For days after his birth they had not known how to name him, for ‘Stone Mole’ is no name for a mole to live by. But a name is more than some moles think, for with it is inherited something of everymole that bore that name before, and offers the chance of passing something on to namesakes yet to come.
Few names, if any, are all dark, but some seem so more than others. So is Mandrake dark, and Rune; so is Bracken good and stolid, and Rose a name for moles whose lives give much to others. But how to name the Stone Mole?
Tryfan knew that his own naming came with his father Bracken’s first sight of him when, as a newborn pup, he climbed higher than his siblings and snouted upwards, making a form whose shape, Bracken said, reminded him in miniature of the solitary peak near Siabod on whose summit the Stones rise.
Remembering this Tryfan felt he should be the one to name the Stone Mole, and so for several days after his birth he huffed and puffed about it, looking this way and that for an inspiration that did not come.
But one day, as mothers will – as mothers must – Feverfew whispered nothings to her pup as he nestled contented at her belly. And Tryfan, allowed near for once, smiled to see them both content, and barely heard the words she spoke … ‘Yowe are myn sonne, and mayyowe bee the sonne for alle of us …’
Myn sonne. Owre sonne.
She spoke the words not as mole speaking mole speaks it, but accented long as if she said ‘sowne’, which the flowers are when the wind blows hot on a late summer’s day and the seeds scatter and drift to hide in the earth’s warm heart until a new spring comes.
But ‘sonne’, however pronounced, meant something else as well. Tryfan, knowing the traditions of the Dunbar moles of the Wen as he did, and having read many of the texts in their crumbling library, understood Feverfew’s natural play on words and that she was saying that the Stone Mole was not just her son, or Boswell’s, or both, but that he was the sun that would shine upon them all and bring them new life.
So much Tryfan understood, but he felt more instinctively, not fully understanding the way his thoughts ran, or towards what end. For in the moment he knew that for Feverfew ‘sonne’ meant several things, his own thoughts moved on from that and he remembered a day – a warm sunny day! – when he had first arrived at Beechenhill, and had the sense that in that good place, which seems to lie at the very heart of a natural beauty moledom has forgotten, a part of him had come home.
Beechenhill, whose mists and sun and curving fields, whose height and favoured prospect give it a wider fuller sky than most other systems he had ever seen. Beechenhill! A place where a mole such as the Stone Mole might have done better to be born than in outcast Duncton. Yes, Beechenhill.
The very place to which Mayweed and Sleekit, acting on a similar instinct, had taken Tryfan’s two pups by Henbane and so saved them, for as surely as the sun rose each day Tryfan felt that Wharfe and Harebell were safe and hoped that one day they might know him, or know at least that he had cared.
And thinking that, Tryfan trembled and then whispered as he looked on the Stone Mole pup: ‘His name could be Beechen, my love, after a place which all moles who visit it learn to love. A place of good moles, loving moles, moles trusted with my own. It is a worthy name.’
Feverfew thought, and touched, and whispered, and the pup turned and came closer. She whispered it yet more, annexing the name to him and to herself, and as she did so she did not see the tremble in Tryfan’s flanks, nor guess the sweet sorrow in his heart, nor see at once the tears that ran down his face. But when she did …
‘Myn luv!’ exclaimed Feverfew, concerned.
‘Well, a mole may cry if he likes,’ mumbled Tryfan, looking at Beechen and then at her. ‘’Tis something about the name and his vulnerability. I fear for him, Feverfew, and wonder what you and I can do for one marked out as he is.’
‘Luv hym trewe,’ said Feverfew, touching Tryfan’s face gently where his tears were. ‘Feare nat, the Stane ys his fader and we fynde favowre to watch over hym. Wan that we yaf doubts and troublis we wyll togider aske of the Stane ytys holpe and yt wyll guyde us tway. Beechen ys nowe hys nam.’
So Beechen got his name and Tryfan knew that one day, whatever other places the Stone Mole might visit, he would go to Beechenhill. Then Tryfan was thankful that the Stone had ordained that his own pups were living there, and might learn of their father from Beechen while they, in their turn, would be witness to Beechen’s coming, and give what support he might need.
Beechen’s puphood was as other moles’, and he was raised in the same burrow and tunnels which in long moleyears past had been Rue’s, the mole who bore Bracken’s first litter amongst whom was beloved Comfrey himself.
In those modest tunnels Feverfew chose to settle, and though the soil was not as wormful as some in Duncton, that mattered less since her need was only for herself and a single pup.
Despite the public nature of his birth, and the fact that it was witnessed by so many in Duncton, afterwards there was a communal sense that Feverfew and her pup needed privacy, and so, though all longed for the day when Beechen would go among them and be of their life, her tunnels were left in peace. A few did happen by, mainly females who longed for pups of their own and were cursed by the sterility which plague, stress and consequent disease seemed to have cast forever on that system. But none of these few moles got a sighting of the pup, and they were gently deterred by Tryfan from coming yet awhile.
So Beechen grew unseen, as young pups should, learning what Feverfew told him, her dialect words the first he ever heard. Later, when he was adult, her soft accent and sometimes curious turn of speech stayed as his own, and gave his words a touch of timelessness that ran from the past and forward to the future.
His eyes opened but a day or two after he was named, and from the first he seemed quick and curious, falling over himself to get at his mother’s milk and then, when full, not sleeping as other pups do but gazing in her eyes and then turning from her to venture from the encirclement of her paws.
Not that, at first, he dared go far, nor risked going anywhere when great Tryfan was about. Yet Tryfan was gentle with him, and Beechen soon found the confidence to crawl all over Tryfan and tussle with him as that mole allowed himself to be buffeted by the pup’s young paws. His fur then was fair, and Tryfan wondered at its softness, touching it with his gnarled cracked paws, discovering that when life starts it is so soft and tiny it’s a puzzle it survives.
The cold time of April passed with the pup barely seeing the surface above, nor being allowed to feel the blasting of chill winds upon his fur, or the showering rain that fell so easily through the still-leafless wood.
But in the first days of May, by which time Beechen was well grown for one of his age, and already talkative, Feverfew allowed him to quest his nervous way out of the tunnels towards the light and bright air above.
He ventured as far as an exit, poked his snout out, heard a run of wind through budding trees, and rushed back down to safety once again. But curiosity drives a mole up and out, and Feverfew was beginning to want to be on the surface once again, and so as the days went by Beechen was encouraged to venture out with her, and learnt to know the sounds of the wood, and associate them with comfort and not danger. A rustle of leaves was Tryfan coming, a flap of wings was but the harmless blackbird’s way, and the youngster could forget for a little his need of his mother as she groomed and rested in the first warming suns of May. But then strange sounds: the tumbling of a branch, a rook’s rough call, and he was away and down, back to where he was safe.
Rook? Feverfew told. A rustle of leaves not always stern Tryfan’s paws? Feverfew explained. A hooting owl at night? She warned.
Yet Beechen’s curiosity overcame his fears and he ventured out again and further still, too far now for Feverfew to leave him be for long before she must follow him, thankful she had not other young to fret over.
So far Tryfan was Beechen’s only other company, and Tryfan had to serve as a whole tribe of siblings, playful, irritable, generous, silent, always there but different and unpredictable until learned, just as siblings are.
In those molemonths of May, Feverfew delighted to see Tryfan’s smile and the way that so powerful and strong a mole could be so gentle with one who often tried him hard. For Beechen was sometimes more than boisterous, and as that May gathered strength and he grew more, he was not always easy in his response.
But Tryfan spoke with him, calmed him, laughed with him and even at him when he must, and troubles subsided and moments of harshness soon went. The youngster learned to listen quietly as Tryfan and Feverfew talked, each weaving stories of the past for the other, and myth as well, for moles like to talk and remember what they have been told and add something of themselves to it.
Of the Stone they often talked, and to it they spoke and prayed, Tryfan in his Duncton way and Feverfew as Wen moles did, with quiet passion. But neither spoke to Beechen directly of it, letting him absorb what they did and said, and in his own time ask.
Yet in the end it was to neither of them that he first directed such questions, but to one of those moles who, from mid-May, began to come into the small orbit of their lives. These were naturally all adults, since no other pups were born that spring in Duncton, and mainly those who had been closest to Tryfan and Feverfew at the time of Beechen’s birth and who, by virtue of the Seven Stancing that was then made, were his natural guardians. So old Skint and well-made Smithills came, interested more in talking to Tryfan than to the so-far untried pup. Bailey too, who played with him much in those days, for Bailey was ever a mole who understood the young, and perhaps in his playing came a little closer to the beloved sisters, Starling and Lorren, he had lost. Marram came by too, though he was mainly silent, a mole to trust and respect for the journey to Siabod he had made, but never one to talk unnecessarily. At that time the only female who came there was Sleekit, mysterious Sleekit, Mayweed’s mate, a mole who knew much and in time would impart much. Beechen was a little afraid of her, but curious, and always took stance near her when she came. For he had learned from Feverfew and Tryfan’s talk of the pups by Henbane, and how two of them, Wharfe and Harebell, had survived Whern with the help of Sleekit and Mayweed, and been partly raised by them. When he dreamed of having siblings, as he sometimes did, it was of these two unknown moles he thought; but Sleekit was too formidable a mole for him yet to dare ask her to tell him of those dread days.
Nor was it to any of these tried and tested moles that Beechen finally put his first serious questions about the Stone, but another. One we know, one we love, one more devoted to Tryfan than anymole alive.
If ever appearances were deceptive, and a mole looked one thing but in his nature was quite another, this mole was he. Patchy of paw, rotten of tooth, calloused of flank! But intelligent of eye, quick of brain, humourful of nature, great indeed in his lean, slight stature; huge in his humble spirit … He came into Beechen’s life quite suddenly one day, and, as with other moles whose ways he crossed and whose lives he changed, he came at the right time.
Beechen had wandered further from his home tunnels than Feverfew would have wished, and she, distracted by visitors, had somehow lost sight of him. But the wood had opened out alluringly and he had gone on until it had suddenly seemed to darken with the approach of evening. His natural fear of the unknown caught up with him and he had turned to run quickly back to more familiar surroundings which, to his consternation, he had not found. Instead the wood and its trees seemed to confuse him, the tunnels he ventured down for help scented ominous, and he had tried to keep calm but was failing miserably. It was then, as panic began to overcome him, that from behind and from nowhere, it seemed, an alarming mole appeared.
Beechen reared up in a not unimpressive stance of self-defence, but one in which he could not seem to prevent his back paws shaking, as the mole raised a paw of greeting and said, ‘Trembling tot, stupefied by my sudden and unexpected appearance, note my smile: it is astonishingly friendly. Note my stance: it unasserts. Remark upon my pathetic form: not likely to cause harm.’
‘Whatmole are you?’ asked Beechen doubtfully.
‘Inquisitorial Sir, I shall tell you. I am a humble mole, a nearly nothing mole, an almost anonymous mole!’
‘You’re Mayweed!’ said Beechen, relaxing.
Mayweed grinned, his teeth livid in the bad light.
‘You’re Sleekit’s mate. You’re Tryfan’s friend. You’re …’
‘I’m many things, still-growing Sir, son of fecund Feverfew.’
‘They said you speak strangely.’
‘Who, when, why, and how did they say it?’ demanded Mayweed.
‘Well …’ began Beechen.
‘Ill!’ declared Mayweed, his eyes lighting at the devious possibilities of verbal play.
‘Unwell!’ said Beechen.
‘Ailing,’ said Mayweed, delighted that Beechen was able and willing to join in his game.
‘Um … hurt?’
‘Unhealthy,’ said Mayweed immediately.
‘Er …’ But Beechen stopped, unable to think of another word expressing the same idea.
‘Diseased, injured, harmed, wounded, and afflicted, much-yet-to-leam-but-trying-very-hard Sir,’ said Mayweed, beaming with satisfaction and frowning as he thought of a dozen other words he might have added to the list but deciding against uttering them out loud.
‘Well!’ said Beechen, smiling.
‘Well indeed this mole me, Mayweed by name, agrees,’ said Mayweed finally.
So the two moles met and became friends, and not for the first time in his life, nor the last, Mayweed guided a mole back to safety who had got himself lost.
‘I didn’t know I was lost,’ said Beechen in surprise as they came back to familiar paths.
‘Serious state to be in that, self-losing Sir, very serious.’
‘I’d like to talk again,’ Beechen said as they parted.
‘Loquacious lad, this mole will return. He always does. He knows where losing’s to be found, he knows where darkness lurks, he’s been where all moles go if they are to go beyond themselves and helps them through. Mayweed understands. What will Sir wish to talk about?’
‘The Stone,’ said Beechen. ‘And Boswell.’ With that he was gone, and it was Mayweed’s turn to look surprised and even perplexed, and then to grin into the fading light and turn away, wandering on the surface for a while, then underground, following the course of his memory of Boswell, and stopping to think in awe of the many uncharted ways of the Stone.
When they next met Beechen simply asked Mayweed to show him how to route-find, which Mayweed did in his own peculiar way: beginning by getting Beechen completely and utterly lost within his own familiar tunnels.
‘Lost lad, feel it, and enjoy. Being lost is nectar to a route-finder’s soul; being lost, contrary to popular conception, is most enjoyable. Humbleness adores it, loves it, longs for it. Being lost! Too rarely happens to him now, not here in Duncton.’
‘But isn’t it very big?’ said Beechen. ‘You can’t know all of it!’
‘Too-eager youth leaps to his first confusion: “know”. For “know” he imagines you mean “remembers”. Humbleness remembers more than most and therefore knows more routes than most, but that is not how he route-finds. Most moles never route-find, they go along so desperate to keep their talon-hold on what little they know that they become confused the moment – as you now have, very average Sir – they lose hold. In short, they learn the way, remember it, and inevitably when they put a paw out of line get lost. In fact, humbleness avers that most become so afraid of becoming lost they go nowhere new at all which, he mildly suggests, is far worse than being lost since it is next to being dead.
‘A lost mole, like you, is therefore in a learning situation, as the moles of the Word put it so curiously. A learning situation! Mayweed loves it! Ha, ha, ha! A much better way of progressing is to assume you are lost from the beginning and must deduce each junction afresh. Exciting, that! This way? Or that way? Thinking keeps a mole young! Now … which way? Let us commence!’
The theory was over, for the time being, and poor Beechen, bewildered by the way Mayweed had got him lost in tunnels he should know, looked around in some panic as Mayweed darted this way and that, round and round, now here now gone, his snout disappearing and reappearing all over the place.
‘Clueless Beechen, a tip. Crouch down. Groom. Ponder the pleasantness of being alive. Forget you are lost. Let your body remind you what your mind has forgotten: you can never be lost, since you are here. Look at your paw! Here. Look at the mark it makes in the dust. Here. Hear your nervous breathing. Evidently here! So you are not lost.’
Beechen pondered this, relaxed, and eventually said doubtfully, ‘But I don’t know where I am.’
Mayweed beamed with pleasure as if Beechen had fallen into a trap he had intended him to.
‘Befuddled Beechen, wrong yet again. Crucially wrong. Think and learn, for this is the only way to become a route-finder. Don’t say, “I don’t know where I am” but “I don’t know where this place is”. See? Understand? Appreciate?’
‘Sort of,’ said Beechen, who sort of did. Certainly he felt less panic-stricken than he had and, now he saw that his problem was not himself but the place, it was easier to keep calm; and certainly, he realised suddenly, there was something familiar about those walls.
Mayweed watched delightedly as Beechen snouted this way and that, scratched his head, breathed more deeply and, with the sudden sense that might come to a mole who falls headlong into a void and after whirling about lands safe again on his four paws, he saw where he was.
‘But we’re here!’ declared Beechen with a sudden rush of recognition. ‘But … !’ And he felt, and looked, angry at himself and the world for fooling him into thinking he was lost when he was not lost at all.
‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!’ Mayweed said, almost shouting the words. ‘You see, you know, you feel, and marvellous … you’ve found, young Sir.’
‘But …’ protested Beechen.
‘Ah! Astonished and marginally annoyed youth wonders how humbleness here got him to feel lost in the first place? Humble he is clever at such things. Humble he has made a study of such things. Humble he excels at it. By turning this way and then that way, by taking the young innocent’s mind off the route he was going, by making what was familiar become so unfamiliar that the bemused youngling could not even see correctly what was in front of his paws. We are in tunnels he has passed many times, but have come from a direction abnormal and stopped in a place and at an angle abnormal. Result? Confusion, panic and a sense of feeling lost. Dear oh dear, now bloodied Sir, and this is but the beginning!’ Mayweed laughed again, scratched himself, thought a bit, and finally told Beechen to take him to the surface and find him some food.
When they had relaxed and eaten, Beechen asked, ‘Will I ever become a good route-finder?’
‘With persistence and application, and a touch of genius – yes, Sir will,’ said Mayweed contentedly.
‘Will you teach me?’ asked Beechen.
‘Will you learn?’ replied Mayweed, his eyes bright.
‘Yes,’ said Beechen seriously. There was a pause, and then Beechen boldly asked, ‘What exactly is the Stone?’
‘That’s persistence!’ said Mayweed. ‘No sooner recovered from being lost than he rushes headlong into a most existential maze. Modest me had guessed that bold Beechen would soon seek the portal to that arcane world, but had vainly hoped that in the bewilderment of getting lost Sir would forget his interest in such things. Me, Mayweed, is not one to say much of the Stone. Tryfan knows it best. He was taught by Boswell.’
‘Who’s Boswell?’
‘Ah! Quick and speedy brained Sir, the questions will come thick and fast now like sounds in a badly made tunnel, and Mayweed will not be able to cope. Tryfan will give you better answers than Mayweed …’
‘I heard Tryfan say to Feverfew that you know more about the nature of the Stone than anymole alive.’
‘He did?’ said Mayweed softly, his bright eyes suddenly moist. ‘No, no, great Tryfan cannot have meant that, and anyway youngsters had best keep silent on what they hear until they know it to be true for themselves.’
‘What’s scribing?’
‘Sir will never stop now!’ said Mayweed with a sigh.
Then the sounds of approaching mole across the surface relieved him of the need to answer more and instead he asked, ‘Whatmole is that, young Sir?’
‘Tryfan, and he’s tired.’
‘Correct but incomplete. He comes from where?’
‘Don’t know,’ said Beechen.
‘That’s because loquacious lad was talking so much and asking inadequate me so many questions he forgot the route-finder’s cardinal rule, which is to keep half an ear open for sounds and clues, for they help, every one of them. Tryfan comes from upslope, some way towards the Stone.’
Which, when he reached them, Tryfan confessed he had.
‘But not from it. Nomole’s been there since Beechen was born. They’re waiting. Eh, Mayweed?’
Mayweed sighed and nodded.
‘This mole asks a lot of questions, peerless Tryfan, and so he should. Indeed, humbleness himself asks lots and will never stop. He’ll die asking questions, for that’s the way of route-finders. However, while he knows whatmole to ask (usually himself), burgeoning Beechen here is asking the wrong mole and should in Mayweed’s judgement direct his questions to you yourself, named Tryfan.’
Tryfan laughed but Mayweed did not even smile. Then as Beechen, bored by their conversation, turned from them and snouted a little across the surface, Mayweed said quietly, ‘Mayweed is made afraid by the youngster’s questioning. The nature of the Stone? Who was Boswell? The truth of scribing? The way to go … ?’ Mayweed looked full into Tryfan’s eyes, wavering. ‘When I am with this mole I am full of fear for moledom,’ he said simply. ‘I feel I cannot help him or guide him as I can other moles. I feel close to tears.’
Tryfan nodded and touched his old friend on the flank.
‘You are not alone in that, Mayweed. The mole is growing fast, he questions everything. But if he now asks you of the Stone and Boswell, it is more than he asks myself or Feverfew.’
Mayweed grinned and said, ‘See how he has drifted off … he must ask the questions but is afraid of the answers we will give. Youth, patriarchal Tryfan, is a touching thing but aren’t you glad you’ve left it far behind?’
Tryfan smiled.
‘When I was first told by Boswell that one day the Stone Mole would come, I thought he would come complete, full grown, ready to guide us. But …’
They stared across the woodland floor to where Beechen, seeming so young in the soft May light, touched a root, gazed up at a branch, scented at some leaves and then simply settled down to look out through the speckled shade that spread over the wood’s wide floor.
Tryfan continued, ‘But he has come newborn, a pup, and is in all our care. Each one of us in Duncton must give to him what we can, striving to teach him all we know, whatever he asks we must answer it truthfully. When moles fear answering questions asked it is because they fear something in themselves, and do not trust what the Stone ordains. Answer his questions, Mayweed, and tell others in Duncton to do the same. For soon now he will leave the home burrow and I shall take him to the Marsh End. There, as Midsummer comes, I shall teach him scribing as I taught you at Harrowdown one Midsummer that seems long ago. Be not afraid, Mayweed. Here he is among good moles, moles the Stone wished to be here. We are his guardians and until he is ready to guide and teach us, we must all be his teachers.’
They watched Beechen for a little longer until, aware perhaps of their silence, he came running back to them, his eyes alight with the beauty of the wood.
‘He’s teaching me to route-find,’ Beechen told Tryfan, going close to Mayweed.
‘Then you have found the best mole in all of moledom to teach you,’ said Tryfan. ‘Now come, your mother would talk with you.’
As they left, Mayweed watched after them, trouble still in his eyes. He stared at Beechen’s still slender haunches, but finally his look was for Tryfan.
‘You I’ll watch until you have no more need of me,’ he whispered. ‘This mole Mayweed loves Tryfan, and what great Spindle began in Uffington this mole will conclude. Who knows what ways lie ahead, but while you trouble yourself with the Stone Mole’s rearing, I’ll trouble myself with watching over you! Slower now you are, Sir, your fur patchy like mine, and Mayweed sees ways ahead for you which may be hard to find and fathom. But humbleness will be there.’
Then, as the two moles stopped at an entrance to go down, Beechen turned and looked back across the wood to the place from where Mayweed watched them. He saw Mayweed, and for a moment his body was quite still and his left paw a little raised. Mayweed saw the look in his eyes, and knew it. It was the look of love, terrible and strong, and before it a mole might quail. And at his raised paw there seemed a light, and Mayweed knew that he was blessed and that moledom would be guided, if only it knew how to see, and hear. That time was yet to come, but for now, here, in beleaguered Duncton, the moles had a task to teach a young mole all they knew, and it was a great and good one.
As June began they all noticed that Beechen grew withdrawn and difficult, asking questions to which he seemed not to listen to the answers, staying near moles he seemed not to want to address, making silence, making sudden outbursts. If there had been other youngsters about it might have been easier for the adults there, since he could have vented his confused needs.
Now, too, he began to wander far, but he seemed not to want to talk to anymole and none reported talking with him, though sometimes he was seen over on the Eastside or near the Marsh End. He seemed not to attempt to go near the Stone or out on to the dangerous Pastures and he came back to Feverfew for rest or food, but she knew his time with her was very nearly done.
‘I am muche afeard for hym wandering far,’ Feverfew would say when she and Tryfan had time to be close.
‘We all are, my love, but it is of more than shadows in Duncton that we fear for him. It is the darkness of which the grikes are a part that I fear. I know Whern’s ways. Rune may be dead, as Mayweed and Sleekit witnessed, but Henbane will have taken charge. Mistress of the Word! She will have cursed her father for not killing Boswell when they could have done. Now his son is come, which surely they must suspect, they will not rest until they have taken him. The day will soon come when they know or guess he is in Duncton Wood and he will have to escape from here. Now he has things to learn, and we must try to teach him, for that is our task. I shall take him to the Marsh End, my dear, and there teach him what I can of scribing, and then too other moles of Duncton – the many who have waited so long and patiently to see him, and who have left him well alone – shall come to tell him what they can. If he is the mole I think he is, he will listen well, and learn, and what he learns from us will give him much that he needs to know when he goes out in moledom and takes word of the Stone.’
‘Hee ys myn sonne,’ said Feverfew quietly, for talk of learning and journeying, guidance and the Stone, upset her. She who had borne him did not want to let him go. So as the sun of June brightened and grew clear, Feverfew grew apprehensive.
Today, historians of those times seek signs of what Beechen was to become in the few scraps of stories that are told about him then. Some say he had healing powers young, and even by the end of May was curing moles; others say that he made a journey to the Marsh End and spoke words of prophecy.
But it was not so. Tryfan himself, who left records that make the matter plain, tells us that until a certain day in mid-June, Beechen was pup and youngster like any other with nothing much to mark him out except, perhaps, a certain grace of form and the common sense intelligence of a mole who needed to be told things that mattered only once.
In the last few days before he first touched the Stone, as if he was beginning to understand that he must at last turn his back on puphood for all time, he slept badly and suffered nightmares, but recovered soon enough. Whatever darkness passed through their tunnels in those final nights vanished and their youngster slept as deep and sound as every youngster should.
At last a dawn had come which called Tryfan and Feverfew out into the wood. The whole of moledom seemed to wake about them as they groomed and ate, a day of beauty and change when a mole might take up his task. They felt that in travelling through the dark nights past they had grown nearer each other and nearer a joyful day to come.
‘A day of sunshine such as this one,’ said Tryfan softly, looking about the wood he loved, ‘a day when Duncton is found once more. I think I shall be gone by then, and you, my love! Our tasks will be done and other moles will be where we are now, to turn about as we do and rejoice in what they see. Theirs to inherit what we leave behind, as we have, and our parents before us. Theirs to guess at what we knew; theirs to know what we cannot.
‘But this sun shall be the same, and it will warm their fur as it warms ours. And the Stone shall be there and be the same. Touching it, they shall be nearest what was good in us. Touching it, we can reach out to what will be best in them. The Silence they strive for will be the same as that which, Stone willing, we will have found.’
Then Tryfan and Feverfew were close and touching, and the light was on them and in the dew about, and all Duncton Wood felt it was at one and, if purposeful, would have no need to doubt.
It was a little later that same June morning that Beechen came to the exit nearby and saw the sun, and all knew this was his day to touch the Stone. Then, with all of moledom waiting as the sun rose high, they had begun the trek up towards the Duncton Stone.