by Michael Tod
‘Find a mate, live in peace and bring up a family under the Sun – that Great Lord Silver business is a sham. I can see that now,’ Sitka hissed back.
‘You won’t do that with Malachite in charge. His head is full of punkwood. Come and join us.’
‘I can’t do that, you’re outnumbered many times. You’ll all be zapped by nightfall.’
‘We’ve got a Woodstock,’ hissed Hickory. I don’t think old Punkhead knows what that is. Come and join us.’
‘Get on with it, damn you both,’ Malachite’s voice came from the bank behind Sitka. ‘Or are you rabbits?’
They ignored the insult and went on with the charade.
‘Are you a Sun-squirrel?’ Hickory asked.
‘Yes.’
‘You never told me.’
‘You never asked. Are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You never told me.’
‘You never asked.’
A small pine cone splashed in the water beside them as a gruff voice called down, ‘Get on with it.’
‘I’ll go and ask Malachite to give you all safe passage,’ Sitka said, while going through the motions of stamping and arching his back again.
Hickory made the same movements, advancing towards Sitka who moved backwards.
‘Not a chance, the old fool is using this, and you, as a step towards the Oval Drey. He fancies himself as Great Lord Silver.’
Hickory moved backwards to allow Sitka to make a forward feint.
‘I’ve got to give it a try. We Sun-squirrels have to do what we think is right.’
Hickory stood to his full height, saluted with his right paw diagonally across his chest. Sitka, facing him, did the same and then they embraced briefly as a shower of cones flew around them, bouncing off the bridge and dropping into the water.
Sitka turned and, tail high, went up the bank to where Lord Malachite sat glowering down at him. Sitka lowered his tail, remembering the Request Kernel he had been taught by Rowan, though forgetting for the moment that Malachite would not know this.
A submissive stance
And a request, presumes help –
Give it if you can.
‘Lord Malachite. These are good squirrels, all friends of mine, please let them pass safely.’
‘They are natives and traitors, as you are showing yourself to be. A cowardly one at that. Your body will hang in a tree as an example to others. Zap him!’ he ordered and a group of Greys leapt on to Sitka, biting and scratching.
The Reds on the island, and Hickory on the bridge, watched, unable to see clearly what was happening in the melee at the top of the bank. Then they saw a limp grey body being hauled up a pine trunk and dragged out along a branch where it was suspended, with its neck jammed in a fork. The tail moved slowly in a slight breeze.
Hickory saluted again.
‘Come back here, Hickory-Friend,’ Rowan called, and the Grey turned and slowly climbed the gentle slope of the island to where the Reds were clustered around the Woodstock. Bluebell moved over to crouch beside him.
‘They will attack soon,’ said Rowan, ‘but we are ready for them.’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Malachite looked down at the island and was about to order ‘Attack’. He had decided to stay up on the bank and direct from there, rather than get involved himself. ‘Only fair to give these youngsters a chance to prove themselves,’ he was telling himself. ‘Wouldn’t do to get injured myself when I am about to make the journey to Woburn and challenge the Great Lord Silver. Must keep myself fit for that.’
There was something about the way the natives on the island were clustered together. Not in terror or in panic as he would have expected, but confidently, as though they knew something he didn’t. Were there reinforcements on the way? Instinctively, he glanced over his shoulder, them realised that there were no other natives in the area. It couldn’t be that.
The nearby Silvers were all looking to him for leadership, waiting for the order to pour across the bridge and dispose of the quarry. He looked again at the natives. There was something on the ground in front of them. He rubbed his eyes; just lately he found he could not see distant things as clearly as he used to.
‘What’s that in front of them?’ he barked at a youngster near him.
‘It’s a stick, sir. A sort of knobbly one.’
‘What’s it for?’
‘I don’t know, sir. It might be some kind of totem, these natives do have some funny customs.’
‘There’s a prime territory for any squirrel who can bring it to me – spread the word. What’s your name?’
‘Monterey, sir, same as the new Great Lord Silver, sir.’
‘Well, Monterey, how do you fancy living up to that name. Go and get that knobbly stick. If you bring it to me you get a choice of territories. Off you go now – go on.’
Monterey braced himself, rushed down the bank and leapt on to the bridge. He saw one of the natives scratch at the knobbly stick and then felt as if he had been hit by an invisible whirlwind. His head swam, lights flashed in his eyes and, losing his balance he fell from the bridge into the water. The shock cleared his head a little ad he struggled for the bank, splashing clumsily. The squirrels who helped him ashore saw that his whiskers were coiled into tight little curls. He begged them to bite them off before he could report back to Malachite.
‘It works,’ Rowan said, ‘we must have got those numbers right.’ He looked at the sun. ‘About four hours to sunset, I wonder if they will try again?’
Lord Malachite, who had never seen a Woodstock in action before, was interrogating Monterey.
‘A wave hit you? I didn’t see any wave, you’ve lost your brains as well as your whiskers. Everybody on this side get ready for a mass charge. Ready now. CHARGE.’
Malachite watched a flood of squirrels pour down the bank towards the bridge. As the first reached the fallen trunk it rolled sideways, clawing at its face, as did the next and the next. The other squirrels turned and scrambled up the bank leaving the three behind.
Malachite watched in astonishment. This was more than a totem that the Reds had. It was an amazingly powerful weapon. It was as well that he had been wise enough to stay up on the bank. Wouldn’t do for his battle group to lose their Commander.
‘Bring up the injured,’ he ordered.
The Reds watched a small party of Greys come cautiously down the bank, their tails low, and help the three with the curled whiskers, climb back up.
‘What now?’ Hickory asked.
‘Wait and watch,’ said Rowan.
Unknown Danger near
Lie high, wait, watch and look out.
Trust in the Sun’s light.
‘The danger’s not unknown,’ said Hickory.
‘Kernels don’t always fit exactly, but the message is clear. Keep alert – trust in the Sun.’
Meadowsweet asked if she should organise the building of dreys in the trees.
Rowan looked up at the three trunks, then across at the mainland.
‘It goes contrary to squirrel nature, but I think we should make a ground-drey. There’s no fox danger here at present and if we are on the ground and all together, we can react faster to anything the Greys do.’
With one watching the bridge and another scanning the bank across the water behind them, the other Reds collected fallen twigs, biting off and dropping more dead ones from the trees. With these they built a hollow mound, large enough to take them all. The females used their skills with grass and moss to make a warm lining.
Dusk was falling and there was no sign of another attack. Rowan sat outside the ground-drey, thinking, his paw on the Woodstock. Across the narrow strip of water he could see Sitka’s body hanging, the tail moving eerily whenever the evening breeze eddied among the trees. Another Sun-squirrel gone. At least he had died standing up for what he believed in.
Rowan remembered how Sitka and Hickory had helped with the classes for the colonists passing through, allocating them to tho
se skimpy dreytels. Then organising the newcomers so that they all absorbed the messages of the Kernels and were at least partly Sun-worthy before they moved on to take up territories. He could not, even now, get used to the idea of squirrels owning things, especially woods.
What had happened to all those Greys he had taught? They had left after each course was complete, vowing friendship with their teachers and with each other, brushing whiskers and embracing, and arranging reunions that Rowan had ruefully thought were unlikely ever to take place once the harshness of survival in a hostile world overtook those who had just graduated.
Why were these Greys now persecuting them? Then he realised that they were only fresh-squirrels, newly arrived, and at most had only a few lessons. How easily they had accepted the Three Lords. Those old fools would not have been able to influence a more experienced class.
Rowan’s stomach rumbled and he looked around for food.
There were some fallen cones lying under the trees; there might be a seed or two in those. He looked up at the pines. There were clusters of cones silhouetted against the sky but they would not feed eight squirrels for long. Nothing much on the ground, no fungus; some lichen, but that had little food value, and some tufts of grass which might have done if they were rabbits but was not much use to squirrels. Food was going to be a problem if they had to stay here for long.
He called the others out of the drey and explained the food situation, watching the bank and the bridge as he did so.
‘It is unlikely that the Greys will attack again until dawn, they don’t care for the darkness any more than we do. But we must stay on guard. You will all be hungry and we don’t know how long we must stay here. Eat what you can find tonight, share it out equally and we will think what to do for more in the morning.’
Rowan was feeling very tired. He tried to hide a yawn, then said, ‘Spindle, will you allocate guard duties? One hour periods – two squirrels at a time. Take over now. I am exhausted and must sleep.’
He went into the ground-drey, curled up and slept until dawn. Spindle had deliberately omitted him from the roster.
Spindle and Hickory were on duty at midnight, listening to the night sounds and watching for movement. The moon had set and the stars were bright above them. Spindle pointed out the North Star.
‘Zee thoze zeven starz there. Uz callz thoze the Great Squirrel. Those are his two front pawz. Follow a line up from thoze and that next ztar iz the ztar that iz alwayz in the North.’
There was a rustling on the bank across the water. Hickory crept down to the bridge to investigate, tense and ready to scamper back if danger was too close. A cone arched through the sky and landed in the water beside him. They were being watched. He retreated up the bank as a shower of tiny specks of light shot across the sky and were gone before either squirrel could focus on them.
‘Thoze is zhooting starz, ‘Spindle told Hickory.
A little later they woke Bluebell and the twins, taking care not to disturb Rowan. They briefed the females and stayed with them until they were sure that their eyes had adjusted to the darkness and they were fully alert.
‘Wake us all if anything seems to be happening,’ Hickory said. ‘It’s Wood Anemone and Meadowsweet’s turn next – wake them in an hour.’ He brushed whiskers with Bluebell, and Spindle did the same with his daughters.
‘Yew keep alert, now. Don’t let them zurprize yew.’
Spindle and Hickory wriggled into the ground-drey and slept.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Wakened by the light filtering through the sides of the ground-drey, Rowan poked his head out, looked round at the dew-laden grass and drew a deep breath. The smell was familiar to him; the year he had once spent living on this Eyeland, as he had called it then, was still strong in his memory. That was before the tree fell, bridging the water. In those days he had swum back and forth to the Mainland.
Now, he could see Hickory’s back down near the bridge and when he turned round he saw Spindle gathering pine needles and throwing them on to the top of the drey. He went and faced him.
‘Why didn’t you call me – I’ve missed my guard duties.’
‘Yew wuz all burned out, Rowan-friend. Yew will be able to lead uz better now yew iz rezded.’
‘Thank you, Spindle-Friend, but I should always take my proper turn,’ he said.
The day wore on with no sign of aggression from the Greys. At first the Reds could see them moving about on the top of the bank and in the trees on the Mainland. They waited apprehensively for another attack until Bluebell said, ‘Rowan-Pa, I know there are no Kernels to guide us in war, because we have always been peace-loving squirrels, but if there were, I am sure that they would tell us to take the initiative. I hate sitting here waiting for something to happen. There is the one that says:
Your prayers alone
Will not do. The Sun will help
Those who help themselves.
‘I know we’ve all been praying, but surely there is something we can do?’
Rowan nodded, thought for a moment then crept backwards to where the Woodstock lay on the grass. He turned it slowly towards a Grey who was peering at them through the branches opposite, and scratched a on the smooth wood. The Grey dropped to the ground stunned, then, rubbing his whiskers, climbed slowly up the bank to disappear over the top.
The next Grey to show his face met with the same fate. Three more suffered in the same way before they realised that the Red’s weapon had a long reach.
Malachite saw the first Grey fall and kept within his tree-trunk out of sight of the island. The victim was sent for and came, reeling and stumbling, to the foot of the tree to explain what had happened and how he felt.
‘Bite off his whiskers,’ Malachite commanded. ‘Light duties for three days.’
When the third Grey came before him with tightly curled whiskers, Lord Malachite was angry.
‘Can’t you see what happens when they point that rotten thing at you. Keep your heads down all of you. They’ve got no food over there; we’ll starve them out. Damned unsporting lot, rot their tails. Watch through the grass or from behind leaves, don’t let them see you. Back to your positions – now!’
The two youngsters found Malachite behind his tree when they came to report on the Lords Obsidian and Silica.
‘They are in a wood on a knoll which is covered in fallen trees,’ he was told, and he soon established that the two Lords were back in their old dreys in the Tanglewood.
‘You have done well,’ he told the messengers. ‘Now keep you heads down and find food. Tell no one else.’ He put a claw to his lips and winked.
Rowan was quite sorry when there were no more heads to discharge the Woodstock at, but knew that he ought to conserve it. The power it held was not infinite and there was no way of knowing how near it was to exhaustion.
The early evening sun shone gently and the Reds sat in a cluster, each facing a different way, watching the bridge and the banks of the pool across the water. No movement was to be seen anywhere.
‘Huz them gone away?’ Rosebay asked, echoed by Willowherb, ‘Gone away, huz them?’
'I don’t think so,’ Meadowsweet said. ‘We can’t be sure, better to wait. It may be a trap. My mother would tell a story at times like this. Anyone want to hear about Acorn and the swan’s feathers?’
Squirrels never say no to a story but Rowan cautioned them to stay alert while they listened.
Meadowsweet began. ‘Once upon a time, there were only two squirrels in the world, Acorn and his lovely life-mate Primrose.
‘On the day I am going to tell you about, Primrose was relining their drey with new, sweet- smelling moss, and Acorn was walking by the river, thinking. He was thinking how beautiful everything was and what lucky squirrels they were to have such a wonderful world to live in. There were so many things to see and find out.
‘He had seen how the seeds grew when the spring sunshine warmed the ground, and he had seen how the autumn sunshine ripened all the frui
t and the nuts so that they could be stored ready for eating in the winter.
‘Thinking of winter days, when cold winds blew and snow covered the ground, he began to believe that he could have arranged things better if he had been the Sun. Why have winters at all? Life would be much easier if there were only springs, summers and autumns. In fact, why have summers? It was often too hot in summer to be comfortable.
This is a brilliant idea, he thought.
‘He was about to rush back and tell Primrose, when he remembered that she would probably find some good reason for there to be summers and winters. She often spoilt his best ideas by being practical. This was far too good an idea to be spoilt by practicalities. He walked on, enjoying his plans for a year with only springs and autumns. He was not seeing all the good things around him now – he was thinking of a way to tell the Sun that it had got it all wrong.
‘Now, as often happens when you think hard enough, and want a thing enough, something will turn up to help you towards getting it.
‘This happened to Acorn. There on the river bank were feathers. These had been moulted by the First Swan in the World when the summer heat had told it to shed its old feathers and grow new strong, clean ones for the next year. The swan had taken most of the soft, downy ones to line its nest and keep its eggs warm, but on the bank were the stiff white quills from its wings.