But underground Boswell could only see the white light of the Stillstone and feel the joy of holding it as he watched, or felt, the dance in its light of Bracken and Rebecca. Oh, he wanted to join them, to dance with them, to cast off the weight of his old body as they were doing and dance where his crippled paw would not slow him, nor his age, nor the cold, nor the wind that was straightening the Stone and making its base fall blissfully upon them.
Did he want any more to find the seventh Book? Did it matter, when the dance in the light was such joy? As he started forward towards them he saw, from the brightness of where Bracken and Rebecca had been crouched together so peacefully, Rebecca’s smile coming towards him and love and trust for him in her eyes. He heard her voice with Bracken’s as they said, or called, or sang, ‘Not yet, not yet, go back, beloved, for yours is the task of the seventh Stillstone. We give you the Book, Boswell beloved, beloved mole who has loved us, we give you the Book that you may inscribe it, the great Book of Silence, the lost and the last Book, for you who have lived it are its author-protector scribe and creator and the Stillstone will give you the strength for the scribing, beloved Boswell, White Mole of Uffington.’
Boswell reached a paw forward to touch his Rebecca, to feel the fur of Bracken, for he wanted to join them and not take this burden, for who was he before their light or before the Stone? ‘Help me,’ he called out. ‘Help me!’
And the light from the Stillstone travelled into his paw and from there to his body and over his fur until it shone from his eyes so that he had the courage to turn away from their light into the sound of the wind and the cold, and feel again the weight of his frail body. But he knew that their love was within him and that he would scribe the great Book of Silence. The lost and the last Book.
Above him the great mass of the Stone’s base began finally to sink down upon him and behind him upon Bracken and Rebecca, roots breaking about him as it crashed down through them, but holding the Stillstone he ran from under the Stone’s base as his old limbs raced to escape the cracking roots and shattering soil; he heard the thump of the Stone behind him and he began to turn back up the tunnel to the hollow of the tree, which swayed and shook before him as he picked his way around its edge, limping and hobbling with great difficulty because of the Stillstone, trying to get away as the tree began to pull out its roots from beneath the Stone and started to sway and to crash and to fall.
As the tree began its final descent he called out, ‘Tryfan, Tryfan, help me. Now you can help me. Tryfan, yours is the power.’
Mole upon mole had come to the circular chamber around the Chamber of Echoes, from which the fiercest sounds came, drawn by a sense that a great moment of change was taking place in the system, fearful of the sounds and awed by the majesty.
They chattered and stamped their paws with fear, for somemole had said he had seen Bracken and Rebecca go into the Chamber and that Boswell was there as well and all moles could sense that danger and great joy were there together.
‘Should we go in, should we help, can we do anything?’ they whispered and muttered to each other, looking fearfully at the entrances to the Chamber, not one there with the courage to enter in. Some braver moles wandered from entrance to entrance, passing by all seven of them, still unable to find the strength they needed to risk going in. Most just stared.
But all of them agreed afterwards on one strange and mysterious fact. As they watched and trembled they seemed to hear the singing of a sacred song whose words they knew but which they had, until then, forgotten. And all began to sing it, a song of hope and exaltation that spoke of the coming of a White Mole.
Then suddenly, as their song gained strength, Tryfan entered the circular tunnel, the only completely calm and silent one among them. He stared for a moment at one of the entrances into the Chamber of Echoes by which so many of the moles had been crouched hesitating. He was strong and purposeful and, moving without pause or apparent hesitation, he boldly entered into the echoing tunnel from whose darkness the sounds of stressing destruction were coming. He did it so naturally that, seeing him, a mole might have thought he had been that way before…
The strange thing is that afterwards each mole in the circular tunnel swore, and would have sworn by the Stone, that it was the entrance that they were standing nearby which Tryfan entered—which is impossible, for how could Tryfan or anymole enter all seven entrances at once?
As he disappeared from sight the song fell away from them and they waited in terrible fear as the root-pulling and stressing reached a climax of destructive sound. Yet although many of them wanted to run away to a place of safety not one moved, for they sensed they were witnessing a moment of profound change, a moment of wonder.
And then back out of the tunnel Tryfan came, half carrying and half pulling old Boswell of Uffington, who was covered in dust and grime and barely conscious from the power of the forces that had so nearly overwhelmed him. And who carried, clasped against his old chest, a small pebble or stone that looked as if it had nothing special about it to make a mole want to carry it out from such destruction.
Up on the surface by the Stone, where he had watched the storm continue into the first light of a wild, grey dawn, Comfrey saw the beech by the Stone finally sway back and back, and back and down, as its crown and branches and trunk crashed through the surrounding trees, and one by one its roots tore themselves from the soil around the Stone, which swayed and rocked on the edge of the crater they had left.
Then, as he watched, the Stone slipped back and down into where the roots had been until it stood firm and upright, no longer tilted by the roots towards Uffington, but upright as it must originally have been, with its great sides and top thrusting straight up into the sky.
But even though the crashing tree thundered and shook through all the tunnels of the Ancient System and the walls of the circular tunnel where the moles had gathered cracked and fissured from the shock, that was not what the moles noticed. What made them gasp in awe, and sing the sacred song that all moles thought they had forgotten, was that they saw that Boswell was changed. In the time he had been caught in the violence of the Chamber of Roots and seen the Stillstone’s light pass into Bracken and Rebecca, he had become a Holy Mole surrounded by silent love; and they saw that his fur had turned completely white. The White Mole had come. So they sang in exaltation and reached out to touch him.
Chapter Fifty
Duncton Wood stood quiet, bedraggled by the storm as last drops of rain dripped on to the damp leaf mould and the sky cleared to the west. Every tree, every bush, every plant seemed battered and shaken and there was a silent, almost wounded, air about the wood, as if a great mole were resting after a very long fight. Boswell crouched with Tryfan and Comfrey by the Stone. The other moles had finally gone back to their burrows, reluctant to leave the wonder and love they found in the presence of Boswell, beloved Boswell, Blessed Boswell, the White Mole of Uffington. Now only Tryfan and Comfrey remained, one who was in deep awe of Boswell and the other, Comfrey, who accepted him matter-of-factly, just as he had accepted Rebecca’s return to the system and her final departure with Bracken into the Stone where all moles must go.