Duncton Tales (55 page)

Since the soil seemed more wormful below the outcrop, and there were signs of delving there, she ventured downslope for a while, glad to get out of the wind. She found the soil lay in drifts between the outcrops and scattered boulders of a different rock, and stopped being wormful to the east, where the Top sloped away and changed to hags of peat and heather. There, she supposed, the Moors she knew began. She avoided the portals she saw, remembering the dangers entering them had led her into when she first came on to the Top, though whether that had been by night, or the previous day, she was not now sure. She had no wish to suffer Dark Sound again. Unless Rooster was with her.

She smiled to herself, feeling suddenly free and light-pawed, “almost skittish!”, as she said to herself, using a word she knew nomole in Crowden would ever have used of staid Privet, assistant librarian.

With a start she remembered the story her father Sward had told her of Wort’s Testimony and how he had found it on Hilbert’s Top, and left it where he found it. Should she look for it? She doubted it, and the idea drifted from her.

So Privet wandered, time of no consequence, comforted by the knowledge that Rooster was somewhere about the place, and certain in herself that when the time came he could find her again. It was the most secure and comfortable of feelings. She was meant to be here where Rooster was.

The grass shuddered with a colder wind, and she snouted about for an entrance below, sensing that she was clear of the ancient delvings now and nearer something more recent and domestic: Rooster’s place. Feeling like a trespasser, she delved away some grass and mud and with a thrust of her back paws, ventured down, glad to escape the cold winds and lowering skies, and what she found took her breath away.

Broad, strong, superbly arched, the tunnel turned its splendid way; its air cool, its wind-sound subtle, its walls well made, no,
beautifully
made. But it was a rough beauty, a serviceable beauty and seeing it, and touching it, she felt herself in the presence of a Master of the Delve.

The tunnel echoed her pawsteps softly, and led her into the first of several chambers —’burrow’ was too mean a word — whose different uses she could not guess. The light filtered in from above, pale and soft, catching the entrances and exits just so, and making their curves and lines harmonious and deep. Then she paused, for there was something
familiar
about the place, as if she had been there before.

She ventured on, and found what must be an eating burrow. Yet it was clean, and ordered, and comfortable, unlike so many she had seen in Crowden. Though her own had always been like this! But Hamble’s! She smiled at the sudden and familiar memory of her friend’s tunnels and wondered coolly if she would ever see them, and him again. Of course she would! Back to the present!

She found nearby a smaller tunnel that led to a sleeping place, simple, peaceful, empty.

“Rooster’s place,” she said in wonder to herself. “Oh, he
can
delve.” But it was not its grandness, for it was not that, nor its snugness, for that is too little a word to describe what she experienced; nor its clarity of line, nor its subtlety — its beauty — of sound. It was all of these, and something more, much more. Something she had seen before, and
knew
 …

In awe and wonder she wandered on, taking one of the several ways she could see back out of the burrows, emerging briefly on the surface again to find, to her astonishment, that she was much further downslope than she had expected. How he had achieved this effect she could not imagine, and so she went back down, exploring on, until, astonished by the cleverness of all the delving, she found herself back at his sleeping place once more.

Should she? Could she? Dare she?

Oh, yes she could! If only to stance down and find out what it felt like to be where Rooster had been. With her heart beating faster once more, she advanced into this most private secret place of his so that for a moment she might lie where once he had lain, and listen to how he had made the wind-sound and vibrations of the whole system centre on this spot.

Never in all her life had she stanced in a place so sensitive to sound, yet quiet in its effect, for all was carried here, and all absorbed here, and a shift to the right brought a whispering wall, and to the left another, and up above a ceiling, rough-hewn, yet, somehow, finished. She listened to the sounds of grass in wind, and trees whose leaves were shedding, and far, far off the roaring owls, all clear, all carried.

She reached out a paw to touch the wall that he had delved, and stretched out her body where he had lain, and closed her eyes, and knew that the Rooster she had known, that all the system knew, was not a real mole at all. This was Rooster, here was Rooster, and his form was beautiful, and the only thing that was grotesque was that he had been driven from this place, and it was — felt — bereft of him.

She closed her eyes, she thought of him, she slept, she dreamed.

“Mole! Mole!”

She woke quite terrified. Rooster was there and the tunnel was filled with strange bright light. She could not immediately tell what part of the day it was, nor how long she had been asleep. Then she knew. A whole night had passed, and new dawn had come. Time, on Hilbert’s Top, seemed not its normal self.

“I … I …” she struggled to find words, to take a defensive stance, to, to …

“I’ll not harm you, mole,” he said loudly, backing off as if it were he who was afraid. “Didn’t know you were here. Wondered where you’d gone. Don’t
mind
. Anymole who gets this far into Hilbert’s Top’s not a harming mole.”

“I’m sorry, I —” but she could not speak. Never ever had she been so taken by surprise. Terror gave way to dismayed embarrassment. “I came to ask you —”

“You from Crowden?” he said. He seemed to glower but perhaps it was his normal look. She noted that his front paws were different sizes, just as she’d heard. She noted too that there was something very solid about Rooster, gentle but solid.

“I’m Privet,” she said, “of Crowden’s Library.” At such a moment, and feeling vulnerable, she instinctively wanted to give herself the protection of her work.

He stared unhelpfully, seeming huger by the moment and more strange.

“I came to ask you a favour.”

“
Favour
?” It seemed not a word he knew.

Then words tumbled out of her, about Crowden, about what had happened at Chieveley Dale, about everything.

When she had done he made no comment about any of it at all, but said again, “A favour?”

“I want you to come to Crowden,” she said.

Slowly he grimaced in what she thought might be a smile.

“Can’t,” he said. Too late, too dangerous, no good.”

“The grikes?” she said.

He shook his great head. “We’d never get across the Moors, not in time. Winter’s come.”

Winter? She stared at him blankly. But it was only autumn!

He turned from her and without a word led her uptunnel to an entrance. He led her out and she found herself in the shadow of one of the great boulders and staring at a muted landscape of white snow. Not deep, not even covering all the Top. Beyond, the Moors were as yet untouched, just brown-black and dull.

“Soon now. Coming from the east. The Moors will be impassable. And anyway … I have delving to do.”

“Delving?” said Privet faintly.

He nodded, and peered vaguely about, his paws fretful among the snow on the ground.

“And I?” she said in sudden alarm.

He shrugged indifferently. “There’s worms, there’s room, you’ll survive,” he said. “Stone decides all things. Stone brought you here.”

“Did it?” she asked.

He nodded gravely.

“And my friends, did the Stone let them survive?” she said with a sudden bitterness that took her by surprise.

“Some did,” he said. “Saw them escape. They got away. Some will.”

She stared at him and suddenly felt tired, and yet relaxed. Stone decides all things, he had said.

“Rooster,” she said, “do you mind if I stay here?”

He shook his head and looked away, and still looking away as if he could not meet her gaze, he said, “Was alone too long. Can’t delve well since Samphire went into Silence. Asked the Stone for help. You’ve come.”

Without saying more he ambled off, and she watched him go, as ungainly in his gait as his paw marks were irregular across the thin covering of snow.

“Rooster …’ she whispered after him, breathing the chill air and staring at the snow-laden sky, and feeling that here and now, so strangely, her adult life had finally begun.

He turned as if he had heard her.

“Privet,” he said, speaking her name for the first time. Across the white layer of snow they stared at each other.

“Will you come back soon?” she asked.

“Will,” he said firmly.

“And talk?” she said.

He grinned lopsidedly. “Want to,” he said.

“This evening?” she dared ask.

“Haven’t delved for days and weeks and months,” he said. “Can delve now you’ve come. Then we’ll talk, Privet and Rooster. Talk till ravens sleep. Samphire used to say that. She was my mother.”

He turned and finally went off, and as Privet watched him go she felt she wanted to run after him, and hold him, and love him. She felt she wanted to cry out his name. She felt she wanted to become him.

“Rooster,” she whispered again, and for a moment he paused again, as if he heard, which surely he could not, and then was gone to delve.

It was night when he returned, and his paws and head were grubby with soil, his talons clogged.

“Have delved,” he said, and began to groom himself. She watched fascinated, almost hungering to help him groom, terrified of the power of what she felt. But she stanced still and staring, and not a single movement of eye or snout, of mouth or paw, of flank or tail, betrayed the passion that she felt as she wallowed in just watching him.

“Have delved well,” he said at last.

“Will you show me sometime?” she said, feeling suddenly stupid.

He grunted non-committally.

“Will talk now,” he said finally, as if hoping that was a good reply.

They stared at each other in silence and suddenly, for the first time since she was a growing pup, she felt her snout blush pink. Was he staring at her as she had at him, devouringly? No, no, no. No.

“Tell me,” she said impulsively with no idea what she wanted him to tell her until she said it, “about the first time you went with Drumlin, Sedum and your mother, and the others, to see the secret delvings in the Charnel.”

“You know about me?” he said.

She nodded. “Tell me what you want to, Rooster. Please.”

“That day my life began,” he said. “That day the journey here began.”

“Today our journey on from here begins,” she said, again impulsively. Now why had she said that, and what did it mean? Oh, she knew, she knew what it meant!

Rooster blinked and his great paws fretted.

“Want to talk about it all,” he said.

Chapter Twenty-Six

The entrance into which Drumlin led Samphire, Rooster and the others, with Sedum taking up the rear, appeared at first as no more than a cleft among rocks, but once inside, they saw it continued steeply downward as a tunnel between narrow sloping walls. These came so close together that it was hard for the moles to progress without tripping over themselves, which most of them did; and it was made harder by the loose rocks and other obstructions which littered the tunnel’s steep floor. It occurred to Samphire after only a short way that she would have already given up and turned back had not Drumlin, who had the advantage of familiarity with the place, been leading them on with such determination. But perhaps after all the tunnel was meant to be awkward, to discourage strangers from venturing down too far; and perhaps too this visit, which seemed so sudden and spontaneous, had long been planned.

After some initial nervous chatter they all fell silent as they continued to clamber steeply down, concentrating on where to put their paws. Twice they had to stop to catch up with each other and recover themselves, but at last the tunnel walls widened and the floor cleared and flattened into a more normal tunnel.

A short distance on the passage opened up, and they found themselves deep underground in a hushed, cool, cavernous chamber, across which, from fissures in the roof high above, great shafts of light shone down so brightly in the gloomy place that they obscured what lay at the furthest end, though some sense of sound and continuation came from that direction.

Those parts of the walls they
could
see, which ran back behind them to a gloomy end wall, were carved in deep and intricate patterns of an extent and beauty that quite took a mole’s breath away. Their convolutions of spiral and incision seemed to shimmer and shine with the light from above, and when a mole stared at them they seemed to move as if they were alive, being sensuous and subtle in some places, stark and shocking in others.

“Was this
delved
?” asked Rooster in awe, going to the nearest wall and reaching up to touch an area of the carvings. As he ran his paws over them a sound was emitted from the wall opposite, strange and wistful, then suddenly harsh, then fading into a cry from somewhere fer away.