The Second Wave (16 page)

They had reached the edge of the hollow in which the Blue Pool lay.  The surface was calm in the late-winter sunshine and the upside-down reflections of the Beachend trees were green against the blue of the mirrored sky.  Even in her agitated state Marguerite felt the surge of joy that always came when she looked at the loveliness of the pool and its setting.  The Sun forbid that she would ever have to leave it again.  Yet somehow she knew it would come to that.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

It was a night for dreaming.

Crag dreamed of the day when both trunks of the Temple Tree would be filled with metal, safely stowed there to prove to the Sun that he was a
worthy squirrel
.  No Sunless Pit for him!  The hollows were filling fast – every day more Greys arrived and were instructed by Ivy that this was the local custom and therefore, in accordance with their instructions from the Oval Drey at Woburn, must be followed.  She was also adept at describing the Sunless Pit to the newcomers – he could not do better himself.

A few feet from him Rusty, on a ledge in the cold hollow of the Temple Tree, dreamed of loving and cuddling, then awoke shivering with fear, afraid that Crag might somehow know of her sinful dreams.

Chip, in a hollow lower down in the tree, was also dreaming of loving and cuddling, but with no such sense of sinfulness.

The object of his dreams, Tansywistful, in the drey above the pool, was dreaming of a pine marten eating her family one by one, whilst she watched helplessly from a tree surrounded by water.

On the island, the object of her dream, Blood, had returned from his unsuccessful hunt in the pottery labyrinth to find the church door shut and neither sight nor sound of the peacock and the peahens.  There had been a tangle of human scents around the church, and some of the undergrowth that had been invading the building and its surrounds had been cut back.  He had found a dry place under a rhododendron bush nearby, and now slept and dreamed of the peacock.  His pride prevented him from dreaming of squirrels that night.

Mogul, the peacock, was at that time crouched uneasily on a beam in an unfamiliar shed, the remainder of his harem of peahens perched alongside him, their heads under their wings.  In his restless slumber he was resenting the way he had been shooed out of the stone building that has been their home for so long by a party of humans, who had come into the church and started to clean it up after many years of abandonment and neglect.

Mogul’s dream was that, when spring came, he would dazzle his hens and all the humans with a display of colour such as none of them had ever seen before.  He would especially show off to the man in the brown and green clothes, the man with the picture of the oak-leaves and the acorns on his chest, who was clearly the Cock of the parties of men now busy all across the island.

The object of Mogul’s dreams was the National Trust Head Warden, who had recently been appointed when the Trust had taken over Brownsea Island.  He was dreaming of – or perhaps it would be more honest to say, lying awake worrying about – all the things that had to be organised and carried out before the official opening ceremony, scheduled for late May.

As well as the church, the restoration of which was being carried out by a group of volunteers from a mainland parish, there were countless things to be done.  Masses of the rhododendrons had to be cleared, buildings would have to be repaired and a power line brought over from the mainland.  The diesel generator was just not adequate.  So much to do, so little time!  Some people just don’t realise how much! All they kept asking him was, ‘Are the squirrels still there?’  Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen them for a while.  Finally he fell asleep with pictures of squirrels filling his dreams.

Not many of the Ourland squirrels were asleep.  Just Poplar, fearful of a return visit from the marten, had employed another trick from his dreyling-hood games.  An hour before high-tide he had led the entire party out of the labyrinth on to the shore and they had set off in the dusk, along the beach below the high-water mark.  Soon the rising tide would obliterate their tracks and their scent!  They had left the beach after rounding the point and were now resting uneasily in the darkness near the ruined Man-dreys of Maryland at the extreme western end of Ourland.

Old Oak was asleep.  The burden of Leadership lifted from him by Just Poplar, Oak seemed to be shrinking in on himself, sleeping often, and little concerned with the events going on around him.  Earlier that day he had led the youngsters out of the rear entrance of the labyrinth as the marten had gone in at the front, and had kept them amused whilst the other mature squirrels had confused and demoralised the hunter.  Then there had been that long trek over the sand and the pebbles of the beach.  His age now excused him from any guard duty, so he slept and dreamed of his daughter, Marguerite the Bright One, and his son, Rowan the Bold.  What a character
he
was, totally fearless.  He would have
enjoyed
today – fooling the marten!

Rowan himself, snug in his drey at the Humanside Guardianship of the Blue Pool, cuddled up to his life-mate, Meadowsweet, tagged Rowan’s Love, and their dreyling, Young Bluebell.  Rowan was dreaming of the day his sister, Marguerite, had shown him the numbers she had invented for counting things.  The odd-shaped figures paraded across the backs of his eyelids

  Each had the right number of corners to hide nuts in, as Marguerite had explained, after she had scratched the figures in the clay. 
 had one corner,
 had two and so on.  Neither of them had dreamed then of the power these numbers would have when scratched onto the smooth surface of the Woodstock.

The Woodstock itself was the object of Marguerite’s dreams.  She dreamed that she was pointing it at Crag and threatening to curl his whiskers if he did not hand over Young Chip, and stop this business of misleading the gullible Greys.

Juniper stirred next to her, briefly waking Young Oak and Young Burdock who, after wriggling about and nudging one another, dropped off to sleep again, leaving Marguerite awake in the darkness.

She was not sure now if she was dreaming or not.  Images tumbled through her mind.  At first she felt surrounded by a thick grey mist filled with a hidden menace.  Then a shaft of sunlight broke through and it its light she could see the long sweep of a pebble beach as it had once been described to her by Chip – Dandelion had portrayed it again in the Whale story.  It was there that the second wave had swept Primrose out to join Acorn in the water before the whale had taken them to safety on Ourland.  The Second Wave – that was what the Greys called themselves now.

Did this mean that the Greys were destined to sweep the Reds off the Mainland to Ourland?  She tensed, then relaxed to let her subconscious thoughts rise to the surface like cones dropped in a pool.  The first picture to come was of the great ruined Man-drey that the squirrels could see in the distance from the tops of the poolside trees on clear days.  In her mind a rainbow arched through the sky over the heath, bright against the dark sky beyond.  One end appeared to be on the Lightning Tree and the other on the ruined Man-drey.

Before she could interpret this, another picture emerged.  She could see a huge slab of stone tilted on its edge and seemingly balanced on other small stones beneath.  It was surrounded by desolate heathland, but in the distance beyond it was the sea.  The rainbow came again, faint and nebulous at first, then glowing brighter and brighter as the sun broke through the grey clouds and massed behind her.  Now one end of the rainbow was on the great stone and the other far out to sea.  She followed the arch with her imagination and where it ended she could see three black dolphins curving gracefully through the waves.  She remembered Malin and Lundy, the dolphins who had helped her when, with Spindle and Wood Anemone, she had been carried out to sea in a rubber boat the previous year.

She felt that the two larger dolphins were these same ones and that they were trying to communicate with her.  She strained all her senses to try to pick up the silent thought-waves, but the picture faded and she woke feeling sick and empty.

At first light Marguerite slipped out of the warm drey and ran through the mist-wreathed treetops to the drey of Alder and Dandelion.  She paused outside and whispered the Calling Kernel –

‘Hello and greeting.

I visit you and bring peace.

Emerge or I leave.’

Dandelion’s sleepy voice responded, ‘Marguerite, come on in.  It’ll be a bit crowded. But you’re always welcome.  Do you have news?’

‘I must speak quietly to Alder.  Is he awake?’

‘I’ll come out now,’ Alder called, and emerged, blinking, into the cold air.

Marguerite, as always when she first saw him each day, had to adjust to the fact that he had no tail, and remind herself that this did not mean that he had no brain.  In fact, he had proved to be an excellent Leader, though perhaps a little lacking in imagination.  She smiled to herself as she remembered what Dandelion had once said to her, that she, Marguerite, had enough imagination for three ordinary squirrels, and some to spare!

They brushed whiskers on the grooming branch, then Marguerite signalled Alder to follow her out of ear-twitch of the drey’s other occupants.  ‘I don’t want to alarm any squirrel, but last night I had the strangest dream.’

Alder looked puzzled, and waited for Marguerite to continue.

‘I don’t know even if it was a dream – it seemed far stronger than any dream I have ever had before.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Alder, gently, seeing how agitated Marguerite was.

She told Alder what she had seen in the night.  As she did so, the pictures strengthened in her mind and she became more and more convinced that they were more than just a dream.

Alder asked her to repeat what she had told him to Dandelion, his life-mate.

When Marguerite got to the great rock set in the desolate heathland, Dandelion broke in.  ‘That is an exact description of the Agglestone that my grandfather told me about.  It is on the heath between the ruined Man-drey and the sea.  He described it to me once.  He found it when he was on climbabout as a youngster and slept the night on top of it.  You’ve had a Sun-scene!’