‘But why?’ persisted Bracken.
‘Why? What mole can say the true reason why a mole risks death where every other mole fears to go? The reason he gave, it is said, was that the Stone does not exist. There is no Stone. Therefore the Stones themselves mean nothing. He wanted to show that the Stone all moles worship and Siabod moles have always revered is nothing. He wanted at once to show how he despised our fears and mocked our belief. Remember, in those days before the plague, all moles were made to worship the Stone, but Y Wrach taught him not to, at least she told him to take no part in our rituals. But then Mandrake said, What Stone can exist when such suffering as was wrought by his own birth can exist? And after the plague came a lot of us came to see he was right, see?’
The thought hung about them, each considering it in a different way. For Boswell the answer was as simple and as peaceful as sitting still; for Bracken, who had seen plenty of suffering in his own time, it was a question he had never been able to answer. For Bran, it was not much worth thinking about. They could not tell what Celyn thought at all.
‘And she’s still alive, after so long?’ asked Boswell. ‘What is it that she’s waiting for?’ He asked it with compassion, looking not at Bran but at Celyn. Bran repeated the question in Siabod and Celyn answered it very softly.
‘Well?’ asked Bracken.
Bran laughed and shrugged. ‘He says that she thinks that Mandrake will come back,’ he said.
Bracken had never actually said Mandrake was dead and now was even less sure what to say. But Boswell got him out of the difficulty.
‘Take us to her,’ he said gently.
‘But we need to rest, to sleep…’ complained Bran.
‘Take us,’ Boswell repeated, saying the words to Celyn, who seemed to understand and got up to lead the way forward again.
The second journey consumed several molehours more and took them into tunnels whose size and appearance was more fearful than anything a Duncton mole could ever have imagined. The slate walls began to tower higher and higher above them, the floor to widen so broadly that it was sometimes hard to make out the far side. To keep a straight track they had to stay close to one wall, though that was difficult sometimes because the continual running of water down the walls had created great pools on the floor, which was made of slate flakes rather than soil. In several places great tunnels entered the one they were travelling down and there was the continual sound of the running of underground streams and even in one place of some subterranean waterfall. The quality of the echo became deep and sonorous so that even the smallest paw sound seemed made by a giant mole.
‘What moles burrowed these?’ asked Bracken in awe at one point, his voice echoing harshly into the distance.
‘Not moles,’ said Bran. ‘This is not the work of moles.’
In some places there were great chambers of slate, higher than a hill, taller than the biggest beech tree, and littered about the flat, lifeless floors were twisted, jagged shapes of rusting metal such as they had seen sometimes near where roaring owls ran. The air was chill with a death that had been dead many generations before.
‘She lives here?’ asked Bracken.
‘No, this is just a quick way to reach her when there’s too much wet on the surface above. But we’re nearly there, see,’ said Bran.
Celyn led them round another great chamber that echoed to the clatter of their paws on the slaty floor, then through a blissful mole-sized crack in the rock that sloped steeply upwards but down which fresh cold air streamed. They scrambled up through the muck of slate fragments and muddy, fallen vegetation, scrabbling through sodden peat particles and back to near the surface into a proper tunnel, obviously mole-burrowed. Then out on to the surface, where the evening was beginning to form in the angry grey sky. They could see Siabod more clearly now, nearer and more massive; more jagged, too, with black buttresses of rock jutting out and disrupting the smoother profile they had first seen and obscuring all but the highest part of the summit itself, over which grey mist lingered.
Then down into another tunnel, along for a quarter of a molemile, and into the tunnels of a damp and dismal little system that reminded Bracken of Curlew’s burrows in what had once been the Marsh End.
‘It’s Celyn and Bran, Gwynbach,’ called Bran. ‘And some friends for you to meet.’
They rounded a corner, went to a burrow entrance, and Celyn, signalling them to stop, entered. They heard him talking in Siabod and the murmur of a reply from a cracked and aged voice through which ran an edge as sharp as the thinnest of slate flakes. Celyn came out and beckoned Boswell and Bracken inside the burrow.
Y Wrach was crouched in a nest of dried matgrass and heather, and what pale fur she still had on her ancient body was grey and worn with age. Her face was contorted into a thousand wrinkles and her talons were short and worn—one had gone altogether—and their colour was translucent grey rather than black. Her eyes were closed, blind and running, and Bracken noticed that her back paws were swollen out of shape by some disease or complains that came with age. But her head movements were quick and acute, and she beckoned first Boswell and then Bracken over to her, seeming to know exactly where they crouched. She snouted at each one of them, running a paw over Boswell, lingering for a moment at his crippled paw and then pushing him away, turning to Bracken, whom she examined in the same way. He shuddered at her touch, which was like the caress of disease, but he noticed that Boswell was looking intently at her, compassion and warmth in his eyes—and more than that, respect.
‘Pa waddod ydych, sy’n ddieithriaid yma? Dywedwch yn eich geiriau eich hunain a siaredwch o’r galon.’
‘She wants to know who you are and for you to tell her yourselves,’ said Bran.
‘Well, I’m not sure that we ought to tell her everything…’ As Bracken hesitated and stumbled over his words, Boswell quietly interrupted him, speaking to Celyn and ignoring Bran.
‘Where shall we begin?’ he asked.
Celyn hesitated and then, to Bracken’s surprise, broke into mole, which he spoke very well though with a harsher accent than Bran.
‘Tell her what’s in your heart. She will know it, anyway. I will translate.’
There was something almost ritualistic about the way Boswell set about telling their story—quite unlike the matter-of-fact approach Bracken used. First he settled himself down comfortably, close to Y Wrach, closing his eyes for a short while almost as if he were praying or invoking some power he felt the occasion warranted. To his surprise, Bracken saw that the ancient mole started to do the same, the two of them engaged in a kind of crouching mutual trance.
Finally Boswell said, softly, ‘What I shall say is from my heart to your heart, told with the truth the Stone itself put there, and which I shall try to honour.’ He paused briefly, and Y Wrach nodded slightly, her snout bowed and her head a little on one side.
‘My name is Boswell, scribemole of Uffington, who has journeyed here for many long moleyears, through winter and snow, with news you have waited for for far longer than that. May the Stone give you strength to receive it.’
He paused between each sentence so Celyn could translate, and imperceptibly Bran and Bracken retreated into the further shadows of the burrow as Boswell and Y Wrach began their talk, almost as if it were private. Even Celyn soon seemed to fade away, his voice speaking the words of one to the other as if he himself were not there, so that soon it was just Boswell and the old female talking alone together.