‘Beyond it to Duncton Wood I should think,’ she replied.
‘Oh! Well ask a silly question and it seems with Avebury moles you immediately get a silly answer. Duncton Wood: nice place to go if you want to catch an infectious disease and live miserably until you die.’
‘Violet, my grandmother, said it was a safe place for a mole to go.’
‘Violet, your grandmother, must be a mole used to living dangerously if she described Duncton Wood as safe. It’s about as safe as an owl’s nest. Your grandmother must be mad.’ But seeing his remark had brought Mistle close to tears again, Cuddesdon said with surprising gentleness, ‘I wish you’d tell me about the Avebury Stones … and Violet.’
‘She didn’t mean safe from talons. She meant safe for … well …’
‘Yes?’ said Cuddesdon.
‘For moles of faith.’
‘What faith?’
‘Just faith,’ said Mistle, so used to keeping quiet about the Stone that she could not bring herself to mention it now, even though every instinct in her told her that Cuddesdon was a mole she could trust.
‘Wait a minute!’ said Cuddesdon as much to himself as her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re a genuine unadulterated follower? I mean a follower of the Stone? No “ifs” and “buts”? The real thing?’
‘Well …’ began Mistle, her doubts about Cuddesdon fading before his evident surprise and delight. ‘I’m not sure what you mean by “follower” exactly, but …’
‘A follower is a mole who knows which way to take but isn’t sure how to do it, or where it’s going. You learn how to do it as you go and, and …’
‘ … And eventually it doesn’t matter where you’re going because your faith will take you there!’
‘Why yes!’ exclaimed Cuddesdon. ‘That’s how I feel about setting off to find the system where my family came from and starting something. I know it will be all right if I can only keep going even when I’ve no idea what’s coming next. That’s what faith helps you do! It’s when I’ve tried too hard to do something that I’ve failed.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Mistle, ‘and it wouldn’t have been any good me trying to predict that I’d be here with you today. I couldn’t even have imagined it, or thought that with three grikes on our tails and likely to hurt us if they found us, I’d have taken stance here in the sun by such a beautiful river feeling, well, happy. Violet always said there was no point thinking about tomorrow because unless you sorted out today it wouldn’t be any good anyway. Maybe being a follower helps you sort out today in readiness for tomorrow, and it’s being ready that makes it all right.’
‘Violet sounds as if she is quite a mole.’
‘Was,’ said Mistle softly. ‘I think she’s gone to the Stone now; I think she must have.’ She looked at Cuddesdon with a growing realisation that she would never see or talk to Violet again and tears came to her eyes once more. But though she did not cry she let herself feel sad for a time before continuing. Cuddesdon looked at her sympathetically for a few moments and then, enjoying the warmth, extended his snout along his paws and closed his eyes as the sun beat down.
‘She would have liked today,’ said Mistle eventually. ‘She would have liked here. She would have liked you.’ Cuddesdon half opened his eyes but said nothing, thinking his own thoughts.
‘Fancy me finding a genuine Stone follower!’ he said at last. ‘Well, that’s a bit of luck. Tell me how you came to leave Avebury, tell me …’
But he did not need to ask her more, for suddenly she wanted to talk and tell it all, and cry, and sometimes even sob; but most of all she wanted to talk about Violet, and say how much she had loved her, and that she knew she would not see her again, but all she had said, all she had taught, was here in her heart and she would never forget it, not ever …
Cuddesdon listened in utter silence, and sometimes as she spoke his eyes filled with tears as well; and when she was silent he waited patiently until she started talking again. And then, when she was finished and had been quiet for a time, she said, ‘I feel better now, much better.’
‘I said I’d never really seen a Stone,’ said Cuddesdon. ‘Well, listening to you I realise how little I know. I was moved, of course, but most of all – and to be quite frank – I was enthralled by what you said. It is incredible! I want to know all about the Stone, all about the rituals, all about the prayers, all about everything. Then I’d know how to be a proper follower.’
‘But it isn’t like that …’ began Mistle. ‘It’s just … well … it just is. It’s easy and you’re sort of making it seem hard. Anyway, you’re a follower already.’
‘Am I?’ said Cuddesdon earnestly.
Mistle laughed and crunched another worm.
For the first time in all the long time they had talked the sun went in, and Cuddesdon stanced up, wandered about a bit, came back and said, ‘We had better make a move.’ For a moment he hesitated and then he said, ‘Are we going to travel on together? I mean …’
‘Of course we are,’ said Mistle, ‘aren’t we?’
There was a shy silence between them, the shyness of two moles who each want to stay together but are not yet certain of the other’s reaction to the idea. They looked here and there – in fact everywhere but at each other – but the day seemed to be conspiring for them to journey on together and, as if to put a seal on it, the sun came out briefly once more.
A silver dace rose in the stream and took a fly, the circle of its surfacing travelling downstream, widening and distorting until it was lost in the watery light ahead. Then with a dash and scurried rush of wings from among dry grass a damselfly crashed and dangled for a moment from a spider’s web in the grass above them, its long blue body and black sheening wings catching the sun. Its legs battled furiously, its body righted itself, and its free wing banged at the air until suddenly it was free and hovering, and then gone over the stream, and off to the east.
‘You know when you asked where I was going and I said Duncton Wood? Well, it wasn’t the whole truth,’ said Mistle impulsively. ‘If we are going to travel together I wouldn’t want to begin on a lie. Violet said that lying is like taloning both yourself and others around you at the same time.’
‘What do you want to tell me then?’
‘I think I am trying to get to Duncton but the reason is that I’m looking for some moles I saw, or thought I saw, and I thought I’d most likely find them there. I didn’t tell you the whole story about leaving Avebury. You see, really I didn’t know I was going to leave until after I touched the Stone …’
So he listened and she told him the rest of the story, concluding by saying that she believed she had been guided from Avebury, and the moles she saw would one day be real, and they had all been trying to help a mole, and it was so hard to explain but …
‘ … But no buts!’ She smiled. ‘Does it all sound strange to you? – because it does when I talk about it like this.’
‘No. It all sounds no more strange than what I didn’t tell you … You see, it’s not just Cuddesdon I’m looking for, but a mole as well. He’s called the Stone Mole. It’s about all I know of the traditions of the Stone that one day he would come. Well … I’ve heard that a lot of followers seem to think he has come, and is alive. And … I think so too. He’s sort of in the air at the moment, and I think if I can find him I’ll know what I’ve got to start at Cuddesdon when I get there.’
‘The Stone Mole?’ whispered Mistle, awe in her eyes.
‘Apparently there was a star in spring, just after I was born. Followers say he came then, they say he’s come to moledom now. Surely you’ve at least heard of him …?’
She nodded, for Violet had told her that moles believed the Stone Mole would come, but she had thought it would be far in the future in another age.
‘He’s really come?’ she said quietly, staring at Cuddesdon in wonder and remembering the sense she had had at the Stone of them all helping another mole, one mole; a particular mole. She felt suddenly afraid.
&nbs
p; ‘Will you …?’
But she did not need to ask. Cuddesdon was at her flank and holding her protectively.
‘You’re trembling,’ was all he said.
‘Yes …’ she whispered, her teeth chattering, but not with cold. ‘It was when you said “Stone Mole”. I know he’s come. When I touched the Stone I felt him here and that he needs us, everymole of us. And … and …’
She lowered her snout and wept, and Cuddesdon held her closer until she was ready to say more.
‘I was born on the night that star showed,’ she whispered at last. ‘Violet told me about the star and she thought that one of the litter my parents had would be special. After I was weaned she picked me out, persuaded them to let her have me and reared me herself … It was him we were trying to help, it was him.’ And she wept again, and Cuddesdon held her and knew that he had been right: it had been meant that they should meet, for the Stone wanted them to make their way towards the Stone Mole together.
‘We had better cross the stream before it gets dark and start our journey,’ he said gently.
‘Yes,’ said Mistle. Then without asking if he could swim she went down to the stream and, checking only once to see that he was close by, she swum out into it, head high, and her eyes on the darkening eastern sky beyond the far bank.
When they reached the far bank they clambered out and she said, ‘You see, you can swim. It’s not difficult.’
‘You’re right,’ agreed Cuddesdon, shaking the water off his fur.
Then they climbed the bank together and were gone, leaving only the poppies swaying against the evening sky to say where they had been.
Chapter Fourteen
A glorious high summer, so long heralded by the clear days of June, duly came, and the lovely vales and glades of Duncton Wood settled into days of warmth and hallowed contentment.
It was as if the wood sensed that it too had its final role to play in Beechen’s rearing, and must show him its finest part so that when his time came to leave he took such memory of it that he had only to speak of the wood where he was born and all who heard it would feel its textures and see its light.
Each dawn seemed ushered in by the soft call of wood pigeon, echoing and re-echoing among the leafy branches high above the wood’s floor; until, the air grown warm with sunshine, the pigeons shifted high above, and a moment’s flap of wings here, or a shudder of flight there, marked the real beginning of the day.
Then, far below, moles awoke and peered about, and listened to the sound of scurrying birds astir once more, as night foxes slipped out of sight, and badgers returned to sleep in their setts on the Eastside slopes.
The tunnels sounded merrily with the movement of moles, and the dry summer surface stirred with busy paw and hungry snout as they groomed and ate and began another day in a succession of summer days that seemed to have no end.
At noon, when other creatures quietened, the moles looked about for company and, choosing a spot where the sun came down – and was likely to do so for a good while more – settled to talk and gossip, or just rest together in companionable silence. What pleasant thoughts those old outcast moles then shared, regretful at times, no doubt, but finally thinking that if a mole had to end his days somewhere far from home then such a summer in such a system as this was as near to dream come true as he might have.
That good summer, when Beechen roamed freely and in safety through his home system and was generally made welcome where he went, memory and nostalgia were in the air. Those moles who had survived such hard lives at the paws of the grikes and now found themselves cast together in old age in Duncton discovered a new harmony after the Midsummer rite, and in the long years of summer felt it safe to talk pleasurably again of a past many had sometimes found painful to recall.
Most sensed that, like it or not, they were near their end. They had survived plague, the invasion of their systems, outcasting into anarchy, dreadful murrain and disease, but now the Stone (and for some, like Dodder, the Word) had granted them peace and security in a system time seemed almost to have forgotten, and into which the grikes no longer came.
Tryfan had rightly sensed that they would be willing to impart to young Beechen what knowledge and wisdom they had or he could discover, and so it proved. It was as if he was their only future, their only immortality.
If a mole seemed weak and likely to die then others would seek Beechen out and say, ‘Mole, visit this one now … she be close to her time and would talk with you before she goes …’ Others, too shy and timid to seek Beechen out, would find their friends had brought him to them, and that he seemed almost timid himself, and not at all the fearsome mole the name ‘Stone Mole’ might have made them expect.
‘Why, you’re but a mole like us …’ They began in wonder, as he took stance by them and reached out and made them feel more themselves than they had ever felt.
What was it that such moles said to him? What wisdom did they, often unknowingly, impart? Why were so many anxious to tell him of themselves?
These questions, asked even then, before Beechen’s task made his name known to allmole, will find many different answers as this history tells its tale. But we may guess now that it was of modest things they spoke, of memories that meant much to them, some happy, some troublesome, which had been restless in their minds and needed telling.
‘What would you tell me?’ he would ask, and they might reply, ‘’Tis barely anything, mole, hardly worth the mentioning, but when I was young there was a tunnel, see, beyond which I had never dared to venture. Then one day …’ And so they would start, and tell him how they learnt to learn. Others spoke of love known, some of regret.
But some spoke only of trouble, of something they had done which they wished might be undone … and more than one, and those not just of the Word, told of murders made or hurts they had inflicted which, had they their time again, they would not do.
‘Never forgiven myself, never, never,’ a mole might weep. ‘Can’t get it out of my mind, that I did that. You think twice, Beechen, before you let anger or fear overtake you, think a hundred times. Love’s the only way, though I should be ashamed to say it for I’ve never given much love to anymole … Aye, hurting hurts most the mole that does it …’
Beechen listened and nodded, and sometimes he wept too, and not a mole talked to him but felt better for doing so, and better able to face the days still to come his way.
No accurate record exists, or could exist, of Beechen’s wide wanderings those summer years. We know only that he adopted two centres to which he returned frequently, and from which he would set out re-fortified. One was the tunnel system of the mole Madder, whom he had met when he had first gone a-visiting, and whose quiet surfaces seemed to provide him more than anywhere else with places to be at peace. When he was there his only company, apart from Madder, was provided by Dodder and Flint in whose new unity moles saw proof of Beechen’s gift for bringing harmony where there had been disorder. There was a general understanding that when Beechen was at Madder’s place he was to be left alone.
The second centre to which he retreated was the old Marsh End Defence, to which, after Midsummer, Tryfan had retired once more to complete his scribing of a Rule for community. There Beechen resumed his studies of scribing by snouting through the texts Spindle and Tryfan had left, as well as those texts which Mayweed, in his eccentric way, had contributed. Beechen himself scribed of the moles he spoke with during those summer years as if by so doing he transmuted what they had told him into something of himself.
But to make such scribings was not the only reason Beechen returned to the Marsh End, for it seemed to have become clear to all that the old mole needed help now to find food on difficult days, and Beechen would watch over him when he chose to take a quiet stance on the surface and, for hours on end it seemed, reflect on the passage of another day’s light and the ever-changing cycle of decline and revival in the wood’s life.
When Beechen was in residence with Tryfan these were tas
ks the young mole took upon himself. But when he travelled forth as Tryfan had bid him, and learnt the many wisdoms others in the wood chose to impart, strong Hay stanced close by Tryfan, with Skint and Smithills to back him up when sleep or other duties called him away. And then, in August, Feverfew moved into the Marsh End Defences.
We have said that Beechen travelled about the system ‘in safety’, and so he did, but only by virtue of the labours of other experienced moles who watched over him. In a sense all the moles had become his guardians, but so far as external dangers from the grikes were concerned it was primarily the now frail Skint who directed things.
Nomole knew the system’s defensive needs better than Skint, who, when Henbane invaded Duncton, had given Tryfan and Mayweed the time they had needed to lead the moles who lived there then to their fateful escape.
Now Skint was older, and the moles available to him who had strength and skill for watcher duties were but few, so their task could not be one of active defence but, rather, simply of watching out for signs of grike activity near the cross-under, and preparing a warning system against the day when the grikes entered the system once more.
It was Skint who mainly kept such fears, and precautions, alive, for he was always distrustful of the grikes, however certain it seemed they would now leave Duncton alone.
‘The day the Word is forgotten is the day we can stop being on our guard, and that day is a long way off,’ he would say. ‘As long as I’m alive I’ll keep half an eye open for its dangers.’
Skint used various moles for watching duties, with Marram and Hay in the fore, and Mayweed and Sleekit as formidable roving sources of intelligence. Teasel, who had survived the original anarchy that followed the system’s outcasting by spying and passing information from one rival outcast group to another, was a useful ally, and her loyalty to Tryfan and natural good sense made her a mole Skint trusted.
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