Duncton Stone (112 page)

She accepted it as if it were her right.

“Well then, let us go and see him.”

“He’s grown old.”

“Madoc said he was horribly fat.”

“No more.”

“Take me to him, Whillan,” she said, taking his paw, and for that short journey to Squelch’s modest tunnels, he might have fancied that he went with Madoc once again.

Squelch
had
aged, and when they found him he was hunched over some scrap of bark, humming loudly to himself and stabbing at it, making marks as he did so. His tunnels were a chaos of folios, and odd texts that he had made for himself.

“Squelch! It’s me, Whillan.”

“Ah,” sighed Squelch, peering round, “a friendly voice. You are welcome, mole. You have somemole with you?”

“I have, Squelch. It is your daughter, Morwenna.”

“Morwenna,” he exclaimed, darting out to see and too astonished to seem surprised. It was hard to say at that moment what his feelings were. He seemed perplexed.

He stared at her and she at him, and then she laughed and said, “You’re thin!”

“Not fat now,” he conceded with a rueful smile.

“What are all those?” she asked, moving past him with grace and waving a paw at his work.

“Melodies, songs, and other things,” he said.

“Whillan said they are made for me.”

“Did he? He’s right – not you in the body, you in my head. In the body you may be a different thing.”

“Madoc said that the one good thing about you is that you could sing. Whillan says you don’t sing any more, so things don’t sound promising.”

“He’s right. Better not sing. My penance for wrongs done. I put it down here instead,” and he picked up a pawful of folios.

“Sing to me,” she said.

“Well then, perhaps I will. Perhaps I will.”

He would not for a time, only looking at her, getting them food, fussing about, and trying to order his tunnels and chamber, which proved quite impossible.

“Sing to me,” she said.

“Well, I could I suppose. There’s a lifetime of singing here. Just one, perhaps.”

“Sing to me, father,” she said passionately. “It is why I have journeyed from Siabod, so that I may one day tell my pups that I heard you sing.”

He looked at her, and at Whillan, and went to the back of the chamber. He touched one folio, and then another, turning them over, peering at them, seeming unsure quite where to begin.

But then, softly, he began, his strange, high, haunting voice filling the chamber, filling their hearts. Of her coming he sang, and of dreams, and of all there could be when moles came together whom life had pushed apart.

“And another,” she whispered when he had done. “Another,” she breathed.

He sang then of torment, and loss, and reunion.

“Another.”

He shook his head, and said his voice was cracked and old and not what it once was.

“I know,” she said, “I know... but it is the song I shall remember, not the voice. Sing of my mother Madoc.”

A dark look came across his face, a look of shame.

“My voice is not good enough for that,” he said.

“Sing,” she whispered, and it was like the command of wind and sky.

He began, and then, as his voice did break, did crack, she began to sing softly too, gentle as the wind, embracing as the sky.

“You?” he whispered.

And then she sang for him, of loss and of forgiveness, of the light that comes after darkness with the seasons’ turn.

“You...” he said, tears coursing down his face, for she sang with the beauty that his own voice once had.

“You are my daughter,” he said.

Then she sang for him, and for the first time in his life he knew real joy.

So Morwenna came for a time to Duncton Wood. She stayed with Squelch and he taught her what he knew. The melodies he made, the songs, the great works which he called “other things” she understood and she learnt from them all she could. Perhaps nomole has ever given moledom so rich a legacy of moving song and chant as Squelch, and that great collection that he made, at her request, was taken not into Duncton Library, for she deemed it not quite suitable, but to Cuddesdon, where Whillan was.

At his end, which was when June came, but before Midsummer itself, she nursed him until he died, and she sang a lament which was his own, made for allmole, but never sung as beautifully again as that first time.

Then, as mysteriously as she had come, she was gone, and Squelch’s great legacy was left safe for evermore.

At that time, too, Elynor passed away, and Pumpkin began to grow old as well. As Privet finally regained her health, he declined, all his great tasks fulfilled; and surely there was nothing more for him to do. Now, as he had cared for her when she had seemed near her end, so she cared for him.

“Midsummer’s coming, my dear, and I wish you to be there to witness it before the Stone,” she told him many times.

“Aye, Pumpkin, we all wish for that,” Sturne agreed, for when Privet was not near at paw, Sturne took her place. And, if Sturne had been called away, why, there were a hundred moles who would have been there to watch over Pumpkin in those last days.

Two days before Midsummer Weeth appeared, just as he had promised he would do; and, to everymole’s amazement, he had a mole with him who had come from the far side of the Wolds: Dint, Frogbit’s adoptive father. Tales, stories, arrivals and delights... that was ever the way the days before Midsummer
should
be, and that blessed Midsummer was no exception.

As indefatigable as ever, Pumpkin rallied on Midsummer’s Eve and declared that nothing would stop him going up to the Stone for the ritual: “Even if it’s the last time I ever go there. Aye, I’ll get there!” So he did, with Sturne to help him on one flank, and Hamble on the other, and Brimmel tagging along behind. The trek up the Slopes and across the High Wood was slow, and Pumpkin had to make a good few stops.

“Not what I was, am I?” he said. “Brimmel? Where’s that mole! Brimmel, you see that tree there? Well, that’s where Bracken nearly got caught by Rune a century ago, and if he had been, how different things would be! Eh?”

“That’s right, sir!” said Brimmel, who had spent many a happy hour with Pumpkin in the days before he was confined to his tunnels, being shown the old places, being taught the old lore.

“Got a taste for it, he has,” Pumpkin had told Privet, and so it seemed.

So now, on what few could doubt was his last trek, Pumpkin was still wanting to show Brimmel things.

“Wait a moment – what do you mean, ‘That’s right’?” said Pumpkin.

“You told me about the tree before. And how Rune didn’t catch him, and Bracken ran all the way —”

“Did I? Repeating myself, Sturne. Time to go!”

“There’s a whole summer yet, Pumpkin,” said Sturne.

“No, mole, there isn’t,” said Pumpkin simply. “Now, let’s go on.”

Their route seemed lined with moles, all cheering Pumpkin on, all sensing that this was a moment they would remember and cherish all their lives.

“How many moles have come!” he said, delighted to see so many new pilgrims, so many youngsters, so many kin together once again. “The Stone will be well pleased.”

The sun shone in the Stone Clearing, moles chattered and greeted one another, and when the time came the youngsters were gathered round the Stone, Loosestrife’s three especially close to Privet. There were not as many yet as there would be in years to come, but it is not numbers, but faith and trust that count.

Fieldfare told of how she had first come when a youngster, and how she had been afraid and hid behind the bulk of Elder Drubbins, who few there now remembered. Others talked, and the youngsters heard the tale of how Hulver, at this very Stone, defied Mandrake of Siabod and spoke the Invocation of the Graces, whose words lie at the very heart of the Midsummer Ritual.

“Well, then,” said Fieldfare, “I think somemole had better say it. In the old days it was one of the Elders did it – a mole loved and respected by all the community. These days we don’t have Elders, so...”

All eyes turned to Pumpkin.

“No!” he protested. “All I am and all I have ever wished to be is a library aide. No, this is a task for Sturne, our Master Librarian Sturne.”

For all Sturne’s new-found happiness, and his heroism in the face of the Newborn Crusades, it cannot truthfully be said that his name yet inspired as much warmth as it might, and there was a certain lack of enthusiasm at Pumpkin’s suggestion.

“No, no,” Pumpkin protested, when Sturne riposted that he say the ritual after all, “I am not up to it. I do not feel as well as I would wish. No, no, it is nothing, but it would give me great happiness to hear Sturne say it, it really would.”

Even then, moles might have hesitated, had not Privet come forward and said, “Perhaps, after all, it would best for Sturne to say the ritual. We would not want to tax Pumpkin’s strength at such a moment as this... and anyway,” and here she smiled at Sturne, and at Myrtle too, “the last time Sturne spoke before this Stone, why, he was most formidable. It would be good for us to hear him in gentler vein.”

“Aye, that’s well said!” cried out many a mole. “You’re one of us, Sturne, and there was never a truer, more courageous Duncton mole than you, excepting your friend Pumpkin, of course!”

Which gave pleasure to them both, and was a heartwarming prelude to the ritual itself.

How awesome Sturne seemed as he took his place before the Stone, and how the youngsters’ eyes widened as he indicated that they come forward and form a group about him, and everymole-else a circle about them.

He spoke of how all moles reached a point when they must begin to think of leaving their home burrows, and that when they did, if they had come from a burrow of love, and had faith in the Stone, they had little to fear from the trials and tribulations they would face when they journeyed forth into life.

Then he spoke the words of the Invocation itself:

“We bathe their paws in showers of dew,

We free their fur with wind from the west,

We bring them choice soil,

Sunlight in life.

We ask they be blessed

With a sevenfold blessing.

The grace of form,

The grace of goodness,

The grace of suffering,

The grace of wisdom,

The grace of true words,

The grace of trust,

The grace of whole-souled loveliness.

We bathe their paws in showers of light,

We free their souls with talons of love,

We ask that they hear the silent Stone...”

Yet though the sun shone on all of them, it seemed at that moment that it shone on one in particular. Who could doubt, as they looked on old Pumpkin, surrounded by the friends he loved, and the moles whose faith and life he had done so much to protect, that he had been blessed with that sevenfold blessing?

In him was the grace of form, and of goodness. In him there had been suffering redeemed by wisdom. He spoke true words, and had faith and trust in the Stone always. Truly, he was a mole whose eyes shone with the grace of whole-souled loveliness.

Now he stanced before the Stone, weak and growing weaker and the Light was upon him and the Silence called.

“I tried,” he whispered, “to do all that was asked of me. You youngsters do the same, and if you suffer doubts and difficulties along the way, remember this: the Stone is always there to listen to your doubts, and your grumbles, and your moans – and to your joys as well. There’s many of those to find, if you look for them. So many of those...”

“Brimmel!”

It was Privet’s voice, and it was authoritative in the old way. How could she speak so, and now of all times?

“Brimmel, Library Aide Pumpkin has one more task to perform. Go to his tunnels, mole, and fetch the Book. No need to hurry, mole, the Stone will wait. But don’t be too long either!”

The Book! What Book! As others wondered Brimmel turned, and was gone, down the paths that Pumpkin himself had shown him, across the High Wood, and then down the Slopes to Pumpkin’s place.

Others followed him some of the way, wondering, puzzled, awed. There had been a light about the Stone, and it was the same light Brimmel found when he entered the tunnels, and went to find the Book. It was just where he had placed it himself, when he had first come to Duncton Wood. It shone upon his face as he reached down to it, and it was heavy, heavier to him than before. But no matter, he was carrying it to Pumpkin, and nothing and nomole would stop him doing that.

He took it from the chamber, up to the surface, and then began the trek back to the Stone. Whatmole who witnessed it will ever forget that trek? A youngster, not fully formed, carrying an ancient Book, battered by time, worn by care, glimmering with light. Heavy it was, but though many a mole offered to help him he carried it upslope alone. Through the High Wood, alone. And then, towards the Clearing, between two lines of moles, who knew what the Book must be, and understood what they were witnessing was the lost and the last Book, coming now to ground.

Only as he entered the clearing did Brimmel stumble and slip; the Book fall from his grasp and open at a pilgrim’s paws. That mole alone saw what was in the Book, and picking it up and righting Brimmel, that good mole, who was Hibbott of Ashbourne Chase, closed the Book and gave it back to the youngster.