Duncton Quest (124 page)

“Well, I did, yes...” stammered Borage.

“Then go and get her,” said Tryfan gently.

She came softly down into the chamber to them, and it seemed that with her came the light of a hopeful day. She was thin and diseased but bright of eye and looked at Borage with great love and tenderness. Yet she was not at peace and it seemed to Spindle, who recorded that scene, that she came to Tryfan as if she was searching for something that was not of herself at all.

“This is Heather,” said Borage.

Tryfan came closer and touched her paw.

“We have heard much of Borage,” he said, “and it is an honour to meet his mate.”

Heather said nothing but just stared, and a silence fell which Tryfan did not try to fill with meaninglessness.

“Will you bless me?” said Heather suddenly. “Will you bless me to be fertile?”

Tryfan laid his paw on hers again, and kept it there.

“Long ago I healed a mole here and a mole there, but I lost my way, Heather, and I do not know that I have found it again. Healing comes from the sufferer not the healer, who is only a way for the Stone’s Silence to pass on to where it should be.”

“Please!” she said urgently, and Borage moved nearer and seemed a little embarrassed. But Tryfan only said sadly that he did not think he could make a mole fertile who was not.

“No,” she said, “no I didn’t think you could. Wouldn’t be right. There’s many like me and they’d all come running if they thought you could! A female starts to die if she knows she can’t pup.” She smiled briefly and with terrible resignation, and yet – as Spindle noted – there was still the light of the searcher in her eye as if, already, she was thinking there might be another way, another opportunity, and that she would never give up until she found out what it was.

“Why do you want young?” asked Tryfan.

“You might as well ask me why I want to breathe,” she said, “or why I want to eat. It’s a mole’s way, a female’s way, especially because a mole learns and a mole shows and a mole tells.”

“What will you tell your young when you have them?” said Tryfan.

How her eyes softened at that, how gentle the tears that came to them to meet a mole who used “will” not “might” and “when” rather than “if’”!

“When I have young,” said Heather, settling down and pushing her flank to Borage’s in a friendly, loving way, “I’ll be so happy that the very first thing I’ll tell them is there’s the Stone there always, and it hears you and it knows you and it feels you whatever you may do or say. Then I’ll tell them that where they are is the best place to be if they make it so, and that’s not hard if a mole doesn’t expect the wrong things. Why there’s lots I’ll tell them. Like, for instance, that they’re lucky to have the father they have and they’re lucky to have
me
! I’ll tell them rhymes and stories and I’ll make sure they know the difference between their right paw and their left paw because a mole that doesn’t trips up. I’ll have to tell them that more than once: pups need telling!

“Then as they grow to be youngsters I’ll tell them the things I’ve learnt, and hope they believe me! Mind, a mole learns best what he learns for himself so maybe I’ll just tell them I am there if they need me. Then when autumn comes and they’re nearly ready to leave the home burrow I’ll tell them that soon they’ll be on their own, except for two things: the first is the Stone, always the Stone, and the second is knowing that Borage here and me loved each other true, and the day they find out why that means they’re not alone is the day they grow up and make me proud. I’ll tell them that so they know!”

The moles listening, including Borage, were silent when she had finished, and Tryfan’s snout was low. So many moles he had met, so many known, and always the Stone found another that taught him how much he had to learn.

“When I was a pup, Rebecca my mother was a healer and sometimes females came to her because they had not got with pup. I can remember something she said to them and perhaps, Heather, you would let me say that now.”

“I’d like that,” she replied.

So Tryfan touched her flank and spoke the words his mother sometimes said to such moles as she.

There is a charm for the lack of pup

But ’tis the Stone to give it.

There is a charm for the pupless nest

But ’tis the Stone to give it.

There is a charm to grant mother’s love

But ’tis the Stone to give it.

There is a charm for father’s rite

But ’tis the Stone to give it.

There is a charm for mating’s joy

Often the Stone will give it

Aye, often the Stone will give it.

Hear this mole’s plea O Stone

She is pupless and does not wish it.

Hear this mole’s plea O Stone

She has faith, and to thee she gives it.

Tryfan spoke the words in a quiet lilting way and Heather’s eyes closed and did not open for a time after he had finished. When they did they were bright with tears.

“Tell nomole what I have done, Heather, and have faith, yet not so much that you do not continue the search you make! I’m afraid that these days I’m more of a scribe than a healer.”

He smiled, and turned to Borage and they talked for a long time of Buckland and the changes there after Tryfan had led his party out of the Slopeside, and then later when Wyre had come.

“He’s strong and dangerous is Wyre, and as loyal to Whern as it is possible to be,” Borage told them. “So long as he has power in Buckland then I doubt if there’s anything moles of the Stone will ever be able to do to establish their right once more to worship the Stone freely. The grikes are too powerful and strong. We cannot fight them.”

“Of that, I fear I have less interest than I once had,” said Tryfan, “though I should not be popular among followers for saying so. But I believe that when the day comes for us to go out and declare our right to the Stone’s protection it will be peacefully and not through fighting. I greatly fear that in sending Alder and Marram to Siabod we have encouraged mole to fight when other ways may have achieved the same more peacefully. Talons win less than peaceful hearts, but that is a lesson I have learned the hard way. May those two moles learn it more easily than I did!”

“But how will anything ever change now?” asked Borage.

Tryfan shrugged a little impatiently and said, “I believe that the Stone Mole is coming and that only he can show us. We may not perhaps live to see him but he
will
come. Younger moles than I will follow him and show others the true way. For myself I am content to stay here in Duncton and scribe those things I have learnt that others might one day know them. Though in truth it may be Spindle’s scribing they find more interesting since he scribes of other moles and recent history, and moles prefer such tales than stories of the spirit.”

Hay and Borage and the other two listened in silence, then Borage said, “There are many moles other than I would wish to hear you speak, Tryfan, many who would find encouragement from your words. Could you not begin now to go among us and tell us what you believe? The dangers are much less than they were – there has been such death and illness about this winter, and such despair.”

Tryfan shook his head.

“Once I would have done. Didn’t we do so on the way to Whern, Spindle? Remember those places we went, and the brave followers we met?”

“I remember it all,” said Spindle, “and I’ve scribed a lot of it down.”

Tryfan laughed and said, “I wonder if you scribed the place I remember best of all, or did you not notice?”

The others looked at Spindle, who frowned and thought for a bit and said, “That must have been...” And then he stopped.

“You see,” said Tryfan, “he scribes everything but the bits I remember!”

The others laughed and Spindle grinned.

“Beechenhill,” he said. “It has three folios all of its own.”

They saw that he knew Tryfan well, and loved him deeply, and were touched. Such love as that had been rare in Duncton Wood these past years and the moles forced to live there had missed it.

“Well, I hope you will go out when the weather gets warmer, because many would welcome you,” said Borage. “As for the Westside, well the moles there bluster and rant but I doubt if they’d harm you.”

Then Tryfan grew tired and Spindle brought the meeting to a close. Yet alter Borage had gone, Tryfan talked some more to Spindle and concluded that their seclusion had gone on long enough, and anyway his scribing paw still ached and felt damaged and perhaps some exercise would do it good. Soon they would go out and meet others again, soon now.

Just as so many moles remember the first appearance of the eastern star at Longest Night, so do many recall the strange heaviness and breathless hush that seemed to have come over all moledom in those still days in March that preceded its second appearance in the sky. And one that surely presaged a third showing, a final lighting that would mark his coming.

But in March, although most moles were aburrow and silent with winter, enough were travelling for it to be unusual and remembered.

Of those we know, Marram was still making his way from Siabod. Steadily and with confidence, going by the Stones that he and Alder had visited on their passage west. A little sad sometimes that his friend was not with him, but feeling that such was the Stone’s way, and Alder’s task was the ordering of resistance about Siabod and beyond, to rally moles to a call that one day might be heard across the whole of moledom. So Marram pressed on, each day drawing a little nearer Duncton Wood.