Duncton Found (63 page)

“Cuddesdon,” whispered Mistle, reaching out for him.

He turned to her quickly and saw in the starlight that her eyes were full of tears, and he went to her and held her close.

“I feel so much has happened here, and
will
happen. There’s moles here who have needed help, and others yet to come, and I want to reach out to them all and hold them as you’re holding me.”

“You can’t help everymole, Mistle, though I sometimes think you want to try. You can’t love all of us.”

“No,” she said, and wept and held him in return, “but you are right: I want to try.”

“Is the mole you said you wanted to meet one of the moles here?” asked Cuddesdon.

She stared among the confusing silhouettes of Stones and each one might have been a rearing mole; everywhere she looked seemed shapes of moles that had once been or might yet be.

“I don’t know,” she whispered to the stars twinkling above, “but I don’t think so... he’s like us, just like us; he’s now, always now.”

“He?” said Cuddesdon, surprised to find himself feeling suddenly protective and even jealous.

Her paw tightened on his and she smiled in the darkness.

“Yes, he,” she said. “No, don’t let go of me, Cuddesdon. Hold me. I love you, Cuddesdon. I hope we’ll always be this close.”

They slept together on the surface, with only a scrape in the stonefield to protect them, and when they woke the early sun was slanting and glinting across the Stones and gravel and made some of the smaller Stones glisten and shine. Yet as they reached out to touch them, they found the Stones’ light faded as they got to them and others lit up further away, as a rainbow recedes before a mole who tries to reach it.

As the sun rose up they wandered forward among the Stones, the game of trying to touch a glinting stone absorbing them. Over the plain they went, close as the closest friends can be, pointing new things out to each other, laughing, secure, lost in their pleasures, their journey for the moment quite forgotten.

All sense of time and distance seemed to leave them until they found themselves on higher ground, north of the stonefields. It was early afternoon.

“I think moles will come back here to live one day,” said Mistle, “and I think Seven Barrows will be occupied again.”

Stretching away below them now the Stones rose up, one here, one there, a pattern to their randomness, and they looked like guardians to a secret place.

Cuddesdon shivered.

“Well! I wouldn’t want to go back down there among them. You say those six Stones are friendly to mole but they still make me feel nervous. If there’s one at Cuddesdon, and a small one too, that’ll be enough for me.”

“There’s seven Stones for Seven Barrows,” said Mistle following him, “not six.”

“Six,” he said, sure of himself.

They turned back once more to see who was right, and counted the Stones.

“Six,” said Mistle faintly, “yes, six.” Then she started forward towards them and said, “I promised that mole Furze to say a prayer for him before the Stones and I quite forgot. I must go back...” Then a cloud’s shadow drifted across the stonefields and the Stones seemed suddenly dark and formidable.

“Must we?” said Cuddesdon.

“I’ll go alone,” said Mistle, and though Cuddesdon protested, and tried to persuade her that there was probably a Stone ahead where they could say a prayer, she insisted on going back.

“Stay here. I shan’t be long.”

So back she went, alone, and feeling all the more alone as she got down among the Stones once more and found that, as before, the smaller Stones glinted ahead of her with a light that went out when she reached each one.

“Where shall I say a prayer?” she asked herself. “Before which Stone?”

One after another she visited them, hesitating as she stared up at their rising facets, feeling each time that the next would be better. One, two... to each Stone she went, three, four... and she was growing tired: five... six, but there
was
one more. She could see it, just over there, not far. She had been right: seven Stones.

“That’s where I’ll say a prayer for Furze,” she decided, and went towards it.

As she approached a calmness came to her, and she felt as a mole feels when she reaches out to something in the dark she cannot see, yet knows with certainty she shall find it there. The Stone rose higher than all the others, and as she turned out of the shadow at its base and into the sun she came upon a little stone which caught the afternoon’s sun within its depths and did not fade when she got nearer to it.

It held the whitest light she had ever seen and around her other sounds faded, blocked out, it seemed, by the sound of Silence this stone made, a sound she had heard before. It was the same as that at Avebury, but this time no moles called out of it to her, and she was alone.

She stared at the standing Stone not daring or not able to touch it. All was light and white and calm and she felt life upon her body like an ache she could not shed, nor yet wished to.

She whispered her prayer for Furze, and then for Violet, and then for Cuddesdon, too. For so many moles, and others yet to come. She felt no fear and knew that every day would bring her nearer to the mole she sought, every day: for that the ache of life was worth the carrying, for that the Stone would help her help herself survive.

“Help
him
,” she whispered. “Help them all.”

Then as suddenly as she had found herself by the seventh Stone she found herself leaving it, hurrying away, not daring to look back. But then, as she reached rising ground, she turned and counted the mysterious Stones. There were seven, no doubt of it, and yet they did not look quite the same as they had before....

She turned upslope and ran on and was relieved to find Cuddesdon once more, as relieved as he was to see her return.

“Count the Stones,” she said as she reached him.

He did so.

“Six,” he said at last. “The same as before. Why?”

“Did you see anything strange about them while I was down there?” she asked.

He looked apologetic.

“I was so afraid you wouldn’t return that I don’t think I noticed much at all. Why?”

She tried to explain what had happened, though it sounded strange repeating it, but Cuddesdon listened gravely right to the end.

“Don’t expect me to say anything useful because I can’t,” he said when she had finished. “But I was thinking. This mole, the one you said you had to meet... let’s go and find him, shall we?”

“Yes, let’s,” Mistle said, suddenly glad to be away from the Stones and back with Cuddesdon. They laughed, and ran on, and did not look back again.

After the stonefields of Seven Barrows, the Holy Burrows of Uffington seemed to Mistle inconsequential. Perhaps it was that she had come to Uffington from experiences of the Stone so deep and intense that whatever she had been told by Violet of this once most holy of systems, she saw it as it was – deserted, wasted, the spirit flown.

True, the Blowing Stone was there, but it did not sound for her and Cuddesdon as they went by. Their past lay behind them, their future spread before them: the ruined tunnels of Uffington were but a place they passed whose time was over.

They paused atop Uffington Hill and gazed down across the vale. Mistle looked, listened to the day and was so still, with her head a little to one side, that Cuddesdon asked, “What can you hear?”

“The sound of roaring owls,” she said strangely. “They seem suddenly so loud.”

They had arrived in the vale as the news of the new crusade from Whern was beginning to get about. Grikes were thick on the ground and had they not had by then such long experience of travel it seems unlikely they could have avoided being taken by them. But they did, and Mistle guided them carefully north, pausing a few days here, and a week or so there. Eager to get where she was going but taking it slowly, with that grace over time that Cuddesdon had grown to love her for. And by good fortune, and the Stone’s grace, they avoided Buckland.

So it was, sometime just after mid-October, that they first heard the rumour of a Stone-fool, different than others they had heard about, one who preached and made healings; one who had been to a place called Dry Sandford.

“It’s him. I
feel
it’s him,” said Mistle. “We shall find him soon.”

But though the rumours increased, when they finally got to Sandford at last the Stone-fool was long gone, and they had also missed another mole, called Buckram, who had set off to find him. But another called Poplar said, “He was the one called Stone Mole all right, because I saw him heal moles. But he looked like just an ordinary mole, except for when he spoke of the Stone, and when he looked at you.”

“Yes?” said Mistle, gazing on him.

“Well, I can tell you his name was Beechen, and he had two others with him. Old Moles. Mayweed and Sleekit.”

“‘Beechen’,” repeated Mistle with a half smile.

“That’s what I said.”

“Where was this Buckram going?”

“Fyfield... but I wouldn’t! Grikes!”

“The Stone shall guide us,” said Mistle with a laugh.

When they left, Poplar stared after her as he had Beechen, and he said, “She looked something like Beechen did, that Mistle.”

Place after place they followed in the tracks of Beechen, until at last, too late, they had reached Garford.

But not too late to learn something strange indeed, told by a mole who heard it from another mole, who heard it....

Cumnor.

“They’ve all gone to Cumnor, my duck, the whole bleedin’ lot of them, ’cept for me and a few who’ve got more sense. They say the Stone Mole’s come, say he was
here
, but you better hurry now if you’re to find him.”

“Did you
see
him when he was here?”

The old female’s eyes lightened. “’Course I saw him, and when the guardmoles come for him, and when he faced them fierce and proud. ‘Want to talk of the Stone, do you?’ says he. ‘We do,’ says they. ‘Then I’ll come,’ says he, and he went. Next thing we know a follower comes bespattered with grime and says. ‘To Cumnor, lads, the Stone Mole says to Cumnor.’ ‘“Stone Mole”? who says he’s come?’ asked one of ours in return. ‘He was
here
, you daft mushroom,’ says the follower. ‘The mole Beechen,
you
know. Bugger me, put a worm in front of a Garford mole and it wouldn’t know what to do until somemole else came by and said “Eat”. Dim isn’t in it! That was the Stone Mole who was here, and we’re to go to Cumnor for he’s to outface Wort and preach of the Stone!’

“That’s how it was and I’m looking forward to hearing what a fiddle-faddle of a time they have had when those that survive the grikes and the bleedin’ roaring owls get home. Meanwhile, beggin’ your pardon and nothing personal, I’m off to get some peace and quiet.”

“I sometimes think,” said Cuddesdon, “that we shall never quite reach your Stone Mole.”

“No, Cuddesdon, it is not we who shall reach to him, but we who must let him reach out to us.”

“That’s very subtle, Mistle. Yes... so... Cumnor then?” said Cuddesdon with mock weariness. “Or would that be us striving too hard?”

“Cumnor,” said Mistle. “I’m not perfect, Cuddesdon, but after that I’ll try to stop trying to find him.”

“To Cumnor and beyond then, fellow follower!”

For once Mistle let Cuddesdon lead the way, and she followed after him with love in her eyes, and saw something about him that she had seen more of only recently: that he went slowly now, and with grace, and had discovered that time is not against a mole, but on his side.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Of the madness that the trek to Cumnor became, Sleekit after remembered only one thing: the forgiving of a mole of the Word amidst the wind, driving rain, and a sense of rushing moles, their paws on the ground all about, trekking, trekking.

“Stone-fool!” a voice hissed out of the darkness.

In the wood at Appleton it was.

“Stone-fool, he is here!”

In Appleton, at night, Beechen was stopped by a mole the others knew not. Immediately Buckram loomed up and Sleekit was there, both watching for tricks and traps since Beechen never watched for such things himself. For so wise a mole his innocence seemed strange to those who knew him, yet it was something for which those who knew him best learned to love him.

But Beechen said, “Mole, you helped us in Frilford. How can I help you now?”

“I have brought a mole who seeks forgiveness,” said the stranger.

Beechen nodded and the mole led him, Sleekit and the still-wary Buckram into the dark shelter of a rotted tree stump where the wind was quieter. A smell of fungi and dampness hung about, and then they noticed something more: the rank odour of murrain.

In the shadows there, his flanks shivering, a mole crouched low, his body afflicted by the final stages of the plague. His eyes wept pus and from his throat there came the sound of rasping, painful breathing.

“What is thy name?” asked Beechen gently. “And what would you with me?”

The mole who had led them moved near the mole, as protective of him as Buckram was of Beechen.

“He is my father. He desires forgiveness before he dies.”