Duncton Stone (107 page)

He had finished in a burst of words and strange gesticulation, breathing heavily, stomping at the ground, and finally bearing down on her and staring into her eyes, which softened as she reached to him and he to her.

“Now,” he whispered, and grinned, and grimaced in mock madness; chuckling, he turned from the chamber and was gone.

Hamble sighed, words utterly failing him.

Fieldfare shifted, peered about, started to speak, and then thought better of it.

Elynor got up and taking Pumpkin’s proffered paw, said, “I’ll be off to somewhere comfortable.”

Then, without more said, except goodbye and farewell, they all drifted away until Privet, in Pumpkin’s absence, was alone.

She smiled, and slept; and in the morning, in her own time, and asking Pumpkin not to come until a little later, she went back into the tunnels of the Ancient System, back to the Book, and back into Silence.

Pumpkin resumed his daily visits to Privet, to bring food, to clean the chamber, to tidy the folios, to tend to things. In the short intervals when he was not there, he was over in the Library to share Sturne’s quiet company; or in his own tunnels at peace; or fretting at his prayers by the Stone.

For all of them he prayed, especially two moles: Privet and Maple. The rest, it seemed to him, with the possible exception of Sturne, could help themselves, though he hoped an occasional word to the Stone on their behalf would not go amiss.

The weather stayed mild as Privet had hoped, at least long enough for Maple and Weeth to have the chance of getting a good way to the Redditch Stone. Then, in February, cold snapped down again and put hoar frost in the trees. Snow fell, thawed, and foul rain drove down. The High Wood became a shivery, bitter place. And still Privet worked, scoring out more than she scribed. Casting out words, as Rooster had put it, and seeking the last.

“Stone, there’ll be no Book left if she continues the way she is,” grumbled Pumpkin to the Stone. “Or no words left at least. She scores it all out like Husk used to do at the end of his long life, scribing, re-scribing, scoring and finally unscribing. It’s not the way it should be, and she began so well! Oh dear, oh dear – I suppose she knows what she’s doing, but I don’t!”

Rooster’s words had given Pumpkin comfort initially, but as time went on, and the winter grew steadily worse, and a mole did well not to stay on the blizzardy icy surface for more than a moment or two, all Pumpkin’s doubts returned. She was growing more tired, she was eating too little, there was nothing left on her flanks at all so her ribs were beginning to show; and her eyes had the gleam of a dying mole about them.

Her cough had become a steady rasp, and was the first sound that greeted him as he entered the tunnels near the chamber, and the last he heard as he left. That and her groans and mumblings as she scratched and scored and scrivened.

Then early in March she began to clutch the Book to her thin chest when he came in, and to speak to him – or rather shout at him, in a thin and frightened way – in Whernish; and she laughed sometimes. Her eyes grew frightened and when he came near she would often stab at him with her talons.

“Take him away!” she cried out one day, breaking her silence and pointing a paw at the dead aide. “Collis speaks to me and tells me... there is no Silence.”

“Privet...”

But his words she did not hear; and he did not remove the dead mole.

“Privet, come to my barrow and rest again, come —”

“Noooo!” she screamed, “I shall never be able to start again if I do.”

“Privet...”

And she wept like a pup, her voice so weak it was no louder than the scribing of her talon on birch-bark. Then she forced him to leave her. Day after day passed like that.

Heavy snow, a sudden thaw at night and waking to the drip, drip, drip of water in the tunnels.

Even as Pumpkin lay aburrow, the wind shifted and the cold returned, and deepened into the crippling thrall of the worse freeze in Duncton in living memory. He begged Privet to leave her icy chamber. She refused. He begged her to let him stay. She refused – and followed him, shouting and railing when he tried to hide in the tunnel outside the chamber that he might keep watch on her.

Next day he returned to a most terrible scene. She lay half-conscious, mumbling, the Book’s folios scattered, food he had left half-eaten and strewn about; while above her there hung down, like talons of death, great icicles amongst the frozen roots.

“Privet, this cannot go on,” he said, when he had warmed her, and she had revived and eaten a little.

“No, but it is not finished. One more night and one more day. There is so little left to do, look!” She almost laughed as she proffered him the broken, battered Book. “Look, my dear, is it not nearly beautiful? Is it not peaceful now?”

He turned its loose folios, though with considerable difficulty, for the Book was strangely heavy, strangely unmanageable, and he strived and struggled with it, panting with effort and feeling a dread.

Yet he pressed on, putting back in place those folios that slipped out, and seeing that one after another after the next all the words she had scribed on folio after folio were scored out. She had made new scribing between the lines of the first, but that was scored out too. And along the margins, and upside down, and everywhere, the scribing was scored out. He could not bear to look at all the folios. This was not scribing, this was a death of words.

“It told all I knew, Pumpkin, everything – but I had to take it out. Bit by bit it had to go. Husk did the same with Tales, but I did not understand. He knew, as Rooster knows. But I... I have not the strength to score out everything.”

“You seemed to have nearly done so!” Pumpkin exclaimed.

She sighed. “Give me another night and day. I shall try one more time. And don’t fret so, Pumpkin, I shall not die quite yet. What season is it?”

“March, winter, freezing,” he said.

Reluctantly he agreed to leave her, eyeing the icicles above her as he went, as if they were an enemy.

“I shall be back at midday on the morrow,” he promised. “And Privet, I swear that if you will not agree to come with me I shall drag you out!”

“Pumpkin!” But even as she exclaimed at his threat, her eyes wandered back to the Book, her paws reached out towards it, and he saw fear and apprehension, and age, creep over her, like shadows, like death.

He went to the Stone before returning to his burrow and his prayer was simple and direct.

“Stone, release her. Let her be free of this! Thy Silence cannot be so terrible that seeking it kills a mole. Release her now...” And he wept into the icy, unyielding ground.

He slept but fitfully, imagining he heard her screams and that she called his name; he must go back to her! He rose to do so, felt the bitter bite of cold, thought again he heard her call and slipped back into sleep. So tired... But when he woke he knew he was too late. He knew it as certain as the prick of thorns.

“Privet...!” and he hurried out of his burrow up to the surface and...

And she was there, fallen, her paw reaching out, calling his name in a voice that he could barely hear.

“Privet...” he whispered, appalled, helping her down into his tunnel, and putting her into his still-warm sleeping chamber.

“I called your name, my dear,” she whispered, “but you could not hear. All night I have called your name.”

All night! Her paws and face and flanks – all thin, almost nothing now – were icy, her voice insidiously soft and sleepy.

“Pumpkin, the Book... I could not, I cannot...”

He held her, warmed her, wept for her, and wondered what to do.

“Pumpkin, fetch the Book for me. Fetch it here. It will help me to have it now, unfinished though it is. Fetch it, mole.”

He warmed her more, settled her, saw that she ate a mite of worm, which was better than none at all, and he began to think she might recover.

“Fetch it, mole, now, now...”

It was then that he saw she was beginning to die.

“I cannot leave you. I must get Rooster. I must... I...” He stanced over her, shaking, muttering, uncertain.

“Fetch it, Pumpkin. For me...”

Then he settled her into the warmest place, his own sleeping chamber, and turned from her and ran from the burrow, panting and gasping up the frozen slopes, slipping and sliding on the ice and then down into the Ancient System, down through the icy tunnels, on and on into the heart of all that was lost and forgotten and so long forsaken. Running for his life, and for hers.

He turned towards the chamber, saw the glimmer of light, heard the icy whisper of Dark Sound, and ran in, his pawsteps racing ahead of him.

He stopped dead at what he saw, the echo of his pawsteps fading about him as he took in the scene. The chamber was filled with that light they had seen when first they came. And the chamber was clean and clear, or almost so. The litter of folios was gone. The bits of worm, the nesting material once strewn about had been removed; the chaos she had made about her, all was gone, all tidied away, all cleared.

Even the floor was clear and cleaned, as if a library aide had come after the mole he worked for had left, and had ordered things once more, and made them as they should be.

Only the Book was there, back on the dais where she had first found it, its folios neat and tidy and all made right again. Perhaps then, with one last effort, she had worked to leave things as she found them, and placed the Book back for another to find. Perhaps she had finished it.

But he felt that was not so. Nor did he believe that she could herself have cleared the chamber: it was more than she could have done.

“Much more,” he whispered; stancing now in the light about the Book, he looked around him. It was then that he saw that the body of the aide had also gone, his paws outstretched towards the dais no more, no mark of him left: his part of this awesome task complete.

Pumpkin felt awe and wonder, and knew then what mole had cleared the place, and made it whole again: Collis of Sedlescombe, the unknown aide.

“Mole,” he whispered, his voice echoing forward to the Book, and then to where the aide had been and then beyond, though whether back or forward he did not know.

“Mole,” he whispered in gratitude, for the aide had been there to watch over her, “mole...”

“Mole,” that whisper came back to him, back to the now where Pumpkin was, back in gratitude, aide to aide, mole to mole and Pumpkin understood that
now
had come, and here he was, to do what he must do.

“Stone,” whispered Pumpkin, and the answer came back to him with the clinging of an echo:

“Mole...” whispered the aide.

Pumpkin went to the Book. He opened its time-worn covers, and turned its ruined folios, and saw such scorings that no single word on page after page could he ken at all. Not one word seemed left.

Then one he found. Untouched, unscored. As perfectly scribed as it had first been. He turned further on and then to the end of the Book, but all else was ruin and lost words, and nothing at all. He turned back to the single word that remained, and the unscored space about it that was white with light.

He reached out his old paw and touched the scribing she had first made.

“Privet,” he kenned aloud.

It was her own name she could not score out, her very self. That alone she could not let go. It was the last word she had found, and she could not let it go.

Privet...

And Pumpkin wept for the mole he served. He took up the Book, and felt how heavy it was, how hard to carry, and he turned from the light where it became harder still.

“Help me bring it to her, Stone, help me now.”

At the portal from the chamber he turned back, for he heard a new sound, a clean and steady sound. He put the Book down to see what the sound was. It came from the dais where the Book had been, but it started high above, where the light was bright as stars.

The sound again, deep, sudden; then again.

He looked down at the dais, up at the light, and seeing the great white icicles that hung there pointing down, he knew the sound for what it was.

Drip!

Drip!

And Drip! again.

A sound as old as time, the sound of a season’s turn, when winter ends, and spring begins. The water dripped upon the dais that had held the book, and the dais began to crumble and erode away before his eyes, and meld back into the earth from which it had been formed.

He took up the Book again, though it was a struggle to do so, and then, his paws dragging, the tunnels seeming endless, he began to carry the Book out of the Ancient System. And if, sometimes, in that long trek he felt the Book grow lighter, and a paw at his flank, and heard words of encouragement, he fancied that another aide was there to lighten his load a little, an aide who had served, as he did now; a mole who understood.

“Privet,” he whispered as he came to the tunnel end and towards the light of the High Wood, “I am coming. Wait now... wait.” And as best he could, but like a mole who is sure he is too late, old Pumpkin reached up towards the light of day once more.

Chapter Forty-Nine