The Second Wave (11 page)

What else could he, Crag the Temple Master, have done?  Chip might be his son, but building up the offerings in the Temple must always be his main concern, and the Greys seemed easily led and open to any influence.  He was sure that the youngster would be back, suitably contrite and begging to be forgiven, when he found how degenerate other squirrels were.  He was sure that he had taught him well.

Training is vital.

As the growing twig is bent –

So shall the tree grow.

Crag moved a rusted gate-latch to a new position, studied it for a time, then moved it back a nut-width.

Ivy watched Crag moving the metal about.  There was something in the intensity of his movements that impressed her.  He really did believe in what he was doing.  When she found an opportunity, she would ask him what it all meant.

Across the bright, snow-laden heath and the cold marshes, beyond the leaden waters of Poole Harbour, in the chill bell tower of the disused church, Blood woke and stretched himself, prowled about in the tiny room that was now home to him and decided he would go outside, if only to look around.

He came down the rope into the smelly nave, brightly lit in an unusual way by the reflected sunlight from the snow outside, and assessed his living larder.  There were enough of the silly birds to see him through to the spring, even if he couldn’t find squirrel again.

The biggest cock bird, known to his harem as Mogul, whose tail swept to the floor, eyed him sleepily.

I’ll keep you till last, Blood thought.  You’re probably tough and stringy anyway.  In passing, he pulled out a tail feather with his teeth and, ignoring the squawk of protest, carried it outside, where the sun caught the feather’s rainbow eye and even Blood had to admire the iridescent colours.

Moved by an unusual urge, he poked the feather upright into a snowdrift and pranced around it, making a ring of tracks in the crisp surface, then set off towards the leaf-pile in the swamp, mocked on his way by a pair of magpies, their white undersides appearing dingy against the gleaming brilliance of the snow.

After his first two visits he had never found squirrels at the leaf-pile, but it was worth a try, and he always went that way on his squirrel-hunting expeditions.

The ex-zervant, Caterpillar, in the Bunker, was bored.  He had heard all the stories of Acorn, the first squirrel in the world, that any of them there knew.  He had listened to endless discussions on new names for the ex-zervants to replace the creepy-crawly names given to them by the Royals and thought the whole business unnecessary.  He had refused the proposal of Catalpa for himself.  He had always been Caterpillar and had never even seen a catalpa tree.  He doubted very much if such a tree really existed!

And as for a tag – not for him!  He would probably end up as Caterpillar the Ruddled, as all the Ourlanders know of his fondness for the fermented sloes.

A diffused light was filling the hollow of the tree.  The pool below was covered in ice and snow and the sunlight was reflected by this up through the round entrance.  Caterpillar went and looked out of the hole, the light in the Bunker dimming as his head nearly filled the opening.  ‘I’m going out’, he called back over his shoulder.

In the early Bunker days the squirrels, when they needed to drink or to dispose of their meagre droppings, had always gone out in pairs, one to be watchful all the time.

A watchful squirrel

Survives to breed and father –

More watchful squirrels.

Despite the strength of the Kernel, in the absence of any attack or even a sighting of the marten since they had been in the Bunker, some of the squirrels had relaxed and gone out singly, but never for more than a few leaps from the leaning willow trunk.  Today most of them were in the semi-dormant state that is not true hibernation, but does reduce the body’s calls on the fat-reserves.  Oak saw Caterpillar go, but was not concerned – he would be back soon.

Blood bounded along, the midwinter sun just warm on his back, his eyes narrowed against the glare from the snow.  The air felt crisp and clean in his nostrils.  There was no scent of squirrel as he came to the leaf-pile, dark in the white expanse, where the heat of the decaying leaves had melted the night’s covering.  He playfully scattered the compost, kicking it backwards from the pile and seeing how far he could spread it, the rotting leaves making brown stains on the white blanket.

As he dug down he found small round fruit, warm from the leaf-heat and smelling like the squirrels he had first found here.  He tasted one whilst the magpies chattered and scolded him from a nearby bush.  The fruit warmed his tongue, like blood, but as he swallowed, the warmth continued down his throat and exploded inside him.  Wow! 

He took another bite, and then another.  He ate three of the sloes before the trees leaned over sideways and the magpies grew to the size of the eagles he could remember from Scotland.  Blood did not care a feather.  He ate another of the ruddled fruit.

Caterpillar, his sloe-craving overriding discipline or fear, climbed out from the Bunker entrance and along the underside of the trunk, then dropped to the snow-covered ground.  No other squirrel had followed him out. In the muffled silence he stood on a drift and sniffed the air.  Nothing, just snow and trees.  He looked up at the hole, took a mouthful of snow, cold and crisp, felt it melt on his tongue, then hopped off in the direction of the leaf-pile.

He heard the magpies’ warning long before he reached it.  It was the ‘four-footed predator’ call, so he climbed an alder trunk and went slowly through the bare branches, from tree to tree, until he could see them fluttering about in a bush near the leaf-pile, on which lay a ruddled pine marten.

Even with his traditional foe so far below him and obviously harmless, he felt the paralysing marten-dread seize him and he had to shake it off consciously.  Caterpillar sat there, for the first time able to study their enemy with safety.

The pine marten lay on its back, apparently oblivious to the magpies who were growing bolder and circling closer, their harsh chatter annoying Caterpillar, who now dared to come a long way down the trunk.  The magpies saw his movement and, suddenly tiring of their game with no response from the hunter, flew off together through the trees.  Caterpillar waited and watched in silence.

Slowly it dawned on him that the scourge of Ourland, the terror which had haunted them for so long and which had forced them to live in the Sun-damned Bunker, was lying ruddled and helpless on the leaf-pile below him.

Had he been born a free squirrel, he might have known what to do, but being an ex-zervant, he had been trained from birth not to think for himself, just to do as he was instructed and to report unusual happenings to the Royals.

This was an unusual happening, but there were no Royals now, and if he told Oak the Cautious, their Council Leader, he might insist on punishing him with a denigratory tag for going so far from the Bunker against orders.

So Caterpillar sat there indecisively, and watched the pine marten as the sun’s shadow moved around until, chilled by a cold breeze from the sea, he turned back for the Bunker.  Oak was waiting, concerned at his long absence.

‘What kept you?’ he asked, his voice as cold as the air outside.  ‘Have you been to the leaf-pile?’

Oak manoeuvred himself until he could smell the errant squirrel’s breath, but there was no taint of the ruddled sloes.

Caterpillar toyed with a full lie – zervantz were adept at these – then, seeing a slight relaxation in Oak’s stance, chose the half-lie.

‘Uz wuz bored and ztiff and uz went for a little exerzize,’ he said.

‘To the leaf-pile?’ Oak asked, knowing the habits of the ex-zervantz.

‘Well, uz did go that way,’ Caterpillar conceded, then decided to turn the inquisition away from himself and said ‘The marten wuz there, him udd been at the zloez.’

‘Martens don’t eat fruit,’ Oak challenged him.

‘Thiz one doez.  Thoroughly ruddled, him wuz, lying on hiz back there like a dreyling, gone to thiz world.’

‘When was this?’ snapped Oak.

Caterpillar looked around, trying to judge from the artificially small amount of light coming in through the entrance hole.  ‘A while pazd,’ was all he could say.

The other squirrels were alert now and had gathered round aware of a feeling of excitement.  Oak declared a Council Meeting.

‘Caterpillar has reported that our enemy is senseless at the leaf-pile.  This is an opportunity we must examine.  What suggestions are there?’

‘Let’z all go and kill it,’ said Just Poplar at once.

‘Hold on,’ said Oak, his cautious nature asserting itself.  ‘It may be a trap.

Squirrels – to survive

Never act impulsively.

Look before you leap.’

To which Just Poplar replied, quoting a Kernel that Old Burdock had taught him,

‘Fear can paralyze.

Zupprezz it and ACT.  He who

Hezitatez iz lozd.’

They looked at the Tagger, Clover, for clarification.

‘These Kernels do seem to contradict one another,’ she said.  ‘I wish Old Burdock were here – she knew how to resolve these things.  I suppose that it depends on the exact circumstances.  Now if…’

The arguments went back and forth, the light in the Bunker dimming all the time.

Finally, Oak remembered the Leaders’ Kernel –

Indecision kills.

Act positively and lead.

Action is the Key.

‘We’ll go and kill the Marten,’ he said, then realising that in a few minutes it would be completely dark outside, added, ‘in the morning.’

Blood awoke.  It was warm on the leaf-pile but the magpies were now inside his head and chattering incessantly.  He stood up, fell over, then stood up more slowly.  It was dark.  He moved onto the snow and pushed his face into the coolness of a drift. The magpies in his head were not quite so loud now and, as he headed unsteadily for home, they almost, but not quite, stopped pecking at the inside of his skull.

At the door of the church he paused, pushed his face into the snow once more, pulled the peacock feather from the snowdrift and urinated on it, then went into the dark nave.  He brushed against Mogul’s tail, thought of giving it the usual tug, but his head told him that it could not take the inevitable screech.

He climbed the rope to his den in the tower.  After the third fall he gave up, crawled under a pew and slept noisily amongst the dry peacock droppings and feather moult.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Tansy had pressed Marguerite to tell her when the Woodstock could be taken to Ourland to deal with the pine marten on the assumption that, with her own parents in danger, Marguerite would drop everything and leave at once.

Marguerite’s first reaction had been to do just that, and her busy mind started to organise the venture.  Then she realised that she was not a free agent.  She was the selected Tagger of this community, responsible for important aspects of their lives.  She also had youngsters of her own, rather young for the hazards of winter travelling.  It would need more that the efforts of Tansy and herself to take the Woodstock any distance.  This, and the unknown future behaviour of Chip’s family and the Greys, made the whole project impossible.  But then she had been taught that nothing is impossible.  The Kernel said –

If you think you can

Or if you think you cannot,

Either way it’s true.

So far she had not thought that she could.

‘Tansy-Friend,’ she said, ‘we
will
find a way to get rid of the pine marten, but there is a lot of planning to be done first.  There are many details for me to work out.  Rest and sleep while I think about these.  Nothing more can be done while this snow lasts.  Try to sleep now.  Leave it to me.’

Juniper had been watching the shadows of the trees at High Sun as they reached out across the snow-covered ice on the Blue Pool.  ‘They’re getting shorter,’ he reported.  ‘The Longest Night is gone.  We can have the Midwinter Celebrations any time now.’

Chip was exquisitely warm in the drey, constantly and pleasurably aware of the close contact with the other squirrels, especially Tansywistful, who was in a deep sleep next to him.  He asked in a whisper, ‘What happens to the Sun in midwinter?’

Marguerite explained.  ‘Every autumn the Sun, who is tired after shining so hard for us all summer, finds it harder and harder to climb up high in the sky.  But, in the middle of the winter, his strength starts to come back, ready for the next year.

‘We can tell when this is, because the shadows at High Sun start to get shorter.  We have a celebration then, because we know that spring and summer are on the way, and that winter will not last forever.’  She smiled at the inquisitive youngster, encouraging him to ask another question.

‘What’s a celebration?’

‘That’s when all the squirrels get together to thank the Sun and enjoy themselves.  We have feasting on our favourite foods, play games and chases and tell stories, usually about Acorn, the first squirrel in the world.’

‘And Primrose – who wouldn’t go in the boat?’ Chip asked.

‘Yes.  Do you know that story?’  Marguerite sounded surprised.

Chip remembered that he had heard it when listening secretly with his parents that September night and, guided by an instinctive loyalty, replied,  ‘Yes, I heard it somewhere’, and followed immediately with, ‘Where do you have these celebration things?’

‘It has to be outside, for all of us to get together.  That’s why the winter one is sometimes late.  We have to wait for a warm enough day.’

The snow lay for three days, then a warm south-westerly wind came, with rain on its back, and the drifts shrank to dirty ridges before disappearing altogether.  In the mild spell that followed the Celebrations were held.