Duncton Wood (101 page)

D
UNCTON
Wood stood quiet, bedraggled by the storm as last drops of rain dripped onto the damp leaf mold and the sky cleared to the west. Every tree, every bush, every plant seemed battered and shaken and there was a silent, almost wounded, air about the wood, as if a great mole were resting after a very long fight.

Boswell crouched with Tryfan and Comfrey by the Stone.

The other moles had finally gone back to their burrows, reluctant to leave the wonder and love they found in the presence of Boswell, beloved Boswell, Blessed Boswell, the White Mole of Uffington. Now only Tryfan and Comfrey remained, one who was in deep awe of Boswell and the other, Comfrey, who accepted him matter-of-factly, just as he had accepted Rebecca’s return to the system and her final departure with Bracken into the Stone where all moles must go.

“So you found the Seventh Stillstone but not the Book?” said Comfrey, looking at the smooth, flinty stone that Boswell had placed on the ground before them; it did not look special at all.

Boswell smiled wryly. “No, I know where the Book is, Comfrey,” he said simply. “I have to scribe it myself.”

“Oh,” said Comfrey, “yes, of course.” He should have thought of that. Bracken and Rebecca and Boswell had made the book together, so it couldn’t have been scribed before. A mole can’t scribe a book until it’s ready – it’s probably just like picking herbs.

Boswell had told them both something of what had happened, and Comfrey had understood that finally Rebecca was safe and so he could stop worrying about her. She was all right now.

He looked at Boswell and thought what a contrast he made to Tryfan – one frail and white, the other strong and black-furred. He smiled, too, because he saw that Tryfan watched with love and care over Boswell’s every move, as if he were afraid that a puff of wind would blow Boswell away. Well, one day he would know Boswell better than that.

“I will pray for your safe journey,” said Comfrey finally. “But then there’s not much harm can come to you, Boswell, with Tryfan by your side.”

Tryfan snouted about to size up the hour and the weather and decided that the time had come when they ought to leave. But he did not need to say a word of what he felt to Boswell, because Boswell knew.

“It would be an honor to have your prayers, Comfrey,” said Boswell, looking up for one last time at the Stone that now stood upright and towering over the base of the fallen tree. “If a mole could scribe on stone, I would scribe their names on it,” he said.

Then, with a last touch and final farewell, they left Comfrey by the Stone and set off across the clearing, out through the wood to the pastures and then off across them to the west toward Uffington. Comfrey whispered a prayer after them and a journey blessing and crouched wondering why he felt such a sense of relief. The air in the wood was so clear after the rain, it smelled so good, and he was at the start of a new spring in a system that had pride and memories and so much hope.

He could teach some of the youngsters the rituals and show them how they should be done. And if he didn’t remember all the words, it didn’t matter, because true words come from a mole’s heart, not his memory.

He looked back into the direction toward Uffington and Whispered again “May they return home safeguarded.” Then he laughed, a rare thing for Comfrey. He liked its sound so much that he laughed aloud again, with relief and happiness.

Off to the west, on the pastures, Tryfan and Boswell wound their way downhill. The trees of Duncton rose behind them at the top of the hill, the pasture dropped away below, and Tryfan asked “How long will it take?”

“Not too long,” said Boswell.

“Will you tell me about the things that happened to you and Bracken, and to Rebecca? All the things they would never talk about? All the stories?”

“Yes, yes,” said Boswell, smiling.

“Will I become a scribemole?” asked Tryfan.

Boswell stopped and touched him gently. “You’ve begun already,” he said, “just as I did, without ever knowing it.”

But Tryfan found this hard to believe, even though Boswell himself said it.

“Tell me about them,” he asked, and Boswell sensed that it was right to start doing so, for surely no mole held more of their joint spirit than Tryfan. And so Boswell began to tell the story, from the beginning, drawing on the memories of what Bracken and Rebecca had told him. Stories that gave him joy as well.

While Tryfan, after taking a final look back to Duncton Wood, which was now almost too far even to scent, moved protectively nearer to Boswell, whom he would see safely home to Uffington whatever dangers or trials they had to face. He felt strong and powerful, with the Stone of Duncton behind him and the White Mole who carried the Seventh Stillstone at his side and who would scribe the Seventh Book, the Book of Silence, telling him stories that he had so long wanted to hear.

As evening fell and they settled down into the first stage of their long journey, Tryfan thought to himself that if he ever did become a scribemole, then perhaps, with the Stone’s grace, he might one day record all that Boswell was beginning now to tell him of the story of Bracken and his beloved Rebecca.

UTHOR’S
OTE

The moles of Duncton Wood are
Talpa europaea,
the most widespread species of the mole family
(Talpidae),
whose members occur in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Talpa europaea
is similar to
Scalopus aquaticus
or the Eastern mole, one of the most widely distributed species in North America.

Moles are just under 6 inches long when mature (males are inches, females Six inches) and have a long, cylindrical body whose head merges straight into the trunk. They have large spadelike forelegs that are as broad as they are long. Each has five powerful claws or talons which, combined with powerful shoulder muscles, give moles a remarkable ability for rapid burrowing through soil.

Their snouts are pink and hairless and extremely sensitive to both smell and touch and to changes in humidity and temperature. Although some species of moles are blind – their vestigial eyes being covered with skin –
Talpa europaea
has eyes, though they are no more than minute black dots on the facial skin and are normally found only with difficulty beneath the fur. They appear to be of little use except, perhaps, to distinguish between light and dark. But moles’ sense of vibration is very acute and this combined with hearing and the ability to smell, equips them to live very successfully in their normal subterranean environment. They also have an erect tail that is almost certainly a sensory organ –
maintaining contact with tunnel roofs rather like, as one authority puts it, “the overhead pick-up of an electric train.”

Mole fur, once prized for outer garments, is characteristically dark gray. It has no single direction of lay (unlike, for example, a cat’s), and this gives a mole the advantage of being able to move in any direction in a narrow tunnel without difficulty.

Although many people associate moles with open grassland – principally because that is where molehills are most easily seen – they live in a very wide range of habitats, from woodland through to marginal coastal areas. The only two conditions in which they are not found is heavy peat and pure sand, where their invertebrate food (mainly worms) is almost impossible to find. One reason they are so rarely observed in woodland is that their molehills are obscured by leaf mold and wood litter, but this is probably their most common habitat.

Their tunnel systems are complex and extensive (about 350 square yards), though the shape is variable and reflects local conditions. They frequently create tunnels at different levels, perhaps using the deeper tunnels (up to 39 inches deep) in colder conditions. The familiar molehills are outcastings of burrowed soil from tunnels.

Moles appear to be strongly territorial: they will attack to kill if confined together. Laboratory conditions are nevertheless not the same as real life and there is now much evidence that, though defensive of their own territory, they will share communal tunnels with other moles. It also seems possible that moles are more willing to share at least some territory in woodland habitats than in pastureland – or, put another way, moles have less defined territories in woodland. Moles are frequently seen on the surface and there are well-confirmed reports of them being seen in amicable company with each other.

Like many other creatures, moles tend to mate and have their young in spring and early summer. A small proportion of females appear to have second litters in summer, and there are isolated reports of pregnant females being found in the autumn. Gestation takes about four weeks and the average litter size is four, the young being born in underground nests carefully lined with leaf litter. They are weaned after another four weeks or so and begin to leave the mother to find their own territory after six or seven weeks. At this period, when the young are still too weak to burrow deeply or find their own territory, mortality from such predators as owls is high.

The vocal range of moles varies from a characteristic squeaking and soft purring to alarm sounds of shriller twittering.

From this account it will be clear that the moles of Duncton Wood make various departures from the normal lifestyle of “real” moles: they are probably more sociable; the journeys Bracken, Rebecca and Boswell make are abnormal; and the autumn births in the story are probably rare in real life. But then, Duncton Wood is a story and allegory rather than a doctoral thesis, and the realities it is about are different from those that preoccupy a zoologist.

A special problem in the narration relates to the mole’s power of vision. The simple fact is that moles cannot see very far and some maintain that they cannot see at all. They “see” with their snouts and through their senses of smell and hearing. Because
we
see through our eyes, our language is richer in its vocabulary of vision. So, while we have a vocabulary of vision, a
mole
ought to be given a rich vocabulary of smell and hearing, the senses they use most of all. But, logical though this is, it would not work to write a book in which characters say such things as “I smell what you mean” when humans would say “I see what you mean.” For this reason I have applied the human vocabulary of vision to the moles’ senses of smell, vibration and hearing.

Moles live for up to five years and perhaps very occasionally a little longer – though the majority die younger. This makes a single year in the life of a mole equivalent to about fourteen human years. On this basis I have arbitrarily made a moleyear equivalent to a human month.

Which leaves just two issues for the really pernickety: First, how do moles read? The books in the libraries of the Holy Burrows are “written” –
scribed
is the precise word – in molebraille and a mole reads them with his snout.

Ah, but can moles talk? Of course, though the chatterings and twitterings they make in real life are impossible for humans to interpret. But anyone who has had the pleasure of being close to creatures – whether quietly in their own home or in the deep peace of the country when no other sounds are heard – will know that they talk in many different ways. And certainly
moles
talk, just like anymole else.

Scanner’s Note

This contains the complete text from the original Canadian paperback edition of this great series. All original art has been included, as well as every page. (At least I hope I didn’t miss a page!)

There may be a few broken sentences here and there, but I have tried my best to catch them all without a full proof read. I have left the original spelling error’s where they are (A few missing T’ and the odd word with a couple letters swapped around). Any other major problems, please feel free to email me and I’ll fix and release again.

While Abby is an absolutely excellent piece of software, being able to scan around wrinkles, through mold spots, and other things due to the water damage my Duncton series suffered from the floods here, not once did it scan and spell
Uffington
correctly for some reason. My other Duncton books are/were all the
original
hardcovers, and I will start to chop them up and scan them in if they aren’t too far gone inside.