Duncton Tales (11 page)

He heard the rooks, but once only did he stop and look back. They were not after him yet, but were clustering, fighting, flapping over the carrion that had been a mother and this pup’s siblings. So in death, by delaying the rooks, mother and siblings helped save the new pup’s life. Then the pup bleated, and blankly Stour struggled on up the slope with his unfamiliar burden, his eyes filled with unwonted tears for what he had left behind.

In which state of grief and shock, his instinct was to take the pup to the place where he felt most secure, irrespective of the pup’s distress and immediate needs: the Library.

It was there, that same until-then-pleasant morning, to the astonishment of all the workers in the Library, that Stour stumbled into the Great Chamber and laid his burden down. It breathed, and its little mouth opened wide and bleated, and for all the weakness of the sound, how it carried about that great and bookish place, and turned the heads of the unsuspecting clerics, librarians and Keepers. Had a mole searched every system in moledom, it would have been hard to have found such a large collection of moles more unsuited to the mundane and thankless task of fostering a pup, as Duncton’s bookish librarians and workers. But there they were, and to them the Stone (for so it must have been) had guided Stour in his wondering distress.

Breathless, speechless, near breaking-point and not his normal self at all, he stared at the unprepossessing sight of the pup without expression; or rather, with an expression that seemed to see only the horror that had been in the cross-under and surprise that he had been involved in such an outcome.

The clerics clustered and whispered uselessly, “It’s a pup! The Master’s brought a pup!” And some in that quirky awkward lot even tittered and made comments, unable to comprehend that what lay before them was new life, but life that was failing and slowing, and growing dangerously chilled.

Eventually one of the females asked, “Where did you find it, Master Librarian?”

Stour’s reply was faltering and strange, and so much unlike himself that some there, embarrassed at the sight of the pup, and not liking to see their awesome Stour vulnerable and close to shock and tears, drifted away.

Others whispered, and one said, “It’s dying of cold and lack of mother’s sup. Poor thing.”

The ‘poor thing’ raised its tiny naked head and turned its blind eyes towards the only comfort it knew, which was the austere flank of Stour, and bleated once more. At which Stour realized suddenly that
he
was the one who must act, and fast. The pup’s mother had said … so much, and yet so little. But she
had
said …”

“Fetch Keeper Privet. NOW!” said Stour. “
Now
! Does nomole know where she is?”

“I shall find her, Master!” It was Pumpkin who spoke, his eyes tear-filled to see the pup, his heart full; he had a strange sense that here and now it was he who must fetch Privet, for in this was the Stone’s Light. So off he went, not
knowing
where she was, but a certainty guiding his pawsteps through the tunnels until he found her, huddled silent and afraid, at the very furthest point in the Library, where the ruins of the older, mysterious tunnels of the Ancient System began.

“Pumpkin …” she said, staring at the dark depths into which no mole dared go, “I thought I heard a pup’s cry. I thought …”

“Come, Miss Privet, come with me. You’re needed now, Miss, more than you’ve ever been …” And meekly, and staring back again and again at the ancient tunnels before whose Dark Sound she had been much afraid, she followed him.

“It is a pup?” was all she managed to say when she reached the extraordinary sight. “A pup!” She stared at the gasping thing in utter alarm, and then at Stour.

“Yes, Keeper Privet, it is a pup,” said Stour brusquely, his old self coming back more strongly now his decision had been made.

“Quite so, Master,” said Privet uneasily.

“Well, mole, don’t just stance there. Care for it.”

“Master?” said Privet again, in disbelief.

“The pup, Privet, the pup,” said Stour more gently. “The Stone has sent it to the Library’s care, and we
shall
care for it, as if it were more precious than any text in this great place. But somemole here has to
raise
it. It will be your task.”

“But Master, I …”

“The Master Librarian has put it plainly, mole, so get on with it,” said Jwryde, who had appeared round a corner.

“But I have much work. I cannot do it. I have not had pups. I …’ she said, Snyde revelling in her panic.

“Now’s your chance!” he said with a laugh, grinning around at the fascinated crowd of aides.

“Silence, Snyde,” said Stour shortly. “And you others, get to work. Librarian Privet, I am I think a reasonable mole. Today you must accept that there is reason in my unreasonableness. I ask you again to accept this task.”

“But there is other work …’ she said despairingly, staring at the pup which had now laid its head along the library floor and was shivering and gasping for breath.

“There is no work more important than this,” said Stour softly, going forward and picking up the pup and taking it over to her. “I shall appoint you an aide to help you with the raising of … of …

The pup bleated weakly, and Privet dared at last to look at it.

“It is a female’s work,” said Stour.

“But why
me
?” whispered Privet, sniffling at the pup. At her touch it raised its tiny snout again, quested here and there, and then found hers.

“Because,” said Stour, fixing her with such a look that she had experienced only one like it before, and that from Stour on the first day that they met. It was then she knew his test of her had begun, and knew too that he had not expected this any more than she had. The Stone’s Light was in it all.

“Poor thing,” Privet found herself saying in wonder, her voice weakening as that deep urge that lies in moles waiting for its moment to find life, found life in Privet: the urge to save life, to nurture, to make the frightened safe, to help the lost feel secure.

Timid, uncertain, frightened though she was herself, yet she sensed a crucial moment in her life had come. Was it her deep faith in the Stone that helped her see the Light? For surely simple obedience to her Keeper and the Master was not sufficient to give her such strength as she needed to go forward, as she then did, and snout down at the pup, and half lick it, and begin that act of uncritical acceptance from which parental love is born.

Yet doubt still remained and Privet said, “I don’t know his name,” hoping perhaps that in his anonymity would be a way out of the responsibility that faced her.

“His name is … Whillan,” said Stour, and there was some wonder in his voice as he said it, and unaccustomed gentleness, and somewhere in his heart, though then denied, he knew that in this strange happening something more powerful than anything he had experience of was speaking to him, and speaking true. In this event lay the beginnings of an answer to troubles that had been building up so long and which were not yet at their worst. In
this
shared act of faith answers to future problems not yet even guessed-at lay.

“Whillan …?” said Privet, frowning and puzzled, as if she knew the name. “Oh, Whillan …’ And she snouted down at the pup once more, licking with a sudden and whole-hearted gentleness.

“Whillan, my love!” she whispered, and she and the pup might as well have been alone, for all she cared, or seemed to see of all the world about.

Then she took him up by the scruff of the neck as Stour had done, and accompanied by younger, eager aides, who cooed and chirruped and chattered along behind them both, turned back out of the Library and from thence to her modest quarters down towards the Eastside.

“Well, get on, get on!” said Stour sourly to those many who still stared. “To your work, the drama’s over.” His aides noticed however that
he
could not work, but dithered about all day, snapping at moles to right and left, until, when evening came he who was normally last to leave was first away and off to the Eastside, to Privet’s place.

That same evening, gentle Pumpkin, who had been much shaken by the coming of the pup and his part in finding Privet, turned from the Library exit and slowly crossed the Wood westward to the Stone. It was not a place he often went, nor was praying a thing he often did, or felt he knew much about. Yet pray he felt he must.

So into the Stone Clearing he went, across its open space, and stanced down humbly before moledom’s greatest Stone.

“Don’t know what words to say, Stone,” he said, “but somemole must make a prayer to welcome that pup Whillan to our Wood. And wish him well. There’ll be reasons why he’s come to us, and why it’s as an orphan he was born and will not know his mother, or father, or much about himself. Well … you know best, Stone. You know everything. Grant the pup life, and Miss Privet the patience and the love to nurture him. Watch over her as well, Stone, for she’s a mole I think has suffered much and yet finds love to give.”

Pumpkin said nothing for a while, but stared for a long time at the Stone, and shed tears which were neither sad nor happy ones, but tears acknowledging that sometimes life is hard for moles and must be borne.

“Feel better now,” he said at last, “for good has come this day to Duncton Wood. Grant that I may play my part in it, Stone, and be worthy of what tasks you choose to give me.”

Then he turned and left, and where he had been the Stone was awesome in its Silence, and about it was a Light that seemed to touch all the trees of the clearing, and shine beyond them into the wood to where old Pumpkin went on his solitary way.

Chapter Six

For Privet, who since the mating season had begun had felt so cast down by her unspoken memories of the past, the days that followed the pup’s arrival were so far the most extraordinary, most trying, and yet most exhilarating of her life.

Poor Privet. Whatever the burdens she already carried, life had now thrust another upon her, and its shape was puppish, and its sound was puppish, and its effect was puppish: which is to say it offered no possibility of escape.

Twisting, turning, bleating, feeding, excreting, waking, always waking, crying, scrabbling, sniffling, there was not one single troublesome wakesome ‘-ing’ that the pup Whillan did not do, and many that Privet had never dreamed a mole
might
do.

The first day or two was one long frantic worry over keeping him alive, for he/Seemed limp and desperate, his little furless chest heaving in and out as if breath was in short supply and he had best get it while he may, his mouth sucking for milk she could not give. It seemed certain that death was lurking just beyond the portal of her sparse and modest burrow on the slopes, awaiting the slightest excuse to enter and take the pup away.

But like so many moles who must care for young they have not borne, instinct and necessity found a form of nourishment in chewed worm and spittle. As Privet made it, Whillan took it, and did not die. Worse, he wanted more, and more, and more again, and left Privet more exhausted than if she had been feeding a whole community of moles.