Yet it had also become something of a trap as well. For long, long before, when the system had been smaller, up on top of the hill, with the Stone as the natural centre, the lie of the land had made the moles outward-looking, seeking new places, eager to follow their snouts into the distance. But lower Duncton Wood was worm-rich and safe, so it was foolishness to want to go outside it.
Inevitably there were dark stories of those who had tried and always, so it seemed, met a terrible end. Some had actually been seen being torn in the talons of an owl almost the moment they set paw on to the pastures; some had died of sadness, others had suffocated in the mud of the marsh.
But generally, few moles concerned themselves with these places or such fears: they kept their snouts clean, fought for their own patch, found and ate their worms, slept in their dark burrows, and pulled themselves through the long moleyears of winter until, blinking but aggressive, they came out in spring for the mating time.
Each full moon represented the passing of another moleyear, with the Longest Day at Midsummer the happiest time and the Longest Night—at the end of the third week of December—the darkest and most treacherous: a time to placate the Stone with prayers and to celebrate the safe passage into the start of the new cycle of seasons in the snug safety of a warm home burrow. A time to tell stories of fights gone by, and worms and mates to come. A time to survive.
A place to survive! By the time Rebecca and Bracken were born, that was all the once proud Duncton system had become. Its pride was all in the past when, setting out from the shadow of the great Stone, many a young adult male ventured forth from Duncton Wood carrying its name far off to other systems. Inspired by the talk of scribemoles, many of them headed for the Holy Burrows of Uffington, others simply wanted to show that they could live for a while alone, or in other systems, and then come back with new experience and wisdom to their home system. And how exciting it was when one returned! Word would go round the chalky tunnels of the Ancient System and many would gather about him and give him worms for encouragement as he told his stories. Of fights and strange places and different customs. A very few were able to tell how at Uffington they had had the honour to see, perhaps even to touch, one of the legendary White Moles said to live there.
But that was past. Even the oldest mole in the system, Hulver the elder, could not remember a time when a mole had left the system and returned, or a time when the system had been visited by a friendly mole. Hulver himself rarely talked of the past—he tried but had found that the ears of the new generations seemed increasingly deaf and he had given up. He preferred to mutter and sing to himself, picking out his hard life as one of the isolated moles who lived in the worm-poor slopes below the hilltop.
Once in a while he would talk, though, and the moles around would listen out of respect for his age (or rather for his ability to survive). Indeed, after the last elder meeting before the Longest Night preceding Bracken’s birth, when everymole was in a mellow mood, he had told a group of chattering moles in Barrow Vale: ‘I can remember my father telling me that the system used to be visited each Midsummer year by a scribe from the Holy Burrows.’ (And old Hulver inclined his head to the west where Uffington lay.) ‘He would crouch with the elders by the great Stone, for that was the centre of things then, and question them about the state of the system.
‘But even when I was young, it was a long time since a scribemole had been. They said then, and I believe it now, that something happened to stop the scribes coming and that no scribe could ever come again. If I had known that to be so when I was young—when I was your age,’ he added, looking especially at the younger moles about him, ‘I think I would have gone forth as my father’s father did, even if it meant that, like him, I never came back.’ But Hulver was old and they dismissed this last comment as old age talking, a foolish dream that might have crossed each of their minds at one time or another, but which none with sense should listen to.
Yet Hulver was right: something had happened. The system, the Ancient System of Duncton—a system whose glorious past was written up by the scribes in some of the most venerable histories in Uffington—Duncton had been cut off.
It was isolated, anyway, by the sheer chalk escarpment, and the marsh to the north. And then, in Hulver’s grandfather’s time, the road that had always been a hazard far off to the north and west had been developed so that it was uncrossable for moles, or hedgehogs, or almost any creature.
Scribemoles charged with the fearful task of visiting Duncton had tried and failed. Some were killed on the road by what the moles who lived near it called ‘the roaring owls,’ some never had the courage, or the faith, to venture on to it at all.
So Duncton had been left unvisited, safe enough in its isolation but declining in spirit through the years for want of the kind of stimulus new moles, especially scribes, could give. Many of its traditions died, only the most important, like the trek of the elders to the Stone at Midsummer—and on the Longest Night—surviving. Its legends and stories were passed down but in an increasingly romantic or simple form, for few of the new moles had the love of language or spiritual strength that taletellers of the Ancient System had had.
Yet had they been able to know what was happening in other systems, the Duncton moles might have drawn a small consolation from the fact that their own decline merely echoed a decline in the spirit and energy of moles in general. Even the scribes were not quite what they had been, for in the past a scribe would have made his way to Duncton Wood, revelling in the trial to his soul that the new dangers created; and once there he would have left no doubt about what he thought of the fat, sleek, complacent mole the Duncton mole seemed often to have become.
But would the Duncton moles have cared? Certainly most of the seven elders of Bracken’s youth would have been unimpressed by a scribe’s comments, for they were of the new breed, born with the inward-looking attitude of the lower system. Elders like his own father, Burrhead, for example, simply would not have understood a scribemole’s comments about the lack of spirit at Duncton: ‘Haven’t we got worms, don’t we defend the system, aren’t there plenty of youngsters coming out?’ That’s what he would have said.
Rune was another elder, originally from the Westside as well, though to be near the centre of things he had moved his burrow nearer to Barrow Vale. He was a menacing mole who wove warning into his words, which were usually as dark and dank as the Marsh End soil. What he lacked in terms of Burrhead’s size and muscle he more than made up for in cunning and deviousness. His ear was tuned to disaster, for he knew when the bad weather was coming or when a tree might fall. He knew when the owls were hungry (and was capable then of leading his opponents to a place where they might become owlprey) or where disease might be found.
He was always the clever one, was Rune, always so clever. But you didn’t stay long with him without sadness creeping into you and a desire for clean air in your fur. You didn’t meddle with Rune either, because a terrible thing would happen to moles who did: they seemed to die.
His voice was cold as ice, dry as dead bark and covered with the red velvet of a dangerous sky. Nomole liked to fight him, nomole ever came forward who ever saw him kill. Yet each mating time he would kill for a mate, luring his rival somewhere dark and treacherous. Rune was a shadow on life, and much feared.
‘He’s the clever one, he is,’ moles were inclined to whisper about him. ‘He’ll know when his opportunity comes. He’ll take over the system one day with his cunning ways and warning words.’