The Golden Flight (15 page)

Marguerite felt very uncomfortable. Was what Sycamore had allegedly done been so very different from what she had done herself only the day before? At least she had a motive. Perhaps Sycamore did too. Should she be trying to find out? With no further thought she spoke out.

‘I would like to suggest that this meeting is suspended while Sycamore and I talk about his reasons in private. I know it is against custom but please trust me. I am sure I can help.’

Clover said, ‘It
is
against custom, but so many things that are happening now are against our customs. I value Marguerite’s judgement. Unless any squirrel is against, we will wait for Marguerite’s report. Sycamore the Ruddled, you will do exactly what Marguerite tells you and answer all her questions. We meet again here in seven days.’ Marguerite signalled to Sycamore to follow her and the two left together.

‘I want to know why you do all these things,’ she told him. ‘But don’t answer now, I want you to think carefully before you tell me. I want the real reason, not whatever comes into your head – that’s too easy. First though, we will go and apologise to Chip and see if he needs help remaking his Bark-rush.’

Chip was not happy to see Marguerite with Sycamore. A tinge of jealousy stabbed him and he ignored the proffered apologies, turning away and scratching at a flea bite so vigorously that a trace of blood showed on his fur.

‘Chip!’ Marguerite said sternly, ‘Behave yourself. I look to you to set an example.’

Chip looked contrite and mumbled his apology. Marguerite was staring at the blood on his fur, her mind obviously far away.

‘Not bleeding –
breeding
!’ she said out loud.

‘Woodlouse knows how the mushrooms of the moon control breeding.
That’s
what Thizle was trying to tell me.’

Then her face fell. Her dear friend Woodlouse (now called Wood Anemone), who appeared to hold the future of the Ourland squirrels in her paws, was out of reach. She had stayed on the Mainland to help with the teaching of the Greys.

Marguerite knew she must find a way to get a message to her.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

The stern-faced scoutmaster called his boy scouts together and instructed them to sit on the grass. He was not looking forward to what he had to say.

It was a pity. The camp had gone well so far. The boys had made bridges, rafts and bivouac shelters. They had all worked well together and played exciting wide-games and learned about stalking and concealment. Now this had happened to spoil it.

His knees were burning. Unaccustomed to short trousers, the last two sunny days had left their bright red mark. He wondered briefly if what he was going to have to announce was unfair but then decided crossly that the little blighters must be taught a lesson.

‘I do feel that one or more of you have let the side down,’ he said. ‘This troop was selected from all the scouts in Dorset to camp here on Brownsea Island on the very place where Baden-Powell held the first ever scout camp nearly sixty years ago. That was a real privilege for our troop. Now someone has chopped a tree about so that it looks like a squirrel. I had to promise the wardens that all axe-work would be strictly supervised. I want the person who is responsible to own up.’

He waited but no one spoke.

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Someone must have done it.’

‘Perhaps it was a squirrel done it,’ a young scout ventured.

The other scouts laughed nervously and the scoutmaster glowered.

‘If no one owns up by lunch-time none of you will go to help launch the hot-air balloon this afternoon. Dismiss.’

The scoutmaster went angrily back to his tent to rub calamine lotion on to his sunburnt knees. If none of the little blighters owned up he would have to miss seeing the flight himself.

Away from his hoppos, and with no access to the ruddled sloes, Sycamore was really pleasant company. After his apology to Chip he seemed eager to learn numbers from Marguerite and find out what the Bark-rush could be used for.  She told him of her concern about the possibility of the island becoming overpopulated by squirrels and she reminded him of the dreadful plague that had virtually wiped out the rabbits earlier in the year. Then Chip, at first reluctantly, taught him how to calculate using the bark rings. Marguerite sat apart from them, trying to think of a way to get a message to Wood Anemone.

Later on that hot afternoon, the three of them were together, resting in one of the trees that formed the Island Screen. Chip seemed unhappy that Marguerite planned to spend so much time alone with Sycamore and when she had suggested they go to look at the Mainland from the South Shore trees, he had tagged along.

‘What in the Sunless Pit is
that
?’ Sycamore asked, when a roar as of some great animal came from the direction of the meadow between them and the church.

Moments later the sound came again and the three squirrels hurried through the trees to where they could look out over the open grassy area. They could see a few humans gathered around a hump, the colour of a buttercup flower, which billowed and rippled in the breeze. Nearby a peacock and his harem of peahens scratched and pecked at the ground as though nothing unusual was happening.

‘What’s that thing?’ Sycamore asked again in a hushed voice.

‘I don’t know, I’ve seen nothing like it before,’ Marguerite replied, climbing higher for a better view.

There was a longer roar and the glossy yellow hump, seeming to have a life of its own, rose above the heads of the humans and tossed about in the breeze. An unfamiliar and disturbing burning smell blew directly towards the squirrels in the pinetree. The humans were now clustered below the yellow thing, which had become a round ball, and were holding something beneath it that the squirrels could not see.

‘It’s the Suns-child,’ whispered Marguerite, ‘come again!’

‘What’s the Suns-child?’ Sycamore asked, hoping for a better answer this time.

‘Twice in the past, the Sun has sent its child when we squirrels have been in trouble. Now it’s here again, only it’s grown much bigger. Look at the size of it!’

The balloon towered above the humans who were debating amongst themselves as to whether or not it was safe to fly with the wind rising and blowing so strongly from east to west. The pilot was annoyed that the boy scouts had not turned up as promised to help with holding the basket, even though a boy had come at the last minute with an apologetic message.

Finally, having decided that it was
not
safe, the pilot tried to release the hot air but the ripcord seemed to have jammed. With the other helpers hanging grimly on to the basket, he climbed on to the woven wicker edge and reached upwards for the cord.

He was doing this when a sudden swirl of wind spun across the meadow, lifting the dried soil from the peacocks’ dusting places, and blowing it into the eyes of those around the balloon. Each, believing that others were holding it down, let go to wipe their eyes. The balloon suddenly lifted. The pilot, also temporarily blinded, let go and fell backwards off the basket, knocking down two of the helpers.

The balloon jerked violently away, rose higher and floated off in a westerly direction towards the trees, trailing a rope.

‘Grab that rope someone. Grab hold of that rope!’ the pilot shouted, getting to his feet and running after the balloon which was now nearly above the trees. Others joined the chase.

The squirrels heard the incomprehensible shouting and saw the humans running after the tail-end of the rope, now far out of their reach. It trailed through the branches towards them.

Marguerite sensed that the Suns-child should be restrained and called to Chip and Sycamore, ‘Help me catch that rope, we must help the Suns-child,’ and snatched at the trailing line as it slithered past them.

In a moment, the three squirrels, all clutching the rope, had been torn from the treetop and were being lifted bodily high into the air. ‘Hang on for your lives,’ Marguerite shouted.

It was suddenly calm and, looking down, Marguerite could see the island falling away behind them. Below was the blue water of Poole Harbour, dotted with the white spots of boat sails. There was no sensation of dizziness as there had been when she had once climbed the chalk cliff to the Barrow of the Flowers. Somehow the ground was remote and distant, not a part of the world they now found themselves in.

‘ Climb up after me,’ she called down to Chip and Sycamore and the three climbed easily, their claws gripping firmly into the fibres of the rope until they reached the basket and scrambled over the padded edge. They explored the box of woven willow stems, which contained only a few loose items of human’s coverings and two round red metal things as big as tree stumps.

Marguerite was puzzled by the silence. Apart from the occasional creaking of the willow box, there was no sound at all. Down in the trees the wind had been singing its gentle song, so familiar to the squirrels that they hardly noticed it. There pine needles had rubbed against one another, leaves shook and rustled and the movement of air past the twigs and branches always had a special sound of its own.

Suddenly she realised what had made the change – they were floating and drifting on the very wind itself!

How many times had she watched the white-winged gulls flying effortlessly on the breezes over the sea and envied them? Now she and her companions were doing the same. Her tail rose with pleasure as they climbed to the edge of the basket and sat there, claws gripping the soft padding.

‘We are flying on the wind,’ she shouted joyously and Sycamore grinned across at Chip. This was much more fun than the stupid things he had been doing lately.

There was land below them now and the Suns-child seemed to be slowly getting nearer the ground as they drifted along.

‘There’s the Blue Pool,’ Marguerite said excitedly, as she recognised her old home demesne, the pool itself glowing sapphire in the green trees, below and to the south of them. The Sun had sent its child once again to help her and now it was carrying her to Wood Anemone. She prepared herself for the Suns-child to come down out of the sky – but it floated on.

Perplexed, Marguerite recited the Kernel –

‘Trust in the Sun.

His ways are mysterious.

Faith can fell fir trees
.

‘That must be Rowan’s Pool down there.’ She pointed out another small pool now passing beneath them, shaped like a crouching animal with an island where its eye would have been. And still the Suns-child floated on.

‘Have faith in the Sun

His ways are mysterious…’

Rowan looked up and saw the yellow balloon above the three trees of the Eyeland.

‘The Suns-child has come again to save us,’ he called, and the besieged squirrels followed his pointing claw, then saw his face fall as the great yellow ball, its fabric now billowing lazily in the wind, drifted westwards apparently without seeing them.

The balloon floated on, the wind veering slightly and blowing more from the north-east. Below them, Marguerite could hear the gun-fire from the Lulworth ranges and see the flashes as the humans played with the thunder and lightning force. The Suns-child was now much nearer the ground and heading for a ridge of hills, beyond which she caught glimpses of the sea.

As it dropped even more the basket bumped along the ground on the top of the ridge, and their movement slowed briefly. Before the squirrels, tumbled in the bottom of the basket, could compose themselves and jump clear, it lifted again and floated feebly out towards the sea. Then, as if giving up, the Suns-child collapsed with its flaccid skin draping the mellow stone walls of a ruined barn.

‘That was fun,’ said Sycamore, crawling from the basket and brushing himself down, followed by Marguerite and Chip who did the same. ‘Where do we go from here?’

The sun was setting, painting the sky in dramatic shades of gold and red, all reflected in the waters of the circular cove to their right. A mass of rock far out to sea in the south-west was dark against the glow. Chip pointed to it.

‘That’s the Isle of Portland. That’s where I was born,’ he told Sycamore.

Rowan watched the Suns-child disappear and suddenly felt very tired. He looked at the bright western sky and the setting sun.

In times of great stress

Rest is a sound investment –

Restoring one’s strength.

‘Organise the night watch again, Spindle-friend,’ he said, ‘but count me in this night.’

He went into the ground-drey, curled up and closed his eyes.

On Ourland, a Council Meeting had been called and was better attended than most.

Just Poplar called for order.

‘Doez any zquirrel know what huz happened to Marguerite, Chip and Zycamore? They zeem to have left Ourland with the round yellow thing the humanz brought here. The thing that looked like the Zun and floated in the zky?’

CHAPTER TWENTY

The humans arrived at the ruined barn as it was getting dark, folded the Suns-child and carried it, with its basket, away into the night. The three squirrels hid in holes in the decaying stonework until the humans had gone, then climbed up to the highest point and looked around.

Somehow we’ve got to get back to the Blue Pool, Marguerite was thinking. But if the Sun had meant us to go there, why has the Suns-child brought us to the coast?

She turned towards Portland far across the bay and watched as it seemed to sink into the water as the light faded from the sky. Stars appeared, twinkling and sparkling above her head and she sensed a sadness trapped in the stone walls below her. Chip seemed to feel it too and he urged her to leave.

‘Wait,’ she said. ‘Hush!’ She had felt tingling at the base of her whiskers which usually indicated that the dolphins were trying to contact her. She cleared her mind to listen.