Duncton Quest (123 page)

One or two dared ask questions: “What was Rebecca like?” and, “Was Comfrey harmed by his experience?” and, “Were moles from the Marsh End normally allowed up to the Stone?” All of which Tryfan answered with such modesty and evident authority that a mole could have heard a beetle stir so silently and well did they listen.

Then at the end one or two females nudged each other and whispered, “That’ll be the day, when I hear a pup mewing down this system’s tunnels.”

“Aye, that’ll be something to make a mole feel good about!”

Then afterwards, when they had gone as silently as they had come, Tryfan turned to Spindle and said, much moved, “Not until now did I truly know I had a home system where memories might live, and moles be content to go where others went before, knowing their lives succeed the deeds of others. I shall not leave Duncton again, Spindle, not even if the Stone Mole himself summons me! This is my only place now and whatever Hay may say I believe good life will come back to these tunnels again, and hope, and faith. As for the Stone, why that’s somewhere we’ll make trek to soon enough. If moles cannot live together in peace in a system like this, how will they ever live so in moledom itself?

“Here is our task now, Spindle, here where I began. And we shall succeed in it by word and peaceful deed, not by talon and tooth and war. We shall begin to scribe those things we know, and teach others to do so, that they may scribe their own lives down, and learn of others too. We shall meditate and we shall be quiet, and from the silence we make, little though it may be compared to the Silence of the Stone itself, something good will come to these moles here.

“I think, Spindle, that the pain I felt in Whern, and which lives with me always across my face and sometimes throbs in the night, will remind me of the pain all moles feel when they are wrenched from places and moles they love, and forced to raise their talons against their hearts’ desire. But a mole cannot forever live on dreams and pretend he is not where he really is. Duncton is the home now of these many stricken moles, and quietly, without force or persuasion, we may, through our own stillness, help others love where they are.

“As for these weak paws of mine, and these talons once so strong....” and here Tryfan raised his right paw and looked at his scarred skin and bent and weakened talons, “They will learn to scribe again, and if the script they scribe is weak and falters then it will do so no more than the mole who scribes it.

“Tomorrow we begin, Spindle, and one day before too long, when we have made something to be thankful for, we will make trek to the Stone whatever moles in this place may say or do, and make obeisance and celebration.

“The Stone Mole
is
coming, and I pray that we may be granted to see him. A star heralded his coming, and many saw it. Many wait as we do now, and this time of waiting is a time to reflect and be still, a time indeed, as January always has been, of waiting for life to begin once more.

“Each mole to his own way of meditation and discovery, each to his own direction. It matters not what they say they do, or what names they give it, only the spirit in which they do it. With knowledge of themselves first, with love of others next, and with respect for the place they find themselves in last; that is the way. Which means no fighting with talons, nor harsh words without thought, nor belief that they are right without belief that they might be wrong. Tomorrow....”

Yet tomorrow began that night. For as Tryfan slept, Spindle scribed down the words he had spoken, using bark he found, and so began the first of what historians call the Marsh End Texts.

Chapter Forty-Five

That first night that Tryfan returned to Duncton Wood, deep snow came. Soft, unheard, and gentle, it drifted through the black winter-stricken trees and settled heavily on the ground.

So with dawn there was startling light: reflecting from the white snow, deep and pure, the trees alive with its cold reflections. Across the whole of Duncton Wood the snow lay and brought with it a special silence that marked the coming home of Tryfan.

Under its cover, Tryfan and Spindle were able to move to a place only Hay was allowed to know, which was the old Marsh End Defence where Skint and his covert group had been. Nomole had found those tunnels, nor other creature either, and they lay quiet and protected just as Skint had left them.

There, for a time, Tryfan might be safe from prying eyes, while Spindle would help him as, together, they began their work which later moles would know as the first flowering of a time of great scribing for which moledom had unconsciously thirsted for so long.

White was the snow over Duncton, deep its purpose, silent its effect. Rumours went forth of the presence of Tryfan and Spindle, strange stories of two moles who came into the system, who told of days gone by and prophesied a peace to come. But though moles of the Westside searched for them, and zealots of the Marsh End hunted them, yet those two had disappeared as silently as the snows that fell that January and whose silence seemed to spread and deepen as the cold, still days of February came.

So Tryfan and Spindle found peace, and safety, to scribe as they felt they must, the one of the spirit and the other of mole: the one as a scribemole trained by Boswell himself, the other as a scrivener, not ordained by mole but certainly ordained by the Stone, who told of moles like Comfrey and Thyme, like Starling and Bailey, like Holm and brave Mayweed, so that moles of future times might know their stories and whatmoles they were.

Spindle made a library as he had before up in the Ancient System, in Harrowdown and other places too. Caches of texts that one day others might find to know what happened before and learn from it.

Unseen by the two scribes, but reported to them by Hay, that harsh February brought death to Duncton Wood and growing despair. For cold saps an ill mole’s will to live, and many who had been strong before perished then. Nor did new ones come, for moledom outside Duncton seemed in a thrall, and more than one of winter.

By the end of February, when normal systems would be beginning to sigh and rejoice to the sounds of mating and of pups to come, the tunnels of Duncton were more silent than ever. Indeed, the winter seemed to linger in them, and on the surface where the snow had settled and then turned to ice. Now it was grubby with the fall of bark from old trees, and the earthy print of fox, and the spatter of spoor from winter corvid. Birds lay dead, branches had fallen, life among its trees seemed gone. If there was sun at all in moledom, it shone rarely upon the open spaces of Duncton Wood, and never in Barrow Vale, once the heart of the system Bracken and Rebecca had known.

So the system was beset by stillness and silence, and felt oppressed, with every entrance blocked by snow and debris and moles staying underground and waiting for a pupless spring beyond which lay no hope nor sign of relief.

Such mating as there was was a hopeless thing, gaunt flank to gaunt flank, cries not of ecstasy but despair, for those moles were cursed by illness and disease and whatever it was that made them sterile. Females wandered aimlessly, caring no more for the threats of the Westside, or the zealots. Not that they came much now, for among them many had died. And still there was ice above, still the chill ate deep.

So, surrounded by suffering and despair, Tryfan and Spindle scribed their work until, as February ended, they made their darkest texts which told of the filthels of the Wen, of the savagery of grikes, and of the story of Rune. Their days were lightened only by Hay’s secret comings, though the news he brought was ever of a system that seemed downcast by cold and ice, and where the future was all gone.

One day he came while Tryfan was scribing, and he spoke for a time with Spindle alone....

“... Mind you, the grikes are still there down by the cross-under because I’ve talked to a female or two who went there. Looking for mates, of course, but the grikes won’t touch the Duncton females – fear of disease. Anyway they’ve got other things on their minds at the moment. Thick as mites in a weasel’s nest the grikes are. Nervous, too. They’re said to be under strict rulings about allowing new immigrants into Duncton because of fears about the Stone Mole. Think he’s coming here! That’s why there’s hardly been a mole come in recent weeks, and no males at all. So if he’s on his way, it’s not to here!”

But Hay stopped his chatter because he saw Spindle was tired and looked ill, while the glimpse he had of Tryfan showed a mole slowing down.

“Not sickening, are you?” he asked worriedly. “Duncton’s not the place to be in this winter, if you ask me. Maybe you came at the wrong time.”

Spindle shook his head.

“It’s always a hard season, but I’m tired and I need a change, and Tryfan’s been very silent lately. He feels he’s failed in his tasks, he feels he’s let moledom down in some way, and he feels far away from the moles he grew to love.”

“There’s plenty of moles here would like to meet him,” said Hay. “They know you’re both in the system now and I think a few suspect where. But we respect your silence and there’s a good few moles take pride in the fact that even if

Duncton’s now cursed to be a forgotten disease-ridden place of aging moles, at least there’s you two scribing and making something for the future. Perhaps in years to come, in better times, young moles will come back and pups’ cries be heard again where now only old moles die.”

Spindle was pleased at these sentiments and invited Hay to see what work they had done.

“Me?” said Hay in some alarm. “A text wouldn’t mean a thing to me.”

Spindle smiled.

“It didn’t to me once, but now I think as Tryfan does, that all moles should be taught to scribe. Living comes first, says Tryfan, then scribing; the one for knowledge of the heart and body and the other for knowledge of the mind. Come, I’ll show you....”

So it was that Hay, an illiterate mole then, was the first to see and touch the great texts that Tryfan and Spindle made that dark winter. They were ranged on simple shelves in the dry soil of the deep tunnels of the Marsh End Defence, not far from where the light of day shafted down from the dead tree which rose above the centre of the tunnels and gave a little life to them.

Hay stared at the texts in awe, but only with difficulty was he persuaded to touch one.

“What’s this then?” he asked.

“It’s one of mine,” said Spindle. “That’s the title... here...” And he ran his talons and then his snout over it and read out,
A Preliminary Bibliography of the Books Scribed at Harrowdown with a Memorandum on the Final Days of Brevis and his Martyrdom with Willow, Worthy Mole of Grassington
.

“
Yes, well... you must be a clever mole to scribe that!” said Hay in wonder. Then he snouted at another.

“That’s an account of my early puphood at Seven Barrows,” said Spindle, adding with a touching mixture of vanity and apology, “I’m somewhat prolific, you know.” And then, moving on quickly as if to make light of his achievement, he took up some loose folios and said, “This is one of Tryfan’s works. This one’s entitled,
The Way of Silence – Teachings of the White Mole Boswell.
Of course you realise we’ll never finish all we have to do, scribes never do. I....”

And then, suddenly, Spindle stopped and a look of constricted pain came across his face.

Hay immediately went to his side, but Spindle, unable to speak it seemed, waved him away. After a few minutes he began to breathe more easily again.

“Are you all right, mole?” asked Hay.

“I... am... well enough,” said Spindle.

“You don’t look it to me. Have you had attacks like that before?”

“Twice before,” said Spindle, “but please say nothing to Tryfan, I do not wish to worry him. The winter has been long, and the journey here from Whern tired me very much. Please, say nothing to Tryfan.”

“No, I won’t,” said Hay doubtfully. Then, more cheerfully, he said, “Maybe you two should have a visitor apart from me. There is a mole you can trust who’d like to see you, and that’s Borage.”

“Well, I don’t know, I think Tryfan....”

“You think Tryfan what?” said Tryfan joining them.

When he heard he smiled and nodded his agreement.

“Spindle’s always protecting me but we’ve spent enough time here alone and spring’ll be on us soon even if it doesn’t feel like it!” he said, cheerful after a long day’s work. “So bring Borage to see us.”

Two days later Hay reappeared with Borage at his side. He was a big mole and had the good stance of one who knows what he believes but no longer wishes to persuade others how right he is. A mole who lives as he believes and trusts others will live so too. Yet, like so many other moles who had been through the harsh paws of the grikes, Borage’s body bore the signs of torture and illness.

Tryfan greeted him and stared at him in silence and Borage seemed in awe and said nothing at all.

“Did you not bring your mate?” asked Tryfan.

It was one of many times Tryfan, in those molemonths and years, showed that he had reached a stillness in himself that enabled him to see into other moles’ hearts and minds.