The Second Wave (13 page)

Amongst the others, liaisons formed and dissolved in the confines of the hollow tree, most ending in harsh words and sulks – the confined space of the Bunker distorted the courting patterns evolved over centuries of open space and tree-life.

Oak guessed that the Longest Night must have passed, and suggested to Fern that they hold some kind of celebration.

Fern was having another bad day – she hated the darkness of the hollow.  ‘With what?’ she had replied, witheringly, ‘Stale hazelnuts and a mouthful of fungus each? Forget it!’

As the days passed, the quarrels increased and Oak knew that some action on his part was needed, but he was unsure what to do and was therefore pleased when another cold spell made all the confined squirrels sink into a semi-dormant state, bringing peace to the Bunker once more.

One morning, as the light in the hollow was beginning to brighten with the rising sun, Just Poplar gently shook Oak’s shoulder to waken him.

‘I think your Fern is Sun-gone,’ he said.

Oak turned and looked at his life-mate curled besides him and shook her gently.  She didn’t stir.  Her tail, with the thin grey hairs of age, covered her as a blanket.  He hadn’t noticed how old she had been looking until then and he felt a twinge of vulnerability as he realised that he too was really quite old now.  He shook her again, not believing that she could just have left him in the night, then called Clover to see her.  She confirmed that Fern the Fussy was indeed Sun-gone.

Memories of happier days at the Blue Pool flooded over him.  He could picture her sitting on the grooming branch outside their drey there, combing her fur and tail with her claws.  Everything had to be just so!

All he could do now was to ensure that she had a worthy burial.  Somewhere peaceful where she could nourish a tree, as it said in the Farewell Kernel –

Sun, take this squirrel

Into the peace of your earth

To nourish a tree.

Clover was clearly thinking the same thing. She opened her mouth as though to say the Kernel, closed it again, looked across at the entrance hole and then said, ‘We’ve got a problem.’

Oak was about to respond by quoting the Kernel which stated that there were no problems, only Challenges, thought better of it and waited for Clover to explain.

‘We
can’t
bury Fern,’ she said.  ‘As soon as we get her through the hole, she’ll drop into the swamp.’

‘We can’t keep her in here,’ Oak replied, and looked at Just Poplar as if he might know how the body could be disposed of in a dignified and fitting way.

The other squirrels had woken and were gathered round Oak with words of comfort and regret.  An informal Council Meeting developed and finally it was agreed, with Oak grudgingly conceding that they would, for the sake of the enclosed community,
have
to drop the body out of the hole into the Zwamp.

Fern would not have liked that, Oak thought, remembering how carefully she had groomed herself each day, determined to maintain what she called 'proper standards’ but he could see no alternative.

Fern’s body was dragged to the exit hole and Clover rehearsed the Farewell Kernel in her mind.  It was not exactly appropriate, she thought – squirrels like to be buried at the foot of their favourite tree – but times were not normal.  She looked at the other squirrels clustered round her in the dim light, then reached out and put a paw on Fern’s shoulder.  Clover opened her mouth and was about to say the Kernel when Chestnut the Doubter, who has kept silent up to this point, whispered in her ear, ‘I don’t think she’ll go through the hole.'

Chestnut was right.  The body had stiffened in the curled-up sleeping position, and would not straighten.  No manoeuvring or shoving could post it to a muddy and undignified end.  As the squirrels always buried their Sun-gone ones at once, they were not to know that if they had waited, their problem would have solved itself.  Even in death Fern had managed to maintain ‘proper standards’.

A formal Council Meeting was convened and after an awkward discussion it was decided that, as tradition called for bodies to be buried as soon as possible after death, they had no choice other than to dig a hole in the powdery punkwood at the very furthest corner of the hollow and put Fern in that.  Oak and Clover said the Farewell kernel together as the other squirrels crouched silently around them.  Then Oak, suddenly needing to be alone, went out though the exit hole and climbed up the bark of the old willow to the highest branch, where he clung blinking in the bright sunlight.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Crag sensed a different atmosphere in the Temple Tree when he awoke.  There was an ominous grumbling from the Greys and he knew that whilst he had been away they had been plotting against him.  Why had Rusty not warned him?  Then he recalled that she
had
tried to talk to him the previous night.  He had forbidden her to speak as he had been tired, and he had sent her off to her own sleeping space.

Hickory and Sitka were climbing up towards him, followed at a distance by that female, Ivy, or Poison Ivy as he had heard some of the Greys call her.  They looked ill at ease.

Crag did not wait for them to speak.  ‘I’m glad that you came up.  I have an announcement to make.  I am able to increase rations all round and today there will be no work.  This is to be a Sin-day to celebrate the passing of the Longest Night.’

Hickory glanced at Sitka, then turned back to Crag.

‘What’s a Sin-day?’

‘It’s a day when there is no work and we all have extra rations.  Go and tell the others.  There will be a special meal at dusk.  In the meantime you may all rest or forage as you feel inclined.  That is all.’  He dismissed the Greys with a flick of his tail and went outside.  He hoped that the local sycamore trees were subject to the same afflictions as the few Portland ones had been.

They were.  He sorted through the dead leaves on the ground until he had at least one for every Grey plus one each for himself and Rusty and carried these back to the Temple Tree, watched by Greys sitting about in unaccustomed idleness.

At dusk he called the Greys together and handed each a leaf.  Then he gave one to Rusty and held one in his own paw.

‘Do exactly as I do,’ he instructed them as he rolled the leaf into a tight tube.  He smiled as he did this and the Greys, intrigued by this previously unseen aspect of the Temple Master’s character, relaxed, and tried to roll their crisp black-spotted leaf into a similar tight tube.  Crag went from squirrel to squirrel, holding his own rolled leaf and directing the others as their tubes sprang open and they rolled them up again.  For the first time, laughter was heard in the Temple Tree clearing.

Crag was showing Ivy just how it was done when his own leaf dropped from under his left forelimb and unrolled on the ground.  He grabbed it quickly and rolled it tightly, but not before Ivy had seen that this leaf was clear of any of the black mould spots.

Crag moved among the Greys until every squirrel was holding a rightly rolled leaf.

‘Now,’ he said loudly, ‘ we must each eat our own leaf.  Stem and all.  Like this…’ He nibbled his way rapidly down the leaf then chewed the brown stem.  ‘There,’ he said, ‘nothing to it!’

The Greys, having some unaccustomed fun, followed him and vying with each other to be first, crunched on the musty tasting leaves.  Only Ivy, pretending to be having difficulty with her broken tooth, let her leaf unroll and bit at it carefully, unobtrusively dropping the pieces with the black spots on them.

In the night Hickory crawled across to Sitka’s sleeping place.

‘I feel awful,’ he whispered. ‘I know it can’t be true, but I feel as if I’m falling through space, spinning round and round like a sycamore seed.’

‘Me too,’ said Sitka, and they crouched together, shivering and waiting for daylight.

For them and nearly all the other squirrels in the Temple Tree, daylight did not come that day.  Long after they knew it must be light, the helpless, sick animals cowered in apparent darkness, blinking their blind eyes and clinging to the inside of the tree in a vain attempt to stop the spinning, falling feeling.

Ivy, the only unaffected Grey, watched Crag moving silently among them.  She noted that the red female, Rusty, was in the same state as the Greys.

At High-Sun Crag moved into a position where he could be heard by all.

‘I am disappointed,’ he announced.  ‘Not one of you has passed the Sin-test.  Each of you must have sinned grievously to be so affected.  This is why the test is special.  It finds out not only the squirrel who has sinned openly, but also those who have sinned in their hearts.  All those who are impure will now be experiencing the horror of the Sunless Pit.  Falling in darkness forever.’  He paused. ‘But I, Crag the Temple Master, can give you hope.  All those who truly repent and vow to serve the Sun in any way I direct will be forgiven and have a second chance.  Think on what I have said.’

He climbed out of the hollow and up one of the dying upper limbs of the oak.  Ivy followed him.

‘You misserable crooked worm and tricksster,’ she said, the words hissing savagely past her broken tooth.  ‘I know that you made them eat poissoned leavess and that iss why they are all sick.  Even your own mate!  I don’t whether to kill you mysself or tell the otherss what you have done and let them do it.’

She looked at Crag in contempt, then spoke again.  ‘There iss, of coursse, one thing you could do.’

Crag looked up at her.  She suddenly seemed much bigger than he was.

‘You could tell the otherss that
I
have not sinned and because of thiss I am to be in charge of all the Greyss.’

Crag hesitated.

‘Right,’ said Ivy.  ‘I will denounsse you for the tricksster you are.’

‘Wait,’ said Crag.  ‘Tell me just what you want.  I am sure that we can work together for the glory of the Sun.’

‘Ressponssibility,’ said Ivy, ‘and a chansse to prove mysself to otherss.’

On the third morning after the Celebrations Juniper wriggled out of his drey in a pine overlooking the Blue Pool and started down the trunk to forage for his breakfast.  He stopped, head down.  The ground below him was covered with grey squirrels, scratching and digging where he and Marguerite had buried their winter reserves.  He went carefully on down the tree to investigate, pausing a few feet above the scattered pine needles covering the earth.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked, the formal greeting seeming inappropriate.

The Greys ignored him.  He asked again, and was again ignored as the intruders dug up nut after nut, eating some and preparing others to be carried away.

‘What
are
you
doing
?’ he asked loudly, for the third time.

None of the Greys so much as glanced in his direction.  He looked round for support, but no other Red was in sight and he felt the same frustration that he had known when, as a dreyling, his companions had ‘sent him to the conker tree’ for some misdemeanour or other.  Juniper went back up the pine trunk to alert Marguerite.

Other Reds were now coming silently through the trees, warily watching the activity below.  Soon Alder the leader arrived, leaping across the last gap and landing awkwardly, having no tail to balance himself with.  The others looked to him for guidance.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

Juniper explained what little he knew.

With Juniper and Marguerite beside him, Alder went down the trunk and asked the Greys why they were digging up all his community’s nuts.  Alder too was ignored – the Greys just carried on as if the Reds did not exist.  Not knowing how to stop them, Alder, after a minute or so, led Juniper and Marguerite back up the tree and they watched the raiders depart, all carrying nuts in their mouths.

An hour later the Greys were back, collecting more of the Red’s precious Harvest, not even leaving the sacrosanct eighth nut as required by the Kernel –

One out of eight nuts

Must be left to germinate.

Here grows our future.

Alder was on the trunk, raging at the Greys, when Marguerite noticed a Red whom she recognised as the father of Chip.  He was directing the foraging party.  She slipped away through the branches and came down behind him.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked angrily.  ‘Those are our reserves!’

Crag turned to her scornfully.  ‘You deserve to have nothing.  You are all Blasphemers, story-tellers and pleasure-indulgers – you don’t even collect metal!  And you’ve corrupted my son!’ he added, venom in his voice. ‘At least these nuts will feed Sun-fearing squirrels even if they are grey.  If you get your lot to repent and help us fill the Temple, I will consider sharing this bounty with you.’

‘That bounty, as you call it, is
ours,
’ Marguerite retorted.  Then, noticing that Crag was looking over her shoulder, she turned to see that there was a group of Greys close behind her.

‘Shall we remove her, Temple Masster?’ asked a grey female with a broken tooth.

‘She’s just leaving,’ Crag replied, as Marguerite leapt for the tree-trunk.  ‘Carry on collecting the bounty.  Don’t talk to the Blasphemers.’

Marguerite rejoined her family and companions, and told them what had occurred.  When she had finished, Chip slipped away to speak to his father.  He found him as Marguerite had, organising the Greys and directing their plundering.

‘Father,’ he said hesitantly, ‘these are nice squirrels.  They are what they call ‘friendly’, and they
do
respect the Sun, only in a different way from us.  Why don’t you talk more with them?’

Crag glowered at him.  ‘They really have got you in their paws, haven’t they?  You always were weak.  Well, they won’t have you much longer!’  He nodded to two Greys who had come up behind Chip, and they seized his forelimbs and dragged him, scratching and chattering in fear and anger, towards the North-east Wood.

Tansy had trailed Chip, or Chipling as she usually called him, when he had gone to speak to his father, and had seen him being taken away by the two Greys.  She was annoyed because Marguerite, though always agreeing that they must take the Woodstock to Ourland, appeared to be doing nothing about it.  She had vague hopes that Chip might, in some way, be able to help her.  Tansy followed them quietly, through the treetops, wondering what it was that one of the Greys had said to the youngster that made him stop calling out.  Crag and the laden Greys were coming along the ground below her in a group, hampered by their loads of nuts.