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 tasks 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.
Smithills’ role was one of companion and support to Skint, but those who knew him did not doubt that should the need ever arise Smithills would give all that remained of his aging strength to the mole who had journeyed at his flank for so long.
Skint had long since confided to Tryfan that he believed it would be after Midsummer that danger from the grikes would loom once more. They would be free of whatever young they had reared by then and eager for action in the summer years. More than that, summer was the time when, traditionally, the sideem postings were changed, guardmole patrols were rearranged, and what had been static and unchanging since the previous winter was liable to be upset as sideem and guardmoles, eager to impress their superiors and show they could do better than their predecessors, poked their snouts about and caused trouble.
‘I’ll warrant that the day will come when somemole or other of ours down at the cross-under will blab about Beechen’s presence in the system, and some over-eager sideem or other’ll hear about it,’ said Skint. ‘Well, if there’s need for a warning I’d like to be the mole to give it!’
Tryfan was content to leave such arrangements in Skint’s capable paws, and knew that such was the good feeling among the moles in Duncton now that nomole would betray them but by accident caused by infirmity or senility. A mole could not prevent such things. In any case, the Stone would ordain when word of Beechen’s presence went forth, and when it did he knew that Skint’s watchers would do as good a job now as they had in times past, and all must hope that Beechen stayed well hidden until able to make good his escape. But if, on the other paw, they were spared grike interference until the autumn years then Tryfan had no doubt that Beechen would be ready to slip safely away from the system, and that some among them would be able to help guide him on his way.
Meanwhile, both Tryfan and Skint knew that one reason for the system’s being left alone was the dread reputation it had gained for violence and infection – indeed, it was part of Skint’s strategy to encourage the more diseased-looking moles, if they were able and willing, to wander down to the cross-under and let it be plain that disease was indeed still rife in Duncton Wood.
Such ventures were not, however, without danger for two or three such moles had failed to return, and the body of one of them had been found murdered next to the cross-under, presumably by bored grikes doing guard duty who were, perhaps, less afraid than they once had been of infectious disease.
So Skint’s precautions seemed sensible and he found just enough willing watchers to maintain an adequate cover of the cross-under and neighbouring areas.
Of all this Beechen was either not aware or not interested, but even then, as later in his life, he showed scant regard for his own personal safety as far as moles of the Word were concerned. He had grown to be a strong mole, not over-big nor especially aggressive, but physically more than competent, and with a grace and beauty that even in a system of normal moles, and not one in which age, infirmity and the ravages of disease were the norm, he would have been striking.
His fur was now more grey than pure black and it lay naturally well, and had such a good sheen that it seemed to glow with light. His snout was sure, his paws and talons well set, his voice male but gentle.
Yet, though others found strange peace in his presence, he was not himself untroubled, and at times seemed distressed as he had been in the last months of his puphood. Those who knew him well knew that in some way he felt that the demands the Stone would one day make of him would be too great, while the strangeness of his conception at Comfrey’s Stone, and the mystery of Boswell’s death there, seemed as something he could not resolve.
Tryfan scribed of his attitude to the Stone then in this revealing way:
‘I know that when he spoke to others he spoke not of the Stone. I know it because they told me, and told Feverfew, and were enough surprised by it to mention it especially. Several times I heard that moles asked him about the Stone and to this he would invariably reply, ‘Tell me what you know of it yourself, and would say no more than that.’
The truth is that in the very period when so many moles thought Beechen was showing little interest in the Stone his thoughts were almost constantly upon it, and profoundly so. In his periods of retreat with Tryfan their conversations were much concerned with matters of the Stone, and the indefinable problem the memory of Boswell seemed to present to him. Again and again Beechen quizzed Tryfan on all that he could remember of what Boswell had done and said, and he worked at those texts in which Tryfan and Spindle had recorded Boswell’s words.
We know of this as well from a record scrivened by the former sideem Sleekit, Mayweed’s consort, of conversations she had at this time with Feverfew, which include this brief memory:
‘She told me once that when Beechen visited her he often wanted to know about his father and his making at Comfrey’s Stone, but that she could not remember much. She said it was as if he half remembered his father but that the memory eluded him and he wanted to capture it again. ‘Boswell-moule was as yff an dreme to hym thatte hadde ben trewe and wych he gretely soughte yet gretely was afeard to knaw another time. Yette strang was hys nede to knaw, poore moule, ytt peyned hym muche.’
Moles tend to forget how remarkable Sleekit was. Not only was she one of the few female sideem who had survived the rite of Midsummer, but she was probably the only one in all the long centuries since the time of Scirpus to escape the cold teachings of the Word and turn her heart truly towards the Stone. From her, surely, Beechen had much to learn, not just of faith in the Stone, but something of the true nature of the Word as well; and more than that, of dark sound.
Beechen, then, was seen and known throughout the system that summer, and at some time almost everymole must have met him, and shared time with him. His worries and concerns were as well known as his delights, and his sense of burden and self-doubt where the Stone was concerned must have been general knowledge. The few healings that he did – some called them miracles – before he left Duncton had not yet occurred when, at the end of August, the first incontrovertible evidence of Beechen’s powers of control over matters beyond himself was witnessed by two moles. The incident began almost casually, when to her great surprise Sleekit discovered Beechen stanced quietly up by the Stone.
‘Why Beechen, you look as if you’re not so much praying before the Stone, as waiting for somemole to come.’
‘Perhaps I was,’ replied Beechen, turning to her with a smile.
‘But I thought …’
‘ … I didn’t like this place? You’ve heard the Stone worries me?’
‘Something like that, yes,’ said Sleekit, reflecting that while it was true that a mole always felt better for Beechen’s direct and open gaze, there was some personal discomfort in the fact that he did not make idle conversation, and was willing to gaze on in silence such that other moles were inclined to babble on to fill the silence until, stopping at the sound of their own nonsense, they found themselves speaking to this young mole whatever was deepest in their hearts.
But Sleekit stayed silent, and at peace. She was a mole who had found her way, and knew it, and throughout Duncton had gained great respect, as much for this quiet restraint and sense of having arrived at spiritual peace as for the fact that she lived with Mayweed, the most eccentric and strangely beloved mole in the system.
Beechen looked ruefully behind him at the Stone, and, going to her in acknowledgment of her seniority said, ‘Curiosity brought me here, not reverence! I was just wondering if all the rumours about the Ancient System of Duncton are true and there really are old tunnels down there, and dark and dangerous places. Tryfan’s the only mole I know for sure who has been down there, but he would never talk about it when I was a pup, and certainly won’t now. I was sort of hoping to find a mole who might, well, guide me down there …’ He grinned ingenuously.
Sleekit laughed and said, ‘The Stone has granted your request sooner than it is reasonable to expect. Mayweed has sometimes taken me into the periphery of the Ancient System, and I see no reason why I should not guide you there myself – not that there’s much to see these days. Though why you need me I don’t know, since from what Mayweed’s told me you’re already as good a route-finder for your age as any he’s known. Mind you, I would not recommend going into the deeper central tunnels of the old system.’
‘Is it dangerous then?’ asked Beechen.
‘To a mole that lets it be, and one who allows dark sound to kill his spirit, very. But … it’s wise to be cautious. Even Mayweed is reluctant to venture down into those tunnels.’
‘Dark sound? Tryfan has told me of it but I have never heard it.’
For the first time Sleekit looked discomposed. Her intelligent eyes went blank as she remembered her own most striking experience of dark sound, which was at Midsummer when she was a novice sideem, and she barely survived the swim over Whern’s deep lake to scriven at the Rock of the Word.
Beechen’s eyes were deep on her, and she sensed that now, today, she was being tested by the Stone, and that in the hours ahead she might – no, she would – need all the self-discipline and courage at her command.
It was not Beechen the young adult before her, but Beechen the Stone Mole. It was his eyes that gazed on her, and continued to gaze on her, challenging her to lead him into the Ancient System, even to its deepest parts, and there to hear dark sound. Sleekit trembled and was afraid. But …
‘Come,’ she whispered finally, and she led him down into the Ancient System, to a place that seemed far away from the light and safety of the rustling summer surface above.
It was in the course of that same day that sturdy Marram, doing a turn of duty with another mole as watchers down on the south-eastern slopes near the cross-under, first gained proof that Skint’s fears of a grike resurgence of interest in Duncton, and general aggression towards followers, might be justified.
It began harmlessly enough when Sorrel, the second mole, the same Sorrel whom Beechen had come by in Tryfan’s company when he had first entered the Marsh End, wandered past the hidden Marram and into the cross-under itself. By this device, and the grike reaction, they had often gained information about what was happening beyond the cross-under, for the grikes were not necessarily unfriendly, or unforthcoming.
Generally, it was the guardmoles’ habit on these occasions to warn the Duncton wanderers back and, since they were invariably infirm (though less so than they seemed), to give them time to get clear. Often the guardmoles would laugh and ridicule the vagrant, and venture towards him and point him back in the right direction with friendly oaths if it was a male, and scurrilous ones if female. Brave Teasel, who had become well known to the guardmoles over the moleyears, invariably gave back as good as she got, and as a result gained time to see if there were new guardmoles about, or any change in number or attitude.
That day, as Marram covertly watched, it was plain that things were very different indeed.
As Sorrel approached the cross-under, two new guardmoles, not known before, came marching out towards him as another mole, young, slight and mean of appearance, watched coldly from the shadows of the concrete uprights of the roaring owl way.
‘Name and origin?’ demanded the larger of the two guardmoles.
It was unfortunate that it was Sorrel and not Teasel playing decoy that day for she might have known better than he how to deal with the challenge. A laugh, feigned stupidity, even silence might have been enough to get him away from the danger; but he did none of these things. Perhaps he was feeling tired and ill that day – certainly his scalpskin looked livid and his limping painful indeed – for to Marram’s horror he replied aggressively, ‘And what’s your origin, mole? Malicious and murky. And your name? Filth.’
Even then another guardmole, one perhaps used to the occasional intransigence and madness of these outcast moles, might have ignored Sorrel’s outburst blaming it on the irascibility of old age. But the new guardmole who had confronted him took the old mole’s words as, in truth, they were intended and grew angry. Yet despite everything he might still have preferred to do nothing and avoid further contact with a diseased mole but that the vicious-looking one in the shadows nodded a quick order to apprehend Sorrel – an order the hidden Marram saw, and one which the guardmole obeyed.
He advanced on Sorrel, and looming over him thrust the points of his talons under his snout.
‘Did I hear what you said right or was it a trick of the wind?’ he said menacingly, eyes narrowed.
‘You heard right, filth,’ said Sorrel, speaking with some difficulty because of the guardmole talons in his chin. ‘It was bastards like you killed my kin in Fyfield.’
At this the other guardmole came forward and, without warning, taloned and buffeted Sorrel several times in the side until he collapsed, bloody and winded. Then together they dragged him, breathless and only half conscious, to the watching mole.
Brave Marram crept forward to hear and see better, and perhaps find an opportunity to intervene.
As the third mole approached the gasping Sorrel and moved into the light, Marram recognised from his youthful authority and the humourless intelligence of his cold eyes that he was sideem, and not one he had heard of at the cross-under before.
With mounting concern Marram watched from the gully that runs parallel with the roaring owl way as the sideem circled Sorrel with distaste, waiting for him to recover from the beating he had had.
‘Your name?’ whispered the sideem as Sorrel came to. Then, when Sorrel did not immediately answer, he thrust a single vile talon in Sorrel’s ear, and twisted it until that mole screamed.
‘To make you hear the better … your name?’
‘Sorrel,’ whimpered the old mole, eyes wide in fear as the sideem’s talon poised barely a hair’s breadth from his vulnerable snout. He was not acting any more.
Then the sideem made a statement and asked a question which sent a chill of apprehension through Marram’s body.
‘Sorrel,’ he said, with false and loathsome friendliness, ‘followers of the Stone persist in coming here to try to enter your system. Do you know the mole they’re searching for? Eh? Eh?’ Now his talons were on Sorrel’s snout and the other moles had come closer and were resting their own talons on him to prevent him breaking free, or attacking the sideem, though either course seemed an unlikely option for so infirm a mole, which made their precautions seem grotesque as well as cruel. The sideem suddenly, and expertly, applied sharp and pointed pressure to Sorrel’s snout, and the old mole screamed again.
Though Marram was very near to intervening, he held himself back a moment more to see if the sideem revealed anything further.
‘Yes, Sorrel,’ continued the mole, ‘they think there’s a mole in your Duncton system called the Stone Mole. Well? True?’
Marram, who knew the torturing ways of the sideem too well to doubt that it would not take long for them to find something out from poor Sorrel that might give away Beechen’s presence, now showed all his courage and resource.
Instead of rushing blindly forward to the rescue, he went quickly down the gully away from the cross-under to where he could climb up on to the Pasture and turn back towards where the moles were as if he had happened by. He limped and went slowly, to make himself less dangerous-seeming, and indeed it was not until he had almost reached the three moles of the Word, intent as they were on getting information from Sorrel, that they heard him.
The bigger of the guardmoles swung round, but even as he came forward Marram limped past him very fast and gained the far side of the cross-under as if he was trying to escape the system altogether. In fact his purpose was simply to see what other guardmoles might be near to give these three support, and the happy answer was that none was near enough to undermine Marram’s purpose.
Even as the guardmole called after him, and the others paused in their assault on Sorrel, Marram swung back suddenly towards them, still maintaining his pretence of limping, and came directly at the guardmole as if he could not hear what he was saying.
It had been a long time since Marram had last fought, and not since his departure from Siabod had he wished to fight again, for his way was peaceful now, just as Tryfan’s was. He knew that physically he was no match for three younger moles, and could not hope to rescue Sorrel, and prevent the news of Beechen’s presence leaking out, by force. But he had not forgotten the value of boldness and surprise.
Judging his moment well he suddenly surged forward and, in what could easily have seemed an accidental and lucky thrust, taloned the larger of the guardmoles painfully on the snout. As he did that he stumbled, or appeared to, and let his left paw buffet the sideem away hard against the concrete wall behind him, where he slumped winded and furious.
In the moment of confusion he had caused he was able to put a powerful paw under Sorrel’s shoulder, raise him up and thrust him bodily back towards Duncton’s slopes, then he turned and faced the astonished remaining guardmole, and with a smile said apologetically, ‘No harm meant, not by him nor me. No harm …’ and he backed hastily away.
The first guardmole was thrashing about in pain and surprise, his eyes watering and his shouts of anger echoing about the damp cross-under. The sideem seemed dazed and slow to comprehend what had suddenly happened to them.
So only the second guardmole pursued Marram who, urging Sorrel to make good his escape back into the system, stopped limping and loomed his full height intimidatingly back towards the grike who, perhaps sensibly, drew to a halt.
‘He’s just an old fool that one,’ said Marram, ‘let him die in peace.’
The guardmole stared up at the now formidable Marram and, thinking better of attacking, took the easiest way out.
‘You better bugger off, mate, before my mate and the sideem come to. Get yourself lost, and stay lost.’
‘Why?’ said Marram, at his most authoritative.
‘Because he’s not the only new sideem they’ve sent, and Duncton’ll be in for a visit if you don’t keep your bloody snouts out of sight. Now … this won’t have done any of us any good and the last thing we want is to come searching your Word-forsaken system and catch disease. Wouldn’t be too pleased if we had to do that, wouldn’t be too friendly.’
‘You’re new here. Changes in the patrols?’ Marram dared ask.
‘Changes all over bloody moledom, chum. Now scarper!’
Which, thankfully, Marram did, following on after the redoubtable Sorrel, and ensuring that their escape up into the wood beyond the slopes above was swift, and complete.
News of this incident and its obvious implications for the system spread rapidly through Duncton Wood and it was not long before Tryfan was dragged from the Marsh End by Skint to hear the report at first paw by Marram and the unrepentant Sorrel. They met, along with a growing number of excited moles, that same afternoon at Barrow Vale and there told their tale in full. Marram’s modest and brief account being graphically filled out by the still-outraged Sorrel, who showed off his injuries and, far from exhibiting signs of weakness as a result of what he had suffered, seemed rather to gain strength as the afternoon progressed.
As soon as he had heard the news Skint had quietly and efficiently deployed other watchers down towards the cross-under, in case the grikes sent out a revenge party; at the same time moles like Madder and Dodder on the Eastside were evacuated to Barrow Vale and that side of the system cleared.
But the cross-under stayed quiet, guardmoles were seen there doing no more than their usual duties, and the threat seemed, for the time being at least, to subside.
Meanwhile, at Barrow Vale, Madder made a rousing speech against all sideem and grike guardmoles, and was ably seconded by Dodder, though the latter avoided casting aspersions against the Word itself. Then there was a renewed demand for yet another recounting of Marram’s splendid rescue, followed by an increasingly serious discussion about the dangers implicit in a new regime of sideem at the cross-under, and, worse, the grim news that the grikes might be on the rampage across moledom once more.
All there knew how vulnerable to attack they were, all realised that the days of their contented and happy summer were getting fewer, as old Skint had long since warned. All feared that …
‘Aye, but where’s Beechen?’ said one of them suddenly, provoking general alarm. Moles ran here and there looking for him but found he was not among them. None had seen him that day! He might very well be in danger! Quick! Find him! Save him!
Tryfan calmed them.
‘He’s no fool,’ he growled, ‘and is not one to go on the south-east slopes unaccompanied. Panicking will help nomole. Where’s Mayweed? He’s the one who’ll find him.’
‘Humbleness is here, and he is, trenchant Tryfan, the one to find him. Or, looking at it another way, he’s the one to find us! Get it? Yes? No? Not got it? No? Are we dim tonight? We are! Mayweed humbly takes your leave and will seek him here and seek him there and, in the end, find him, as one day moledom will, everywhere.’
With many a mole shaking their heads at this cryptic statement, and some still wanting to rush off and search for Beechen themselves, Mayweed turned around several times, snouting north, east and west, before turning resolutely southward and upslope, towards the Stone and Ancient System, and saying, ‘Yes, Sirs, Yes, Madams, yes, yes, yes!’
Then, humming cheerfully to himself, and winking at Tryfan while leering confidently at Feverfew, he said, ‘One half of me is better than the other half, and the better half knows where bold Beechen is. To her me, Mayweed, humbleness, will go. Southward! Farewell and good night!’
He paused for dramatic effect, a sudden stir of wind up on the surface obligingly marking the moment, and with that and as dusk settled over the quiet wood, he was gone …
From the moment Sleekit had led Beechen down into the peripheral tunnels of the Ancient System she felt uneasy and disorientated, as if she was doing something difficult, something she had never done before, and doubted her own ability. However much she reminded herself that her consort Mayweed had brought her here without mishap, her heart still pounded uncomfortably, and nor was her well-being helped by the distant murmurs of dark sound that the tunnels seemed to carry.
Had it not been for the fact that Beechen seemed quite unaffected by the sound and followed quickly behind her without any apparent doubts about her ability at all, she might easily have surfaced and made good her escape from what felt like the tightening talons of danger while she still could. But, in truth, as well as the sense that she must not let Beechen down there was also that sense of mission a mole gains when personally challenged to do something from which to back down is an admission of defeat. So she went on.
Not that initially there was much direction to their exploration other than that provided by curiosity, whim and the necessity of turning one way or another because the tunnel ahead was blocked. The part of the system they first entered, which was made up of tunnels of an ancient arched style which the Duncton moles did not employ in their later colonisation of the lower slopes and Marsh End of the wood, had clearly been damaged in every way they could have been. Apart from the roots of trees and undergrowth, which in Bracken’s day had been benign but since seemed to have grown malignant, dry summers had cracked the soil. Creatures like voles and weasels had broken into burrows, and squirrels and foxes and, in one place, badgers had vandalised stretches of the Ancient System so that only moles with eyes to see could make out the remnant tunnels and chambers that had once known such glory. Now they were open to the summer sun, desecrated by bird muck, lost among the tumbling of fallen trees and branches, all but destroyed.
It said a great deal for the quality of such tunnels as remained that there was windsound at all in these broken subterranean ways, and suggested that despite appearances even these ruins had links with a deeper part of the system which was whole and undamaged. It was towards this that their seemingly random route appeared to go, and as they went Sleekit had the frightening sense that they were being inexorably led towards a place to which she did not wish to go. She knew that place’s name, for Mayweed had told her, but as yet she had no wish to tell Beechen.
How long they wandered thus that summer day, now below ground, now forced above it by some invasive root or broken ceiling, she did not know, but there came a time when the tunnels began to become more whole, the windsound to grow more sonorous, the hint of dark sound more treacherous, and their route to turn back westwards, towards the centre of the High Wood, beyond which was the Stone itself.
It did not surprise them that here the tunnels were less damaged, and, eventually not damaged at all, for the beech trees were larger and more ancient, and their thick canopy of leaves above, and the many-layered covering of dry beech leaves below, smothered and prevented undergrowth and kept other creatures out. At first they chose to make slow progress, snouting about the tunnels a bit, listening to the subtle windsound, and then darting up to the surface to ascertain where they were.
But finally the ruins were all behind them, the tunnels deepened, and they committed themselves to pursuing their exploration underground.
The nature of the soil had changed, being drier and harder, with a sub-soil underpaw that was nearly chalk. Here they found tunnels of extraordinary high elegance, deserted and dusty, and in which the ancient moles who had made them had used flints to great effect as buttresses at corners, and exploiting their shiny surfaces to cast light from vents into the dry surface leaves above, and to carry the subtlest of sounds forward.
There was now a quite unmistakable whisper of dark sound about the tunnels, and again and again Sleekit paused and asked Beechen if he was sure he wanted to go on.
Eventually he stopped, stanced still and gazed at her in the direct way he had. ‘I think it is you who does not want to go on,’ he said. ‘It is your fear you question, not my own.’
‘I … I hear dark sound,’ whispered Sleekit, ashamed that her fear was so obvious to the younger mole.
‘And I hear confusion,’ he replied. Then, coming close and touching her, he said gently, ‘You know, I must go on towards such confusion until I find it. That is my task, Sleekit. I will go on alone if you … if you feel fear. But I think Boswell’s teaching to Tryfan was that nomole helps another by shielding him from his own fear, or merely by showing such fear can be conquered. My going on alone would not help you, and nor, since my task seems to lie with allmole, would it much help me!’
Beechen even smiled as he said this, and Sleekit felt much moved at his concern for her, and his courage.
She said, ‘My dear, I am afraid. I have known dark sound before, but I was younger then and perhaps I had more strength than I have now.’
‘Was it when you were a sideem in Whern?’ he asked. ‘You’ve never told me about any of that, and nor anymole else as far as I know, because I’ve asked.’
‘This is hardly the place,’ said Sleekit, looking around the shadowed arches of the tunnels and listening to the distant and ominous sounds that came to them.
‘Don’t see why not,’ said Beechen lightly. ‘If a mole waits for the right time and place he might wait for ever. Tryfan always said Boswell said that now was the best time of all.’
‘Tryfan has a lot to answer for!’ said Sleekit. But then she smiled and said, ‘But you’re quite right, I haven’t spoken of it. I’m no different than most of the moles in Duncton who want to forget. I sometimes feel lucky just to be here and alive, and have no wish to remember my past. ’ Beechen stared at her silently, and she at him.
‘Well, are you going to tell me?’ he asked at last. Sleekit sighed and said, ‘I suppose I must!’
It was then, and in the now ominously whispering tunnels of the Ancient System, that Beechen first heard a full account of those events that had led to the invasion of Duncton by Henbane moleyears before. Then Sleekit found it necessary to tell Beechen of Whern, of the sideem and of the Word. Of the Midsummer rite at Whern she told, of the Rock of the Word and of the Master Rune.
Then too he heard the real truth of Henbane, of her violation and corruption by Rune, of the strange mating with Tryfan and of their even stranger love which was light discovered in darkness, and how Tryfan had been all but killed by Rune’s sideem.
Then of how Mayweed discovered her Sleekit told, and that Henbane had borne Tryfan’s young, and two of them had been rescued by herself and Mayweed and taken out of Whern to Beechenhill.
‘Wharfe and Harebell,’ Beechen said. ‘Tryfan told me of them.’
‘Yes,’ said Sleekit. ‘And through their rearing I learnt to love Mayweed, and he to love me. We have not young of our own, and nor can we have for disease makes a mole sterile. But we saw those two grow towards maturity and left them in the care of the leader of Beechenhill, Squeezebelly. There is no better nor more stoutly faithful mole than he.’
‘What of the third pup?’
Sleekit shook her head.
‘I know not. We left him in that dreadful place with Rune and Henbane to fight over him. I know not …’
‘But you have an idea?’
‘I know only that if he survived he would be raised a sideem, and because of his birth he would be favoured. If he was favoured and well trained, then Tryfan’s son would be thy enemy, and the Stone’s.’
Around them, suddenly, the windsound strengthened, and there was the rumble and roar of dark sound as if other moles were in that place, threatening moles.
‘Sleekit,’ whispered Beechen, ‘I think that mole is alive. I feel he is alive. And I think … I think I know where I must go after Duncton.’
‘Not Whern, Beechen!’ said Sleekit urgently. ‘Never there. For they shall kill you and moledom shall die with you.’
‘Not Whern …’ repeated Beechen faintly, but whether he was simply echoing what she said, or whether he had another place in mind, she could not tell.
The light in the tunnels had faded, and there was the sense of dusk about the place.
‘We must go back to the surface,’ said Sleekit with a shiver. ‘We must continue here another time.’
‘No, no,’ said Beechen, ‘we must continue now. And you shall come with me despite your fears. I shall show you the way beyond them now. I know the way. I have been learning it from the first hour of my birth. Come now …’
Yet even then he lingered, as if reluctant to take up the challenge that he felt lay before him.
‘Tryfan told me that he loved Henbane.’
‘It is true. I know my Mistress much loved him. In their union I saw the first good, the first light, I ever saw in Whern. Tryfan opened a portal in Henbane’s heart which I believed could not, would not, be closed again. She … she …’ Sleekit lowered her snout.
‘Yes?’ said Beechen.
‘She was not as evil as she seemed. She did evil, but she was not all evil. And always, always, there was in her what other moles – moles that might be good, followers as well – often did not quite have. She had life, Beechen, and seeing that and witnessing what I did when Tryfan loved her, and how she bore their young with courage I have never seen before nor known myself, I knew that moles who live, which is to say moles who have courage to experience what comes their way, may finally, whatever else they may have done, find their snout turning towards the Stone’s light.’
‘Others think her evil.’
Sleekit made a strange reply to this. She said, ‘Others once thought my Mayweed to be a mole of no account. I have loved him as I loved her, despite what all others say.’
‘Perhaps you have an eye for the light of truth,’ whispered Beechen.
Sleekit said nothing to this but instead declared with uncharacteristic passion, ‘I am fearful for them both. What will become of my Mayweed? What has become of Henbane?’
There was no reply but in the windsound, dark and light, of the tunnels about them.
‘I often think you know more than you let others know,’ said Sleekit.
It did not seem to be Beechen, a young adult, who replied.
‘I may know more fear than they, it is my heritage and my task,’ said the Stone Mole, his eyes bright in the darkness about them, his form almost lost in the chalky shadows where he stanced.
‘Now, you have told me of the dark sound of Whern. What of this place, and the sounds we have heard all day? Tell me!’
But all Sleekit could do was to repeat the little she had been told by Mayweed and Tryfan, about a place Bracken had called the Chamber of Dark Sound, wherein moles had once died in their pursuit of Mandrake. Stories of times past before the plagues, fearful stories.
‘Then let us face these fears and find that chamber!’ said Beechen boldly.
So, with dark shadows all about, they turned into those side tunnels from which the dark sound came loudest. By slow degrees the tunnels deepened and the surface noise of the rousing wind seemed further off. Yet in places light from a rising moon began to reach down to them through the cracks and crevices of the surface above, and the windsound and dark sound in the tunnels increased and grew more troubled until at last Sleekit was forced to pause and let Beechen take the lead, for her courage was deserting her again.
Whatever lay in the tunnels or chamber ahead was echoing their pawsteps back to them, but all turned and distorted and painful to the ear.
‘It is like the sound I heard the Rock of the Word send out,’ said Sleekit.
‘Then follow close and let us face it,’ said Beechen.
A short time after, the tunnel widened and Beechen led Sleekit into that fabled chamber into which nomole had gone since those distant days when Mandrake had wandered madly there.
Great beyond sensing. High beyond seeing. Long beyond telling. But far ahead of them across its width was the rising, shining, flinty and scrivened face of the chamber’s west wall. At its base, centrally, but dwarfed by its size, was the portal that led on to the whispering sinewy sounds of the Chamber of Roots.
But this was no ordinary portal. It had been delved such that rising from it, all around, across the whole face of the wall, was the image of the cruel open beak of the owl whose image was formed by the carvings or scrivenings which made the dark sound.
The flinty wall shone and reflected dark light, and the slightest pawstep or breath seemed instantly to be echoed back from its scrivenings, all distorted and fearful.
Beechen stared across the chamber in awe and wonder but then, seeing the portal, he said without a moment’s hesitation, ‘That is our way. That is where we must go.’
‘But the dark sound …’ whispered Sleekit. ‘It will grow worse as we go nearer to it. It is like the Rock of the Word, made to disorientate a mole, and then destroy him.’
There was no doubt that she was right. For as their eyes grew used to the strange light of the place, they saw that scattered across the floor were the gaunt remains of moles who had been in the place before them, which they guessed must be the bodies of henchmoles who, in times past, had pursued Bracken and Mandrake. They saw then, too, that the portal was partially blocked with fallen flints and more bodies of moles, but all broken and crushed.
‘Do not be afraid,’ said Beechen, reaching out a reassuring paw to Sleekit. ‘This is the way we must go.’
Even as they started to move, and their paws scuffed the hard uneven floor, dark sound reverberated back at them from the wall and to Sleekit it seemed that the air of the chamber was full of the violence of things hurled by a wind whose sole purpose was to destroy her spirit and break her body.
Only the form of Beechen ahead of her kept her from losing herself in the confusion of sound, only the touch of his paw kept her on course. And then he stopped suddenly, as if he heard something beyond the dark sound, and something even more fearful. Then, horror in her heart, she heard it too.
Desperate pawsteps, and a desperate crying voice. A mole in terrible desolate fear. A mole lost who called a name.
‘What is the name he calls?’ said Beechen, turning to her.
Louder it came, nearer, from the very portal towards which they struggled, pawsteps and a cry, lost and nearly hopeless now.
Then she knew the name it called. It was her own.
‘Sleekit! Sleekit, help me now! Help me for I am lost, lost … Sleekit … help …’
Then slowly through the portal he came, pushing a way through the death and destruction there, now with the strength of desperation, now feebly with the weakness of hopelessness. Mayweed. Route-finder. Lost. Speaking in a voice that was not his normal one, yet more nearly his own than any he had ever had. Poor Mayweed.
Sleekit looked, and looked away in fear. She did not have the strength to go further across the Chamber of Dark Sound and help him.
‘Go to him!’ Beechen cried to her, as she knew he would.
Again she looked, again stared helplessly, again she looked away.
‘I cannot help him,’ she whispered. ‘The sound is too dark for me.’
She could not move. It was like a freezing day in winter, when the cold is so penetrating it stops a mole’s mind and he sees all move slowly and in silence beyond his power of control. Thus she watched as Mayweed stumbled into the Chamber of Dark Sound and saw as he staggered here and there along the edge of the scrivened wall, crying out in agony, seeking with his paws to stop the sounds that were destroying him, yet still calling for her. He seemed blinded by the noise, for he did not see them where they stanced immobile watching him.
Until before her eyes poor Mayweed slowed and collapsed and began to cry, terrible cries that were like those of a pup lost from everymole. A pup lost in darkness. Sleekit looked away again.
‘Help him,’ commanded Beechen then. ‘One chance more you have.’
Help him? So Beechen must have spoken – though so strange that chamber’s sounds, and so confusing, she felt it was the scrivens of the wall that spoke.
But help him she could not. Her only saving in that place was Beechen’s proximity, as if about him was a sense of Silence that gave her space just to survive. To leave him and go to Mayweed was too much for her to do.
‘Help him,’ Beechen said again.
Mayweed was a lost mole now, lost in some memory of puphood, lost again in that place in the Slopeside of Buckland from which once he had only just been rescued, and from whose darkness his life had ever since been one long striving to escape.
‘Sleekit, he was lost, and found, and now is lost again. I cannot save him, I can save nomole except that knowing the Stone through me they may save themselves. For this have I come, to show how we may help each other. You and Mayweed are as one, so find the courage to leave me here and go to him. Use all your training, all your love, and go to him where so long ago his mother left him. Help him. Teach him as he has taught so many others it can be done. Here he is weak. Here he is dying. Through you he can survive and be stronger still that one day he shall have the strength for his final task, which is to guide Tryfan into a darkness beyond imagining.’
‘His final task?’ whispered Sleekit, knowing that if she took her eyes off Mayweed now she would not have the courage to look at him again.
‘As a mole is loved so shall he love, so show him the way now, Sleekit. I think he had come in search of us. He came to find us and nomole knew better than he the dangers of this place or the torments it might bring. Despite that he has dared come and it has nearly killed him. For you and me he did it. His love has given you the strength to help him now. Use it, return it to him.’
Then in that dreadful place Beechen stood aside, and for a time Sleekit felt the full force of dark sound upon her and thought that she would die. Yet somehow discipline and faith came to her, one learnt of the Word, the other discovered of the Stone, until with Mayweed’s cry weakening before her she found the strength to advance through the blizzard of darkness that beset her, and go to him.
‘My dear, my dear …’ she said, and she reached him, and put her paws to him, and comforted him, and like a pup he wept and cried that he was lost.
‘Yes, help him so,’ said Beechen, and with love she did, and held him where he had fallen, and encircled him, and whispered safety to him, and the security of love.
Then all about them the dark sound began to die, and peace fell on that place, and from the eyes of Beechen came a light of love that seemed caught in the scrivens of the walls of the chamber, a light that was the light of Silence.
Then the Stone Mole went to those two striving moles and touched each of them, and they felt a healing in their hearts and knew that they were safe, and the chamber held fear for them no more.
‘Follow me,’ said Beechen then, and weakly they did, and it seemed that each pawstep they made, each piece of debris they cleared to make a path back through the portal, brought forth a gentle sound from the scrivened wall above.
They passed through into the Chamber of Roots, and paused there within sight of the roots that formed a vertical and ever-shifting screen through which only moles of faith might go.
Mayweed, half supported by Sleekit, said nothing, but stared at the roots which were lit, it seemed, by the luminescent tendrils of the smallest of their number high in the chamber’s roof, carrying some light of their own, or taking from the surface above something of the moonlight there.
Beechen seemed barely interested in the roots, but Sleekit noticed that when, briefly, his gaze fell on them they stilled, absolutely, and all sound went, and an enchantment of Silence fell over them and the chamber they commanded.
Beechen sighed and said, ‘Come, we have heard and seen enough. This chamber can wait its time once more when Duncton shall be found again. Our tasks are different. Come, we must go to the surface and make our way to Barrow Vale, where our friends are concerned for us.’
They reached the surface, and, before they set off downslope, they turned back to touch the moonstruck Stone and all stanced together in the night with the Stone’s light upon them.
‘I shall never forget you, nor this place, nor the moles who have taught me so much,’ said Beechen suddenly.
Neither said a word, but both came close and knew that already Beechen was beginning to say goodbye to the system that had made him, and they sensed that the time for his leaving was drawing near.
Mayweed separated from Sleekit and stared up at the Stone. Still he said nothing.
‘What are you thinking, my love?’ asked Sleekit. Tears were on brave Mayweed’s face.
He spoke no long words in reply. Nor strange words. Nor smiled, or leered, or grinned, or anything of that. Yet he was more Mayweed himself than humble he had ever been.
‘What do you feel?’ whispered Beechen. It might have been the Stone itself that spoke.
‘Feel?’ repeated Mayweed in wonder. ‘I feel no fear.’
‘And you, Sleekit?’
‘The same.’
With his left paw Beechen reached out to Mayweed, with his right to Sleekit.
‘Tell nomole of this, or of what I shall say now. Soon I shall leave and travel where I must. Both of you shall come with me, one all the way and the other but to see us safely begin a journey of which all moledom must know. Mayweed, you shall be the one who must turn back. With Tryfan lies your task for he shall need your guidance one last time.’
‘Shall I see Mayweed after that?’ asked Sleekit fearfully.
Beechen shook his head.
‘The time remaining in Duncton is all the time you have. You have heard Silence today, you have seen light, and you shall not want other company than your own. This shall be your time and shall prepare you for the parting soon to come.’
‘But whatmole shall need me so much that I must leave Mayweed?’ said Sleekit, staring at the Stone.
‘Tryfan’s own shall need you. And I shall need you. Many shall need you.’
‘But …’ began Sleekit.
But Beechen gazed on her and she was silent.
‘Tell nomole of the dark sound you have conquered or what I have said to you. Nomole, not even Tryfan yet, will understand. Now … we must go to Barrow Vale. Take me there for I feel weak now and need your help. Guide me there, and then be to yourselves alone until the time comes that your final tasks begin.’
‘When will that be?’ asked Sleekit.
‘When the beech leaves of this High Wood begin to fall, and autumn heralds the coming of moledom’s darkest winter.’
Above them in the night, wind stirred at the high branches of the beech trees and down into the clearing a few leaves fell, their green turned prematurely to brown.
They turned to Beechen and saw in the white moon’s light that his fur was drenched with sweat, and his eyes fearful, and that he was fatigued beyond sleep. Then together they helped him turn from the Stone, and led him downslope towards Barrow Vale.