The same June sun that lit their way that morning shone down its special light in other places in moledom, and upon other moles. Some saw that light well, others darkly.
All moles know – even those whose systems have long been in the control of the grikes and whose faith, if such it can be called, is of the Word – that there are seven Ancient Systems in moledom, where the Stones rise true and moles of faith seek to abide.
Most, like Duncton, Rollright, Avebury and Fyfield, have long been taken over by the grikes, and the Stone followers broken and dispersed. Yet even then a very few followers scraped a living nearby hoping that one day better times would come and they could open their hearts to their special Stone and touch it once again.
But two systems of the ancient Seven had been deserted altogether, unoccupied by grike or follower. One was Uffington, where Boswell served his novitiate and where he had been captured by Henbane of Whern and lost to moledom for so many years.
The other was the least known of the seven: Caer Caradoc in the west, where in recent times only a vagrant family of moles had lived, of which only one had survived, living alone and mateless, wandering the hills of the wild Welsh Marches, keeping faith with the few followers of the Stone in those parts who, leaderless and systemless, clung on to their faith with that stubborn obstinacy and pride of place that marks out the moles of those wormless parts.
He had been named Caradoc by his father, after the Stones whose destiny it was to have him as their guardian, and already he has played a part in our history, for he it was who first guided Tryfan’s emissaries, Alder and Marram, on to Siabod where for good or ill they went to show the besieged Siabod moles how they might best resist the grikes.
Of that we will soon know more, but now, today, this June, we discover the ragged and hungry Caradoc climbing the steep slope towards the Stones that are his birthright and his burden.
For days before had he travelled, driven by some inner need, from the western hills into which he had wandered, back to a system moles, and time, seemed long ago to have forgotten. Through honeysuckle ways he went, among the meadowsweet, and then finally up the remorseless bracken-covered slopes above which Caer Caradoc looms dark, its flat fell top out of sight from below.
Slowly at first and then with quickening step he was drawn back up to where his life began and where, he had no doubt, it must one day end.
In those days none but those in Duncton Wood itself knew who the Stone Mole was, or even whether he had come. That secret so far was Duncton’s own to be revealed only when and how the Stone ordained. Yet many across moledom guessed that somewhere he had come at last for a star had shone, and while grikes and unbelievers protested that it was but a phenomenon of the skies, the followers were sure it was more than that, and that the star was the Stone’s own sign that its mole had come and soon their faith would be tried and tested hard and they must try to be ready.
Such a believer was the vagrant Caradoc, and such was his fervour that those few friends he had and trusted with his thoughts said privately among themselves that Caradoc saw signs of the Stone in everything, even the passing sheep!
Caradoc cared not, and when that inner call came to return to the Stones he loved most of all, he had heeded it. Now, this June morning, as he returned at last, the light seemed especially clear, and the ground to tremble with purpose and hope.
The going was rough, and lesser moles might have cursed the dew that encumbered their paws and made them slip as they struggled upwards. But faithful Caradoc saw only the bright light caught in the glistening drops and was glad that he had health and strength to climb the slopes before him. He lingered sometimes to catch his breath and admire the special green of the leaves of tormentil and wonder at why it was he almost smelt the sense of change in the air that morning. Then his breath recovered, and with the prospect of the Stones themselves and the flatter fell getting ever closer, he went steadily on, speaking out his prayers and offering his faith and life aloud, as moles who spend too much time alone sometimes do.
If the seeming weakness of his harried body belied the evident strength of his spirit and ability to press on it was because of a special belief he had – and which he expounded to all moles who would listen – that one day to this deserted, bereft place, where most moleyears the wind blew cold and the snows lay hard, to this very place the Stone Mole himself would come. Aye, and he’d give his blessing and these long years of Caradoc’s lonely faith and courage would find their reward. For surely, inspired by the knowledge that the Stone Mole had come even here, moles would return once more to Caer Caradoc, and though the soil was not so wormful as in the vales below they would make the system live again.
A few more yards, a little more effort, and there he was once more, before the Stones he loved. To those who knew the Duncton Stone, the Caradoc Stones were modest enough, but to Caradoc himself, who knew no other and whose faith was great, no Stones were more grand, nor ever could be. Certainly, though modest in size, their stance was noble and sure, and few prospects in moledom are more striking than the vales and hills they watch over, east and west, north and south. He felt his heart lift in joy and his faith renewed, for this was a good place to be, one where a mole might feel himself well found and know that one day, if moles had strength enough, then moledom could be made aright once more.
Aye! The sun shining among these Stones, and the breeze across the glistening grass and in among the bracken and bursting heather, why that gave a mole good faith! Yet more than that struck Caradoc as he looked about over the hills and finally to the mountains of the north and west where, visible that day, the mass in which distant Siabod and Tryfan rose. He gasped at a sense he had that today – today and nearly now! – there was great power in the earth and a trembling promise of life and death, of light and dark in which, if a mole was to know the Silence which was a follower’s best intent, then he must look to himself afresh and not flinch from whatever task he now faced. Aye!
Then Caradoc went forward to touch the greatest of the Stones, but even as he reached up to do so he pulled sharply back, hesitant and fearful, looking about him as if there were shadows near and he should protect himself. But though there was nothing, only light and his imaginings, he crouched down before the Stone, and decided not to touch it yet.
‘Not time,’ he muttered, not knowing why and taking a humble stance. ‘No, it’s not time yet. But I think it will be soon. There’s something about the light this morning that tells me that I’ll know what to do and when.’ He fell silent and kept his snout low. His flanks shivered a little though the day was warm.
‘I’m scared, that’s what I am,’ he said to himself, ‘and I want others near me. A mole can’t go on alone forever.’
Then he spoke a prayer: ‘Send moles, Stone, send moles who have been vagrants as I have, send them to Caradoc. Send them one day that they may see the light as I do, and share the beauty of the Stone. Let those nearby come to Caradoc and those near other systems go to their own. Send moles to this place and make it live again. Grant it, Stone, if it be thy will. Grant too that I may find a mate and know the joy of seeing my own pups run and play among these Stones which in all my life have only known one pup’s laughter, which was my own. Grant it if it be thy will.’
So Caradoc prayed, so he waited, and the sun was warm in his fur and though he saw it not himself – for his snout was as low as his humility was great – that sun made his fur shine as it never had before, as he waited for his time to touch the Stone again.
While Caradoc waits we must travel on, to visit a system whose name we have heard before, but whose dry grass ways and proud Stones we have so far left unvisited. We must venture there to witness the beginning of a life of dedication to the Stone, by a mole who shall in time be much loved, much loved indeed.
If a mole might choose a day he might first travel where we go now, let it be a June day such as this, when the sun shines bright and blue harebells blow across its chalky grass and the great rising beeches of its knolls cast welcome shade across its venerable Stones.
It is to great Avebury we have come, set most southerly of all, a system with history and holiness enough that it should be no surprise that from it a great mole might one day come.
But long now has been noble Avebury’s suffering, long and remorseless. For to it the plagues came hard, and after them the grikes visited in force, killing most of its adult Stone followers and perverting its young towards the Word to make them derelict of spirit, and much demeaned.
In all the chronicles of grike outrage few are as sad as that inflicted upon Avebury, whose young were forcibly mated with moles of the Word, and whose happy rhymes and rituals and dances of seasonal delights were reviled and mocked, their performance made punishable.
But there lived in the grike-run Avebury tunnels one old female who could just remember the time before the plagues and the Word, which meant she could remember the Stones themselves, and was the last surviving Avebury mole to have touched them.
Her name was Violet, a worthy Avebury name, and by that June morning, when the Stone Mole in distant Duncton was being taken to the Stone, she was old indeed, and near her time. She had escaped punishment and Atonement of the Word by feigning vagueness and stupidity, but those few who knew her well knew she was more than she seemed, though none could ever have guessed how much.
The grikes let her live because she pupped well and reared her young clean, and she had in her time given guardmoles sturdy, well-found pups. But latterly, growing older, thinking her mating days were done, the grikes had let her go among the few pathetic local males who remained. With which she mated nomole knows, but into pup she went, fecund to the last, and in the cycle of seasons before the June we come to Avebury, she pupped a final litter.
She reared them hoping that among them would be one with whom she could share her ancient irreplaceable secrets of the Stone. But though she was hopeful for a time of one, named Warren, he insisted on becoming a guardmole and so she could not trust him to be silent. She knew the Word used sons against mothers, for that is in the vile nature of its way.
Somehow she survived the winter years, and come the new spring, the very same the Stone Mole had been born, Warren mated, and had young. Violet, growing blind now, was allowed to visit them, and when she did and she touched them with her withered paws, she felt the Stone’s grace come to her, and knew there was one among them the Stone’s light had touched. A female, sturdy and good, who soon showed a nature Violet knew well indeed for when, so long before, she herself was young, before the grikes came and moles ran free among the Avebury Stones, it was her own.
The mole was called Mistletoe, but from the first she was known as ‘Mistle’. When May had come, and Mistle was beginning to speak well and learn the world about her, Violet had asked Warren to let the youngster leave the nest and live in her old burrow, to help her now she was infirm and found it hard to take worms and clear out summer tunnels.
Which Warren agreed to, persuading his dull grike mate that one less pup was one less mouth to feed, and his old mother had earned some help in her last moleyears.
Then, when Mistle had come, Violet found ways to begin to tell her of the Stone; subtly, gently, and, as is the way with youngsters when adults treat them as they would themselves, Mistle understood the special nature of such talk and that it was secret to herself alone.
When June came Mistle unexpectedly asked her grandmother, old now, blind, and unable to travel far, to take her to see the Stones.
‘Hush, my dear, that’s not for us to speak of.’
‘But you’re not afraid of them like other moles, are you? I’ve heard you speak to them.’
‘And what think you of that, my love?’ said Violet, not denying it. She knew she talked to herself these days, and to the Stones as well, no doubt.
‘I … I don’t know. I don’t think I’m afraid of the Stones.’
‘Have you told others you’ve heard me speak to them?’
‘No!’ said Mistle vehemently. ‘They wouldn’t understand, though I know you do.’
‘Understand what, my dear?’ said Violet softly, her voice trembling. She felt the Stone was guiding them.
‘That the Stones are there. They always have been. They’re like the ground itself or the sky. And … and …’
‘Yes, Mistle?’
‘I … I … I’m frightened,’ whispered Mistle, her mouth trembling. ‘It’s … I mean … what they teach about the Word being the only way is wrong. I feel it’s wrong because the Stones are. I …’ And then she wept, and told Violet her fears and how recently they had mounted up in a confusion inside her. ‘And that’s why I wanted you to take me to the Stones, so I could see for myself and decide whether they’re old superstitious things like the eldrene says, or something else. Do you know what I mean?’ There was anguish on Mistle’s strong face, and courage, too, and though Violet could not see it her paws touched Mistle and she felt it in her.
‘Shush, mole, and let me tell you what I have not dared tell anymole since I was barely older than yourself. I am of the Stone. Before it was I raised and by it shall I die.’
Mistle looked relieved and came closer to Violet, and touched her as she spoke.
‘The night you were born there was a star in the eastern sky and I knew that night hope was rekindled across moledom, and nurtured in many old hearts like my own. A few days later when I was able to touch Warren’s first litter, I felt the Stone speak to me as I touched you. You have been touched by the Stone, my dear, though why and what for I cannot say; and why it spoke to me, who is not much of a mole and has not long to live, I do not know.
‘But there you were, my dear, and I prayed that the Stone might grant that you could come to me so I might teach you what I can. A light shone the night you were born, and your life will be lived by that light, and true to it you must be.’
The two moles were silent and close for a time, as if they were in the presence of a truth that needed no words more. Then Mistle said, ‘When I cried it wasn’t just because of what the eldrene teaches, and what I felt about the Stones being. It was something more than that, and it makes me so afraid. It’s something that’s coming, and sometimes I dream about it, sometimes I feel it when I’m awake. But it’s like something I have to touch to know but I can’t reach it, and when I do I won’t have the strength …’ She wept again then, and Violet held her and knew that what her granddaughter was beginning to sense was a task she would have, as all moles have though few know it.
‘You shall have the strength, my love, for the Stone gives to nomole a task that he or she cannot bear. You shall have the strength and courage.’
‘Will you tell me about the Stone?’ asked Mistle.
‘I shall teach you all I know, all that I was taught, and all that living has taught me. But you must listen and learn well, for there is not much time …’
‘Are there other places that have Stones? Are there systems where moles are free to touch them? Will you tell me about them?’
‘I’ll do that right enough, and pray that one day such rights as we once had will be ours again. Now come close, mole, for I’ll whisper the first thing you must learn, which are the names of the seven Ancient Systems, each of which has a Stone or Stones.’
‘Is Avebury one of the Seven?’
‘It is, my dear, and as faith in the Stone lives here still in you and I, so I believe does it live in all the others, and waits for a time which I think may be just beginning. Now, these are the other names … There’s Uffington to the west of here, and Fyfield beyond that. Then secret Duncton and grand Rollright which with us makes five. The last two are far to the west, and one’s Caer Caradoc and the other Siabod …’
So secretly did ailing Violet begin to tell young Mistle what she knew, interweaving her tales with the lore of the Stone, and telling of its rhymes and rituals.
‘The only one of those I’ve heard of is Duncton,’ commented Mistle. ‘It’s where outcasts and miscreants get sent.’ She shuddered, because even if she was too young to have known the purge of diseased and outcast moles, most who remembered it did not fail to talk of the horrors when, at the behest of Henbane herself, Avebury and other systems had sent their worst on a trek westward to Duncton Wood. The pathetic or the troublemakers were sent there still, and allmoles felt that Duncton loomed over them as a threat, the sentence to which was a sentence of death.
Violet nodded silently and said, ‘I remember all that well enough, but even so I’ll warrant there’s moles to trust in Duncton still. ’Twas always a place of mystery and magic in my parents’ tales, and they said it has a Stone the equal of any of ours, and we’ve a good few as I hope you’ll one day discover! Mayhap Duncton’s as bad now as they say, mayhap not. But, mole, I’ll say this – the Stone has its ways and gives its protection as it knows best. I’ve never left these parts, but if ever I had been able to do so, of all the other systems it would have been to Duncton I’d have gone.
‘Now, listen you,’ added Violet playfully, to mask the seriousness she felt, and the sense of wonder, too, ‘I’m going to teach you some words you’d best remember, for nomole else in Avebury knows them. They’ve been spoken for generations and are as much a touching to the past that made us as these touching paws of ours make us one. I’ll tell you a secret, my dear: all my life I’ve spoken these words every time I should, but since the grikes came, which was when I was young, I’ve said them just to myself, hoping that one day there would be a mole to pass them on to. Now I’ll teach them to you and pray that one day you’ll have space to say them before the Stones themselves, or others you’ve taught will.’
‘What words are they?’ asked Mistle, her eyes wide.
‘Words to wake the day with, words for Longest Night: words to eat a worm by and words to heal the sick; words that make foolish moles forget themselves so the Stone is free to do its work through them, words to settle the young; words to win another’s love when love seems strange; and, aye, words of Midsummer when moles thank the Stone for bringing their pups safely into adulthood.’
‘When will you start teaching them to me?’
‘Today, now …’
So Violet began, day by day that June, to teach all she knew and could remember. Until one morning, this morning, the very same upon which Tryfan and Feverfew led the Stone Mole towards the Duncton Stone, the same as that when Caradoc settled down before the Stone he loved for the right time to reach up and touch it; this morning a strange and abiding calm came to old Violet. She went to fetch Mistle to her side but had no need to for Mistle came running out of the lovely morning sun, as if she already knew.
‘I heard you calling!’ said Mistle.
‘Did you, my love?’ whispered Violet, who had not called at all.
‘What can I do for you? Food? Clearing? Grooming? Learn more words?’ Mistle giggled, for she had learnt so much she sometimes joked of it and anyway, this morning, why, it was strange and special and a mole shouldn’t do anything much but be.
‘I want you to show me the morning,’ said Violet softly, ‘and describe all you see. My poor eyes tell me only that the light is bright, but my heart tells me more. Take me up into it towards the Stones, and be my sight.’
‘But the guardmoles …’ said Mistle doubtfully. ‘They’ll let us be. The Stone will see to it. The day I’ve waited for so long has come sooner than I expected, but I’m ready now and you’re to help me.’
‘What day? Help you do what?’
But Violet was already off and up towards the surface, huffing and wheezing and a little uncertain of her way. Yet she struggled on and Mistle, much concerned, ran after her and caught her up.
‘We’re to go to the Stones, my dear. Now, this morning. ’Tis sooner than expected, but I want to touch them before my time’s done.’
‘What do you mean?’ cried out Mistle, suddenly frightened, though as fearful of the frailty that seemed about her grandmother as of the dangers of trespassing where moles were not allowed to go. ‘We can’t go there. ’Tis not allowed,’ she added, trying to restrain Violet. But both moles paused as a male voice, deep and gruff, said, ‘What’s that, lass? What lies ahead where you two may not go?’
It was Warren blocking their path across a field into which Mistle could not quite see, though she sensed there were great shadows there, and more, much more.
‘Stones, mole, that’s what,’ said Violet. ‘Stones that sent you here today to let us through. Stones that’ll show you your task as well one day.’ Violet spoke firmly, even a little roughly, as a mother can when she’s old and her son is grown.
‘You’ll neither of you go any further, for amongst the Stones I can’t protect you. Now …’
‘Then there’ll be the blood of a mother and a daughter on your talons, Warren, and guardmole though you be I know that could never be your way. If you can’t come with us, then bless us and say goodbye for to the Stones we’re bound as you too should be. There’s light all about today, and it protects us and guides us. I’m old and unafraid and I’ll touch the Stones once more, and show them to your lass.’
Poor Warren, strong though he was of limb, felt weak before his mother’s words and the day’s clear light. Troubled, too, and much afraid, for he loved them both and would not see them harmed.
‘Go then, and I’ll watch over this way the best I can until you come back. There’s not many grikes about, nor guardmoles, and I don’t even know why I came myself.’
‘The Stone sent you,’ said Violet with a smile. Then she touched her son, as he did her, and Mistle touched him too.
‘I’ll watch over you,’ he called after them, ‘but be quick about it.’
So Mistle led Violet on the way among the Stones whose lights and shadows fell before them and made a way where time seemed to have no purpose, and where each Stone they passed whispered its strength into Mistle for the days and the years of the life she would live; a way whose light and direction would lead her not only to the very heart of this history of Duncton Wood, but on to the heart of the Stone’s purpose itself.
They came at last to the Stone Violet instinctively knew to be the one within whose orbit she was raised. High it rose, and the sun was golden on its flanks, the sky blue beyond and white where drifting cloud went by.
‘Will you touch it?’ asked Mistle, still awed but unafraid.
‘For now we’ll crouch before it, and later, perhaps, when the time is right, we’ll touch it, you and I, and this old body will have done its work and seen the Stone’s Silence into another mole’s heart.
‘That’s it, you see, my dear: we may not be much in ourselves – too troubled by life and one thing and another – but we always carry Silence somewhere in our hearts and, however humble we may be, and unfulfilled, we can pass the feeling of it on. Mayhap one day a mole will come who can know that Silence and still live. That’s what my good father told me, and it’s what I’m telling you. So crouch now and listen out for Silence, and when the moment comes we’ll touch the Stone.’
‘Can I touch you while we wait?’ asked Mistle.
Violet did not reply, but only nodded and looked tired, the sun seeming almost too bright for her old skin and fur.
‘Are you all right?’ asked Mistle going closer and seeming in a subtle way almost to grow up as she spoke these words.
‘I’m tired, my dear, and I’ve been from the Stones far too long. But I’m here now and you’re with me, and we’ll just stay until it’s time to touch the Stone.’
Then paw to paw and flank to flank they waited, old and young as one, and Violet’s Stone rose silently before them, its shadow shortening towards itself as the sun rose higher still.