Duncton Tales (58 page)

“And the rocks, mole? Do you feel the need in the rocks?”

Gaunt’s eyes narrowed as he waited for Rooster to reply, and watched the strange mole, his paws kneading at the air as he sought, in the desperate way he had, to find words adequate to express the feeling, the truth, he felt inside him.

“Rocks are part of it. Rocks are there for delving to go round. Rocks and stones are centres.”

“Centres of what?”

“Don’t know!” shouted Rooster angrily, rearing up towards Gaunt, almost as if he felt the old mole was deliberately punishing him with questions that were impossible to answer. “Like all is part of one. Can’t be!”

Rooster stanced down again, angry, puzzled, confused, and frustrated.

“Know it,” he said at last.

“Mole,” said Gaunt, “will you delve it for me, what you feel?”

Rooster looked startled, and afraid. “Can’t,” he said, staring malevolently at his paws. “Hume won’t say how high delvings made. Will you?”

Gaunt smiled softly. “I have heard of your interest in that, Rooster. It pleases me. Natural delvers always want to know the answer.”

“Tell me!” said Rooster eagerly.

“You delve your feeling and think about the high delvings at the same time. Maybe one will lead to the other.”

“Will!” said Rooster suddenly. “But have to be a helper as well. Delvers need my strength.”

“You’re free to do whichever you like.”

“Will!” said Rooster again, thumping his bigger paw on the ground.

“Delve the feeling, mole. Do it!”

“Will do it!”

For a few days after that Rooster prevaricated, becoming even more assiduous in his helper duties, working all hours of day and night for others. Then, suddenly, he abandoned his tasks and was seldom seen for several days, occasionally glimpsed by one mole or another, wandering in a morose and pensive way about the chambers, staring and touching them, peering and snouting at them, seeking answers.

He found a small chamber high up and away from the main area, one abandoned decades before by some learner delver who, the story went, had died. There were a few crude delvings about those walls, and the sound they made was hardly anything at all. The place was light, secluded, and here Rooster began to try to delve his feeling as Gaunt had told him to. Others heard what he was about but left him to it, surprised that Gaunt had let him go off by himself without assigning a mentor to him from among the experienced delvers, nor even trying to explain what the Delvings were about.

But then …

“He’s a bright one, that Rooster,” Hume reported to Gaunt and a few others one day, “he’s got the high delvings worked out.”

“He knows how they are made?” said Drumlin in surprise.

“He’s beginning to
make
some, all of his own,” said Hume.

Gaunt wisely let him be, only hearing bits and pieces of what he did and how Rooster was beginning to plague the Senior Delvers and trying to run before he could even crawl.

“He’s got Glee up there working for him now!” declared Hume, grumbling at this sudden loss of another promising helper.

“Have you been to the place where he delves?” asked Samphire, who like Gaunt felt it wisest to leave well alone, but like any mother was also curious to know what he was up to.

“More than my life’s worth,” said Hume. “But I’ll tell you one thing — he’s been about the place asking the delvers about this and that. He’s discovered that some are good at one thing, and some good at another. It’s like he knows what he wants to learn.”

“Aren’t
you
curious, Gaunt?” asked Samphire with a smile. “And the Senior Delvers?”

The easy way the two moles had had with each other from the start had continued. Indeed Samphire had become helper to Gaunt himself, a role Drumlin was especially happy to see fulfilled.

“Beauty and the beast!” she would say fondly to them both.

“There’s no beast in Gaunt,” Samphire would confide. “He’s the gentlest mole I’ve ever known, except that his mind’s so strong. All his power is in that.”

“You only say that because he’s not teaching you to delve. How do you think he’s got Rooster delving like he is? Now just you wait a short while longer and you’ll see how tough my father Gaunt can be.”

She did not have to wait long. A few days later Hume brought the astonishing news that Humlock had joined Rooster and Glee in their endeavours in the chamber Rooster had found. They were using him to help transport material Rooster had delved, guiding him out to the surface and showing him how to dispose of it by touch.

“Hmmph!” said Gaunt, apparently displeased.

“But that’s good, surely, getting Humlock involved,” said Samphire.

“Good in theory, fatal in practice. He’ll get too big for his paws before long. I think the time’s come for me to have a look, and I’ve a feeling that that’s just what Rooster would like.”

Gaunt was right. Soon afterwards Prime came to see him and the two had a long and private consultation. Then the other Senior Delvers were called and all six moles went into a huddle which the whole system knew about. Then it dispersed, leaving only Prime and Gaunt to summon Drumlin and Samphire.

“We have come to a conclusion,” said Gaunt, “which is that we will visit Rooster’s delving. We understand … well … we shall see for ourselves. Come …”

“Aren’t you going to warn him you’re coming?” said Samphire. “Rooster’s a mole likes his privacy.”

“The Delvings are for allmole, not for one,” said Gaunt quietly.

It took them some time to climb the long way to where Rooster had made his delving, and at the steep last part Samphire helped Gaunt along, while Prime, his little paws scrabbling to heave him on, huffed and puffed and glowered as they went.

At last they came to a tunnel from which the noise of delving came, and entered it. There was a rough-hewn chamber used for spoil, in which Humlock, a begrimed and dusty Humlock, stanced in silent thought. Quietly the moles went on, until eventually an elegant and recently-delved archway led them into a medium-sized chamber whose walls were delved with all kinds of strange, stark indentations, whose sound was rough and cheerful, and whose light, cleverly using the fissures above, was both dark and bright, shifting and strange. Most astonishing of all, above them and some way out of reach of even the largest mole’s paw, were delvings, high delvings.

Glee saw the visitors first and gave a warning shout to Rooster, who was busy at the far end of the place, his paws working powerfully at a bare part of the wall.

“Rooster!
Rooster
!”

The great mole, hearing the warning note in her voice, turned and saw Gaunt and Prime, and the two mothers, staring at him and all his work.

On Samphire’s face was a look of pride, while on Drumlin’s was one of wonder that youngsters such as these could have made anything so impressive, strange though it was.

“Didn’t know you were coming,” said Rooster without pleasure.

“Didn’t tell you,” said Gaunt.

“It’s wonderful, all that you’ve done,” said Samphire, “it’s...”

“Yes, my dears, you’ve all —” continued Drumlin.

A frown from Gaunt, a wave of a paw from Prime, silenced them.

Rooster came forward, his eyes on Gaunt and not on his mother.

“Wanted to delve the feeling. Wanted to …’ He sounded defiant and wary at the same time.

“Silence, mole!” commanded Gaunt.

The Mentor signaled to Prime, and together the two slowly examined the chamber, peering up into its recesses, touching its walls and listening to its clumsy sound, shaking their heads in one place, nodding as they talked in whispers in another. The others awaited their verdict with bated breath. Rooster looked most uneasy, most unsettled.

“They’ll like it!” whispered Glee. “You’ll see.”

At last the two came back.

“Well, mole?” said Gaunt.

Rooster stared, not knowing what was meant.

“I asked you to delve your feeling. Is this it?” He waved a paw dismissively about the great place.

“Tried,” said Rooster uncomfortably.

“But it’s very —” began Samphire defensively.

“Madam, wordlessness is best on these occasions,” said Prime grimly. “Words do not help.”

“Tried?” said Gaunt.

“The feeling. The delving need. Put it on the walls. Learned how to do the high delvings. Asked others to help. Only Glee would help. Only Humlock. Tried to make the delving true.”

Rooster spoke with increasing distress and anger.

“And has it worked, mole?” said Prime suddenly.

There was a long silence. Rooster looked about him, and at his work, and his breathing became rapid as he struggled with his feelings.

“You told me that in your delving need you felt all was one. Is this fragmented, noisy, ugly place, all one?” whispered Gaunt. His voice was filled with despair.

“It’s … it’s … it’s me!” cried out Rooster, turning from them and barely knowing what to do with himself. He raised his paws and crashed them down on one of the walls he had so intricately delved, and his work fractured and broke where his paws had struck.

“It’s me!” he shouted, turning to face them and raising his paws in despair as he looked wildly at his work. “Tried to delve the feeling like you said. Tried and tried and tried.”

“And is this it?”

“ME!” bellowed Rooster, spit hanging from his mouth as he became utterly frustrated and enraged.

“Mole!” said Gaunt. “It
is
you. The you I see. The you
we
see.”

“Not the feeling. Can’t delve it. It’s … it’s …”

He bowed his great clumsy head in utter despair and Glee went to him and put her paws to his.

Don’t listen to him, Rooster. I can feel what it is you’re trying to delve. I can, even if
they
can’t.”

As she tried to protect her friend from the assaults that seemed to be coming at him, Humlock suddenly appeared at the archway and entered. Slowly he made his way towards the two of them, seeming to sense their distress and need. He reached out for them, and Glee went to him and led him to where Rooster wept. There, by the scarred wall, the three moles huddled.

“Humlock knows too,” said Glee.

But Gaunt’s gaze was pitiless. “And you, Rooster, what do you know?” he said.

Slowly Rooster raised his head and stared at the old mole. “Know it’s me but not me. Know I can delve better. Want to learn.”

Gaunt nodded and whispered. “Yes, mole, I know you do. Now listen. You will go with Prime, Rooster, and he will teach what he knows. You, Glee, will go to None, for she has need of a female at her flank, and you will learn much from her that one day I think your friends will need from you.”

“What about Humlock?” said Glee, a little aggressively.

Gaunt smiled. “Ah, yes. Take him to Compline. That mole will know what to do with him, for I have instructed him already. Now go! All of you, go! But for you, Samphire, I will have need of your help out from here. Go!”

When they were gone Samphire turned angrily to Gaunt.

“You are too harsh, Gaunt, far too harsh.”

“Am I, my dear?” he said, turning from her and looking about the chamber. “Listen!”

He ran a paw over some delvings Rooster had made, and rough strange sounds echoed about the place, roarings and bellowings, breakings and fracturings.

“Listen!” he said more softly.

As the ugly sound died away, beyond it, for a short moment, they heard a quieter, gentler sound, peaceful, graceful, loving.

“That is your son,” he whispered.

“And this? Is it so bad?” said Samphire. “Can it be so bad if there is a touch of something better in it?”

“Bad?” said Gaunt in astonishment, as if he could not understand why
she
could not understand. “This chamber Rooster has made is the work of a Master of the Delve. In this beginning is our ending.”

“Then why …?” said Samphire amazed.

“Because if he does not learn how to make as he truly feels he will be destroyed by the knowledge of what he cannot do. And he knows it, he knows it.” Gaunt said these last words in wonder. “He knows he is not ready to delve the feeling he knows he has.”

“When will he be ready?”

Gaunt shook his head. “It may take him a lifetime to discover it. But what he has made here already, a hundred lifetimes of Charnel delvers could not have made. Fear not, Samphire, for the Stone is with your son, and will protect him and guide him in ways beyond the capacity of moles like us. But we can set him on the path, now that he is ready to go down it.”

“Then why do you weep, Gaunt?” said Samphire coming close.

“For joy,” whispered Gaunt, “that such a mole has come to my ken in my own lifetime. For joy and regret. The days of the Charnel are numbered and now moledom must prepare to take back what it once drove into secrecy here. The Charnel, and the moles in it, will soon be no more. A Master has come, as Hilbert said one day he would, and all will change, all be as a dream that was. The work of generations is nearly done.”

As if responding to what Gaunt said, the chamber whispered his voice back to him, rumbling, ugly, yet with whispers of beauty beyond. And where Rooster had crashed his talons into his own work and wept, a fragment of his delving fell down on to the floor, and after it a scatter of soil, and particles of rock.