by Colin Dann
‘And the squirrels and rabbits?’ Lean Vixen mocked him. ‘You’d give them a promise of safety?’ She gave a hollow laugh.
‘Why not?’ Kindly Badger asked. ‘For just the duration of our meeting?’
‘They wouldn’t come!’ Lean Vixen protested.
‘That’s up to them. The squirrels might well do so. They could sit in the branches.’
‘When do you propose to meet?’ Lean Fox asked.
‘The sooner the better. There will soon be a new moon. The darkest night is our best security. We should choose then, I think.’
‘By the Great Beech?’
‘Exactly. I shall invite as many woodlanders as I can find.’
‘I’ll speak to the stout fox,’ his lean counterpart offered. ‘I think he’ll attend. He has been going around with a very worried look recently.’
‘Oh, that’s nothing to do with any human presence,’ the vixen informed him glibly. ‘His mate’s ill and she’s almost reached her time. No wonder he’s worried.’
‘Nevertheless …’
‘The old hedgehog will join you,’ said Lean Vixen. ‘You can be sure of that. He wouldn’t miss any opportunity to regale everyone with his weird fantasies.’
Stout Fox had begun to view the humans’ incursions with misgiving. His own cubs would soon enter the world in the shadow of their presence, and who could say how things would develop? But his concern for his unborn cubs was overridden by a much more profound concern for his mate. Stout Vixen was very sick indeed and the big fox ran in and out of their den, unable to rest for a moment. He was at his wits’ end.
‘There must be something I can do,’ he would mutter. ‘I can’t just let her suffer.’ Inside the earth he looked longingly at her. ‘Poor vixen! Are you in great pain?’
‘Pretty much,’ she whispered.
‘If only I could help,’ Stout Fox moaned.
‘But you can’t … we both know that.’
‘Perhaps there is a creature somewhere …’ he murmured and broke off as he heard a voice outside.
Lean Fox had come to give news of the meeting. Stout Fox scarcely listened, his mind was so taken up with his mate’s illness.
‘The Great Beech, you say? All right, I’ll come.’ Then a thought struck him. Maybe one of the animals at the meeting could offer some hope. He called after Lean Fox as he left. ‘I’ll certainly attend. As long as it’s safe to leave my vixen …’
The night of the new moon arrived. Kindly Badger and his mate, along with various hedgehogs, Lean Fox and Lean Vixen, sat waiting beneath the Great Beech. Sly Stoat, Lightning Weasel, and others of their kind, came cautiously. In the branches of the beech Nervous Squirrel and others perched restlessly. A pair of hares, who trusted the badger’s word, had come to listen to the discussion from a safe distance. Other smaller animals peeped from holes nearby. And various birds clustered in the tree-tops, alert to every movement.
Jay spied Stout Fox loping through the Wood to its centre. ‘The stout fox is coming!’ the bird screeched, putting several timid beasts to flight at once.
‘Come back, come back,’ Kindly Badger called. ‘There’s no danger. Everyone assembled here must take the Oath of Common Safety, so that none can be harmed. Otherwise there will be no exchange of views and no opinions heard.’
Stout Fox appeared out of the gloom. He was the largest animal present. ‘I swear,’ he growled, looking around the gathering, ‘to respect the safety of all creatures assembled for this meeting.’
Others followed suit. It was a solemn moment.
Stout Fox mumbled in a low voice, ‘My vixen is sick. She must have found the last diseased vole. There has been no other sickness for days. Does anyone know of a creature who has survived the sickness?’
No-one answered.
‘I must save her if I can,’ the fox continued. It was strange to see the powerful hunter wearing a look of helplessness. ‘She will bear our cubs very soon. She mustn’t die. Not yet.’ It was as though he were talking to himself.
‘Some of the otters cured themselves,’ Sage Hedgehog said when the fox fell quiet. ‘They had the knowledge. But you drove them away. They are not here to help you now.’
Stout Fox hung his head in misery.
‘I thought this assembly was all about protecting ourselves from human interference,’ Sly Stoat interposed drily. ‘Much as the stout vixen has everyone’s sympathy, we really have to think of what concerns us all.’ His sarcasm was evident, but none of the smaller animals dared to acknowledge it.
‘Well, it doesn’t concern me,’ Lean Vixen announced, ‘if you’re referring to the humans’ activities. I don’t hunt in the grassy area any more. I don’t need to. There are plenty of other places to find all the game I want. And I can’t believe anyone here is so stupid as to go nosing around that quarter these days. Let the humans attend to their interests, whatever they are, and leave me to attend to mine.’
‘A more shortsighted remark would be difficult to utter,’ Kindly Badger retorted, angry for once. ‘I wonder you came along.’
‘She’s fully occupied with our cubs, you see,’ Lean Fox tried to excuse her. ‘She can’t think of anything else.’
‘Perhaps she’d better return to them, then, and leave us to the serious discussion.’
‘An argument!’ Jay shrieked. ‘Not a good start!’
‘But the vixen’s right,’ Lightning Weasel gave his opinion. ‘We don’t have to watch the humans’ every move. We can forget them, at any rate for the forseeable future. They’re too far away to cause us any concern.’
‘M-moving nearer, I think,’ Nervous Squirrel said. ‘I w-watch them. They s-seem to creep closer each time I l-look.’
‘You’re imagining it,’ the weasel replied. ‘How can you tell?’
‘Why don’t you look for yourself?’ Sly Stoat sneered. ‘Then you’ll know!’
‘I can’t climb into tree-tops,’ Lightning Weasel snapped.
‘I think we’re losing sight of why we’re here,’ Kindly Badger interrupted.
‘Why are we here?’ Lightning Weasel chortled, glancing around.
Kindly Badger sighed. ‘In your case – and in some others – it would be difficult to say. But I called this assembly so that all of us can air our views as to how to proceed in these difficult times.’
‘What’s he talking about?’ one hare muttered to the other.
‘I don’t know. Waste of time coming, if you ask me.’
Lean Vixen cut across the mutterings. ‘There is nothing anyone here can do to put things right.’ She looked serious for once. ‘That’s if you believe things have gone wrong in the first place. We drove the otters out. We have more to eat, but the humans seem to have replaced the otters. That’s the story in as few words as it takes to tell.’
‘And what of your cubs’ future?’ Sage hedgehog asked her. ‘How do you propose to protect them?’
‘The same way my parents protected me,’ she answered. ‘Nothing has altered that. And when they no longer need me, well … they’re on their own.’
These words seemed to summarize the situation for every creature present. Beyond usual parental duties, there was nothing more in their power to do. The meeting began to break up without reaching any agreement. The smaller animals left first. And gradually all of the beasts and birds returned to their homes or their normal occupations in the night hours. Kindly Badger and Sage Hedgehog were left alone under the Great Beech.
‘They are beyond redemption,’ the hedgehog said with finality.
Far away from Farthing Wood another group of badgers were tidying their set after their fight with the intruding otters. It had been a short and savage fight. The mother badger watched her mate take the lifeless form of Lame Otter by the scruff of the neck and carry it along the entrance tunnel to the outside air. Lame Otter had borne the brunt of the attack as he had tried to shield Long-Whiskers. His wounds were ghastly. The badger dropped him far enough from the set so that no taint coul
d foul the air of the nesting chamber. Then he returned for Long-Whiskers.
The badgers believed both otters were dead, and indeed Lame Otter was at his last gasp. But, severe though Long-Whiskers’ injuries were, she had some chance of making a recovery. She was dropped by the side of Lame Otter. The badger returned to his set, satisfied that the intruders had been properly dealt with.
Long-Whiskers opened her eyes. It was still light. She knew she must somehow crawl away from that place before dusk, because then the badgers would leave the set to forage. If they should discover she was still alive they would quickly finish her off. She sniffed at the still body of the lame male.
‘Are you lost to me?’ she whispered. The horrible ache of loneliness had not yet made itself felt. Pain and fear dominated her senses. She detected the tiniest flicker of movement in her companion as he struggled to draw a breath.
‘You’re still living!’ she whistled softly, though aware life was ebbing from him.
Barely audibly Lame Otter gasped, ‘Leave here. Go on. You … must get back.’ The effort exhausted him, but he tried to speak again. ‘You … the last. For the cubs …’ These were his last words. He shuddered and was then quite still.
For a while Long-Whiskers remained loyally by his side. Then, for his sake as well as for her own, she began to crawl away. She had lost a lot of blood and she felt weak and sick. Her gashes were extremely painful. Amazingly, though, her limbs were still sound. The badgers’ attack had been directed against her chest and head. She paused after dragging herself a metre or two; then continued. She knew she couldn’t rest just yet. Little by little she removed herself from the scene of that horrible encounter, so that by dusk she was able to haul herself under a hedgerow, secure in the knowledge that she had escaped the badgers. She slept the deep sleep of exhaustion; helpless, injured and totally alone.
The grassland around Farthing Wood shrank steadily as the human construction site began to take shape. The Farthing Wood animals, for the most part, tried to ignore the fact. But some of them recalled the otters’ boasts. They remembered how there had, in truth, been no human activity when the otters lived by the stream. And they remembered how the foxes and others had plotted to rid themselves of the clever animals, and, in particular, that the foxes had joined together to drive the otters out. Rabbits and hares had already lost their chosen homes in the grassy areas they loved best. Some of the more thoughtful animals wondered now if that was only the start.
‘Do you think that our set will always be here?’ Young Badger asked his father one day.
‘Of course it will,’ Kindly Badger replied at once. ‘Why, generation after generation of badgers have been born and raised here. It’s – it’s – unthinkable that that could ever change.’ He glanced at his mate for corroboration, as though perhaps needing reassurance himself.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said softly to the youngster. ‘You’ll grow old here, of that I’m quite sure.’
The young male couldn’t think beyond that point and was happy.
The foxes didn’t worry themselves about past events. The otters had gone and they thought that was a good thing. Yet Stout Fox would have been prepared to humble himself and ask an otter’s advice about the sickness of his vixen if an otter had been around for him to do so.
Stout Vixen lay listlessly in their earth. She regretted her failure to be guided by her mate and to shun any voles as food. She hadn’t cared for his over-protection. But he had been right. The sickness had taken hold of her and wouldn’t go away. Each day she felt a little worse. She tried to eat what little Stout Fox brought her, so that at least she would have the strength to bring her cubs into the world when the time came. But gradually she came to realize that the cubs might be infected too, even if disease didn’t claim her before they had a chance of life.
Stout Fox was beside himself with worry. There was no creature he could consult who had the secret of the cure. He watched the vixen wilt and sink a little more with every dawn. In desperation he set off through the Wood one evening in quest of Sage Hedgehog. As he went he told himself it was unlikely that the hedgehog could be of real assistance, but even if the old creature should offer one grain of comfort it would be worthwhile.
Sage Hedgehog was even more morose than the fox. The wasted opportunity of the Assembly had depressed him utterly. There was now, it seemed, no hope of alerting the stubborn and feckless Farthing Wood animals to their plight. Then, as he chewed monotonously on a long worm, thinking dire thoughts, Stout Fox appeared to interrupt his reverie.
‘Old prophet hedgehog, I beg you to help,’ the fox blurted out. ‘If you know anything about the otters’ methods in curing sickness, tell me.’
Sage Hedgehog paused in his meal. ‘Your mate is worse?’
‘Day by day.’
‘I am sorry for that. Truly. But I fear you are too late to save her. You’ve brought this misery on yourselves, for there is now no-one who has the secret. The otters kept it to themselves.’
Stout Fox sat on his haunches in despair. ‘Is there nothing I can do?’ he asked.
‘Do you know where the otters went after you foxes drove them from here?’
‘No.’
‘They’re probably widely scattered by this time. But if you could find them – any of them – and persuade them to return, that would be your salvation.’ The old hedgehog suddenly perked up, as though there might just be a glimmer of hope. ‘Indeed,’ he resumed in a stronger voice, ‘you must find them. For the otters are the salvation of all of us and the Wood itself.’
Stout Fox was encouraged. He looked more resolute. ‘You’re right! Only they can halt the humans’ progress. I realize that now. I’ll go and search for them and, if I can, I’ll take others to help in the search. I won’t rest until I find them!’ He turned and ran back towards his earth. He would need to find food enough for his vixen to last her until his return.
Stout Vixen received his news without enthusiasm. ‘It’s useless,’ she muttered. ‘You’ll never locate the otters. I shall be dead in a few days. Nothing can prevent that.’
But the big fox wouldn’t be put off. ‘I think you’re wrong. And it would be contemptible not to try. I’ll fetch food for you before I leave. Promise me you’ll try to hold on.’
‘Very well,’ she whispered. ‘You have my word.’
Once he had ensured that the vixen had managed to eat at least some of the titbits he had fetched for her, Stout Fox set off to recruit some helpers. He had no close associates and wondered where to begin. He decided that any swift-footed animal with the keen senses of a hunter would be useful in the search. Lightning Weasel dashed across his path.
‘Stop!’ the fox cried. ‘Wait!’
The weasel turned and looked at the larger animal curiously. ‘Well? What is it?’ Stout Fox trotted over. ‘That’s near enough, if you don’t want me to run,’ Lightning Weasel said sharply. A fox was not a beast he wanted too close to him. ‘I don’t believe the badger’s Oath thing is still in force?’
Stout Fox blinked. ‘Oath? What oath?’ His mind was on other things. Then he remembered. ‘Oh, that. I think not. I want to ask for your help.’
‘Help? From me?’ the weasel queried in astonishment.
‘Yes, I’m going to look for the otters. You see, I need their knowledge to save my mate.’
‘Oh, the sickness. Yes, we heard all about that at the Assembly. But this is a bit rich. You drove the otters away and now you want me to help you bring them back. That’s your problem, I think.’
‘I know it sounds odd. I regret now what we foxes did. We all need them here. Without them what future is there for Farthing Wood?’
‘Too late for regrets, I’m afraid. No, count me out. I’ve no time to waste on a fool’s errand and, besides, you’re no friend to me, so why should I help?’
‘But surely, you know how I feel,’ Stout Fox said dejectedly. ‘Your own mate died of the sickness.’
‘That’s right. And now I hav
e another mate. If yours dies, you’ll soon find another too. That’s Nature, isn’t it?’ Lightning Weasel wasn’t prepared to listen any further and bolted into the undergrowth.
Stout Fox sighed and continued on his errand. He began to realize that there wouldn’t be much help forthcoming except from other foxes. He did approach Sly Stoat but there was no sympathy from that quarter either.
‘I don’t want the otters back. They took our food from our mouths. When we laid the trail of disease for them, I couldn’t have foreseen how I would be repaid in kind. Now you’re reaping the same reward. The otters have avenged themselves on us and there’s no escaping it.’
Stout Fox accepted that he must look for assistance from his own kind. But he was no luckier with other foxes. These animals, the very ones who had combined to drive out the otter population, scoffed at the notion of inviting them back.
You’re mad,’ one said. ‘If we’d wanted them here in the first place, they’d still be around.’
‘Though we might not be,’ added another, ‘the way our food was being thieved.’
‘We’re sorry for your mate,’ Lean Vixen told him. ‘She could have exercised more caution. But you really can’t expect us to fight your battles for you.’
‘He’s only asking for a little help in his search,’ Lean Fox reminded her, as usual the more sympathetic listener. ‘I could perhaps go with him for a while.’
‘And leave me to fend alone for our cubs?’ the vixen retorted. ‘Don’t even consider it!’
‘No, no, she’s right,’ Stout Fox murmured, bowing to the inevitable. ‘I shall go alone. I was wrong to try to involve others in my difficulties.’
When he was out of earshot Lean Vixen growled, ‘And woe betide any otters he manages to round up. Because they’ll find a funny sort of welcome awaiting them in Farthing Wood.’
Long-Whiskers awoke at the end of the night. Rain was falling heavily and she felt cold. She heaved herself further under the hedgerow. Her coat was thoroughly damp but the raindrops helped to revive her. As dawn broke she became aware of the movements of birds. There were nests along that hedgerow and the parent birds, at first light, resumed their quest for food for the nestlings. Long-Whiskers watched them flying to and fro, and she was able to locate the various nests by the twittering of the hungry chicks, and also by the places where the adults entered and left the hedge. Despite her painful wounds, Long-Whiskers felt hungry. She began to raid those nests within reach, one by one. The young birds stood no chance. Their parents cried their distress as they saw the hunter in the hedgerow, knowing they were powerless to intervene.