‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
‘I’m Bracken,’ he said after a moment, and then suddenly turned and scurried off up the track and into the evening light. And light dawned on her. She gasped and reached out after him and started to run back the way he had gone. Bracken! So he was Bracken! So hunched, so small, so defenceless.
‘I’m Rebecca,’ she called. ‘My name is Rebecca.’ But he was gone long before the words were out. Then she stopped and turned back to the tunnel he had led her to and ran with relief back into the depths of the main system.
At the spot by the entrance to the tunnel where she had touched him so briefly the air was very still and quiet, with just the drip, drip, drip of the last of the rain from the trees, while far away the heart of the storm moved on across country, leaving Duncton Wood to the silence of the evening and its higher deserted part to the silence of the Stone.
Chapter Two
The entrance down which Rebecca ran so thankfully was the highest of those leading into the main Duncton system. Above it the wood narrowed to the summit of the hill, flanked on one side, the southeast, by the steep, rough face of the chalk escarpment and to the west by rolling pastures that fell gently away to clay vales in the distance.
Up there the chalk reached nearly to the surface of the ground, yielding only a thin, worm-scarce soil, but supporting tall grey beech trees whose fall of leaves formed a dry, brown rustling carpet in the wood. The roots of the trees twisted like torn flank muscles among the leaves, while here and there a patch of shiny chalk reflected the sky.
There was always a windsound there, if only just a murmur among the leaves. But sometimes the strong grey branches of the trees whipped and cut the wind into whines and whispers; or a tearing screech of winter gales raced headlong up from the slopes below, exploding into the trees on top of the hill before rushing on over the sheer scarp face, carrying a last falling leaf or tumbling a dry and broken twig out and down to the chalkfall below.
This highest and most desolate part of Duncton Wood is also the most venerable, for beneath its rustling surface is the site of the ancient mole system of Duncton, long deserted and lost.
Here too stands the great Stone, at the highest point of the hill where the beeches thin out, bare to all the winds—north, south, east and west. And from here a mole might see, or rather might sense, the stretching triangle of Duncton Wood, spreading out below to the escarpment on the east side and the pastures on the west, with the marsh, where nomole goes, beyond the northern end.
At the time Bracken and Rebecca first met, and for many generations before, the system lay on the lower slopes of the hill where the wood was wide and rich. There the beeches gave way to oaks and ashes and thick fern banks, and pockets of sun in the summer. Down there, birds sang or flittered, while badgers padded and barked at night. Down there, life ran rich and good with a worm-full soil black with mould, moist with change. There the wind was slowed and softened by the trees.
Nomole, not a solitary one, lived now up in the Ancient System. Slowly they had migrated from the desolate heights, rolling down through the generations as a pink mole pup rolls blindly down a slope too steep for its grip. First its stomach rolling over its weak front paws, then its soft talons scrabbling uselessly at the soil, then its rump and back paws arching over, until at last it lies still again. So, bit by bit, the generations had come down to the lower system where the wood lay rich and welcoming. They migrated still, but only from one side of the wood to the other, as each new generation left its home burrows in the middle of summer to make burrows for itself or reoccupy deserted ones.
In Bracken’s time the strongest group in the system were the Westsiders, whose burrows flanked the edge of the wood next to the pastures. The soil there was rich and much desired, so only the toughest moles could win a place and defend it. With the dangerous Pasture moles nearby as well, Westsiders needed an extra measure of aggression to survive. Naturally they tended to be big and physical, inclined to attack a stranger first and ask questions after. They laughed at physical weakness and worried if their youngsters didn’t fight the moment they were weaned. Gentler moles like Bracken, whose father, Burrhead, was one of the strongest of the Westsider males, had a tough time of it. They were ridiculed and bullied for not wanting to fight and only the most wily learned quickly enough that to survive they needed to be masters of compromise, cajolery and the art of disappearance at times of trouble.
Eastsiders were less aggressive. They lived on a drier, harder soil, which made for fewer of them. They were small and stocky and superb burrowers. Independent, not to say eccentric, Eastsiders were rarely seen and hard to find, for their tunnels spread far in their worm-poor soil. Their territory was bounded to the east by the steep drop of the chalk scarp and to the south by the rising slopes of the hill.
Northwards lay the marsh, where the air hung heavy and damp with strange rush grasses clicking scarily above a mole’s head. Although the Duncton moles called it marsh, it was in fact a range of poorly drained fields, permanently wet from the two streams that started near the edge of the wood where clay overlay the tilted chalk. Because the marsh was always waterlogged, it couldn’t be burrowed, which made it dangerous ground for moles. The smell was wrong, the vegetation different, the noises of birds and other creatures strange and terrifying. The marsh assumed vast proportions in their minds, a place of dark, dank danger never to go near.
The northern stretch of the wood next to it was called the Marsh End and the moles who lived there—the Marshenders—were feared and reviled, as if they carried a curse from the dangerous place they lived so near. They were felt to be a treacherous lot, known to attack outsiders in twos or threes, something the Westsiders would never do. They were unhealthy, too, for if disease came to the system, it always seemed to start in the Marsh End. Their females were coarse and mocking, inclined to spur on their mates with encouraging shouts or mock them the moment they suffered defeat, switching their loyalties at the fall of a talon.
No one group lived on the slopes above the main system below the top of the hill. Just a few older, hardy moles, who liked to tell stories of the old days and who ekedout a scraggy living in the poorer chalky soil there. Many went mateless in the spring, and few pup cries were heard there in the April weeks.
Nomole knew the whole system—it was too large—but all knew and loved its centre: Barrow Vale. Here the elder burrows lay, and in early spring white anemones glistened between the trees before the bluebell carpet came, mirroring a clear spring sky.
At Barrow Vale a pocket of gravelly soil caused the oaks to thin out, creating a natural open space warmed by the sun in summer, white and silent in the snow of deep winter, always the last place of light in the wood at nightfall. Being wormscarce because of the poor soil, its tunnels were communal and everymole went there without fear. It was a place of gossip and chatter, where young moles met to play and venture out, often for their first time, on to the surface. It was relatively safe from predators, too, for the tunnels that radiated from it to all parts of the system made for early warning of an approaching danger long before it arrived.
As for owls, the most fearsome enemies of the moles, they rarely came there, preferring the wood’s edge where they could wait in the trees and dive down on their prey clear of the branches. So, for a Duncton mole, Barrow Vale was a place of security to go back to from time to time.