Chapter Forty
Nothing more is known of Bracken’s and Boswell’s long journey between Uffington and Capel Garmon, which lies on the very threshold of the Siabod system itself, than has been recorded by Boswell himself. His account has left much technical information about the postplague state of the many systems the two moles passed through, but of the many long moleyears’ travel, and what happened during it, he scribed little and said less.
It is known that the two moles spent Longest Night at Caer Caradoc, a system near the Welsh Marches, after which, says Boswell’s account, ‘we were soon able to gain access to Offa’s Dyke, by which route Bracken of Duncton was able to find a rapid and safe approach for us to the forsaken system of Capel Garmon’.
This brief sentence, which covers a period of many moleyears, gives no hint of the hard winter conditions through which they had to travel, or of the intriguing question of why they made for Capel Garmon. Certainly Boswell regarded Capel Garmon, a miserable and insignificant place now but for its association with these two courageous moles, as a turning point on their journey. Perhaps the stones that now squat lifeless and grey in that dank place still retained some of the power they have now entirely lost.
But the true answer can only be found by a mole who has crouched among the squalid, bare moorlands of Capel Garmon and turned his snout to the west and contemplated the fact that his long journey northwards from the warmer south is over and he must now turn irrevocably west to the heights of worm-poor soils that are the grim prelude to the mass of Siabod itself.
But let the name of Capel Garmon send a shiver down the spine of anymole who knows what it feels like to crouch on the edge of a dark country into which he must, for whatever reason, reluctantly travel and from which death is a more certain gift than a safe return.
The two moles paused there for only two or three days before the hour came when Bracken crouched on the surface, his snout due west, and said: ‘We are near to Siabod now, Boswell; I can feel it, and we must go while we still have strength.’ He was shivering and his voice was strained because he was afraid of the power of Siabod. ‘We must go now.’
Boswell smiled and nodded, for he had often heard Bracken say the same thing when they faced a danger ahead and he wanted to face it and get it over. Bracken always found it hard to wait. But even Boswell felt a sense of dread, for there was something worse than forsaken about a place where a system had once thrived (according to the record of the Rolls of the Systems) but of which there was now barely a sign. The soil was soggy with rain and thawed snow, and there had already been long stretches, many molemiles wide, in which they had had to scratch around for hours to find a decent worm. Now there was just the sodden rustling of last year’s bracken and heather and the plaintive bleating of grubby, dung-caked sheep among the scattered bleakness of rocks whose colour was so dead that when light from the sky touched them they seemed to turn into shadow. Yet, with the prospect of Siabod before them, even Capel Garmon seemed a haven. But finally, wet, cold and hungry, the two moles made the turn west for the last part of their journey. Yet, even at the grimmest moments, a mole may see some reminder of hope, and Bracken saw it. Among the lifeless stones through which they passed he came upon a wet and stunted bush of gorse on which, joyous in the April murk, was a cluster of orange-yellow flowers, fresh as a happy spring. ‘They grow like that, only bigger, up on the chalk downland above Duncton Wood,’ he told Boswell, ‘and one day, if we ever get out of this alive, I’ll show you. I’d give anything to be able to be there now!’
Although in the final stages of their journey to Capel Garmon they had managed to avoid all contact with roaring owls, the route on which Bracken now led them took them steeply down into a river valley in which, as they knew from experience, they would sooner or later have to cross a roaring-owl route. In fact, it came so oner, right at the bottom of a steep valley side. They were glad to reach the bottom, for the valley side was wooded with coniferous trees, never a good place to find food. They pressed on over the roaring-owl way without difficulty, using the technique they had developed over the moleyears—a long touch of the snout on the hard, unnatural ground they found in such places and then, when both agreed that there was no vibration, a fast dash across.
Once on the other side, they found that the air was heavy with the scent of a deep, cold river and though tempted to press on and find it, for rivers were a good place for food, Bracken insisted that they stay higher up the valley by the roaring-owl way and follow along by the side of it. It was a wise decision, for this route took them to a bridge over the river from whose height they could hear that it would have been too fast and wide for them to have swum across safely. They waited until dusk before risking the bridge, but once across, dropped right to the river’s edge, where they found food on the thin strip of rough pasture fields that ran by its side.
On the side of the river from which they had come the ground rose steeply with massive coniferous trees covering it in darkness and stiff silence, while higher up on their own side a smattering of deciduous trees, mainly oaks and ash, gave way to rougher, starker ground that grew thicker with coniferous forest the higher it went. They pressed on downstream until, after only four or five molemiles, a tributary flowed down into the main river, a tumbling, rocky stream too rough for a mole ever to cross.
‘But then, we don’t need to,’ said Bracken. ‘That’s where Siabod lies, off up this valley somewhere.’ He pointed his snout upstream and they both headed westwards again, wondering what lay up the valley above them.
Their progress was mainly slow, for the valley was steep and rocky, but here and there it flattened out into sheep-pasture fields where the food was good and the going easy. But however flat the ground immediately ahead of them sometimes was, they were aware, constantly and claustrophobically, of the steep valley sides rising to their left and beyond the river to their right, and of the dark green forest that clothed it, out of which ugly snouts and flanks of grey-black rock protruded more and more frequently. Bracken felt he was taking them straight into a rocky trap from which, should they run into trouble, there would be no easy escape. The river raced and roared down past them and occasionally its sound was joined by the rumble and rattle of a roaring owl as it went by on the way that ran a little higher up the valley side.
Because the valley was so closed in they could get no sense of what lay beyond it, either to the side or straight ahead, while from down the valley and into their faces ran a continual run of bad weather, rain and wind, sometimes hail, and air that got colder and colder. It gave them the feeling that their situation was only going to get worse.
It was on the fourth day after crossing the bridge that they ran into their first snow—not falling from the sky, but lying in wet, streaky patches in hollows in the ground and several days old, judging from the way it had been trodden over and messed on by the sheep. It was grubby, half-thawed snow and it matched the place they were in. High above them, where rock was exposed, an occasional snow patch glared against the dark rise of trees, though these had now shed whatever snow had settled on them from their steep branches. As night fell, the temperature dropped and the snow patches began to freeze and crackle at a talon touch, their icy surfaces catching the last purple glimmer of daylight in the chill sky above.
It was on the following day, the fifth in their journey up the valley, that they met their first Siabod mole. It happened suddenly among some tussocky brown grass near the river’s edge where they had gone to take a drink in a tiny backpool made accessible by treading sheep.