Duncton Found (139 page)
“Not many moles have asked me if I’m all right,” said Boswell. “Not many at all. Bracken did. And Rebecca. And Tryfan, too. And you, Woodruff, you asked me.”
“Boswell....”
“Yes, mole?” said Boswell softly.
“Would you wait for a little before you go? Would you promise to wait?”
Boswell smiled.
“Why, mole, you can’t stop life itself.”
“Just for a little, because there’s a mole here in Duncton Wood, who has waited for you for a long, long time and she’s not far from here. Would you wait for her?”
“For how long, Woodruff?” Boswell smiled again and looked down at his old paws.
“I’ll find a mole who will talk to you while I go and fetch her. Just wait a little, just a little....”
Then Woodruff turned and ran back into the wood. Fast and faster, and the first mole he saw was Romney.
“Romney, there’s a mole out on the slopes. Go and stay with him, don’t let him go. Go to him, Romney.”
“But....”
“I think he’s the mole Mistle’s been waiting for. Go to him.”
But he needed to say no more, for Romney turned and, as best he could, ran into the rising sun and towards the slopes. Then as Woodruff ran towards the Stone, he felt himself crying out, as if to rouse the wood, to rouse everymole in it, to tell them that now was the time when they must show their snouts and stance up for Mistle, for now was what she and they had been waiting for.
Like the sounding of the Blowing Stone at Uffington his call was across the wood that morning, and moles hurried from their tunnels and burrows and all seemed to know that it was to the High Wood they must go, and fast! Quick! Hurry now! For the light is all across the wood, and moledom waits, and Mistle, who has given them so much, needed all their strength, and all their love.
So they gather and they hurry upslope through the early morning light, across the dewy leaves, in twos and threes upslope towards the Stone. There they find Woodruff, helping Mistle, who can barely stance at all now and is muttering and wondering and rather afraid. But her paws and flanks only shake, and she stares uncomprehendingly at him.
“He’s come back for you, Mistle. He’s here, he’s waiting for you,” says Woodruff, his strong paws about her as the others gather and turn the way he turns her, which is towards the east, towards the rising sun.
“Come on, Mistle. You need your last strength now, but you and he will help each other on from Duncton Wood, because he needs you too.”
Slowly, bit by bit, tree after tree, Mistle progresses through the wood, Woodruff supporting her, and her snout shakes and her eyes stare, and often her paws stumble. But all the moles are there to lend her their spirit and their strength and urge her on.
“He came back for you, Mistle, because you were the one who had most faith, you were the one who loved him most as mole.”
“He came back?” she whispers, and for the first time she dares let hope be in her eyes.
“It’s not far now, not far...” And slowly, so slowly, they break out of the wood and into the sunshine beyond.
Romney is out there on the slopes, and with him is an old mole, waiting, his eyes no more certain than Mistle’s have been.
Leaving Boswell, Romney comes to her.
“He came back for you as you knew he would, Mistle. Go to him.”
“He’s not
Beechen.
He’s not young as Beechen was,” she says.
“I think he’s many moles, and I think if you can find the strength to go to him, my dear, he will know you again and you’ll know him.”
“Then help me, Romney,” whispers Mistle.
Romney smiles but shakes his head.
“I am too old now, my dear, to do more than watch you go, but Woodruff will lead you to the light in which Boswell waits.”
Then Woodruff, grandson of great Tryfan, put his paw to Mistle’s and, with all the moles of Duncton Wood urgingher on with love and prayers, he helped her make her slow and painful way across the slopes beyond the High Wood to where Boswell stanced waiting for her, near the promontory from which she used to watch the roaring owls.
The light was behind him, and his face was hard to see, but it seemed that as she came nearer to him he started forward towards her a little, as if he almost knew her. She too, with each step she took, seemed to know him more, and where they were a light was too, greater than the sun, for it filled the air about them all, and held the sound of Silence.
“Beechen?” they heard her say.
“Mistle?” he whispered back to her.
“Oh my dear, I’ve missed you so much....”
Then they touched each other in the light and turned to Woodruff who stanced by them, his snout low.
“Woodruff of Arbor Low,” said Boswell, “you have fulfilled the great task the Stone ordained that you should perform. Born of violence, raised by Henbane, and traveller in pursuit of truth, you are the mole who brought the seventh Stillstone to Duncton Wood. Delve it up, mole, from whence you buried it.”
Then Woodruff, hardly daring to look at where Boswell and Mistle stanced before him in the light of Silence, delved and found the stone he had buried.
The watching moles gasped as he took it up from the broken soil and its light was upon them all.
“Now mole, what will you do with what you carried for so long and now show us here?”
Woodruff took the Stillstone and touched it first to the withered paw of Boswell, and then to Mistle’s beloved face. Its light was great, and whiteness was upon them both, and where they were the moles seemed to see Boswell’s paw grow whole, and he and Mistle grow young again, and both to laugh as surely once she and Beechen had laughed. Then they turned, or seemed to in the light, and began to go down towards where the roaring owls went endlessly.
“They are our task now, they are our task...” their voices seemed to say. And then, “Woodruff of Arbor Low, your restless search is over, for here in Duncton Wood you are and always shall be much loved, so much loved.”
Then where they had been only Woodruff stanced, and on his lined and once troubled face was the look of a mole who knows that he is loved most true, and who knows at last from where all Silence comes.
Then he held the Stillstone up that they might see it, and carried it back into the wood, and all of them went with him to the Stone.
They gathered together to give thanksgiving and make celebration as Woodruff of Arbor Low took the Stillstone down through the Chamber of Roots and placed it with the others about the base of the Stone.
When he came among them again it seemed that all celebrations were in one that day, and mole touched mole with love, as the sun rose through the trees and they knew at last their Duncton found.
Epilogue
Woodruff’s Duncton Chronicles were finally started on the Longest Night following, as a tale told to a community of impatient moles.
“We’re not going to have to wait until you’ve scribed them all down, are we?” asked one of them.
He shook his head, smiled, crunched a worm and said, “I’m ready to begin it now if you like.”
“You do that, mole! But wait while we get comfortable.”
So Woodruff did, and started in the traditional way: “From my heart to your hearts I tell this tale...” Then he paused, and smiled again, and began like this: “Bracken was born on an April night in a warm dark burrow, deep in the historic system of Duncton Wood, six mole years after Rebecca....”
Moles, that’s how his Chronicles begin and, strangely enough, it’s how they seem to end.
... Well almost...
Tales Of Longest Night
For what happened to the eldrene Wort? And what of the tale of the sinister Thripp of Balgrove Slide? Not to mention Balagan, whose full tale has never been told! And then, what was the secret that first drove a mole to cross the Dark Peak? And whatmole was it recovered the texts of Harrowdown?
There are tales a young mole hears seven Longest Nights after Woodruff scribed the Duncton Chronicles. But perhaps the strangest and most inspiring tale of all is what happens to that solitary youngster when, the celebration over, allmole but he falls asleep and Longest Night is almost done....
To be published before
too many moleyears have passed us by
Epilogue II
Woodruff’s Duncton Chronicles were finally started on the Longest Night following, as a tale told to a community of impatient moles.
“We’re not going to have to wait until you’ve scribed them all down, are we?” asked one of them.
He shook his head, smiled, crunched a worm and said, “I’m ready to begin it now if you like.”
“You do that, mole! But wait while we get comfortable.”
So Woodruff did, and started in the traditional way: “From my heart to your hearts I tell this tale...” Then he paused, and smiled again, and began like this: “Bracken was born on an April night in a warm dark burrow, deep in the historic system of Duncton Wood, six mole years after Rebecca....”
So began Woodruffs first telling of the Chronicles of Duncton Wood which took place over the cold wintry weeks that followed his last Longest Night. When it was done, and old Woodruff had told his tale just as he had scribed it, moles noticed that he was silent, and seemed to have little more to say.
Yet though the scribing of the Chronicles seemed to be his greatest task, yet he left one more gift to moledom.
For aging though he was, he still found strength to direct others to create a great Library at Duncton Wood, wherein all those texts scattered from Uffington and other places during the war of Word on Stone were joined in safety with those left behind by Spindle, Mayweed, great Try fan, and holiest of all, by Beechen when he was young.
At the end of his life Woodruff would often say that nomole’s task is ever complete, and that all he can do is to leave what was left to him ready for those yet to come.
“One day,” he said, “others not yet born will inherit this great Library we have made. To it they will bring new texts, or old texts that our generation has not yet re-discovered. A few texts, and very few perhaps, will be scribed here, using all that we have left behind and the experience gained after.
“Indeed, though the Chronicles are done, one last task seems to remain if the ministry of Beechen, and the work of Tryfan and so many others, is to find permanence, and not be lost through the erosion of time and moles’ forgetfulness.
“Aye, there shall yet be another mole to come out of obscurity and show future generations what the Stone Mole’s teachings were. A great mole shall he or she be. More than scribe, more than a warrior, more than a leader....”
Strangely, in his last weeks Woodruff, spent much of his time in the obscurest part of the Library to which he had contributed so much. There, amongst that collection of texts which librarians call Rolls, Rhymes and Tales, Woodruff found comfort and solace. Those nearest to him spoke out again the tales he loved, and which for one reason or another he had not included in his Chronicles.
“There’s a Book of Tales here,” he would murmur dreamily, “but another must begin to scribe it. And that mole that shall teach others of the Stone Mole’s work, shall come here one distant day, and finish it. Now tell me a tale of the moledom that I love....”
These were the last words great Woodruff of Arbor Low spoke, for during the telling of that last tale, Woodruff heard the Silence of the Stone, and went into it.
Some moles say the tale he was being told was never finished and awaits completion still. Others believe its end is to be found in a tale told long after he had gone.
For the scribing of the Book of Tales which he thought must one day begin, and the coming of the great mole who would complete it, these things came to be as he said they would. Only in that way was Woodruffs task complete at last, and Tryfan’s too, and Bracken’s before him. For the past becomes the present that we live, and for good or ill, the future lies in the present we pass on. May our lives make a blessing then on the lives of the moles that follow us.... and may moles find solace, comfort and inspiration, in the Book of Tales that Woodruff foresaw would one day come....
Scanner’s Note
Well, here we are, finally at the end of this process. Hope you all enjoyed this first trilogy of books as much as I did; New readers, old and re-readers alike.
The original hardcover and paperback editions only contain one Epilogue each; The Hardcover editions contain the original Epilogue and the small snub at the next book,
Tales of Longest Night
. My 1990 paperback edition contains only and extended epilogue (Epilogue II in this ebook edition) and does not have the snub, since by this time The Book of Silence trilogy must have been already under way. At any rate, I have included both in this edition.
