Duncton Found (10 page)

“I offer my life and all my striving to the Stone,” he cried, “and my help to all who need it!”

“And I!” cried out Caradoc, far away in the Welsh Marches where he had waited alone with such faith for so long. “I offer my help!”

Then too did Mistle touch at Avebury, and Glyder for the Siabod moles. Then Rampion of Rollright born. And in Fyfield the wise Stone accepted Wort’s touch too, though she was of the Word and her intentions were most evil. Yet six moles touching, and using their strength to help him touch as well.

For then it was that Beechen reached up, and touched the Duncton Stone, and spoke the words that mark the acceptance of his great ministry to mole: “Stone, who made me, help me serve their need and know thy truth that through me they shall know it too. Teach me to know things as they are: the light and the dark, the noise and the Silence, those that take and those that give; help me to so love them that they shall hear thy Silence beyond the life I dedicate to them.”

So prayed Beechen, where Tryfan and Feverfew found him, crouched before the Duncton Stone, his left paw touching it, and all about him the sense of others near, and holiness, and Silence. They went to him, and touched him with their love and were silent with him before the Stone.

The sun darkened before the clouds that came and mounted up. Dark clouds of warning and trial. The sky cracked, and from it rain fell and shrouded all moledom in its wet and noise.

Yet Beechen knew only joy and said, “I am not alone. There are others with me though I remember not their names. But they shall wait for me. They shall know me and help me until, back here where I was born, and where I come today, I shall be born again and they shall know me, and know themselves.”

And his tears and those of his mother and of Tryfan were at one with the rain that fell; and the good soil of Duncton knew it, and the Stone as well.

Yet, as they turned from the clearing, the Stone trembled and over its wet facets the reflections of the clouds still went. A mole had dedicated his life to the Silence, but great was the darkness, and a mole but small. The Stone trembled in Duncton and began to wait.

While in one place only across all of moledom the sun shone again that day, bringing to life the wet faces of its pale scars and high fells. At Whern it shone, and on Lucerne its light fell, and his eyes narrowed against it and liked it not.

He turned back underground, his eyes dark and his mouth cruel, his body bent towards a future grim that would start where he himself began, by the still pool of the Rock of the Word. So to there he went, and found Henbane.

“What shall you do?” she said, for the day of dark and sun, when her only pup had hit her, was a day when life turned and set itself anew.

“I like not the light, nor the Stone,” Lucerne whispered across the dark pool to the Rock of the Word. Then he was silent as he began to plot the final fading of the light, and the destruction of the Stone.

“Its fall shall be your ministry,” she said. “I shall not oppose your accession when the time comes.”

“No,” said Lucerne evenly, “you shall not.”

Lucerne turned and stared into her eyes and, powerful though she was and still remained, his gaze was the greater, and she looked away. At the Rock? At tunnels that led to where nomole knew?

“Leave me,” said Lucerne.

Neither Rock nor tunnel was it that she saw as she left. But rather a memory, as faint and uncertain as the light that tried to glimmer at the fissure high in the roof above. A memory before any she had ever caught before. A memory born in this very chamber, when she herself was born. A memory of a momentary shaft of light, lost in the fell years when Charlock her mother and Rune her vile father bore down upon her. Lost until now. And knowing it Henbane, for the first time since that nearly forgotten time when she was still wet from her mother’s womb, faltered.

“Leave me!” roared out Lucerne.

Which Henbane did, scattering the sideem that clustered about the higher tunnels, breathless, desperate for the surface and what it had which Whern could never have. Which was light, light of a June day almost done, light that follows the cleansing rains of a storm.

“Light,” said Henbane softly as if she saw it for the first time, and she wept for what she was and what Lucerne had now become. Wept for the life and lives she had lost, and could never find again.

“Help us,” she whispered as she watched the light of that day fade now across Whern, and all moledom too, and saw the darkness come. But whether her prayer was answerable, whether by the Word or something greater than the Word, nomole could know. Moledom faced at last itself, and the answers would lie in what it did, and how.

Chapter Six

As the rain finally eased across Duncton Wood and gave way to a cool evening, Tryfan began to tell Beechen of the events that led to his birth there before the Stone.

Feverfew stayed on as witness to the truth of what Tryfan said, and sometimes when his memory was doubtful or faulty gave her own account, for history is never certain, and its tellers rarely perfect.

Again and again on a particular point of detail Tryfan would say, “You’ll need to look at Spindle’s account of this, for he was the one who insisted on scribing things down and leaving good records behind, and though many of the texts were hidden where they were scribed and must one day in more peaceable times be recovered, when he settled in the Marsh End with me he scribed more general accounts of things as they had been, saying that one day it might be useful. Sooner than he thought, I imagine! The pace of moledom has increased since I was your age. But even so, between us Feverfew and I can tell you of the things that matter most and the details can wait until you know scribing....”

Of his journey to Uffington Tryfan spoke, and of Boswell; of the coming of the grikes and the long eclipse of the Stone’s light by the darkness of the Word; of the journeys with Spindle and the exploration into the heart of the Wen where he first met Feverfew. Then after that to Whern, and the return to Duncton and the star in the sky that presaged Beechen’s birth.

As night fell and the moon rose, Tryfan told Beechen with affection of the many moles, many still unknown and their tasks still unfulfilled, who carried in their hearts the light of hope and faith that one day a leader would come to show them the way out of the darkness which, as many were beginning at last to see, they had helped make for themselves. So he led their talk to the Stone Mole’s coming.

“You know who the Stone Mole is, don’t you, Beechen?”

Beechen nodded, and stared at the moonstruck Stone.

“It is me, isn’t it?” he said simply. Then he added with a touching humbleness, “But I am just mole. I’m not special. But....”

As he paused Tryfan went closer to him on one flank and Feverfew on the other, and all three stared at the Stone and the dark sky beyond.

Beechen continued softly: “Sometimes I seem to know I’m more than me and it makes me frightened, but excited as well. I feel there are moles waiting for me but I don’t know where or how I am to find them. When I touched the Stone I knew that some of those others were there helping me. But....”

Beechen turned to look at Tryfan, and then at his mother, and there was fear in his eyes, and tears. By that light he looked barely older than a pup.

“I don’t have to leave yet, do I?”

“No, not yet,” said Tryfan, barely able to contain the confusion of feelings he felt before Beechen’s mixture of fear and simple acceptance of a task whose difficulty and greatness he already sensed. “You’ve things to learn, things that we in Duncton can teach you. Your task for now is to listen to other moles you meet and learn from what they say and what they do.

“In the old days youngsters left in the years after Midsummer – those at Duncton went out on to the Pastures and a few, like myself, left the system altogether. I first left Duncton in September and I think your time to leave will be when autumn comes as well, but the Stone will guide you on that. Perhaps some of us will come with you, for you will have much to do and will need help as I did. But there too the Stone will help you as it helped me find Spindle and Mayweed and many others I grew to love. Why mole, leaving’s a fear-making thing but ’tis a challenge as well, and there’re moles waiting to cross your path and bring you much you never dreamed of.

“But meanwhile you must take leave of your mother for the short time to Midsummer, during which I will take you about the system so that you get to know its tunnels and the moles who live here. We shall live in the Marsh End, and before Midsummer comes you shall learn a little of scribing. Afterwards you shall learn much more, and it may not be easy for I sense there is but little time. The summer years, perhaps, but not much more. I had longer than that with Boswell but never felt I had learnt enough! But for now get some sleep. Dawn comes and we must take our leave soon.”

At one time Tryfan had assumed that the Stone Mole would come ready made but now he understood that his own task with Beechen was to prepare him as best he could, with others’ help, for whatever challenges might present themselves. For that it was certainly better he left his home tunnels and lived among other moles.

Tryfan’s natural protectiveness towards Beechen had already made him fix on the Marsh End Defence tunnels as the best place for him to be. It was the repository of all Spindle and he had scribed through the long winter moleyears before this summer, and in the atmosphere of texts and learning Beechen must find out all he could of what moles had made of the Stone, and what, too, they had
unmade.

“
Anyway,” Tryfan told Feverfew a little later when Beechen had gone to sleep, “now that summer’s here I feel a scribe’s need to go back to the work I left the day Spindle died and this youngster was born. I’ve a lot to do and he can help me do it and learn a thing or two as well. There’s plenty of moles down Barrow Vale and Marsh End way who’ll be glad to meet him, and he’s a friendly inquisitive youngster and will learn as much from them as anymole else.”

“I shall miss yew tway,” said Feverfew, “yette does a moule nede silence and tranquylitie after the pasciouns of the sprynge. Watch ovre hym wel, my der, and youseln also.”

“I shall, Feverfew. Nor should you wander far. Midsummer’s the time the grikes get active once more and no doubt some will venture into Duncton and poke about. Well, you know the system’s ways and how to avoid strangers, and Skint, who knows the ground along the roaring owl way better than any mole, has got watchers organised so we’ll not be taken by surprise.”

They dozed together for a while, paw to paw, flank to flank, snout snuggled into the other’s fur, and dawn light crept through the trees into the rain-damp wood and bathed the sleeping moles in its softness until the rising sun warmed their fur and dried the moisture at their paws, and they awoke once more.

After grooming and a peaceful meal together, the three said a short prayer to the Stone and set off downslope. The confusions of the day before seemed to have left the trees and undergrowth and they were soon back to the runs and tunnels that had been their shared home since April.

The two males said a brief farewell to Feverfew and then, turning from her, set off downslope once more, the feeling of sadness soon leaving as the rich lower slopes of Duncton Wood opened out before them, and a new and important part of Beechen’s life began.

Tryfan’s return to Barrow Vale after so long away, and with no less a mole than Beechen the Stone Mole at his flank, was soon observed and caused great excitement. There had been much talk over the time since April of what Beechen might be like, and those few sightings of him that had been made – and what guardians like Bailey, Sleekit and Mayweed had said – had only added to the sense that he was a mole the system might well be proud of, and one worthy to carry the hopes of the many old and beset moles who had felt until his coming that time and circumstance had passed them by, and they had been outcast to oblivion and hopelessness.

So when word went out that Tryfan and the youngster were fast approaching Barrow Vale – no, had
arrived
in Barrow Vale – many a mole put all thoughts of summer tunnel delving, modest exploration and a spot of worm-finding to one side, and under the guise of coming to say hello, came to have a good look at how Beechen had turned out.