When Tryfan reached him the two moles touched each other with such affection, and Beechen helped Tryfan turn and face towards the centre of the chamber with such obvious love and care, that there was an audible sigh among the watching moles. Some, like Teasel and Madder, did not mind that others saw them shed a tear or two.
The place where Tryfan had taken stance was near a surface entrance, and light flooded on to him. They saw then that his fur hung loose now at his flanks, for he had lost weight and his sides were thin. Where the light caught his ragged fur it showed that it had turned grey in places, and even white in others. Here and there his rough old skin had no hair at all. He looked like a mole near his time.
Yet stanced as he was at that moment, there was not a single mole who could not tell what once he must have been. His shoulders still had a powerful set to them, and though his head shook all four of his paws were firmly on the ground. But the natural authority he had was not just physical: his spirit seemed to loom within him, and strengthen him. He stared out at them, a mole needing his partner’s help, but more fearless now than he had ever been.
“Where’s Skint?” he said, peering about again, concern on his face.
Skint was almost opposite him, and plain for all to see.
“I’m here, Tryfan, here...” said Skint moving a little. Tryfan turned in his direction and said, “Come closer, mole, come where I can see you. Yes, that’s better.”
Slowly, and with care, he went forward a little, Feverfew on one side and Beechen on the other, and in a bright spot of light on the chamber floor where all could see it, he placed the text he had brought.
Then he went back to where he had been, his breathing heavy, and he said, “Is Mayweed here?” Nothing could have made plainer than the way he stared at the ground and simply turned his head a little to one side as if to hear better that his sight was failing him.
“Concerned comrade,” said Mayweed, “humbleness is never far away from you. Mayweed loves you and will not willingly leave you ever again.”
Even then Tryfan did not look towards where Mayweed was, off to his right paw, but lowered his snout still more as a small smile came to his face and crinkled the corners of his eyes. He looked up, then, and there was much gentleness and wisdom in his face, and those closest to him saw that his eyes glittered with tears.
“Yes, I know, Mayweed, I know,” he said slowly. “It means much to me. Are all of you here?”
“All that could get here,” said Skint, “all but Smithills who is watching at the cross-under, and two others with him.”
Tryfan nodded his understanding, but said nothing, staring instead at the text which lay in the light before him. Another silence fell, filled only with the occasional scrape of a paw, or sniff of a snout, or sound of bird-call or rustle of breeze from the wood above.
Then, at last, he spoke again.
“You know that I am Tryfan, born here in Duncton, and sent from here by the Stone to guard over Boswell on his journey to Uffington with the Stillstone of Silence. You know that Boswell ordained me scribemole and gave me a task which was to help prepare moledom for the coming of the one we call the Stone Mole.
“As time passed, moles I loved gathered about me, the first among them being Spindle, my dearest and my oldest friend. He went to the Stone the night Beechen was born, but his son Bailey is here among us. Other moles who travelled with me are here and some I met before my return to Duncton Wood.”
Tryfan paused and spoke their names slowly and with love, as if he thought of each mole as he came to him:
“You, Skint... and you, good Mayweed... Smithills who is not here... Marram... Feverfew, my dear partner now....
“Others too I have grown to know and love since I returned to Duncton Wood... Hay, who was the first mole Spindle and I met when we came back; Teasel, who trusted me; Borage, Heather, so many moles... Some I have come to know only recently: Dodder, Madder... aye and many more I would name and touch as well if time allowed. But you know of this yourselves, you know it well.
“It is not given to moles to know many they can truly call their friends, for moles – or
this
fallible old mole at least – does not have so much love or energy that all moles may share it. I wish he did! A mole should count himself lucky if he can choose his friends, and blessed if he chooses well.”
Tryfan smiled and the moles about him relaxed.
The pleasant sound of an afternoon breeze through the high branches of the mixed trees about Barrow Vale came down to them, and though the sun shone for most of the time at the entrances there was enough cumulus cloud about to shade it from time to time and bring a moment’s darkening to the chamber.
“I have scribed a Rule for the future use of our community, and there it is, that simple-looking thing.” He waved a paw towards the text before him. “Because only a few among you can scribe or understand scribing, most of you will not make sense of a word it says. Do not worry about that for, as you shall discover from what I say, most of you know what it says already. This Rule is what we are and have become....
“But even so, I want this afternoon to say something about rules in general and this Rule in particular. I hope you will want to listen, and not mind if I ramble a little at times. My thoughts, like my paws, move more slowly than they did.”
He paused again and a slow smile lit his face up, and he looked around first at Feverfew on one flank, and then at Beechen on the other.
“I was fortunate to be born here in Duncton, into a community with great and ancient traditions as many systems blessed by the presence of a Stone have had. Like them, like many of your systems, the moles who lived in my youth have long since been scattered, and most are now dead. Perhaps all of us here are the last survivors of the communities from which we came, and perhaps the Stone intended that to be. Yet in my heart, in my very spirit, I feel that something of the community I was reared in is still alive. And I know, or think I know, that there is not a mole here, not one, who has not brought with him to this place something of the community that was
his
heritage. Not all of it is good, but most of it is, because moles are basically good and as they forget pain and turn their back on its memory, so they turn their back on darkness if they have a chance.
“
If
they have a chance. I wonder if there were any moles who, seeing each of us outcast here, for different reasons and in different ways, would have thought he would have such a chance. Yet here we are, and slowly we have made community among us,
good
community, better indeed than that I remember from my youth. I have come only recently to see that that is so, and to believe that in its wisdom the Stone wished me to return to the system of my birth and be a part of something being made:
us
; what we are today; community. That is what this Rule is all about.
“I have met many moles in my travels, I have talked to them of the communities they knew and made, I have observed communities of which I was not a recognised part. I have wondered often what it was about some that made a mole feel whole, and others that made him feel so separate that something in him fails to thrive. He is but part mole.
“Some of you know how much the community I briefly saw at Beechenhill near the Dark Peak meant to me, especially those like Mayweed, Sleekit, Skint and Smithills, who also visited it.
“They can speak for themselves, but for myself I learnt much about community there. It was Squeezebelly, the mole who led it without seeming to do so, who told me that it was change that kept his community alive, and faith that gave it heart. And when I asked how long the system had been of the Stone, he told me he had no idea, but by faith he did not mean the Stone so much as faith and trust in themselves together to do the right thing.
“Many of you know that when Henbane of Whern had young by me, Mayweed and Sleekit were able to take two of them out of Whern, and it was in Beechenhill they were placed. From that system, too, Feverfew and I found the Stone Mole’s name. I do not know why the system meant so much to me except that it has to do with its power for community, and in that I am sure the Stone Mole’s task will lie.
“Beechenhill revealed something, Whern something more, but in my final years it is what has happened here in Duncton that has guided me most of all.
You
all guided me. Outcast, frightened, suffering, angry, you and those who came but have not survived, made a community strong enough that Boswell felt able to entrust his son to us. Here, without thinking about it, doing our fallible best, I think we have shown what a true community might be. What then is a ‘true community’?”
Tryfan looked at the moles – the community – gathered about him and in his strong way smiled and said, “Why, a mole need hardly ask the question when surrounded by such moles as you! But Autumn’s on its way now and the tunnels must be prepared for the winter soon to come. A good time this, for pondering.
“Well then, a community should admit all that come to it,
all.
Every last one. Moles of the Stone should welcome those of the Word; moles of the Word should do the same to those of the Stone. A community excludes none, even those whose behaviour makes them seem to reject it.
“A community is made of moles committed to its life, not before their own but equally to their own. And when, as always happens, a mole finds himself and his community in conflict he had best expect himself to be the one who’s wrong! Let a mole suspect himself before he suspects his community. And when a mole is most certain he is right, let him feel most certain that he is wrong!”
Tryfan smiled again, a little ruefully, and there were moles aplenty who smiled as well, for they knew well how often they had put themselves first before others.
“A community is a thing where truth is told, not lies, for a mole who lives by lies, or is forced to do so by the lie of others, is a mole not living in reality at all. As for what truth is, a hard thing that! Wiser moles than I may put it better than I can, but the mole who truly knows himself knows it best of all! Boswell spoke the truest things I heard, but even he was sometimes wrong! Which, being so, the more certain you feel when you speak the more wary of yourself you should be, and the more moles whom you love and trust say you are wrong the more you should doubt you are right. Where communities speak without fear then common sense is common!
“But this being so, a community founded on truth is hard for moles to live in, especially at first, because it challenges everymole within with the truth. It does get easier, as many of us know, until it becomes the only way.
“But we cannot expect all moles at all times to be at one with each other. Everything but! A community argues. But if it argues with love and speaks with trust and everymole learns to listen hard, then however difficult things are it has the consolation of knowing that it cannot stray from the path towards true community. Even so, a community may try often to flee from itself but always a majority of its members know it has nowhere else to go and so its moles share a willingness to come home and start again. Often it may do this, and it is right that it should. Such conflicts and their peaceful resolution are the best signs that it is succeeding.
“I have observed that at some time or another a community seeks to place one or a few in command of itself, and thus to avoid having to make decisions for itself. Most systems of the Stone had elders in the old days; all systems of the Word have eldrene and guardmoles.
“The arguments in favour of leaders of one kind or another seem so overwhelming, and the desire of moles to abrogate responsibility for them is so great, that few communities escape them. Moles are so used to their systems having leaders that they cannot imagine being without them, because they have never experienced it. They rightly think that only confusion would result. I said
rightly.
What they do not know, and do not want to risk discovering, is that true community can only lie beyond such confusion, wherein each mole is valued for what he is and discovers his own pride. We here have suffered such confusion. Had it not been for Henbane’s edict to outcast moles here I doubt that any of us would have discovered the community we had, or found the courage to make it. So, unknowingly, does darkness lead to light. There were those who complained that I was not leading you in spring. But the Rule you helped me make forbids that anymole should ever lead. A community that goes that way is a community afraid of itself and one that destroys its core, which is that each individual has something special to give and must be heard. Moles do not like to be leaderless, but so they must be if they are to be a true community.
“But if some moles seem to have greater gifts than others then the community must not let them forget that whatever pride or power they feel thereby is nothing against the honour and responsibility they gain from serving those they love. But in truth nomole may judge if one is more gifted than another, or gives more to all. In true community all help the others to give equally by learning to value what others give before valuing themselves.
“And for this trouble what does a mole get? Safety to be himself and to trust others to let him be. Comfort, when his way seems lost. Joy. Love. A certain hard-won freedom. A sense of pride.
“When a mole grows old in body, and feels weary, and he asks himself what it was he lived that was good, why ’tis of other moles he thinks, of things he shared, of moments when he was accepted as himself and others loved him. Think on your own lives, remember what moments you most value, and you will find that so it was and is for you. It is most strange but in true community a mole is most himself.
“But it is not easy, and a community must forever be on its guard against excluding others. I was born of the Stone, and I am a scribemole in its service, but I no longer believe it is the only way...” There was a murmuring of surprise at this, and even doubt, and Tryfan had to raise his voice to quell it as he continued: “If it was the only way then how can it be that I have met so many moles reared of the Word, some of whom are here now, I think, who have taught me so much? Marram, Sleekit, Dodder, Skint, Smithills, and many more.