June; and in the hushed cool depths of Duncton Wood sunlight dappled through the branches and across the great and lovely beech tree trunks. A light that travelled on to every nook and cranny of the wood’s floor and shone where dry leaves curled and the lightest of breezes lazed along the grey tree roots and then lost itself amongst the green leaves of dog’s mercury.
June, and the light of a summer’s day, a light so pure and good that it seems to renew everything it touches, so that the humblest flower, the most nondescript patch of chalk soil, the most gnarled of surface roots, seemed resplendent and shiny new.
This is light that heralds the coming of Midsummer, when all moles know they may petition their dreams to the Stone, and hope that such troubles and despairs as they have will find their solutions soon enough to bear the waiting, and then be gone.
That same light, that June morning, caught the fur of two moles who had come to the surface and were looking upslope towards where the Stone rose hidden among the trees. One was Tryfan, born of Duncton, now returned and never wishing to leave again. Once he had the nervousness and eagerness of youth about him and his fur had been glossy and black. Now he was much older, his face and back scarred by fighting, his fur patchy in parts and greying now.
The suppleness and grace of youth had gone, but in their place was now the quiet strength of a mole who had learnt to put his four paws on the ground and only move them when it is necessary.
His sight was not good, for he had never fully recovered from the savage attack by the dark moles of Whern, and so to know and enjoy all that was about him he had to listen as much as he looked, crouching still with his head a little to one side to hear the rising summer sounds of a wood and a system as venerable as any in the whole of moledom, though one that had fallen now on difficult times.
The second mole was Feverfew and she crouched at his side. She was younger than Tryfan, though not by many moleyears, and like him her body was worn with experience and life, as well as the scars of scalpskin that had at one time ravaged her. But strong she was in spirit and now snouted out the good day all about her with evident delight.
They remained in comfortable silence for some time, as moles will who know each other well and trust each other more, and from the occasional touches they gave each other and the slight nodding of a head or pointing of talons to indicate some new leafy wonder of the morning and the slopes above, anymole who has ever been half in love could tell that these two were a pair, and as close in love and caring tenderness as any pair could be.
‘Well, Feverfew, if today’s not the day to take the youngster up to the clearing and show him the Stone I can’t imagine what day would be!’
‘Ytt ys, myn love,’ she replied, speaking in the soft and rounded accent of the old language of the Dunbar moles, the colony in the distant Wen where Tryfan had first found her, and from which she had trekked alone so bravely to join him in Duncton Wood and give birth to ‘the youngster’ and so begin a destiny that all moledom had waited for.
‘Where’s he got to, tunnelling or exploring?’ Tryfan spoke of Feverfew’s son with a special love and affection, for though he was not his by birth it was his task, ordained by old Boswell himself, that Tryfan should rear the pup equally with Feverfew and be to him what a father would have been. Out of all males in moledom, Boswell had chosen Tryfan of Duncton to be his main guardian, knowing that the pup would be the Stone Mole, come at last to show moles how to hear the Silence of the Stone.
‘He cums nu herre along,’ said Feverfew, turning to look at a tunnel exit which lay a little downslope of them. Tryfan followed her gaze, wondering, for though it was true that Feverfew could hear better than him yet sometimes it seemed to him that her knowledge of where her son was and what he was doing was more than physical. Never having reared pups of his own he was not familiar with a mother’s sense of what ails her pups and when they need her. But even so Feverfew’s instinctive knowledge of the mole seemed exceptional, and made all the more poignant and difficult for her the changes in recent weeks towards his independence which this day seemed about to mark.
Her day-by-day task was nearly done and now it was for Tryfan to take over and begin the training in scribing and lore which both of them knew had become the Stone Mole’s own desire and need.
As they waited for him to appear it seemed that at the exit Feverfew had pointed to all the light of the June day began to gather and, special and clear though it already was, yet there it seemed more bright.
Then he emerged, first a snout and then a young paw, the light clear about him and seeming to radiate and shimmer over the trees and leaves above, to mark out the place for anymole that watched.
He came out on to the surface and, as Tryfan and Feverfew had before him, stared up in pleasure and wonder at the day all about. His eyes were wide and innocent, his fur still soft, his form just gaining that touching gawkiness all youngsters have as they pass beyond being youngsters and their body takes on a will of its own and grows now here, now there, and they, bemused, cannot yet find an adult’s comfort in it.
He ran quickly over to Feverfew’s side, but it was to Tryfan that he spoke.
‘Will you take me to the Stone today? You said that when Midsummer approached and the sun was bright, you would. Will you today?’ His eyes and manner were eager and intense.
‘Yes, yes the time’s come.’ And there was something about the mole and his way that filled Tryfan’s eyes with tears, though he was not sure why. Some premonition, perhaps, that one day, upon this young mole’s slender and innocent back the weight of moledom’s greatest cares and troubles would be placed.
Then, staring upslope once more among the lichen-green and sinewy trunks of the beech trees that rose up towards the highest part of the wood, Tryfan sought out a route towards the Stone.
Yes, yes it was time he was taken to touch the Stone and be told his sacred heritage. Tryfan snouted about slowly, quite unconscious of the fact that he bore himself so very peaceably these days that his solid, easy stance calmed those about him, and made them wait instinctively on him as if to hurry him would be to try to move moledom itself. Tryfan was: that was what his training, his years of living in a world about which he had never ceased to care, and his faith, had made him.
As Feverfew and the Stone Mole waited for Tryfan to decide on a route upslope, he himself was thinking of something quite different as he stared at the play of light among the trees. It was this: that surely somewhere there in the light and shadows about them, unseen and perhaps never to be seen again, Boswell was with them, watching over his son as he watched over all of them and always had – with love and with hope that they would find their way to Silence.
‘Yes …’ whispered Tryfan roughly, his eyes filling once more with tears, for now he was growing older and he felt sometimes the loneliness that wisdom brings, and wished that Boswell was there to talk to and ask questions of. Why, there were so many things he wished he had asked when he had the chance … when he was this mole’s age. He grimaced ruefully, the play of emotions plain upon his lined face, and wondered what he could possibly teach the Stone Mole. Something or other about living, he supposed.
‘Thiden is the daye, thiden is the houre,’ Feverfew told her son gently. Then, putting her paw to his flank, she said to Tryfan. ‘Latte us goe now, myn dereste luv, alle thre togider, to showe hym whar he was borne and tel hym where tofore.’
‘I’m frightened,’ said the youngster, not moving at all. The wood was suddenly hushed and awed about them, and the air stilled as the light seemed to tremble and darken.
‘The best way with fear is to turn your snout towards it and put one paw resolutely in front of another,’ said Tryfan. ‘Come now, for the June sun has summoned us today and beckons us up through the wood … Come, for I have things to say that you must know.’
Then one after another, with Tryfan in the lead followed by the youngster and Feverfew protectively at the rear, they set off upslope to find the clearing in the high wood where Duncton’s great Stone stands alone and mighty, always ready and waiting for anymole that comes to it in humility and faith.