Whatever strength it was that had kept her alive for nearly six days through the howling winds was finally failing her now. Her mind had begun to wander, and she found it harder and harder to gather the strength to keep the pups from crawling blindly from her protection into the chill that would kill them.
She whispered and mumbled to herself, talking to imaginary moles. She had even laughed in the night and with the dawn: she remembered them all, the moles she had loved. Why, Mekkins was there, out in the snow, calling her to him gruffly; and Rose was there, sweet Rose. And Sarah, and Bracken there, near her, and dear Boswell, sweet mole. And Mandrake up near the rocks that she now saw were nearby, he was there in the shadows, his talons trying to protect her from the wind because he loved her, yes he did.
Only the cold stopped her dreaming, though sometimes it lured her towards sleep—which she fought, and had fought for days, because there is no waking up on a mountain like Moel Siabod, above which the black ravens fly.
Food. She thought of it as a dream, an impossible thing, and it smelt so good. Remember the worms she had stolen from the elder burrows and how Mandrake was angry, yes he was. Silly thing, he was, never seeing what was at the end of his snout.
The smell of food in these cold wastes where nothing lived! And Mandrake, the thought of him had given her such strength. ‘Mandrake. Mandrake.’ She whispered his name and mixed it with the hopeless dreams of food and her Bracken as tiredness came towards her like darkness at night and even the strength to tend to the pups she had kept alive, and whose bleatings seemed so far away now, was leaving her.
‘Difryd difro Mandrake, difryd difro Mandrake.’ She heard the words from beyond the darkness of sleep into which she was finally sinking, but it was his name that brought her back again, and a strong nuzzling, stronger than the pups could manage, much stronger. As she opened her eyes, she smelt food and saw at her side an ancient mole, female and grey, snouting blindly at her and muttering words she could not understand, except that they meant she was no longer alone up here where poor Mandrake had been born.
Y Wrach had found her. The worms she carried were the ones that Celyn had brought up through the tunnels the day before, the fifth day of the blizzard. He had found her writhing and cursing and shouting out at the storm and saying that Mandrake was near, he was, and didn’t Celyn know that ‘addewid ni wrieler ni ddiw’? ‘A promise not accomplished is no promise at all!’
‘He promised,’ she shouted, ‘he said he would come back. He’s here now, up there, up there.’ So she took the worms and crawled painfully out into the blizzard to find him, refusing to let Celyn go with her. Hadn’t she found Mandrake before with nomole’s help?
‘But you were young,’ he said, ‘you were young,’ and she laughed bitterly at her twisted hind paws and said, ‘Just you see!’
When he asked if he should pray for her, she told him to wait for her in her tunnels, and pray whatever he liked.
Then she snouted her way blindly out into the storm, almost blown off her paws in the wind, and he waited until the wind began to die and there was no more blizzard. Then he did pray in the old Siabod way, prayers that sounded more like curses than worship. In a hard language. She must be dead.
But he stayed on to honour his promise, and before his stay could turn into a wake, she had come back off the Siabod slopes, carrying a pup as pink with health as the stem of starry saxifrage.
‘Shut up and keep him warm,’ she cursed before she was gone again, and he did, in wonder he did. And then another, and a third. And she was gone again up to where Rebecca lay eating the food this ancient female had brought who now urged her to her paws with no words she understood but, ‘Mandrake! Mandrake!’
It was darkening towards late afternoon by now, and the wind was freshening again, with touches of sleet in it. Rebecca herself picked up the last pup at the gestured bidding of the old mole and slowly went down the slope, following her clear tracks as the wind grew stronger and stronger at her rear and the blizzard began again. Behind her she heard the mole call out the name ‘Mandrake’ once more, the sound flying in the wind, and she turned with difficulty and saw, or thought she saw, great shadows of moles among the rocks higher up the slopes, that moved and melded into scurrying snow, all white and dark in the evening. And then the old female was gone for ever, lost in the blizzard that had first brought her life. Rebecca turned away back down the old mole’s tracks and entered into huge, slate-lined tunnels where she heard her young mewing for her, and found a scraggy-faced male, who reminded her of nomole so much as Hulver, doing his best to keep them in order as they wandered here and there vainly seeking out their mother’s teats.
Today, in Siabod, Rebecca is legend. They talk still of how Y Wrach grew old and invoked the ancient powers of the Siabod Stones and went out into the blizzard to return with a litter of her own; of how she changed herself into the form of a female whose fur was soft and glossy grey, like no Siabod female’s had ever been, and who claimed her name was Rebecca and said she could not speak Siabod.
They tell of how Rebecca’s four male pups grew into four moles whose size made them unassailable in fights and whose courage brought back the pride of Siabod. They warn of the eastern slopes of Siabod where Y Wrach’s spirit roams and where, when dusk falls and snow flies thick, her Mandrake may sometimes be seen, his talons raised protectively behind Y Wrach, a smile at last on his great, scarred face.
They tell how Rebecca brought love and joy back to the system after the plague, and how, when the summer came and her pups were beginning to leave the nest, she would tell tales of Rose, a healer she knew, and a mole called Bracken, who must have been as big as Mandrake because he faced Gelert the Hound and defeated him.
They love to weave tales on Siabod, and confusing legends that shorten long nights and make the bitter days bearable. They love to sing an old song. But always they tell sadly of how, at last, when her pups were mature and her work was done, she said she must leave before the winter returned.
Then they love to tell the story of Bran, who accompanied her on her journey away from Siabod when she said she was going back to her own system, though all Siabod knew she was really Y Wrach in disguise.
‘What happened to Bran?’ ask the pups when they hear this last tale.
‘Now there’s a strange thing,’ they’re told, ‘because he came back, you see. After moleyears and moleyears it was that he came back, but wouldn’t ever speak a word about it. And that was strange, too, because there was never a mole liked to talk so much as Bran—before he left, mind. Journeys change a mole, see, so don’t you go journeying off too far, little one…’
There’s many an older Siabod mole, too, will claim that more than once, when they’ve been caught in a blizzard, Rebecca’s come for them out of the storm, sometimes like the beautiful mole she was, sometimes looking like Y Wrach had been, but always with the shadow of a great mole that was Mandrake among the rocks nearby to protect her, and she’s shown them the way home to safety.
That’s what they say, in Siabod.
Part Five
The Seventh Stillstone
Chapter Forty-Four
Few creatures in the world are so well equipped to survive burial in an avalanche as moles, whose very first action at birth is to burrow their way among their siblings and nesting material to find teats for suckling.