He paused and was silent.
“The Duncton Stone!” said Bramble with excitement, liking the dream.
“Here, on this very spot,” said Harebell, smiling.
“I don’t know,” said Betony, capturing Harebell’s deeper concern.
The three turned to Wharfe, for him to decide, but his question asked he seemed to have lost interest and turned back north to gaze at the dark mounting cloud that seemed to be bearing out of nothing towards them, right across the northern sky.
Then he was wild again, staring this way and that, distressed.
“I thought I heard....”
“What did you hear?”
“A note. Deep, like a calling to us all. Didn’t any of you hear it?” He seemed surprised and he looked troubled. The dark of his fur and powerful form was mirrored by the terrible approaching sky behind. Still the sun shone bright, but the day had a shadow across it.
Then quite suddenly there was a note, deep and haunting, mournful, quite short, yet in its effect as persistent as a hungry pup’s cry.
“We’re wanted!” cried out Wharfe with certainty. “It’s as it was when one of us called when we were young, and the others knew he was needed and must go quick.”
The others looked at him in alarm, and at the coming clouds, and then reared up in readiness as he himself reared up, turned and said, “I’m needed by the Stone. Now. We’re all needed, and I don’t know why. All moledom’s needed. Can’t you feel it?”
He turned and began to run back upslope and Bramble, who least understood the terrible urgency of the moment, called after him, “You never said where we would meet to be together again. You never said....”
“At our own Stone, at Beechenhill: there we must go now, and there one day we’ll be needed and we’ll meet again. At the Stone of Beechenhill....”
Then Tryfan’s son by Henbane was gone upslope among the grass, faster than they could follow up the long, long way towards Beechenhill’s Stone.
As he went, quicker and quicker, urgent against the darkening sky, the June sun faltering on his back, the others came after him, and moles they passed watched and wondered what the fuss was about before they too stared up at the forbidding sky, and began to think a storm was on the way for the air was restless, and heavy, and the light now strange indeed.
While on ran Wharfe, leaving his sister and friends further and further behind as he strove to reach the Stone before the darkening sky overcast it with shadow and driving rain. As he went he felt that in some terrible and mysterious way the very future of moledom was in his paws. Yet not just in his own: in all their paws, to make or mar as they themselves decreed.
North now, beyond the Dark Peak and into the turbulent shadows that confuse a mole that travels on from there.
Past fair Grassington. Past the crag of Kilnsey and then over the River Wharfe, which marks the edge of Whern and gave Tryfan’s son by Henbane his name, and up the limestone terraces that form Whern’s westward flank.
No sun there now. Its light has gone and June seems all unknown.
Lucerne is abroad.
Lucerne come with his mother to take pleasure in the livid and corrupted sky.
Lucerne, dark one of the three. Henbane’s own, cherished and cosseted by her, reared for fell purpose and darkest of intents, the hope for redemption of generations of moles who chose scrivening and dark sound.
Lucerne, a mirroring of his brother Wharfe, but a reflection seen in the black alluring depths of an evil pool. Eyes and body much the same but biased too well to elegance, his body and limbs making their stance too well to trust. His arrogant beauty abnormal and most sinister.
Just as one forebear, Mandrake, was in Wharfe’s rich veins so another’s blood had seeped like disease into Lucerne’s: Rune’s own.
“What is it, my sweet?” asked Henbane, smiling from the shadows of Whern’s tunnels where she preferred to stay.
“The light I hated has gone out across the fell and darkness is going south from here, as I decreed it should,” whispered Lucerne. He turned and, though almost an adult now, he bent to suckle her, his smooth mouth to her sleek teat, his paws to her flank in a perverse adult copying of a pup’s natural need. While sensuously, Henbane stroked his fur.
“The light is gone,” he whispered once more, lifting his head from her belly and her thin milk streaked on his well-made cheek.
“Good,” said Henbane. “Good.” But there was distant weariness in her eyes, as of a mole who, finding her task almost complete now, begins to doubt its worth. To reassure herself she came out into what light there was and caressed Lucerne’s flank. He did not respond, and his eyes were alert on the billowing sky.
“I want to see the Stone,” he said. “Soon.”
“There are many, my love, too many for a single mole to see. What would you do with the Stone?”
“I should have it for the Word. I would touch it, and speak out the Word and pervert its power to our use.”
“Perversion” was a word that Lucerne liked to use. He used it well.
Behind him distant thunder rolled. A great white flash lightened the sky. Wind came, and sudden violent rain. For a moment Lucerne seemed afraid.
With a smile, Henbane offered her teat once more and Lucerne seemed almost to go to it. Then lightning came again as he hesitated, and its light flared across her body and at her wet teats and he seemed to see her as if in horror and disgust.
“Come suckle me, my love,” she said.
The lightning was violent about them and the thunder huge, and suddenly, impulsively, with hatred in his face, he turned on her and struck her.
“No more,” he said. And with a cry that combined loss with discovery of something new he turned back to relish the scene as rain poured down and his fur shone bright with wet. Appalled, hurt, stricken more in heart and mind than body, Henbane retreated to shelter from the rain, and Lucerne’s wrath.
He did not look at her again, but cried out: “I shall kill the Stone!” And he arced his talons sharp across the sky. Then from high above him, as if at his command, cracking thunder came once more.
Lucerne laughed with pleasure at the dreadful scene and raised his paw as if to touch a Stone which none but he could see. The sky murked with driven rain and the cloud was untidy and lowering over Whern’s greatest height, and the storm passed on across moledom to the south and Henbane was gone, and Lucerne triumphant and alone.
Chapter Five
As Beechen and Tryfan continued their trek towards the Duncton Stone that bright day, the way ahead remained rough and needed clearing, and Beechen said more than once, “Is it near? Are we nearly there?”
His voice was the more nervous because Feverfew seemed to have dropped behind now, and he knew it was not because she could not keep up with them but because this trek represented his passing from her main care to Tryfan’s.
Then Tryfan disappeared as well, in among some heavy undergrowth, branches and twigs cracking as he went to find the way ahead.
Tryfan looked back and could not see Beechen, though he could hear him, so he called out to him to stay where he was while a way was found... He was annoyed with himself, for nomole knew Duncton better than he and yet that day he felt disorientated and could not seem to keep in touch with his own paws. Each way he looked was beguiling, and the air now was warm on the wood’s floor, its scents deep and rich, the soil wormful. Strange! The soils here should be drier and the tall beech trees that surround the Stone clearing must be near. But the ground seemed different and undulating wrong... downslope here and the wood filled suddenly with the strangest wraiths of light as if there were unseen moles about. Tryfan crouched down in awe.
While Beechen, seeing Tryfan go ahead and then disappearing beyond some bramble stems, ran quickly after him to find him once again. Except that when he reached where Tryfan had seemed to go he was not there. Only sunshine, and the whispering breeze high above, and then, as he turned, it seemed the brambles turned as well an
d suddenly frightened he ran back the way he had come, except when he got there it was not. He was alone and lost.
Lost? No, no... Mayweed’s lesson came back to him. He was here –, his paws, his snout, his breathing, he himself. Here. Mayweed... and bringing back to himself an image of the strange mole, Beechen felt comfort and calmness. He was not lost. He was free. And the Stone was near. He need only... what? Mayweed told him to feel his way forward, or back, or whatever way felt best. Make where he was familiar and using that go on, never ever panicking....
So Beechen, very nervous it is true, but still himself, still not panicked, went on. All was leaves, dried twigs and poky branches, and the sticky fronds of cleaver caught at his flanks like soft alien things trying to pull him from his path. What path? Confused again suddenly, beginning to feel tearful, the sound of a mole crashing about nearby hunting him, coming to take him. So soon did Beechen forget Mayweed’s lesson and suddenly, blindly, ran on. The sun was bright and whirling in his eyes, the branches jolting and shaking past him and he might then have cried out in fear had another voice not cried out first:
“Here. Here!”
She was there, a young female and an older, too, at a Stone among great Stones, but distant and seeming unreachable as he went, for they got no nearer. Yet “Here!” they cried.
“What is your name?” he seemed to say.
“Mistle,” the wind whispered. “Waiting for you to come at last.”
“No, no, no, but you must come to me,” he said, for as he reached her and her Stone, and the old female with her, she was gone, and the Stone she showed him yet to be, and there was the first hint of cloud in the sky, and dark imminence.
Then the undergrowth was gone, and the trees seemed to fall away and a thin and ragged mole called out to offer help.
“Here, mole. Aye! This way. I have waited for you so long! Caradoc’s my name.”
“But you must come to me...” whispered Beechen again, running towards him but finding as he did that the ground steepened and grey rocks rose where Caer Caradoc had been, and the air was cold and the wind strengthening.
Above him now Glyder beckoned, and called out directions, and said it was not far to climb.
“But you...” said Beechen, nearly in despair, for though they were so near they still had far to go, and he was but one to help, and weak, and darkness was looming on them all and his paws were weary and his breathing coming hard.
Then that wild place was gone, and trees were near again, and another female calling from a circle of Stones. A male was near her, small, eyes bright. Both sympathetic, summoning him to safety among their Stones if only, as they got nearer still, the circle remained substantial and the Stone where the female bid him come would stay where it was and be touchable.
“Here, Stone Mole, here!” cried Rampion.
But her circle was gone, and as it went past him there went another, barely seen: Fyfield, where a grike mole strove to touch the Stone and called out for him to come.
“Here!” said the self-righteous voice of Wort.
Everywhere were moles who needed him, yet offered help.
Or almost everywhere. For now Beechen found himself where tunnels once had been and holy burrows, but ruined now and desolate. The white bones of moles were scattered across the great high hill of Uffington and nomole was there. The Blowing Stone was hereabouts but too far off for a lost mole to find and reach before the darkness came.
Then his paws were running, running where others had run before, but he needed help now for a great grim darkness was coming – too great for him to bear. The moles had scattered from this place, and the sun’s warmth was draining from his fur, and his body was shivering and he was afraid.
“Help me!” he cried out across the deserted hill, which changed even as he seemed to see it to a place of beauty called Beechenhill.
“Here!” cried Wharfe. “Here, now...” And Beechen knew the darkest terror of them all.
But even as it took him and he began to feel the pain, “Beechen!” said a voice so old, a voice he knew, a voice that was the sound he sought. “Beechen.”
Old, grey-white, limping, his eyes warm, his good limbs bent, rising beech trees all about him across a clear wood floor.
“Beechen, help me now.”
The old mole turned and the youngster followed him, turned into the clearing filled with light, light like his eyes, and Beechen caught the old mole up, who turned and smiled.
“Come, my son,” he said.
There before them rose the Stone whose sides caught all the colours of the sun as it rose straight and true towards the sky.
“You know my name and who I am?”
Beechen nodded.
“Then help them touch the Stone. Help them for me.”
“I am afraid.”
“They are as well. Help them now, it is for me.”
Then the old mole limped towards the Stone, whose light was great and whose sound was Silence more than ever mole had heard. As Beechen tried to follow him, the light was gone, and Beechen found himself before the Duncton Stone.
The June sun was there as the sounds of the great wood fell away below and Beechen strove to reach up a paw and touch the Stone.
But how hard that is, how frightening, and the only consolation he felt was that across moledom were a few striving moles whose names he had known but which he now forgot, and all were there for him.
“Help me!” he cried out again and the few who were waiting heard it well.
Caradoc, guardian of Caer Caradoc.
Mistle, before Violet’s Stone in Avebury.
Giyder at the Siabod Stones.
Then, at Fyfield, Wort: alone, afraid, judgemental, reaching up towards the Stone against which she tested herself and felt fear.
“Help me,” she whispered, an unknowing echo of the Stone Mole’s plea.
Then Rampion, of Rollright born and bred, true mole: she strove to touch the frightening Stone.
All striving, all reaching out their paws, six at the seven Ancient Systems, one more needed to make the seven up.
“Help us now!” cried Beechen, his body beginning to tremble with the strain. The air was heavy about, the sky trembling with darkness coming.
But that prayer was not heard or felt where once it might have been. Not at Uffington, the first of the seven Ancient Systems but last this special day to find a mole to help. None there. Only a place now of memory, where prayers were lost among the ruined tunnels and ended with the white bones of long-dead moles. Not there. A new Seventh was now needed, and with it the change that moledom had so long sought. As the stars shift in the sky so now occurred reorientation across the Stones of moledom. New strength for old. Tradition dies and is reborn. Only so can such prayers be answered.
“Help us!” cried out the helpless Beechen one more time and, turning its back on sterile Uffington, his prayer fled north to Beechenhill and a darkening sky and the approach of sweeping rain. But still where its Stone rose there was light. Brighter than everywhere else about, but threatened, and a mole desperate to reach it now, and desperate with tiredness.
“Too late! I am too late!” cried Wharfe, striving to run forward still as other moles followed far behind.
So he ran to reach the shining Stone before cloud and rain obscured it from the sun and a moment that would never be regained was lost for ever. From where does a brave mole’s strength come? Faith? Stubbornness? An ordination of the stars? No, mole, it comes from the Silence where he was made, the Silence that most lose. From there it comes, and it is allmole’s heritage.
As Wharfe felt the first spits of rain across his face he found his final strength. The ground levelled off and the Stone was there and he too tired to feel afraid. Even as the first full drop of rain plunged from the sky he reached up his paw and placed it on the Stone, and the wet fell glistening on his flesh and fur.
“I offer my life and all my striving to the Stone,” he cried, “and my help to all who need i
t!”
“And I!” cried out Caradoc, far away in the Welsh Marches where he had waited alone with such faith for so long. “I offer my help!”
Then too did Mistle touch at Avebury, and Glyder for the Siabod moles. Then Rampion of Rollright born. And in Fyfield the wise Stone accepted Wort’s touch too, though she was of the Word and her intentions were most evil. Yet six moles touching, and using their strength to help him touch as well.
For then it was that Beechen reached up, and touched the Duncton Stone, and spoke the words that mark the acceptance of his great ministry to mole: “Stone, who made me, help me serve their need and know thy truth that through me they shall know it too. Teach me to know things as they are: the light and the dark, the noise and the Silence, those that take and those that give; help me to so love them that they shall hear thy Silence beyond the life I dedicate to them.”
So prayed Beechen, where Tryfan and Feverfew found him, crouched before the Duncton Stone, his left paw touching it, and all about him the sense of others near, and holiness, and Silence. They went to him, and touched him with their love and were silent with him before the Stone.
The sun darkened before the clouds that came and mounted up. Dark clouds of warning and trial. The sky cracked, and from it rain fell and shrouded all moledom in its wet and noise.
Yet Beechen knew only joy and said, “I am not alone. There are others with me though I remember not their names. But they shall wait for me. They shall know me and help me until, back here where I was born, and where I come today, I shall be born again and they shall know me, and know themselves.”
And his tears and those of his mother and of Tryfan were at one with the rain that fell; and the good soil of Duncton knew it, and the Stone as well.
Yet, as they turned from the clearing, the Stone trembled and over its wet facets the reflections of the clouds still went. A mole had dedicated his life to the Silence, but great was the darkness, and a mole but small. The Stone trembled in Duncton and began to wait.