The Golden Flight (4 page)

‘What is it?’ she asked him.

‘I haven’t given it a name yet, I just call it a bark-rush thing. Do you like it?’

‘Well, it’s very neat and well made, but what’s it for?’

She tipped it sideways and all the rings slipped to one end.

Chip reached out and took it back. ‘It’s for counting on,’ he said, his tail rising with pride. ‘Look.’

His paws moved the rings back and forth along the rush stems so fast that Marguerite could hardly follow the action.

‘There you are,’ he said, ‘that’s a hundred.’ He shuffled the rings back and forth again. ‘And that’s a thousand.’

Chip passed the bark-rush thing to Marguerite. ‘You try,’ he invited.

By High-sun she was using it to count nearly as fast as he was, and each was trying out new ideas.

‘Supposing we have a pair of squirrels,’ Chip said, ‘who have four dreylings each year for four years, we would have
that
many squirrels.’ He held the Bark-rush out to Marguerite.

‘No we wouldn’t,’ she told him. ‘Each of those would be breeding, so we would have
that
many!’ The rings flew backwards and forwards under her busy paws.

‘Wow!’ said Chip. ‘That’s a lot of squirrels!’

‘Of course it’s not true,’ Marguerite told him. ‘Foxes and other predators take many of us, that’s a fact of squirrel life. Others will go off and live elsewhere and some may not have four dreylings every year. Even so, that’s an oak-sized figure. Has any other squirrel seen this?’

‘Not yet,’ he told her, ‘only you and I can count above eight, so it wouldn’t mean much to them.’

Marguerite went away, unable to get the picture of all those ‘calculated’ squirrels out of her head. Chip was shuffling the rings again.

Marguerite wandered through the valley, past the broad-leaved palm trees, the last relics of some human’s attempt to create a sub-tropical garden on the island, and up to the pines on the cliffs beyond. Here she lay out on a resin-scented branch enjoying the cool breeze coming in from the sea.

It was late afternoon and, just as she was thinking of going down to forage, her whiskers started twitching with the feeling that she now knew signalled that dolphins were near. She sat up and looked out over the harbour.

She could see three black heads and backs curving up out of the water and sliding down again, effortlessly keeping away from the few human boats that were sailing in on the tide. Then the thought-voices that she loved filled her head.

She heard Malin first. ‘Are you there, squirrel-friend?’

Marguerite thought back, ‘Yes, I am here,’ and the three heads immediately turned towards where she sat high above the beach.

Lundy’s thought-waves reached her. ‘We are on our way up-channel to a school at the Goodwins and decided to swim into the harbour to see if all was well with you.’

The dolphins and the squirrels exchanged pleasantries, then Lundy said, ‘We have been for a sea-change, down to the Island of Madeira. We could see blue trees on the land there, and I thought of you and how you would love to see them.’

‘Was it the leaves or flowers that made them blue?’ Marguerite asked, intrigued.

‘I think it was flowers, but they were too far away for us to be sure. The local dolphins call them Jacaranda trees.’

Marguerite played with the name. She was so used now to communicating mentally that she could even sense the sounds of the thoughts. This blue tree had an exotic and exciting sound to it. Jacaranda, Jac-ar-an-da, Jacaranda.

‘Did you meet many other Dolphins?’ she asked.

‘Not so many as we have on earlier visits,’ Lundy replied sadly. ‘Humans are using a new kind of net which catches a lot of dolphins as well as fish. The nets are made of such thin lines that we can’t detect them. It is easy to get entangled and then we drown.’

Malin’s voice flowed, swamping Lundy’s. ‘Stop being a teredo. Our friend doesn’t want to know all
our
problems.’

Marguerite did not know how to respond, so asked, ‘What are you going to learn about at school?’

‘Actually we are to be the teachers on this session. You may recall that our patrol area is either side of the Rock of Portland. On the far side is a curved pebble beach that forms what we call the West Bay. Humans go there to catch fish with lines thrown out into the water. It was there that Malin discovered that when he goes near a line that is tautly stretched from a human’s thin-stick out to the seabed, he can understand what
that
human is thinking.’

‘Is that a right thing to do?’ asked Marguerite.

‘We were not sure at first,’ Malin replied. ‘It did seem like an intrusion and while we are near their lines they don’t catch any fish. But when we did listen we learned things which may help us understand them better, and
that
must be a good thing. I know that
you
often have difficulty in interpreting their actions.’

‘That’s true.’

People puzzle us

With their strange actions. But then

They’re only human.

‘We often feel like that. So, on balance, we felt it was not wrong to listen.’

‘Have you learned anything important?’ Marguerite asked.

‘Much of interest, and we will tell you some of it when we return. Time is short for us now, and dolphins must never be late. I think we have told you our little reminder on this.

‘Punctuality

Is vital. Others’ time wasted,

Is stolen by you

And can never be returned.

Lost minutes sink forever.

‘Shall we swim in and tell you about the humans on our way back?’

‘Yes please, if you would,’ said Marguerite as any new ideas thrilled her. She wished the dolphins farewell, then watched their black heads seem to get smaller as they swam for the harbour entrance and the open sea.

A sense of loneliness enveloped her as her sea-friends disappeared around North Haven Point.

Marguerite fed alone, then slept in one of the palm trees in the valley. The coarse fibres around the base of the leaves made a snug nest, but the unusual sound of the wind rustling the great flat leaves bothered her, and she slept badly. She dreamed of watching her friends, both squirrels and dolphins, drowning in nets. Waking from that dream, she drifted into another where the island was so densely populated with squirrels that several families had to share each tree,

She awoke shivering, even though the sun was above the horizon and the dawn air was pleasantly warm. She came down the trunk of the palm to forage, instinctively stopping well above the ground to look out for predators, before remembering that here on Ourland there were none.

Realisation hit her like a peregrine falcon striking a pigeon.

As there were no predators on this island her second dream was likely to become reality. Squirrels would multiply with no natural checks, and there was nowhere for the extra ones to go. Even if they could find a way to get back to the Mainland, that was effectively grey squirrel country now, so was not an option. She went down to the Zwamp to find Chip.

He was rethreading a bark-ring to replace one that had broken, and, after the formal greeting, she asked him to re-do the calculations that they had done the previous day.

If each pair of squirrels…

They did many calculations before resting at High-sun, and by then Chip was sharing Marguerite’s concern. After her rest she went to find the Council Leader, Just Poplar.

He was at the Council Tree in Beech Valley with his life-mate, Rush the Kind. Rush had borne three dreylings that spring, two males and a female, half-brothers and a half-sister to Chip, her first son. The youngsters were off with the others, probably playing the Wall-game.

After greeting and brushing whiskers with her friends, Marguerite tried to express her concern.

‘Chip and I have been working out how many squirrels there will be if we all breed at the rate we are now. With no predators, the island will soon be overrun.’

Just Poplar did not share her worries.

‘Zumthing ztopz it happening,’ he told her. ‘In the old dayz uz Royalz wuz alwayz trying to have lotz of dreylingz but they moztly died and the zervantz never had too many. There always zeemed to be about the right number of
them
. Don’t yew worry now.’

Rush offered Marguerite a piece of her favourite dried fungus and changed the subject.

‘Lots of squirrels have stopped coming to Council Meetings,’ Rush said. ‘They all seem to be doing other things. We – Just Poplar and I – we don’t know all the odd things that are going on.’

‘That’z true,’ Just Poplar added, ‘Uz’z zuppozed to be Leader and uz doezn't know if uz zhould encourage it or zupprezz it.’

‘What zort... sort of things?’ Marguerite asked.

‘Well, uz’z heard that Larch and hiz family are biting into a zquirrel zhape over by Pottery Point, and that Chezdnut and Heather have got their clan growing Woodztoockz. But Uz don’t know how true it all iz.’

‘You sound like Chestnut the Doubter himself. He never believes anything unless he has seen it – at least twice.’

They all smiled.

Marguerite bade them farewell and went through the trees to where Chestnut and Heather had their home near the ruined Man-dreys of Maryland. She found three generations of their family in a hazel copse digging up honeysuckle seedlings and replanting them at the foot of small hazel saplings.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked, though she could see for herself.

‘Hello Marguerite,’ said Heather Treetops. ‘Chestnut doesn’t believe that we and our family are safe here and so we are making sure we have plenty of Woodstocks to defend us all if Greys come here, or if a pine marten gets to the island again.’

Marguerite looked at the young honeysuckles. Some were already reaching up and twisting round the hazel stems. She knew that in a year or two, a silent battle would commence between the encircling bine and the host sapling.

If the hazel grew fastest it would break the creeper, but the honeysuckle bine could strangle the sapling if it was the stronger. In either case the Life Force would be trapped while this was happening, forming the twisted whorl the squirrels knew as a Woodstock. It has been Marguerite who had learned how to release this trapped force with devastating effect, as many a Mainland Grey could tell.

She thanked Chestnut and Heather for showing her their plantation and headed for Pottery Point.

When the island’s screen of protective trees loomed up ahead of her she remembered Wally’s prophecy.

I honour birch-bark

The Island’s screen. Flies stinging

The piece of the sun

Or should it be
A
piece? Either way it still seemed to be a nonsense.

Marguerite found Larch the Curious working with his sons, daughters and their youngsters, biting at the wood of a broken tree and she stood and looked in amazement at what they had created.

The pine that had been broken off in the Great Storm had been chiselled by many teeth into the shape of a giant squirrel, staring out over the sea towards the Mainland. The face of the great animal scowled threateningly and it held a carved Woodstock diagonally across its chest.

Larch saw her, came over and brushed whiskers. She waited for him to explain.

‘We got bored,’ he said, slightly embarrassed. ‘There is such a lot of food here, we don’t have to spend much time foraging and we don’t have to watch for predators, so we thought we’d make something. At least this should frighten any invaders away.’

‘Sun rule that no more come,’ Marguerite replied. ‘But this, this is…’ she struggled for a word, 'magnificent.’

Larch stood proudly, his back to his creation.

‘Where’s Clover the Tagger?’ Marguerite asked, looking round for Larch’s life-mate.

‘She’s busy somewhere else. She doesn’t really approve of all this,’ he added, waving a paw at the huge stump outlined against the setting sun. She thinks it’s all a waste of time, but what is time anyway if you have plenty of it?’

‘A bite more off there,’ he called up to one of the busy youngsters, as Marguerite turned back along the shore towards the eastern end of the island.

CHAPTER FIVE

Marguerite spent several days in the South Shore area eating and sleeping alone. Twice she returned to the screen of trees above Pottery Point and from a distance watched the shaping of the giant squirrel progressing, but did not make contact with the chisellers. Her mind was busy with a web of ideas, trying to untangle thoughts that were hopelessly intertwined.

Early on the fifth morning, as the sun lifted over the eastern horizon and the tide surged in from Poole Bay, she knew, by the tingle in her whiskers, that the dolphins had come again. She went down to the low bank at the water’s edge and projected her thoughts across the rippled surface of the harbour.

‘I am here, my friends, I am here.’

Three heads lifted above the wavelets in the quiet dawn-light and the two large ones surged in towards her, while the smaller dolphin moved slowly up and down the waterway farther out.

Malin and Lundy rested in the shallows a few feet from Marguerite. She had never seen a dolphin at rest before and they looked huge, much bigger than a human.

‘Hello, squirrel-friend,’ they said together, followed a moment later by a shyer greeting from Finisterre as he swam in.

‘We promised to tell you what we learned from the fishing-men and we don’t have be back on patrol until tomorrow,’ Malin told her. ‘We decided to come early before any humans were about.’

Lundy sent her thoughts up to Marguerite, ‘We told you that we often patrol just off the Chesil Bank and there are nearly always fishing-men on that beach trying to catch cod and conger eels. When we learned how to pick up their thoughts from the taut-lines, we were surprised to find that most are not even thinking about fish at all. Some come there just to get away from unhappy situations with their mates and others to relax and let their minds go blank. One was hiding his face behind a flimsy sheet of what they call paper, all day, and his mind seemed full of nothing but enormous mammary glands. Then he stared out to sea, as if expecting a dugong to swim by.’