The Second Wave (6 page)

Caterpillar dropped the sloe he was holding without even a taste and, turning, abandoned his old ruddling friend to his fate and raced off through the trees to Beech Valley, where he described how Beetle had been killed in such vivid detail that even Chestnut could not doubt him.

There
was
a pine marten loose on their island!

CHAPTER NINE

Next to be taken was a youngster, Hornbeam the Disobedient, who, living up to his tag, had wandered off in search of his favourite fungus and did not come back.  His distraught mother pleaded for a search party to go and find him. Four squirrels, led by Chestnut, set out cautiously, to return shortly with a limp red tail.

The Council was meeting twice a day trying to come up with ideas for defence, but no useful suggestions were forthcoming until Tansy the Wistful reminded the squirrels of the Woodstock, the magical vine-strangled stick with which her friend Marguerite had accidentally killed an aged Royal the previous year.  Marguerite had had it with her when she left Ourland and it must surely be with her now at the Blue Pool.

‘If we could get it here, we could use it to kill the pine marten and we’d all be safe again,’ she said.

Her listeners chattered with relief.  The Woodstock.  Of course, why hadn’t they thought of that?

Then reality returned.  Some squirrel, or squirrels, would have to get to the Mainland, journey to the Blue Pool, collect the Woodstock – if it
was
in fact there and still worked – learn how to use it and get it back again to Ourland.  The whole idea was impossible.  They all sat in silence again, tails drooping with disappointment.

‘Perhaps we could find another Woodstock on the beach,’ said Heather Treetops hopefully.  Then, realising how unlikely this would be, she added, ‘Or perhaps we could make one.  I sort of remember what it looked like.’

Over the next two days, in the protection of watchful pickets, the squirrels looked for suitable fallen branches and pieces of driftwood.  Using their teeth, they tried to recreate the twisted spiral they knew as a Woodstock.  Some said that the twist ran one way and some said it ran the other, and several ‘Woodstocks’ were made – but none had the smooth lines of the original or seemed to hold any feeling of hidden power.

‘I think it was Marguerite’s numbers that made it work,’ said Oak.  ‘Does anyone remember how they looked?’

Her practice scratches on the sand had long since washed away, and the odd pieces of driftwood on which numbers had been cut by her teeth had floated off to other shores.

Clover recalled that Marguerite had cut numbers in the living bark of some birch trees, but these birches were too near the church where the marten’s den was thought to be.  Another Council Meeting was summoned, but no new ideas were forthcoming.

Tansy looked round at the despondent squirrels and thought of a Kernel taught to her by Old Burdock, the beloved and much respected elderly Tagger who had been such an inspiration to them on their journey to Ourland.  Burdock had been Sun-gone since the summer and was buried in the ground below the Council Tree where they were now sitting.

The Kernel said –

If you think you can

Or if you think you cannot

Either wayit’s true

‘I’ll go and get the real Woodstock,’ she told them, and before any could object or raise difficulties, or try to convince her it was impossible, she leapt from the Council Tree and set off through the treetops towards Pottery Point, the nearest place on the island to the Mainland.

Watchful for the pine marten and surprised at her own boldness, Tansy jumped from tree to tree, wondering how she could ever cross the frightening stretch of water she could see ahead.

In a pine tree above the shore she stopped, plagued by doubts.  The Sun had sent a door to carry them across to Ourland when they had been pursued by the Greys, and she had half expected to see that very door drifting in on the tide.  She stared out over the water, but could see nothing.  What a fool she had been.  Now she would have to go back and admit defeat.  No she wouldn’t!

Old Burdock had taught them when to use the Needing Kernel, having emphasised that it was for needing and not just for wanting.

Tansy looked up at the Sun and said the first part of the Kernel –

‘Oh Great Loving Sun

What I need most at this time

Is…..’

Her mind went blank as the struggled to find four more word-sounds to express her wish to cross the water.

A male sika deer, who had swum over to the island a moon before to service the hinds there, stepped out of the bushes and paused below the tree in which Tansy sat, exhaustion showing in his eyes and stance.

A weary stag, she thought.  Sun-inspired, she said aloud, ‘Is a weary stag’, and dropped from the tree to cling to his left antler.  The stag shook his head in irritation, gently at first, then violently, but Tansy held tightly to the hard horn.  The stag waded into the sea and swam towards Furzey Island, tilting his head backwards and sideways as he swam, so the water washed over Tansy, who clung there, terrified, salt water washing into her eyes, nose and mouth.

Just as she was thinking that she could hold on no longer, she felt the stag’s feet touch bottom and he waded ashore on Furzey Island.

 Refreshed by the cold water and now seemingly unaware of the tiny sodden animal still clinging to his antler, he trotted across Furzey, entered the sea again and swam to the Goathorn Peninsula of the Mainland.  As Tansy altered her grip, her foot touched the hair between his horns, and the stag tried to dislodge her by brushing his head against a bush.  Tansy leapt into the foliage.

There
is
a way, she thought, if you think you can…. She climbed a tree and licked herself dry, gagging at the taste of salt.  Mentally and physically drained by her ordeal, she searched for and found an old magpies’ nest in which to spend the night, alone for the first time in her life and fearful of every sound from the night-life all about her.

At dawn she set off through the plantation, keeping the sun behind her and heading in the direction that she hoped would lead to the Blue Pool, Marguerite and the Woodstock.

CHAPTER TEN

On the night after their visit to the Blue Pool the Portlanders slept in a disused drey on the north side of the pool, well behind the screen of pine trees.  The drey had been abandoned by grey squirrels when ‘Grades’ – the Grey Death – had swept through there, wiping the colony out to a squirrel.  The lingering scent of the Greys puzzled Crag.  It was similar to red squirrel-scent, though subtly different.  It was an unusual experience for him to be in a drey anyway, and the scent bothered him.

He had been tempted not to use the drey, which was, he thought, too comfortable for serious Sun-serving squirrels, but the temperature outside was falling and the stars were frost-bright above the trees.

‘Just this once,’ he told Rusty and Chip.  ‘Tomorrow we find a more appropriate place.  We must get settled before winter really starts or we will starve or freeze to death.’

Would he really care? Chip wondered.  His father seemed to seek pain and discomfort.  He would probably enjoy freezing to death, or starving.

Crag led the way into the moss-lined interior of the drey, however, followed by Rusty and Chip, who was very conscious of the closeness of their bodies.  There was no room to lie away from one another, and he lay awake, rigid and tense, next to his mother, feeling the warmth of her body against his own.

Later, much later, he dozed off, then woke to find his mother’s paw around his shoulder and her tail covering him.  He nestled against her and slept.

When he awoke at dawn, he found himself alone in the drey.  He could hear his parents moving about outside.

‘Don’t let that youngster sleep on,’ Crag was saying.  ‘Flush him out for prayers!’

Chip wriggled out into a world made magic by frost.  Every twig and leaf was encrusted with crystals of ice, built from the mist that had drifted in over the land during the night and was now dissipating in the sunshine.  Each crystal caught the light and sparkled in a tiny rainbow of colour.  The young squirrel looked about him in wonder.  It was all so beautiful.

‘
Your
turn to say the Morning Prayer,’ said Crag.

Chip had done so several times before, using the standard wording his father and mother had always done, but today, after the first section –

‘Be not too wrathful

Oh Great Sun, on those squirrels –

Who sinned in the night,’

He felt moved to use his own words –

‘Thank you, oh Great Sun,

For the beauty of your light

In this sparkling world’.

 Rusty, thrilled by this unexpected prayer, turned admiringly towards her son, only to cringe as Crag reached out a paw and struck Chip across the head.  ‘Blasphemer!’ he hissed, and finished the prayer himself.

‘Let us serve your needs

For the whole of this your day

Weak though we may be.’

Then, glowering at the unhappy youngster, he led his family down to forage on the chill ground.  Later they would search for a permanent base to create a New Temple.

It was High Sun when Crag found what he was seeking.  In a clearing in the wood a huge gnarled oak stood, twisted by age.  Although it was blackened by the fire from a lightning strike many years before, lingering autumn-brown leaves on a few branches indicated that it was not yet completely dead.  A little way up the tree the hollow of the trunk forked to form two chambers above the large one below.

Crag explored all the hollows, then came down to where Rusty and Chip sat silently waiting on the ground.

‘This will be our New Temple,’ he announced.  ‘There are suitably austere sleeping places for each of us to have their own, and great chambers to store the metal collection.’

Chip groaned to himself, his teeth hurting at the very thought of holding rusty things again.  He looked appealingly at his mother.

‘Is it wise to use a tree that has been struck by lightning?  Might it not happen again?’ she asked.

‘Lightning never strikes twice in the same place,’ Crag assured her confidently.  ‘Now we start the collection.  Honour be to the Sun.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Slate, a mature female grey squirrel, looked at the remains of the Oval Drey in the giant Oak at Woburn Park.  A winter and summer of neglect had made the drey look unkempt and drab.  It was hard to picture it as she had last seen it, bustling with activity.  That was before the Grey Death had killed its inhabitants, the Great Lord Silver, as well as most of the other Greys in New America.

A few survivors were now clustered round, the males discussing what they should do to set up a centre of government again.  Slate could see that they were all at least a year younger than she was and were obviously inexperienced.

‘I would suggest…’ Slate began, the words hissing past her broken tooth.

As one, the males glowered at her.

‘This is a formal meeting,’ a male –Basalt – said firmly.  ‘Females may only speak when requested to report.  You should know that.’

‘I jusst thought that sinsse so many things had changed…’

‘Females shouldn’t think,’ said Basalt, and turned away.

Slate sat on the branch, angry and frustrated.  She had hoped that the one good thing to come out of the Grey Death tragedy might have been an opportunity to right some of the past injustices.  Oh well, she thought, there are more ways of opening a nut than waiting for it to grow.

She listened in silence as the males continued.  Basalt was dominating the conversation, talking down any opposition to his ideas.

‘The Red Ones lived here long before our kind came from our homeland beyond the sunset.  The Grey Death did not affect them, whereas it virtually wiped us out.  Perhaps the way they live is the right way – here in New America at least.’

‘They are all squimps,’ said Chalk, unconsciously using a Red word that had crept into their language.  ‘They’re all soft and gentle.’

‘So they may be,’ retorted Basalt, ‘but they are also alive.  Those we haven’t killed, that is.  I think we should learn their ways.’

Slate was itching to intervene, but was not going to risk another public rebuff.

‘Will we have a Great Lord Silver?’ a male asked.  ‘The Reds don’t.’

‘Well, we don’t have to do
exactly
what they do,’ said Basalt.  ‘But we do need a leader to be in charge here and to direct other Greys who may have survived and come back to Base for guidance.  The Reds would
choose
one, not fight for the position as we have always done.  I propose that I am chosen as Great Lord Silver.  All agree?  Right.  That’s settled, then.’

The Greys looked at one another in amazement, but Basalt continued quickly, ‘Who knows anything about the customs of the Reds?’

‘They have different names from us,’ said Chalk.  ‘The males are named after trees and the females after flowers.’

‘We’ll start there, then,’ said Basalt.  ‘Each squirrel is to choose a new name, but choose trees and flowers from the Old Country.’

‘I’ll be Hickory,’ said Chalk.

‘Sitka for me,’ said Shale.  ‘I never did like my name anyway.  Basalt, you should be Redwood, if you want us to do what a Red would.’

This pun, the ultimate form of Grey humour, was received with groans.  Basalt agreed rather than argue with another squirrel who had just chosen Tamarack, a name he had intended to use himself.  He’d got away with appointing himself Great Lord Silver and was not going to push his luck further.

The females had grouped together and were discussing names for themselves.  One chose Prairie Rose, another Yucca, and, amid laughter, Tufa turned down a proposal that she be called Skunk Cabbage in favour of Bluegrass.