11

Zluty gazed glumly out at the falling rain. Truly this was a season of dark wonders. It was midday by his reckoning and it had been raining heavily since the previous afternoon. Worrying about the mushrooms and the bees, he had decided to wait until it stopped to set off on the journey back to the cottage. But he had never expected that the rain would go on so long.

When night came, he had tried to sleep so he would be rested enough to walk late the following night. But uneasy dreams had taken him back into the dark forest, where the enormous creature in the giant egg had come to life and had pursued him until he woke with a pounding heart, only to find it was still raining.

Now Zluty was beginning to wonder if this rain were any more natural than the stone storm had been. It had gone on for longer than any rain he had ever experienced and he had already lost most of the time he had gained in setting the taps the night he arrived. If he did not leave soon, he would not even reach the cottage by nightfall on the tenth day.

Zluty clenched his teeth and thrust his hand out into the rain. When it did not hurt him, he forced himself to step out into it, gasping a little at the pummelling it gave his sensitive ear tips. It was very heavy rain and in seconds his fur was completely soaked. The feeling of being so wet was horrible but it was only water.

He splashed across to the forest to get some leaves and carried them back to the cave, noticing that the red stones which had fallen were beginning to dissolve and soften.

He got a thorn needle and some thread from his pack and sewed the leaves together, then he bound them to his staff to make a parasol that would keep the rain off his pack. Lashing it in place, he settled the bee jar into it and pushed a little moss loosely into the top of it to make sure no rain would drip inside. Then, with a last glance around the cave, he shouldered the pack, slung the collection bag over his head and set off.

So much rain had fallen that the ground was too sodden to absorb it. Great pools had formed, full of widening and overlapping ripples, and in between the pools the ground was soft and slimy from the dissolving sludge of the storm stones. But Zluty hardly noticed the wet or the cold or the slippery muddy ground.

He was going home.

It was afternoon when Zluty noticed a sodden digger standing up on its haunches. No doubt it had scented his approach for diggers had very keen noses. Coming closer, he noticed that the little creature’s fur was quite a different colour to that of the diggers that lived near the cottage.

‘Ra!’ it cried in greeting, blinking rain from its eyes.

‘Ra,’ Zluty responded. ‘Where did you come from?’

In answer, the digger beckoned and splashed away to the East where it vanished over a low rise of ground.

Zluty hesitated. He was anxious to get home, but he was curious what it could want of him and in truth he was weary enough from his dreary trudge to welcome a diversion.

When he got to the top of the rise, he saw that there was a little delegation of diggers awaiting him, their fur plastered flat by the rain. Zluty bowed to them and asked if they had some need of him.

The digger that had led him to the others nodded passionately and then an older digger explained with a few words and a goodly amount of gesturing and miming that its clan was hungry because rain had got into their burrow system. Zluty asked in dismay if their food store had been destroyed, knowing this would mean the difference between survival and death on the barren plain.

The diggers gave a chittering giggle until the speaker quelled them with a severe look. Turning back to Zluty, he explained that the food storage was almost certainly dry because it was higher than the rest of the burrow, but it could only be reached by a long deep tunnel that had been flooded and had collapsed. The diggers only needed enough food to tide them over until they could dig a new tunnel to the store.

Zluty was relieved and said he could give them some food. He was about to take off his pack but the speaker urged him to come and eat with the clan.

‘I will not fit into a digger burrow,’ Zluty said, but the speaker managed to convey to him that the clan had taken refuge in a place that was big enough for him to join them.

Zluty asked where it was, but he could not understand what the digger tried to tell him. Finally, he simply gestured them to lead the way. If they had found some place where he could get out of the rain, he would be glad to rest for a while and eat something, for he had not stopped since setting out.

The diggers brought him to a ground cave with such a small entrance that Zluty had to push his pack and his other burdens in first, then crawl in after them. But it was a great relief to be out of the relentless rain. The diggers called him to come deeper. When he obeyed he was pleased to find that the cave widened out, so that he could sit up.

Now that he was not walking, he had begun to feel cold and he decided to light a fire and make a stew of mushrooms to share with the diggers. They did not traditionally cook their food, but the ones in the burrow near the cottage had liked anything Bily and Zluty offered. He set about finding a dip in the rocky cave bottom that would serve as a fire pit and laid his last three ground cones into it. He tore up some white fluffs, and struck his flint stones over them. A little spark fell and a thread of smoke curled up. He leaned nearer and blew the spark until the cones caught alight.

Zluty sat back in satisfaction only to see that the little diggers had drawn back in fright. Realising they had only ever seen wild fire before, he made soothing gestures and tried to assure them that these flames were in his control, but he did not have Bily’s gentle skill at communicating with the little creatures and they continued to regard the flames with alarm.

Zluty turned back to the fire and propped a pot over it and filled it with mushrooms and various herbs and the water from one of his bulbs. He would normally have been more careful with his water supply, but with so much rain falling it was hard to feel worried about running out.

The fire soon warmed the cave and the scent of the mushrooms cooking was delicious. The diggers might never have tasted cooked food, but the smell must have been pleasing to them, for eventually they crept forward, their eyes shining hungrily. Zluty poured some of the stew into his bowl for them when it was ready, and ate his own share out of the pot.

The diggers were still eating when he finished, so he got out his little pipe and played them a tune. The diggers at the cottage had always liked the songs he made with the pipe, and these diggers were no different. They listened with rapturous attention until he set the pipe aside, and then they made the same chittering sound of appreciation as the other diggers always did.

Zluty thanked them and only then noticed that several of the younger diggers had been rummaging in his pack. They had got out the small metal egg and were crooning and stroking it. Zluty smiled, knowing how diggers loved to collect shiny things. The ones near the cottage were always dragging home smaller bits of metal to decorate their burrows.

Deciding they would do it no harm, Zluty checked on the bees to make sure they had not been disturbed. He knew he ought to go, but the rain was still falling steadily and it was a pity to waste the fire. He stretched himself out with a sigh.

His last sight was of a cluster of little diggers gazing gravely and worshipfully into the fire, the metal egg gleaming in their midst.

As he slept, a memory came to Zluty of the time after he and Bily had emerged from their egg. They had been small and very helpless, but the egg had been filled with food, and voices inside their heads had told them about the spring, and had explained how to build a shelter from the egg. They had obeyed the inner voices and had lived in the egg house until they grew too large to fit into it. Then the voices told them they must build a new, larger cottage out of things from the plain.

When at length they had run out of the egg food, the inner voice told Zluty of the wild rice and the roots that could be dug from the ground, but it warned that this food would not feed them through the Winter that would come. Before that season, Zluty must go North to a great forest where he could find other foodstuffs.

Zluty put the journey to the Northern Forest off for a long time because the voice inside Bily’s head said nothing about a forest or a journey, and his brother had looked frightened whenever Zluty spoke of going there to search for food to supplement their supplies. But the inner voice had been insistent and finally Zluty decided he must go before it was too late. Perhaps the voice had whispered something to his brother, too, for when he told Bily what he meant to do, Bily had not argued.

In his dream, Zluty saw himself leaving Bily that first time, setting off across the plain too close to Winter, with too little water and no idea of how near he would come to dying. Then the dream faded and there was only a voice whispering urgently to Zluty that he must go before it was too late.

Zluty woke in the stale smoke-scented darkness of the digger cave to find the diggers were asleep all around him in little furry piles. The pale grey light of pre-dawn was filtering through the entrance at the other end of the cave, and he could hear that it was still raining, but the memory of the whispered warning that had woken him would not let him go back to sleep.

He swiftly repacked his flints and the pot licked clean by the diggers, wondering if the voice had spoken to him after all this time. It had once whispered constantly to him, telling him to do certain things, advising him what sorts of food could be safely eaten, but he had not heard it for many long years.

He had come very close to dying on that first trip to the Northern Forest. This was one of the reasons Bily feared his trips there. Yet their lives had been so much improved by the things Zluty had brought back, that they had both known he would make the trip again. Of course, the next time Zluty had known what to expect and he had been far better prepared. He had not needed the voice. Maybe that was why it had fallen silent.

It might just be the wrongness of stones falling from the sky and the unnatural rain that had awakened a memory of the voice, but when he thought of the words it had said, the fur on his neck and ears bristled.

Go, before it is too late.

He rose quietly, and lifted the metal egg from between two sleeping diggers, being careful not to wake them. On impulse, he got one of the shining stones from its pouch and put it between them where the egg had been, wondering what the little creatures would make of his gift. The egg was still warm from the body heat of the diggers when he pushed it gently into the depths of his pack alongside the bee jar. He took out the pancakes he had cooked the previous night, and put them in a pile by the burned-out fire pit so that the diggers would have something to eat when they woke, then he crawled back to the entrance of the cave, dragging his pack and the collection bag after him.

Outside, the rain immediately began seeping through his fur, but he ignored it as he arranged the staff and leaf parasol to protect the mushrooms and the bee jar.

‘Perhaps when dawn comes the rain will stop,’ he told himself as he set off.