Tara then took the baby over to the far side of their large round room, and laid it to rest on the cushion of meadowsweet she had collected and saved from last year for her own cubs. The smell of the meadowsweet tended to overpower any other smells and so was extremely useful for cubs and, she supposed, human babies as well. She then took off the various layers of clothing and material with which it had been wrapped and put them in a comer to take out and bury later on. There was one article, though, which she decided to keep; it was a beautiful multi-coloured silk shawl and Tara liked both the colour and the feel of it. In later years, she thought, the little male creature lying there so peacefully might be glad of some reminder of his past; some link with his heritage. This shawl she carried over to one of the walls of their room and, having dug a small hole in the wall, placed it in and then covered it with soil. By the time she had finished, the baby had begun to screw up his little face again and started to cry. ‘He must be famished,’ she thought and lay down next to him. She hoped that her teats were full enough with milk; if not, she would really be lost as to what to give him to eat. Still her own cubs were due not too far away, as Brock had said, so she should be all right. She pulled the baby up towards her and drew his face near her teats with a paw. For an agonizing minute or two nothing happened but then, to Tara’s intense relief, he began to suck. Physically he could have been one of her own cubs suckling, but emotionally she felt very strange; here she was, giving food from her own body to a baby human. It would have been odd enough if she had been suckling another sow’s cub but this was a different animal and an Urkku at that!
Yet despite this strangeness she also felt the warmth and tenderness that Brock had experienced earlier towards the baby, and she undeniably felt a sense of excitement and adventure as she sat cradling this strange head in her paw and feeling the baby suck.
He was soon satisfied and Tara laid him down carefully on the meadowsweet and covered him with strips of birchbark on top of which she laid dead bracken. He was very soon asleep and Tara set about cleaning the room; dragging out all the old and soiled bedding and putting new fresh stuff on the floor from the piles around the outside of the room. She occasionally ran her paws along the roof to clear it of cobwebs for the ceiling was latticed with the roots of the Great Beech and the spiders liked to build along and at the side of them. She finally went over to the entrance to the tunnel and ran her paws down the three large roots that framed the doorway; one at the top and two down either side. This had been done so often through the centuries that they were now a wonderfully rich dark brown colour and they shone and felt smooth to the touch. There were also little gashes down them where, on the darkest wettest nights, badgers had been unable to go to the scratching post outside the sett and so had sharpened their claws on the two old hard roots at the side. These scratch marks always reminded Tara of the past generations of badgers who had lived here. She wondered how they had died; how many had been killed by the Great Enemy and how many had simply gone peacefully in their sleep.
When she had finished her housecleaning she went through the door and up the short passage which led out to the wood. She put her nose out into the air and immediately had to screw up her eyes to protect them from the glare, for the sun was shining brightly from a clear blue sky and was reflecting up from the snow which lay in thick white smoothness all around. She could tell without looking that the sun was high in the sky, shining down through the branches of the Great Beech. It was time to rouse Brock. She backed down the passage (for there was no space to turn round) and had to wait awhile when she was back in the room to let her eyes adjust to the light. She went over to Brock and gently placed the tip of her nose against his. He awoke without a start, yawned, stretched and got up.
‘Hello,’ he said sleepily and then saw the baby. ‘Oh my goodness,’ he exclaimed as the events of the previous night began to come back and the full impact of what he had done dawned on him.
‘You wanted me to wake you at Sun-High,’ Tara said.
‘Yes; there’s a lot to do and not much time. I heard the Midnight Bells last night and you know what that means for tomorrow, so I must call a Council for tonight. And then there is this baby Urkku. Did you manage to feed him?’ Tara nodded. ‘Good. But some of them won’t like it and they may even try to kill him. They will have to be told, of course; we could never keep him secret when he gets bigger and it’s better to tell them now when he is so helpless and harmless than later when he begins to grow and look more like an Urkku. It’s a bad time, though, with the deaths and injuries that the Enemy will cause tomorrow. I must go and tell Warrigal to summon the Council and then we’d better have a talk with the rest of the sett.’ He went towards the door. ‘Everywhere looks very clean,’ he said, and vanished up the passage.
He emerged into the day and, like Tara, was almost blinded by the glare from the snow. ‘It’s too bright,’ he muttered, ‘too bright.’ But the warmth of the sun felt wonderful on his back and face. It seemed to spread through his body and fill him with new life. He barked quietly twice, looking up at the Old Beech. There was no reply. ‘He’ll be fast asleep,’ he thought. He barked again. Suddenly he felt someone behind him and turned round. It was Warrigal the Wise, standing blinking at him. ‘Don’t do that,’ Brock said. ‘You frightened me.’ You could never hear Warrigal; it was almost uncanny the way he could fly, even through branches and thick rhododendrons, without making a sound.
‘You want me to summon the Council,’ Warrigal said. ‘I heard the bells last night as well.’
‘Yes,’ said Brock. ‘Call them for tonight. And listen, Warrigal; there’s another matter which I want to raise and which I should like to mention to you briefly now.’ Brock felt it would be prudent to tell Warrigal about his strange guest and get him on his side before the others were told. Everyone admired Warrigal for his knowledge and what he advised was always regarded with respect by the rest of the wood, albeit somewhat grudgingly by some of the loners like Rufus the Red. He also felt that a private chat with him might clear his own mind on a few matters before the whole affair came out into the open. Badgers and Owls had been allies in the protection of the Wood as far back as the beginning of legend. The Badgers’ knowledge of the ground and the Owls’ command of the air made a good combination. They were both creatures of extremely ancient heritage and tradition, unlike some of the more recent additions like the pheasants and squirrels, and between them they could muster a great deal of knowledge and intuitive wisdom. Brock therefore felt that if anyone could understand his feelings of the previous night, it was this trusted friend. Besides, the fact that he had a baby Urkku down in the sett this very minute was quite a devastating piece of news and it was a nice change to be able to tell Warrigal, who always seemed to hear all the news first, something which he did not already know.
Surprisingly, and to Brock’s annoyance, the owl did not seem very shocked although he obviously had not known. He merely listened attentively, occasionally giving a long slow blink, while Brock told the whole story. When he had finished Warrigal looked down at the snow and shifted his feet slightly on the root where he was standing. He stood like that for a few seconds and then turned his head round, first to the right and then to the left, as if looking for anyone who might be listening. Then he stared hard at the badger. ‘Well,’ Brock said impatiently, ‘what do you make of it?’