Duncton Found

Prologue

So now is he come to moledom, with no name yet but ‘Stone Mole’.

He came of a blessed union, but one mysterious and strange, discovered only in the light and Silence of the Stone itself.

His father was Boswell, White Mole, wise mole. Mole we have learnt to trust and love. Mole who in his passing left his only son, not to guide us, but for us to guide.

His mother is gracious Feverfew, bom a Wen mole and the last of an ancient line whose final and greatest destiny is to nurture the mole upon whose fateful life our story must now turn.

Whilst to Tryfan, Boswell bequeathed the task of watching over the Stone Mole and helping Feverfew prepare him for the challenges yet to come.

You who remember Duncton as it was when the present histories began and who accompanied Bracken and then Tryfan on their dread tasks, do not weaken now. For the challenges that face the Stone Mole must become your own. His life will be shaped and made, and brought to fruition, sweet or bitter as the case may be, by the actions and thoughts of allmole, of whom you, by your care, your love, and your doubts, are one.

Blessed Boswell knew that moles find it hard to keep faith at the hardest time. So, long ago, he spoke of the first who would follow in the Stone Mole’s path, and said that female she shall be, and by her example would light the path for all. Unknown yet to us! To be discovered best by moles with open hearts and courage, and snouts inclined towards the Stone.

So now, you who once prayed for Bracken and petitioned for brave Tryfan, pray for these two who follow them. First for the Stone Mole, whose birth you witnessed and whose life has now begun; next for she who will understand his life and his example first of all living moles, and show us how to honour it.

Let us choose our companions along the way wisely and well, for we journey but once and need at our flanks moles who have it truly in their hearts to help us to that place we lost even as we first knew it; but where, once more, may be our Duncton found.

Part I

Rites of Midsummer

Chapter One

June; and in the hushed cool depths of Duncton Wood sunlight dappled through the branches and across the great and lovely beech tree trunks. A light that travelled on to every nook and cranny of the wood’s floor and shone where dry leaves curled and the lightest of breezes lazed along the grey tree roots and then lost itself amongst the green leaves of dog’s mercury.

June, and the light of a summer’s day, a light so pure and good that it seems to renew everything it touches, so that the humblest flower, the most nondescript patch of chalk soil, the most gnarled of surface roots, seemed resplendent and shiny new.

This is light that heralds the coming of Midsummer, when all moles know they may petition their dreams to the Stone, and hope that such troubles and despairs as they have will find their solutions soon enough to bear the waiting, and then be gone.

That same light, that June morning, caught the fur of two moles who had come to the surface and were looking upslope towards where the Stone rose hidden among the trees. One was Tryfan, born of Duncton, now returned and never wishing to leave again. Once he had the nervousness and eagerness of youth about him and his fur had been glossy and black. Now he was much older, his face and back scarred by fighting, his fur patchy in parts and greying now.

The suppleness and grace of youth had gone, but in their place was now the quiet strength of a mole who had learnt to put his four paws on the ground and only move them when it is necessary.

His sight was not good, for he had never fully recovered from the savage attack by the dark moles of Whern, and so to know and enjoy all that was about him he had to listen as much as he looked, crouching still with his head a little to one side to hear the rising summer sounds of a wood and a system as venerable as any in the whole of moledom, though one that had fallen now on difficult times.

The second mole was Feverfew and she crouched at his side. She was younger than Tryfan, though not by many moleyears, and like him her body was worn with experience and life, as well as the scars of scalpskin that had at one time ravaged her. But strong she was in spirit and now snouted out the good day all about her with evident delight.

They remained in comfortable silence for some time, as moles will who know each other well and trust each other more, and from the occasional touches they gave each other and the slight nodding of a head or pointing of talons to indicate some new leafy wonder of the morning and the slopes above, anymole who has ever been half in love could tell that these two were a pair, and as close in love and caring tenderness as any pair could be.

‘Well, Feverfew, if today’s not the day to take the youngster up to the clearing and show him the Stone I can’t imagine what day would be!’

‘Ytt ys, myn love,’ she replied, speaking in the soft and rounded accent of the old language of the Dunbar moles, the colony in the distant Wen where Tryfan had first found her, and from which she had trekked alone so bravely to join him in Duncton Wood and give birth to ‘the youngster’ and so begin a destiny that all moledom had waited for.

‘Where’s he got to, tunnelling or exploring?’ Tryfan spoke of Feverfew’s son with a special love and affection, for though he was not his by birth it was his task, ordained by old Boswell himself, that Tryfan should rear the pup equally with Feverfew and be to him what a father would have been. Out of all males in moledom, Boswell had chosen Tryfan of Duncton to be his main guardian, knowing that the pup would be the Stone Mole, come at last to show moles how to hear the Silence of the Stone.

‘He cums nu herre along,’ said Feverfew, turning to look at a tunnel exit which lay a little downslope of them. Tryfan followed her gaze, wondering, for though it was true that Feverfew could hear better than him yet sometimes it seemed to him that her knowledge of where her son was and what he was doing was more than physical. Never having reared pups of his own he was not familiar with a mother’s sense of what ails her pups and when they need her. But even so Feverfew’s instinctive knowledge of the mole seemed exceptional, and made all the more poignant and difficult for her the changes in recent weeks towards his independence which this day seemed about to mark.

Her day-by-day task was nearly done and now it was for Tryfan to take over and begin the training in scribing and lore which both of them knew had become the Stone Mole’s own desire and need.

As they waited for him to appear it seemed that at the exit Feverfew had pointed to all the light of the June day began to gather and, special and clear though it already was, yet there it seemed more bright.

Then he emerged, first a snout and then a young paw, the light clear about him and seeming to radiate and shimmer over the trees and leaves above, to mark out the place for anymole that watched.

He came out on to the surface and, as Tryfan and Feverfew had before him, stared up in pleasure and wonder at the day all about. His eyes were wide and innocent, his fur still soft, his form just gaining that touching gawkiness all youngsters have as they pass beyond being youngsters and their body takes on a will of its own and grows now here, now there, and they, bemused, cannot yet find an adult’s comfort in it.

He ran quickly over to Feverfew’s side, but it was to Tryfan that he spoke.

‘Will you take me to the Stone today? You said that when Midsummer approached and the sun was bright, you would. Will you today?’ His eyes and manner were eager and intense.

‘Yes, yes the time’s come.’ And there was something about the mole and his way that filled Tryfan’s eyes with tears, though he was not sure why. Some premonition, perhaps, that one day, upon this young mole’s slender and innocent back the weight of moledom’s greatest cares and troubles would be placed.

Then, staring upslope once more among the lichen-green and sinewy trunks of the beech trees that rose up towards the highest part of the wood, Tryfan sought out a route towards the Stone.

Yes, yes it was time he was taken to touch the Stone and be told his sacred heritage. Tryfan snouted about slowly, quite unconscious of the fact that he bore himself so very peaceably these days that his solid, easy stance calmed those about him, and made them wait instinctively on him as if to hurry him would be to try to move moledom itself. Tryfan was: that was what his training, his years of living in a world about which he had never ceased to care, and his faith, had made him.

As Feverfew and the Stone Mole waited for Tryfan to decide on a route upslope, he himself was thinking of something quite different as he stared at the play of light among the trees. It was this: that surely somewhere there in the light and shadows about them, unseen and perhaps never to be seen again, Boswell was with them, watching over his son as he watched over all of them and always had – with love and with hope that they would find their way to Silence.

‘Yes …’ whispered Tryfan roughly, his eyes filling once more with tears, for now he was growing older and he felt sometimes the loneliness that wisdom brings, and wished that Boswell was there to talk to and ask questions of. Why, there were so many things he wished he had asked when he had the chance … when he was this mole’s age. He grimaced ruefully, the play of emotions plain upon his lined face, and wondered what he could possibly teach the Stone Mole. Something or other about living, he supposed.

‘Thiden is the daye, thiden is the houre,’ Feverfew told her son gently. Then, putting her paw to his flank, she said to Tryfan. ‘Latte us goe now, myn dereste luv, alle thre togider, to showe hym whar he was borne and tel hym where tofore.’

‘I’m frightened,’ said the youngster, not moving at all. The wood was suddenly hushed and awed about them, and the air stilled as the light seemed to tremble and darken.

‘The best way with fear is to turn your snout towards it and put one paw resolutely in front of another,’ said Tryfan. ‘Come now, for the June sun has summoned us today and beckons us up through the wood … Come, for I have things to say that you must know.’

Then one after another, with Tryfan in the lead followed by the youngster and Feverfew protectively at the rear, they set off upslope to find the clearing in the high wood where Duncton’s great Stone stands alone and mighty, always ready and waiting for anymole that comes to it in humility and faith.

Chapter Two

For days after his birth they had not known how to name him, for ‘Stone Mole’ is no name for a mole to live by. But a name is more than some moles think, for with it is inherited something of everymole that bore that name before, and offers the chance of passing something on to namesakes yet to come.

Few names, if any, are all dark, but some seem so more than others. So is Mandrake dark, and Rune; so is Bracken good and stolid, and Rose a name for moles whose lives give much to others. But how to name the Stone Mole?

Tryfan knew that his own naming came with his father Bracken’s first sight of him when, as a newborn pup, he climbed higher than his siblings and snouted upwards, making a form whose shape, Bracken said, reminded him in miniature of the solitary peak near Siabod on whose summit the Stones rise.

Remembering this Tryfan felt he should be the one to name the Stone Mole, and so for several days after his birth he huffed and puffed about it, looking this way and that for an inspiration that did not come.

But one day, as mothers will – as mothers must – Feverfew whispered nothings to her pup as he nestled contented at her belly. And Tryfan, allowed near for once, smiled to see them both content, and barely heard the words she spoke … ‘Yowe are myn sonne, and mayyowe bee the sonne for alle of us …’

Myn sonne. Owre sonne.

She spoke the words not as mole speaking mole speaks it, but accented long as if she said ‘sowne’, which the flowers are when the wind blows hot on a late summer’s day and the seeds scatter and drift to hide in the earth’s warm heart until a new spring comes.

But ‘sonne’, however pronounced, meant something else as well. Tryfan, knowing the traditions of the Dunbar moles of the Wen as he did, and having read many of the texts in their crumbling library, understood Feverfew’s natural play on words and that she was saying that the Stone Mole was not just her son, or Boswell’s, or both, but that he was the sun that would shine upon them all and bring them new life.

So much Tryfan understood, but he felt more instinctively, not fully understanding the way his thoughts ran, or towards what end. For in the moment he knew that for Feverfew ‘sonne’ meant several things, his own thoughts moved on from that and he remembered a day – a warm sunny day! – when he had first arrived at Beechenhill, and had the sense that in that good place, which seems to lie at the very heart of a natural beauty moledom has forgotten, a part of him had come home.

Beechenhill, whose mists and sun and curving fields, whose height and favoured prospect give it a wider fuller sky than most other systems he had ever seen. Beechenhill! A place where a mole such as the Stone Mole might have done better to be born than in outcast Duncton. Yes, Beechenhill.

The very place to which Mayweed and Sleekit, acting on a similar instinct, had taken Tryfan’s two pups by Henbane and so saved them, for as surely as the sun rose each day Tryfan felt that Wharfe and Harebell were safe and hoped that one day they might know him, or know at least that he had cared.

And thinking that, Tryfan trembled and then whispered as he looked on the Stone Mole pup: ‘His name could be Beechen, my love, after a place which all moles who visit it learn to love. A place of good moles, loving moles, moles trusted with my own. It is a worthy name.’

Feverfew thought, and touched, and whispered, and the pup turned and came closer. She whispered it yet more, annexing the name to him and to herself, and as she did so she did not see the tremble in Tryfan’s flanks, nor guess the sweet sorrow in his heart, nor see at once the tears that ran down his face. But when she did …

‘Myn luv!’ exclaimed Feverfew, concerned.

‘Well, a mole may cry if he likes,’ mumbled Tryfan, looking at Beechen and then at her. ‘’Tis something about the name and his vulnerability. I fear for him, Feverfew, and wonder what you and I can do for one marked out as he is.’

‘Luv hym trewe,’ said Feverfew, touching Tryfan’s face gently where his tears were. ‘Feare nat, the Stane ys his fader and we fynde favowre to watch over hym. Wan that we yaf doubts and troublis we wyll togider aske of the Stane ytys holpe and yt wyll guyde us tway. Beechen ys nowe hys nam.’

So Beechen got his name and Tryfan knew that one day, whatever other places the Stone Mole might visit, he would go to Beechenhill. Then Tryfan was thankful that the Stone had ordained that his own pups were living there, and might learn of their father from Beechen while they, in their turn, would be witness to Beechen’s coming, and give what support he might need.

Beechen’s puphood was as other moles’, and he was raised in the same burrow and tunnels which in long moleyears past had been Rue’s, the mole who bore Bracken’s first litter amongst whom was beloved Comfrey himself.

In those modest tunnels Feverfew chose to settle, and though the soil was not as wormful as some in Duncton, that mattered less since her need was only for herself and a single pup.

Despite the public nature of his birth, and the fact that it was witnessed by so many in Duncton, afterwards there was a communal sense that Feverfew and her pup needed privacy, and so, though all longed for the day when Beechen would go among them and be of their life, her tunnels were left in peace. A few did happen by, mainly females who longed for pups of their own and were cursed by the sterility which plague, stress and consequent disease seemed to have cast forever on that system. But none of these few moles got a sighting of the pup, and they were gently deterred by Tryfan from coming yet awhile.

So Beechen grew unseen, as young pups should, learning what Feverfew told him, her dialect words the first he ever heard. Later, when he was adult, her soft accent and sometimes curious turn of speech stayed as his own, and gave his words a touch of timelessness that ran from the past and forward to the future.

His eyes opened but a day or two after he was named, and from the first he seemed quick and curious, falling over himself to get at his mother’s milk and then, when full, not sleeping as other pups do but gazing in her eyes and then turning from her to venture from the encirclement of her paws.

Not that, at first, he dared go far, nor risked going anywhere when great Tryfan was about. Yet Tryfan was gentle with him, and Beechen soon found the confidence to crawl all over Tryfan and tussle with him as that mole allowed himself to be buffeted by the pup’s young paws. His fur then was fair, and Tryfan wondered at its softness, touching it with his gnarled cracked paws, discovering that when life starts it is so soft and tiny it’s a puzzle it survives.

The cold time of April passed with the pup barely seeing the surface above, nor being allowed to feel the blasting of chill winds upon his fur, or the showering rain that fell so easily through the still-leafless wood.

But in the first days of May, by which time Beechen was well grown for one of his age, and already talkative, Feverfew allowed him to quest his nervous way out of the tunnels towards the light and bright air above.

He ventured as far as an exit, poked his snout out, heard a run of wind through budding trees, and rushed back down to safety once again. But curiosity drives a mole up and out, and Feverfew was beginning to want to be on the surface once again, and so as the days went by Beechen was encouraged to venture out with her, and learnt to know the sounds of the wood, and associate them with comfort and not danger. A rustle of leaves was Tryfan coming, a flap of wings was but the harmless blackbird’s way, and the youngster could forget for a little his need of his mother as she groomed and rested in the first warming suns of May. But then strange sounds: the tumbling of a branch, a rook’s rough call, and he was away and down, back to where he was safe.

Rook? Feverfew told. A rustle of leaves not always stern Tryfan’s paws? Feverfew explained. A hooting owl at night? She warned.

Yet Beechen’s curiosity overcame his fears and he ventured out again and further still, too far now for Feverfew to leave him be for long before she must follow him, thankful she had not other young to fret over.

So far Tryfan was Beechen’s only other company, and Tryfan had to serve as a whole tribe of siblings, playful, irritable, generous, silent, always there but different and unpredictable until learned, just as siblings are.

In those molemonths of May, Feverfew delighted to see Tryfan’s smile and the way that so powerful and strong a mole could be so gentle with one who often tried him hard. For Beechen was sometimes more than boisterous, and as that May gathered strength and he grew more, he was not always easy in his response.

But Tryfan spoke with him, calmed him, laughed with him and even at him when he must, and troubles subsided and moments of harshness soon went. The youngster learned to listen quietly as Tryfan and Feverfew talked, each weaving stories of the past for the other, and myth as well, for moles like to talk and remember what they have been told and add something of themselves to it.

Of the Stone they often talked, and to it they spoke and prayed, Tryfan in his Duncton way and Feverfew as Wen moles did, with quiet passion. But neither spoke to Beechen directly of it, letting him absorb what they did and said, and in his own time ask.

Yet in the end it was to neither of them that he first directed such questions, but to one of those moles who, from mid-May, began to come into the small orbit of their lives. These were naturally all adults, since no other pups were born that spring in Duncton, and mainly those who had been closest to Tryfan and Feverfew at the time of Beechen’s birth and who, by virtue of the Seven Stancing that was then made, were his natural guardians. So old Skint and well-made Smithills came, interested more in talking to Tryfan than to the so-far untried pup. Bailey too, who played with him much in those days, for Bailey was ever a mole who understood the young, and perhaps in his playing came a little closer to the beloved sisters, Starling and Lorren, he had lost. Marram came by too, though he was mainly silent, a mole to trust and respect for the journey to Siabod he had made, but never one to talk unnecessarily. At that time the only female who came there was Sleekit, mysterious Sleekit, Mayweed’s mate, a mole who knew much and in time would impart much. Beechen was a little afraid of her, but curious, and always took stance near her when she came. For he had learned from Feverfew and Tryfan’s talk of the pups by Henbane, and how two of them, Wharfe and Harebell, had survived Whern with the help of Sleekit and Mayweed, and been partly raised by them. When he dreamed of having siblings, as he sometimes did, it was of these two unknown moles he thought; but Sleekit was too formidable a mole for him yet to dare ask her to tell him of those dread days.

Nor was it to any of these tried and tested moles that Beechen finally put his first serious questions about the Stone, but another. One we know, one we love, one more devoted to Tryfan than anymole alive.

If ever appearances were deceptive, and a mole looked one thing but in his nature was quite another, this mole was he. Patchy of paw, rotten of tooth, calloused of flank! But intelligent of eye, quick of brain, humourful of nature, great indeed in his lean, slight stature; huge in his humble spirit … He came into Beechen’s life quite suddenly one day, and, as with other moles whose ways he crossed and whose lives he changed, he came at the right time.

Beechen had wandered further from his home tunnels than Feverfew would have wished, and she, distracted by visitors, had somehow lost sight of him. But the wood had opened out alluringly and he had gone on until it had suddenly seemed to darken with the approach of evening. His natural fear of the unknown caught up with him and he had turned to run quickly back to more familiar surroundings which, to his consternation, he had not found. Instead the wood and its trees seemed to confuse him, the tunnels he ventured down for help scented ominous, and he had tried to keep calm but was failing miserably. It was then, as panic began to overcome him, that from behind and from nowhere, it seemed, an alarming mole appeared.

Beechen reared up in a not unimpressive stance of self-defence, but one in which he could not seem to prevent his back paws shaking, as the mole raised a paw of greeting and said, ‘Trembling tot, stupefied by my sudden and unexpected appearance, note my smile: it is astonishingly friendly. Note my stance: it unasserts. Remark upon my pathetic form: not likely to cause harm.’

‘Whatmole are you?’ asked Beechen doubtfully.

‘Inquisitorial Sir, I shall tell you. I am a humble mole, a nearly nothing mole, an almost anonymous mole!’

‘You’re Mayweed!’ said Beechen, relaxing.

Mayweed grinned, his teeth livid in the bad light.

‘You’re Sleekit’s mate. You’re Tryfan’s friend. You’re …’

‘I’m many things, still-growing Sir, son of fecund Feverfew.’

‘They said you speak strangely.’

‘Who, when, why, and how did they say it?’ demanded Mayweed.

‘Well …’ began Beechen.

‘Ill!’ declared Mayweed, his eyes lighting at the devious possibilities of verbal play.

‘Unwell!’ said Beechen.

‘Ailing,’ said Mayweed, delighted that Beechen was able and willing to join in his game.

‘Um … hurt?’

‘Unhealthy,’ said Mayweed immediately.

‘Er …’ But Beechen stopped, unable to think of another word expressing the same idea.

‘Diseased, injured, harmed, wounded, and afflicted, much-yet-to-leam-but-trying-very-hard Sir,’ said Mayweed, beaming with satisfaction and frowning as he thought of a dozen other words he might have added to the list but deciding against uttering them out loud.

‘Well!’ said Beechen, smiling.

‘Well indeed this mole me, Mayweed by name, agrees,’ said Mayweed finally.

So the two moles met and became friends, and not for the first time in his life, nor the last, Mayweed guided a mole back to safety who had got himself lost.

‘I didn’t know I was lost,’ said Beechen in surprise as they came back to familiar paths.

‘Serious state to be in that, self-losing Sir, very serious.’

‘I’d like to talk again,’ Beechen said as they parted.

‘Loquacious lad, this mole will return. He always does. He knows where losing’s to be found, he knows where darkness lurks, he’s been where all moles go if they are to go beyond themselves and helps them through. Mayweed understands. What will Sir wish to talk about?’

‘The Stone,’ said Beechen. ‘And Boswell.’ With that he was gone, and it was Mayweed’s turn to look surprised and even perplexed, and then to grin into the fading light and turn away, wandering on the surface for a while, then underground, following the course of his memory of Boswell, and stopping to think in awe of the many uncharted ways of the Stone.

When they next met Beechen simply asked Mayweed to show him how to route-find, which Mayweed did in his own peculiar way: beginning by getting Beechen completely and utterly lost within his own familiar tunnels.

‘Lost lad, feel it, and enjoy. Being lost is nectar to a route-finder’s soul; being lost, contrary to popular conception, is most enjoyable. Humbleness adores it, loves it, longs for it. Being lost! Too rarely happens to him now, not here in Duncton.’

‘But isn’t it very big?’ said Beechen. ‘You can’t know all of it!’

‘Too-eager youth leaps to his first confusion: know. For know he imagines you mean remembers. Humbleness remembers more than most and therefore knows more routes than most, but that is not how he route-finds. Most moles never route-find, they go along so desperate to keep their talon-hold on what little they know that they become confused the moment – as you now have, very average Sir – they lose hold. In short, they learn the way, remember it, and inevitably when they put a paw out of line get lost. In fact, humbleness avers that most become so afraid of becoming lost they go nowhere new at all which, he mildly suggests, is far worse than being lost since it is next to being dead.

‘A lost mole, like you, is therefore in a learning situation, as the moles of the Word put it so curiously. A learning situation! Mayweed loves it! Ha, ha, ha! A much better way of progressing is to assume you are lost from the beginning and must deduce each junction afresh. Exciting, that! This way? Or that way? Thinking keeps a mole young! Now … which way? Let us commence!’

The theory was over, for the time being, and poor Beechen, bewildered by the way Mayweed had got him lost in tunnels he should know, looked around in some panic as Mayweed darted this way and that, round and round, now here now gone, his snout disappearing and reappearing all over the place.

‘Clueless Beechen, a tip. Crouch down. Groom. Ponder the pleasantness of being alive. Forget you are lost. Let your body remind you what your mind has forgotten: you can never be lost, since you are here. Look at your paw! Here. Look at the mark it makes in the dust. Here. Hear your nervous breathing. Evidently here! So you are not lost.’

Beechen pondered this, relaxed, and eventually said doubtfully, ‘But I don’t know where I am.’

Mayweed beamed with pleasure as if Beechen had fallen into a trap he had intended him to.

‘Befuddled Beechen, wrong yet again. Crucially wrong. Think and learn, for this is the only way to become a route-finder. Don’t say, I don’t know where I am but "I don’t know where this place is". See? Understand? Appreciate?’

‘Sort of,’ said Beechen, who sort of did. Certainly he felt less panic-stricken than he had and, now he saw that his problem was not himself but the place, it was easier to keep calm; and certainly, he realised suddenly, there was something familiar about those walls.

Mayweed watched delightedly as Beechen snouted this way and that, scratched his head, breathed more deeply and, with the sudden sense that might come to a mole who falls headlong into a void and after whirling about lands safe again on his four paws, he saw where he was.

‘But we’re here!’ declared Beechen with a sudden rush of recognition. ‘But … !’ And he felt, and looked, angry at himself and the world for fooling him into thinking he was lost when he was not lost at all.

‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!’ Mayweed said, almost shouting the words. ‘You see, you know, you feel, and marvellous … you’ve found, young Sir.’

‘But …’ protested Beechen.

‘Ah! Astonished and marginally annoyed youth wonders how humbleness here got him to feel lost in the first place? Humble he is clever at such things. Humble he has made a study of such things. Humble he excels at it. By turning this way and then that way, by taking the young innocent’s mind off the route he was going, by making what was familiar become so unfamiliar that the bemused youngling could not even see correctly what was in front of his paws. We are in tunnels he has passed many times, but have come from a direction abnormal and stopped in a place and at an angle abnormal. Result? Confusion, panic and a sense of feeling lost. Dear oh dear, now bloodied Sir, and this is but the beginning!’ Mayweed laughed again, scratched himself, thought a bit, and finally told Beechen to take him to the surface and find him some food.

When they had relaxed and eaten, Beechen asked, ‘Will I ever become a good route-finder?’

‘With persistence and application, and a touch of genius – yes, Sir will,’ said Mayweed contentedly.

‘Will you teach me?’ asked Beechen.

‘Will you learn?’ replied Mayweed, his eyes bright.

‘Yes,’ said Beechen seriously. There was a pause, and then Beechen boldly asked, ‘What exactly is the Stone?’

‘That’s persistence!’ said Mayweed. ‘No sooner recovered from being lost than he rushes headlong into a most existential maze. Modest me had guessed that bold Beechen would soon seek the portal to that arcane world, but had vainly hoped that in the bewilderment of getting lost Sir would forget his interest in such things. Me, Mayweed, is not one to say much of the Stone. Tryfan knows it best. He was taught by Boswell.’

‘Who’s Boswell?’

‘Ah! Quick and speedy brained Sir, the questions will come thick and fast now like sounds in a badly made tunnel, and Mayweed will not be able to cope. Tryfan will give you better answers than Mayweed …’

‘I heard Tryfan say to Feverfew that you know more about the nature of the Stone than anymole alive.’

‘He did?’ said Mayweed softly, his bright eyes suddenly moist. ‘No, no, great Tryfan cannot have meant that, and anyway youngsters had best keep silent on what they hear until they know it to be true for themselves.’

‘What’s scribing?’

‘Sir will never stop now!’ said Mayweed with a sigh.

Then the sounds of approaching mole across the surface relieved him of the need to answer more and instead he asked, ‘Whatmole is that, young Sir?’

‘Tryfan, and he’s tired.’

‘Correct but incomplete. He comes from where?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Beechen.

‘That’s because loquacious lad was talking so much and asking inadequate me so many questions he forgot the route-finder’s cardinal rule, which is to keep half an ear open for sounds and clues, for they help, every one of them. Tryfan comes from upslope, some way towards the Stone.’

Which, when he reached them, Tryfan confessed he had.

‘But not from it. Nomole’s been there since Beechen was born. They’re waiting. Eh, Mayweed?’

Mayweed sighed and nodded.

‘This mole asks a lot of questions, peerless Tryfan, and so he should. Indeed, humbleness himself asks lots and will never stop. He’ll die asking questions, for that’s the way of route-finders. However, while he knows whatmole to ask (usually himself), burgeoning Beechen here is asking the wrong mole and should in Mayweed’s judgement direct his questions to you yourself, named Tryfan.’

Tryfan laughed but Mayweed did not even smile. Then as Beechen, bored by their conversation, turned from them and snouted a little across the surface, Mayweed said quietly, ‘Mayweed is made afraid by the youngster’s questioning. The nature of the Stone? Who was Boswell? The truth of scribing? The way to go … ?’ Mayweed looked full into Tryfan’s eyes, wavering. ‘When I am with this mole I am full of fear for moledom,’ he said simply. ‘I feel I cannot help him or guide him as I can other moles. I feel close to tears.’

Tryfan nodded and touched his old friend on the flank.

‘You are not alone in that, Mayweed. The mole is growing fast, he questions everything. But if he now asks you of the Stone and Boswell, it is more than he asks myself or Feverfew.’

Mayweed grinned and said, ‘See how he has drifted off … he must ask the questions but is afraid of the answers we will give. Youth, patriarchal Tryfan, is a touching thing but aren’t you glad you’ve left it far behind?’

Tryfan smiled.

‘When I was first told by Boswell that one day the Stone Mole would come, I thought he would come complete, full grown, ready to guide us. But …’

They stared across the woodland floor to where Beechen, seeming so young in the soft May light, touched a root, gazed up at a branch, scented at some leaves and then simply settled down to look out through the speckled shade that spread over the wood’s wide floor.

Tryfan continued, ‘But he has come newborn, a pup, and is in all our care. Each one of us in Duncton must give to him what we can, striving to teach him all we know, whatever he asks we must answer it truthfully. When moles fear answering questions asked it is because they fear something in themselves, and do not trust what the Stone ordains. Answer his questions, Mayweed, and tell others in Duncton to do the same. For soon now he will leave the home burrow and I shall take him to the Marsh End. There, as Midsummer comes, I shall teach him scribing as I taught you at Harrowdown one Midsummer that seems long ago. Be not afraid, Mayweed. Here he is among good moles, moles the Stone wished to be here. We are his guardians and until he is ready to guide and teach us, we must all be his teachers.’

They watched Beechen for a little longer until, aware perhaps of their silence, he came running back to them, his eyes alight with the beauty of the wood.

‘He’s teaching me to route-find,’ Beechen told Tryfan, going close to Mayweed.

‘Then you have found the best mole in all of moledom to teach you,’ said Tryfan. ‘Now come, your mother would talk with you.’

As they left, Mayweed watched after them, trouble still in his eyes. He stared at Beechen’s still slender haunches, but finally his look was for Tryfan.

‘You I’ll watch until you have no more need of me,’ he whispered. ‘This mole Mayweed loves Tryfan, and what great Spindle began in Uffington this mole will conclude. Who knows what ways lie ahead, but while you trouble yourself with the Stone Mole’s rearing, I’ll trouble myself with watching over you! Slower now you are, Sir, your fur patchy like mine, and Mayweed sees ways ahead for you which may be hard to find and fathom. But humbleness will be there.’

Then, as the two moles stopped at an entrance to go down, Beechen turned and looked back across the wood to the place from where Mayweed watched them. He saw Mayweed, and for a moment his body was quite still and his left paw a little raised. Mayweed saw the look in his eyes, and knew it. It was the look of love, terrible and strong, and before it a mole might quail. And at his raised paw there seemed a light, and Mayweed knew that he was blessed and that moledom would be guided, if only it knew how to see, and hear. That time was yet to come, but for now, here, in beleaguered Duncton, the moles had a task to teach a young mole all they knew, and it was a great and good one.

As June began they all noticed that Beechen grew withdrawn and difficult, asking questions to which he seemed not to listen to the answers, staying near moles he seemed not to want to address, making silence, making sudden outbursts. If there had been other youngsters about it might have been easier for the adults there, since he could have vented his confused needs.

Now, too, he began to wander far, but he seemed not to want to talk to anymole and none reported talking with him, though sometimes he was seen over on the Eastside or near the Marsh End. He seemed not to attempt to go near the Stone or out on to the dangerous Pastures and he came back to Feverfew for rest or food, but she knew his time with her was very nearly done.

‘I am muche afeard for hym wandering far,’ Feverfew would say when she and Tryfan had time to be close.

‘We all are, my love, but it is of more than shadows in Duncton that we fear for him. It is the darkness of which the grikes are a part that I fear. I know Whern’s ways. Rune may be dead, as Mayweed and Sleekit witnessed, but Henbane will have taken charge. Mistress of the Word! She will have cursed her father for not killing Boswell when they could have done. Now his son is come, which surely they must suspect, they will not rest until they have taken him. The day will soon come when they know or guess he is in Duncton Wood and he will have to escape from here. Now he has things to learn, and we must try to teach him, for that is our task. I shall take him to the Marsh End, my dear, and there teach him what I can of scribing, and then too other moles of Duncton – the many who have waited so long and patiently to see him, and who have left him well alone – shall come to tell him what they can. If he is the mole I think he is, he will listen well, and learn, and what he learns from us will give him much that he needs to know when he goes out in moledom and takes word of the Stone.’

‘Hee ys myn sonne,’ said Feverfew quietly, for talk of learning and journeying, guidance and the Stone, upset her. She who had borne him did not want to let him go. So as the sun of June brightened and grew clear, Feverfew grew apprehensive.

Today, historians of those times seek signs of what Beechen was to become in the few scraps of stories that are told about him then. Some say he had healing powers young, and even by the end of May was curing moles; others say that he made a journey to the Marsh End and spoke words of prophecy.

But it was not so. Tryfan himself, who left records that make the matter plain, tells us that until a certain day in mid-June, Beechen was pup and youngster like any other with nothing much to mark him out except, perhaps, a certain grace of form and the common sense intelligence of a mole who needed to be told things that mattered only once.

In the last few days before he first touched the Stone, as if he was beginning to understand that he must at last turn his back on puphood for all time, he slept badly and suffered nightmares, but recovered soon enough. Whatever darkness passed through their tunnels in those final nights vanished and their youngster slept as deep and sound as every youngster should.

At last a dawn had come which called Tryfan and Feverfew out into the wood. The whole of moledom seemed to wake about them as they groomed and ate, a day of beauty and change when a mole might take up his task. They felt that in travelling through the dark nights past they had grown nearer each other and nearer a joyful day to come.

‘A day of sunshine such as this one,’ said Tryfan softly, looking about the wood he loved, ‘a day when Duncton is found once more. I think I shall be gone by then, and you, my love! Our tasks will be done and other moles will be where we are now, to turn about as we do and rejoice in what they see. Theirs to inherit what we leave behind, as we have, and our parents before us. Theirs to guess at what we knew; theirs to know what we cannot.

‘But this sun shall be the same, and it will warm their fur as it warms ours. And the Stone shall be there and be the same. Touching it, they shall be nearest what was good in us. Touching it, we can reach out to what will be best in them. The Silence they strive for will be the same as that which, Stone willing, we will have found.’

Then Tryfan and Feverfew were close and touching, and the light was on them and in the dew about, and all Duncton Wood felt it was at one and, if purposeful, would have no need to doubt.

It was a little later that same June morning that Beechen came to the exit nearby and saw the sun, and all knew this was his day to touch the Stone. Then, with all of moledom waiting as the sun rose high, they had begun the trek up towards the Duncton Stone.

Chapter Three

The same June sun that lit their way that morning shone down its special light in other places in moledom, and upon other moles. Some saw that light well, others darkly.

All moles know – even those whose systems have long been in the control of the grikes and whose faith, if such it can be called, is of the Word – that there are seven Ancient Systems in moledom, where the Stones rise true and moles of faith seek to abide.

Most, like Duncton, Rollright, Avebury and Fyfield, have long been taken over by the grikes, and the Stone followers broken and dispersed. Yet even then a very few followers scraped a living nearby hoping that one day better times would come and they could open their hearts to their special Stone and touch it once again.

But two systems of the ancient Seven had been deserted altogether, unoccupied by grike or follower. One was Uffington, where Boswell served his novitiate and where he had been captured by Henbane of Whern and lost to moledom for so many years.

The other was the least known of the seven: Caer Caradoc in the west, where in recent times only a vagrant family of moles had lived, of which only one had survived, living alone and mateless, wandering the hills of the wild Welsh Marches, keeping faith with the few followers of the Stone in those parts who, leaderless and systemless, clung on to their faith with that stubborn obstinacy and pride of place that marks out the moles of those wormless parts.

He had been named Caradoc by his father, after the Stones whose destiny it was to have him as their guardian, and already he has played a part in our history, for he it was who first guided Tryfan’s emissaries, Alder and Marram, on to Siabod where for good or ill they went to show the besieged Siabod moles how they might best resist the grikes.

Of that we will soon know more, but now, today, this June, we discover the ragged and hungry Caradoc climbing the steep slope towards the Stones that are his birthright and his burden.

For days before had he travelled, driven by some inner need, from the western hills into which he had wandered, back to a system moles, and time, seemed long ago to have forgotten. Through honeysuckle ways he went, among the meadowsweet, and then finally up the remorseless bracken-covered slopes above which Caer Caradoc looms dark, its flat fell top out of sight from below.

Slowly at first and then with quickening step he was drawn back up to where his life began and where, he had no doubt, it must one day end.

In those days none but those in Duncton Wood itself knew who the Stone Mole was, or even whether he had come. That secret so far was Duncton’s own to be revealed only when and how the Stone ordained. Yet many across moledom guessed that somewhere he had come at last for a star had shone, and while grikes and unbelievers protested that it was but a phenomenon of the skies, the followers were sure it was more than that, and that the star was the Stone’s own sign that its mole had come and soon their faith would be tried and tested hard and they must try to be ready.

Such a believer was the vagrant Caradoc, and such was his fervour that those few friends he had and trusted with his thoughts said privately among themselves that Caradoc saw signs of the Stone in everything, even the passing sheep!

Caradoc cared not, and when that inner call came to return to the Stones he loved most of all, he had heeded it. Now, this June morning, as he returned at last, the light seemed especially clear, and the ground to tremble with purpose and hope.

The going was rough, and lesser moles might have cursed the dew that encumbered their paws and made them slip as they struggled upwards. But faithful Caradoc saw only the bright light caught in the glistening drops and was glad that he had health and strength to climb the slopes before him. He lingered sometimes to catch his breath and admire the special green of the leaves of tormentil and wonder at why it was he almost smelt the sense of change in the air that morning. Then his breath recovered, and with the prospect of the Stones themselves and the flatter fell getting ever closer, he went steadily on, speaking out his prayers and offering his faith and life aloud, as moles who spend too much time alone sometimes do.

If the seeming weakness of his harried body belied the evident strength of his spirit and ability to press on it was because of a special belief he had – and which he expounded to all moles who would listen – that one day to this deserted, bereft place, where most moleyears the wind blew cold and the snows lay hard, to this very place the Stone Mole himself would come. Aye, and he’d give his blessing and these long years of Caradoc’s lonely faith and courage would find their reward. For surely, inspired by the knowledge that the Stone Mole had come even here, moles would return once more to Caer Caradoc, and though the soil was not so wormful as in the vales below they would make the system live again.

A few more yards, a little more effort, and there he was once more, before the Stones he loved. To those who knew the Duncton Stone, the Caradoc Stones were modest enough, but to Caradoc himself, who knew no other and whose faith was great, no Stones were more grand, nor ever could be. Certainly, though modest in size, their stance was noble and sure, and few prospects in moledom are more striking than the vales and hills they watch over, east and west, north and south. He felt his heart lift in joy and his faith renewed, for this was a good place to be, one where a mole might feel himself well found and know that one day, if moles had strength enough, then moledom could be made aright once more.

Aye! The sun shining among these Stones, and the breeze across the glistening grass and in among the bracken and bursting heather, why that gave a mole good faith! Yet more than that struck Caradoc as he looked about over the hills and finally to the mountains of the north and west where, visible that day, the mass in which distant Siabod and Tryfan rose. He gasped at a sense he had that today – today and nearly now! – there was great power in the earth and a trembling promise of life and death, of light and dark in which, if a mole was to know the Silence which was a follower’s best intent, then he must look to himself afresh and not flinch from whatever task he now faced. Aye!

Then Caradoc went forward to touch the greatest of the Stones, but even as he reached up to do so he pulled sharply back, hesitant and fearful, looking about him as if there were shadows near and he should protect himself. But though there was nothing, only light and his imaginings, he crouched down before the Stone, and decided not to touch it yet.

‘Not time,’ he muttered, not knowing why and taking a humble stance. ‘No, it’s not time yet. But I think it will be soon. There’s something about the light this morning that tells me that I’ll know what to do and when.’ He fell silent and kept his snout low. His flanks shivered a little though the day was warm.

‘I’m scared, that’s what I am,’ he said to himself, ‘and I want others near me. A mole can’t go on alone forever.’

Then he spoke a prayer: ‘Send moles, Stone, send moles who have been vagrants as I have, send them to Caradoc. Send them one day that they may see the light as I do, and share the beauty of the Stone. Let those nearby come to Caradoc and those near other systems go to their own. Send moles to this place and make it live again. Grant it, Stone, if it be thy will. Grant too that I may find a mate and know the joy of seeing my own pups run and play among these Stones which in all my life have only known one pup’s laughter, which was my own. Grant it if it be thy will.’

So Caradoc prayed, so he waited, and the sun was warm in his fur and though he saw it not himself – for his snout was as low as his humility was great – that sun made his fur shine as it never had before, as he waited for his time to touch the Stone again.

While Caradoc waits we must travel on, to visit a system whose name we have heard before, but whose dry grass ways and proud Stones we have so far left unvisited. We must venture there to witness the beginning of a life of dedication to the Stone, by a mole who shall in time be much loved, much loved indeed.

If a mole might choose a day he might first travel where we go now, let it be a June day such as this, when the sun shines bright and blue harebells blow across its chalky grass and the great rising beeches of its knolls cast welcome shade across its venerable Stones.

It is to great Avebury we have come, set most southerly of all, a system with history and holiness enough that it should be no surprise that from it a great mole might one day come.

But long now has been noble Avebury’s suffering, long and remorseless. For to it the plagues came hard, and after them the grikes visited in force, killing most of its adult Stone followers and perverting its young towards the Word to make them derelict of spirit, and much demeaned.

In all the chronicles of grike outrage few are as sad as that inflicted upon Avebury, whose young were forcibly mated with moles of the Word, and whose happy rhymes and rituals and dances of seasonal delights were reviled and mocked, their performance made punishable.

But there lived in the grike-run Avebury tunnels one old female who could just remember the time before the plagues and the Word, which meant she could remember the Stones themselves, and was the last surviving Avebury mole to have touched them.

Her name was Violet, a worthy Avebury name, and by that June morning, when the Stone Mole in distant Duncton was being taken to the Stone, she was old indeed, and near her time. She had escaped punishment and Atonement of the Word by feigning vagueness and stupidity, but those few who knew her well knew she was more than she seemed, though none could ever have guessed how much.

The grikes let her live because she pupped well and reared her young clean, and she had in her time given guardmoles sturdy, well-found pups. But latterly, growing older, thinking her mating days were done, the grikes had let her go among the few pathetic local males who remained. With which she mated nomole knows, but into pup she went, fecund to the last, and in the cycle of seasons before the June we come to Avebury, she pupped a final litter.

She reared them hoping that among them would be one with whom she could share her ancient irreplaceable secrets of the Stone. But though she was hopeful for a time of one, named Warren, he insisted on becoming a guardmole and so she could not trust him to be silent. She knew the Word used sons against mothers, for that is in the vile nature of its way.

Somehow she survived the winter years, and come the new spring, the very same the Stone Mole had been born, Warren mated, and had young. Violet, growing blind now, was allowed to visit them, and when she did and she touched them with her withered paws, she felt the Stone’s grace come to her, and knew there was one among them the Stone’s light had touched. A female, sturdy and good, who soon showed a nature Violet knew well indeed for when, so long before, she herself was young, before the grikes came and moles ran free among the Avebury Stones, it was her own.

The mole was called Mistletoe, but from the first she was known as ‘Mistle’. When May had come, and Mistle was beginning to speak well and learn the world about her, Violet had asked Warren to let the youngster leave the nest and live in her old burrow, to help her now she was infirm and found it hard to take worms and clear out summer tunnels.

Which Warren agreed to, persuading his dull grike mate that one less pup was one less mouth to feed, and his old mother had earned some help in her last moleyears.

Then, when Mistle had come, Violet found ways to begin to tell her of the Stone; subtly, gently, and, as is the way with youngsters when adults treat them as they would themselves, Mistle understood the special nature of such talk and that it was secret to herself alone.

When June came Mistle unexpectedly asked her grandmother, old now, blind, and unable to travel far, to take her to see the Stones.

‘Hush, my dear, that’s not for us to speak of.’

‘But you’re not afraid of them like other moles, are you? I’ve heard you speak to them.’

‘And what think you of that, my love?’ said Violet, not denying it. She knew she talked to herself these days, and to the Stones as well, no doubt.

‘I … I don’t know. I don’t think I’m afraid of the Stones.’

‘Have you told others you’ve heard me speak to them?’

‘No!’ said Mistle vehemently. ‘They wouldn’t understand, though I know you do.’

‘Understand what, my dear?’ said Violet softly, her voice trembling. She felt the Stone was guiding them.

‘That the Stones are there. They always have been. They’re like the ground itself or the sky. And … and …’