them blue?’ Marguerite asked, intrigued.

  ‘I think it was flowers, but they were too far away for us to be sure. The
local dolphins call them Jacaranda trees.’

  Marguerite played with the name. She was so used now to communicating mentally that she could even sense the sounds of the thoughts. This blue tree had an exotic and exciting sound to it. Jacaranda, Jac-ar-an-da, Jacaranda.

  ‘Did you meet many other Dolphins?’ she asked.

  ‘Not so many as we have on earlier visits,’ Lundy replied sadly. ‘Humans are using a new kind of net which catches a lot of dolphins as well as fish. The nets are made of such thin lines that we can’t detect them. It is easy to get entangled and then we drown.’

  Malin’s voice flowed, swamping Lundy’s. ‘Stop being a teredo. Our friend doesn’t want to know all our problems.’

  Marguerite did not know how to respond, so asked, ‘What are you going to learn about at school?’

  ‘Actually we are to be the teachers on this session. You may recall that our patrol area is either side of the Rock of Portland. On the far side is a curved pebble beach that forms what we call the West Bay. Humans go there to catch fish with lines thrown out into the water. It was there that Malin discovered that when he goes near a line that is tautly stretched from a human’s thin-stick out to the seabed, he can understand what that human is thinking.’

  ‘Is that a right thing to do?’ asked Marguerite.

  ‘We were not sure at first,’ Malin replied. ‘It did seem like an intrusion and while we are near their lines they don’t catch any fish. But when we did listen we learned things which may help us understand them better; and that must be a good thing. I know that you often have difficulty in interpreting their actions.’