The Willows in Winter (6 page)

“Couldn’t we just see if he’s stirring?” asked Portly, whose mouth was
watering at the sight of the breakfast they had cooked.

“
‘Well
—” began the
Otter, whose good intentions to let the Rat sleep were weakening before the
scent of food.

It was enough, and Portly and Mole’s Nephew
were out of the kitchen in a flash, and gently pulling the blankets from the
bed where Rat had slept.

“He’s not here!” said Portly. “The door’s open
and he’s gone.”

“Gone?” cried the poor Otter. “Gone?”

The briefest of examinations of the Mole’s
quarters and the open door showed it to be true, and with beating heart and a
terrible feeling of apprehension the Otter rushed outside, the others following
him.

“O dear! O dear!” he said, pointing at the
Rat’s unmistakable tracks in the melting snow. “He’s gone back to the river.”

“But why?
And why didn’t he tell us?”

“I fear the worst, the very worst!” said the
Otter in an anguished voice. “I should have watched over him! I should have
thought! Over-wrought by Mole’s passing, troubled by nightmares and dark
thoughts, there can be no doubt that he has gone back to the river —”

“Well, at least he can swim!” said Nephew
practically. “I think we should follow him as fast as we can!”

“That’s sensible!” said the Otter, brought back
a little way towards reality. “That’s intelligent! That’s Mole-like! That’s
what we’ll do.”

With that all three made their way down towards
the river as fast as they could go,
slushing
through
the melting snow and mud underfoot, and looking earnestly ahead as if that
might help bring the river into sight all the sooner.

As it was the journey seemed to be endless, but
there finally was the bank before them, with the river beyond it, now almost
clear of ice.

“Rat’s not here!” cried out the Otter. “Too
distressed to live without his friend, Ratty has —”

Otter fell silent as Mole’s Nephew pointed down
the steep bank to the river’s edge itself where, among the sedges and detritus
of winter, they saw a most remarkable sight.

It was the Water Rat, sitting with his hind
paws dangling in the icy water, though he did not seem to notice that at all.
His head was high and his eyes were closed and he seemed to be scenting at the
air. Then he bent his head sideways and a little lower as if he was listening
to the river’s sounds; whilst his front paws were gesticulating gently, in
little fits and starts.

“What’s he doing?” asked Portly.

The Otter stared dumbfounded, signalling to the
others to be very quiet. All three sat down to watch and wait in silence, and
as they did so the beauty of the clear winter morning, and the gentle gurgle
and murmur of the river, running now with snow thaw, and higher than normal,
though not yet dangerous or violent, overtook them all.

“I’ve only seen him doing this once before, and
it is a rare privilege for us to be witness to it,” whispered the Otter. “This
is something you’ll be able to tell your children and your grandchildren you
saw — Water Rat is communing with the River. She’s talking to him and he is
talking to her, and I have no doubt at all that it is about Mole they are
speaking. Now, however long it takes, we shall stay here very quietly, so as
not to disturb either of them.”

The sun rose slowly; small white clouds
appeared high in the sky; water dripped from the branches of trees high and low
all through the wood and, falling in the secret places of grass and fern,
withered twig and hidden lichen, turned into a thousand jewels of light which
glistened and shone like lights of hope.

At last the Rat’s eyes opened and his front
paws stilled and stretched up towards the sky. He yawned, shivered, withdrew
his hind paws from the water and looked about as if in a daze and uncertain
where he was.

For a long time he stared at the flowing water,
so dark and dreadful the night before, now filled with the bright winter light
of the sky above. He looked upstream to the right and downstream to the left
and slowly scratched his head. Then he turned and looked up at the bank where
Otter and the others sat so silently.

He nodded and smiled as if to say that he had
known they were there, and was grateful they had not interrupted him, yet on
his face there was also a look of concern.

“It’s Mole,” he said at last, “I know now that
he’s alive, for the River has told me so. But he’s not well, and may need our
help, so we must try to find him. Now listen, Otter: I think I know what we
must do. We must search for him and leave no place along the bank unturned
downstream from here to the weir. Beyond that, well — beyond that is the Wide
World, and though it may be that is where he is, for that I cannot tell, it is
too far for us to search. Now this is what we’re going to do.”

A new look had come to Rat’s face now, a
familiar look, a look which told all who saw it that this was the Water Rat Who
Got Things Done.

“This is not a task we can hope to do all by ourselves.

We need help and a lot of it. Otter, you and
Portly will stay this side of the river and rouse the rabbits,
who
though foolish owe much to Mole and are his friends. You
can get them to begin searching along the bank, starting here and working their
way slowly down towards the island.” He said this last reverentially, for all
knew the island as a holy place.

“Meanwhile, Mole’s Nephew and I will go to
Badger’s house in the Wild Wood, for the time has come to seek his help. Like
most animals, he does not like being disturbed in winter, but I am sure that he
will not object in such dire circumstances as these. In any case we’ll need his
help if the weasels and stoats —”

“Weasels and stoats!” declared Portly, frowning
in consternation.

“Yes,
them,”
said the Rat without
remorse. “Badger will order those miserable, conniving animals to help, and
though I expect they’ll do it reluctantly they’ll do it all the same.”

“How will we get to Badger?” asked Mole’s
Nephew. “Leave that to me,” said the Rat. “Off you go, Otter, and remember that
though Mole’s safe for now he might not always be.”

“What about Mr Toad?” said the
Otter.
“We could send someone up to Toad Hall and ask —”

“Toad?” said the Rat dubiously “Toad is the
last person we need in this kind of crisis. I know he is much improved from the
bad old days, but he would perhaps favour us best by staying securely in Toad
Hall. So get going you two, and
you
stay here.”

With that Rat skipped down to the water’s edge,
broke off the last lingering piece of ice, and disappeared beneath the surface
of the water, his passage to the other side marked only by a few bubbles that
surfaced and were swept off downstream.

He reappeared for a moment to catch his breath
and then was gone again till, a short time
later,
he
climbed swiftly up the other side. Then, with barely a pause, he had gone up to
his own home, untied his boat and hauled it upstream a little more before
pushing it out into the water and sculling it expertly across to where Mole’s
Nephew stood.

“Catch this rope and hold it fast!” he cried.

Then, without a pause, Mole’s Nephew was hauled
unceremoniously into the boat and they were off upstream.

“I would have had to move the boat to its
winter mooring anyway’ said the Rat, panting as he rowed, for the current was
strong, “so doing it now makes sense. I’ll moor it up by Otter’s house. Not far
from there there’s a special way through the Wild Wood direct to Badger’s. He
won’t mind us using it, I’m sure.

It seemed to Mole’s Nephew that it was a long
haul and a dangerous one, for the river was growing higher and swifter by the
moment, and though the Rat kept them near the bank where the current was
gentler, the going became ever harder.

“Not far now!” grunted the Rat. “Not far!”

But it seemed a very long time before they
finally reached Otter’s house, going a good way past it before the Rat risked
turning the boat across-stream and then, with strong and purposeful strokes as
the boat was caught by the full force of the current, he pulled it through and
over to the other side — right to the mooring itself.

“There!” said Rat with satisfaction. “Now you
take the painter and leap out, like a good chap — yes
now
and
quickly!”

Mole’s Nephew did as he was told, but uneasily,
for he was, after all, an earth-bound animal and had not yet discovered the
joys of the river of which Mole himself had sometimes spoken.

Rat followed him out and together they hauled
the boat up the bank and well clear of the water for, as the Rat said, “You can
never tell with the river how high it will come, or quite where. Now let’s make
her fast.”

But just as he was about to do so
they heard the strangest, most ominous of sounds from somewhere further
upstream.
A rasp and a roar.
Then silence.
Then a
dull chugging sound.
Then silence again. Then a distant cough and
splutter, and then a sudden brief roar once more.

“What’s that?” asked Mole’s Nephew.

“I have no idea,” said the Water Rat, “but
whatever it is it’s up to no good.”

“Yes, but —”

“You might well say ‘Yes, but —’, considering
where that sound comes from!” said the Rat.

“You mean —”Yes, I do mean,” said the Rat very
grimly indeed.

“That sound, whatever it is, comes from Toad
Hall, which means that Toad himself is one way or another the cause of it,
which in turn means it ought to be investigated. Toad may be altered these
days, but I have never been as hopeful as Badger about that. Temptation is a
dreadful thing where the weak-willed are concerned, and I hope that ominous
sound does not signal some backsliding or other by Toad. I greatly fear he is
up to no good, no good at all, but we have a crisis on our hands and for now it
is better that we imagine that we have not heard it, and make our way without
more ado to Badger’s house in the hope that Toad will continue to be good.”

With that, and the matter of Toad having so put
him out of countenance that the Water Rat quite forgot to make his boat fast,
and instead let the rope slip out of his hand onto the grass, the two animals
headed off towards the ‘Wild Wood.

It was a very long time since the Rat had ventured into one of the
passages that Badger’s forebears had made centuries before from what was now
his home to the edge of the Wild Wood, so it was no easy task to find where it
began.

“Or rather ends,” muttered the Rat, as he poked
about in yet another clump of damp and prickly undergrowth, “for what we’re
looking for is really an escape route. Badger said there were several, but the
one I’m looking for is the only one I have ever been shown. That was years ago,
when I first met Mole.

“When I first met Mole!” repeated poor Rat to
himself
, remembering those halcyon days when all had been
well. He might have yielded to the tears that wished to flow, but suddenly, from
the general direction of Toad Hall, that throaty, unpleasant roaring sound came
forth again and put resolve and purpose back into the Rat’s eyes.

“We
shall
find the entrance!” he said,
frowning and searching all the harder.

“Couldn’t we go by the surface way?” said
Mole’s Nephew.

“Not in winter, no.
Far too
dangerous.
There’s more than weasels and stoats in the Wild Wood —
that’s why Badger keeps his escape routes repaired and ready Anyway, although
the snow’s melting fast the last place of all where it thaws is in the ‘Wild
Wood itself, so the going would be hard in there. No, no, we’ll find — here it
is! Look!”

He pushed aside some old creepers, dug under
some brushwood and dead leaves, and there, well hidden among some ancient tree
roots, was the entrance.

They forced their way through the creepers into the cold and musty air
of the passage,
then
the Rat pulled a candle from his
bag, lit it and led them along a damp and airless tunnel, from whose arched
roof water dripped most ominously.