Only a few of the older moles, and one or two of the young ones, came to her—the ones who understood that the greatest healing she could give was the sense of joy and peace she herself now felt in the wood about her.
So Comfrey now became healer, and it was to him that they mostly went with their troubles, which he was able to help them with in his own eccentric way, giving them herbs that might, or might not, be of practical help.
But once in a while he would take time off—or Rebecca would come and make him do so—and today, on a clear, misty spring morning in April, she had him grumblingly playing hide-and-seek.
Down past the slopes she ran, into the Old Wood where a few trees still stood stark and black to remind them of the fire, but where fresh undergrowth and two seasons of leaf mould had made the grey ashes of the wood a memory. But burrow a little way and a mole could still find the ashes—and they were alive with life now as fronds of the roots of a new spring of anemones grew into them, or young sinewy roots of sapling hazel and the suckers of elm pierced up through them.
She ran instinctively towards Barrow Vale, which she had not found the previous summer but which now, somehow, she knew would be there. The sapling wood was busy and noisy. Birds darted and flitted about the trees, most of which were heavy with bud or catkins.
Still calling, ‘Comfrey! Comfrey!’ her laugh following the sound of his name, she ran on faster than he could, stopping only for a moment to sigh with delight at the sight of a cluster of yellow celandine.
As she ran on towards Barrow Vale, it was as if she were herself the plants and trees and every creature, everything, alive with the sunlight that began to clear the mist and the life that the spring always finally brought. ‘Oh!’ she sighed, just as she had when she had been a pup and had first run with such wonder through the wood. Comfrey! Comfrey! And her laughter filled the wood.
She came to a clearing where the vegetation was lighter because the soil was gravelly, and knew it had been Barrow Vale.
‘Shall I burrow?’ she wondered. But though she tried to start, she didn’t finish, because she was distracted by the last of the morning mist swirling away and then by the sound of the first bumblebee she had heard that spring. Then by a distant cawing of rooks in the trees on the east side which had survived the fire. She crouched in the pale sunshine, thinking she should go and find Comfrey or help him to find her, and just a little sad that he couldn’t play with her like a sibling or a lover because, she knew deep down, it wasn’t quite his way.
But then what mole had ever played with her with the fullness of life that she saw and enjoyed! But her sadness was part of her happiness that there was so much to see and do and enjoy in the wood. So much of the sadness had left her when, on that night by the Stone, she knew with certainty that somewhere her Bracken was alive, even if now he might not come back; and that somehow the love they had known had changed but he was alive, and she had helped him be so. She smiled at the memory of it and laughed aloud again at the distant nervous call of Comfrey, wondering where she was.
She crouched in the sun that grew clearer by the minute, and said aloud, ‘It’s my wood! My wood!’
‘That’s what you always used to say, Rebecca, remember?’ The voice came from the shadows of the roots of a dead oak tree and cast an immediate fearful chill into her heart.
She looked behind to the darkness of the place where the voice came from. His coat was glossy and his smile bland. It was Rune!
‘Hullo, Rebecca,’ he said. She saw that though his face had become lined with the moleyears and his eyes bitter with age, his coat was as unnaturally smooth and glossy as it had always been. His talons were black, there was not a scar on him—face, flank or shoulder—which was unusual in a mole as old as he must be. But then, Rune had a way of avoiding hurt by passing it on to others.
‘So you’re all living up in the Ancient System now, are you, what’s left of you?’ he asked. He smiled blandly as he said it, but still his voice seemed to hold a sneer.
She simply stared at him, unable to comprehend that he was there. He had gone off after the fight by the Stone but hadn’t he died after that, in the plague? Or somewhere else?
‘No, no, I didn’t die,’ he said, sensing precisely what she was thinking. ‘If you survived, why shouldn’t I? Perhaps the thought of you kept me alive. You know how much I always admired you, Rebecca.’
She shuddered at the way he said it, an old weariness coming over her as she realised he was Rune, and he was back in the system he had once nearly destroyed. And she wondered if she had the strength for such things any more.
‘Well, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. You always had a will of your own, Rebecca, I remember.’ He laughed again, the sound of it like cold grey clouds blocking out the sunshine.
‘A good time for an old mole like me to come back, isn’t it? Well, you know, the start of the mating season… a few fights… you know? Now I think I’ll go and explore the system you must all have so patiently been creating… ’ And he slipped away with cruel humour in his narrow eyes, his body lithe as a youngster’s and cunning as evil.
Rebecca shook for a while in disbelief, then turned away back towards the slopes, towards the sound of Comfrey coming down through the wood towards her.
‘Rebecca-Reb-b-becca,’ he said, beginning to stutter as he saw the tiredness that had suddenly come over her. ‘There was a m-m-mole I met who said he was l-looking for you. I told him you were down here and that I was tr-trying to find you…’
She nodded.
‘I d-d-didn’t like him, Rebecca.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘His name is Rune. There was a time when he would have killed you if he could.’
‘I d-don’t like him,’ said Comfrey. But his misery was not for himself, because that never worried him now, but for Rebecca, for whose happiness he cared so much and who had lost the joy that shone from her earlier that day.
It seemed to Bracken that the yellow cowslips that shook and waved in the April wind outside the shallow tunnel in which he had first hidden when he had crawled out from the stone circle had sprouted, leaved, and blossomed overnight.
He looked at them puzzled and felt the warm air about them, wondering where he was and how long he had been there. So late into spring already? But surely, there was a hoarfrost only yesterday…
Next time he went to admire them, two of the florets were already withering and brown, and there was an unaccustomed blue in the sky, which echoed to the high rise and fall of a skylark’s song. On and on it went, all day long it seemed, on into another day. So whole days had passed by, whole weeks had stolen away, most of which he forgot because he was not conscious most of the time. He slept; he pulled himself into the adjacent ploughed field whose soil was sparse with flints and chalk subsoil but where he managed to find food. He crawled back to sleep away the pain.
Kestrels and crows had wheeled and dived, suns and moons had come and gone, until, at last, he was all there, and his body ached and throbbed with hurt.
There was not one wound but two—one at the top of his shoulder where the joints had been broken and ripped, one out of his chest, where the fur seemed to have been misplaced and there was a scar. He could move his right paw, thank the Stone, but two of his talons in it were stiff and would no longer respond as well as those in his left did.
Then he noticed that another three florets of the cowslips had died, and he knew that spring was passing. What dreams he had had, what nightmares! All so pointless and comic. He saw himself as he had been, different moles at different times, nervous or brave, serious or sad, indifferent or loving. Sometimes one, sometimes another. The mole that left Duncton wasn’t the one that arrived in Uffington; and the one that had left Uffington again wasn’t the same as the one who went up Cwmoer. Each one searching for something Bracken could only smile about now as he looked at the grey earth of his tunnel, thinking there was nothing more real than that.