‘We bathe their paws in showers of dew,
We free their fur with wind from the west,
We bring them choice soil,
Sunlight in life.
We ask they be blessed
With a sevenfold blessing…’
Bracken spoke the words now with power, with the voice of an adult. They filled the clearing and carried on beyond it loud and clear, until they stopped Mandrake and his moles in their tracks.
‘The grace of form
The grace of goodness…’
A wild storm of racing blood and blizzard cold swept through Mandrake’s head and body; he seemed possessed by rushing darkness. With a mighty roar he turned back, thrashing up towards the clearing, tormented by the powerful voice that carried words that agonised his soul.
‘The grace of suffering
The grace of wisdom
The grace of true words
The grace of trust
The grace of whole-souled loveliness.’
Bracken had moved to the Stone and now stood in its dark shadow turned towards Uffington, aware of everything about him: the dead Hulver, the dying Bindle and the agonised rushing of Mandrake fast approaching him, but he ignored it all.
It seemed to Mandrake, as he arrived back at the clearing and saw at first only two moles lying on the ground, that the Stone itself was speaking:
‘We bathe their paws in showers of light,
We free their souls with talons of love,
We ask that they hear the silent Stone.’
It was only with these very last words of the ritual that Mandrake saw Bracken in the shadow, and with a roar as agonised as it was angry, charged upon him.
Bracken stepped forward for a moment into the moonlight, where Mandrake saw him clearly for the first time, and then ran behind the Stone, beyond the great beech tree, and into the wood in the direction of the chalky escarpment.
As Mandrake followed after him, Bindle moved for the last time, stretching a paw towards his friend Hulver, his snout turned towards the Stone into whose silence and light he felt himself flowing, away from the rasping breathing that was no longer his and numbing cold that had been spreading from his paws and flanks towards his heart, and thinking that the youngster somehow knew the words as well, and that was how it should be.
On Bracken ran, his strength failing rapidly. He could no longer think clearly and his breath was coming in pants and rasps as Bindle’s had done. Behind him he could hear Mandrake getting nearer, carried forward as he was by an indescribable rage and malevolence, beech leaves and leaf mould scattering in his wake.
To his left, Bracken could hear other moles running towards him through the undergrowth, Rune, Dogwood and the others. To his right, the hill rose towards its final height, where he and Hulver had lain in secret before tonight. But he knew he had no strength left to climb up and away from Mandrake. So he ran straight on, straight towards the void of the chalk escarpment, his heart pounding in pain and each breath harder and harder to grasp hold of. Mandrake could see him now, just ahead, paws scrabbling over themselves, back almost within talon range. With a final push forward Mandrake reared up to try to bring his talons down on the failing Bracken.
Sensing what Mandrake was about to do, Bracken turned in mid-flight to make a valiant effort to ward off Mandrake’s blows. But as he raised his own talons to defend himself, he felt his back paws continue forward into nothing, sliding downwards through loose soil and vegetation, attempting, it seemed, to keep hold of nothing. As Mandrake’s talons crashed down towards his upturned snout he felt the nothingness of the void swallowing him, pulling him down into the blackness as his front paws flailed desperately at the cliff face to retain a hold. He felt a terrible pain in his left shoulder and the cliff face slipping past his snout, felt loose vegetation and flints scratching at his face.
Above him he heard a mighty roar of triumph from Mandrake. But then, hardly realising what was happening, he felt his front paws fall suddenly forwards into an emptiness in the cliff face and caught hold of a surface. And he was flailing again, pulling himself forwards, back paws again in contact with the cliff face, pulling, heaving, shoving himself up until he finally lay on the smooth, flat floor of a tunnel exposed by some winter cliff fall, whose ancient dark depth echoed back his gulps for air and life. From above him came the thumping of paws and more paws, as Rune and Mekkins, Dogwood and Burrhead joined Mandrake at the cliff’s edge, and looked over into the blackness of its void.
‘He has gone, gone to his death,’ screamed Mandrake. ‘I caught him with my talon before he went and ripped his flesh.’ And then Mandrake laughed terribly into the darkness beyond.
‘Which mole was it?’ asked Mekkins, wondering at the courage and strength of the three moles they had killed that night.
‘It was Bracken,’ hissed Rune into the darkness beyond them. ‘The mole I found in Hulver’s tunnels. I should have killed him then but I did not wish to warn Hulver that something was wrong. I should have killed him painfully then.’
‘It was Bracken, was it!’ exclaimed Burrhead, trying to sound angry. But there was a hint of surprise in his voice, mingled with a touch of pride. He could not believe that it was his own strange son, whom he thought had been killed after leaving the home burrow without a word, who had given Mandrake so much trouble before his end. ‘Best say no more,’ Burrhead thought.
Bracken heard them move off across the floor of the wood, back towards the slopes. Painfully he raised himself up, his left shoulder now stiff and almost lame, and pointed his snout forwards into the Ancient System, which, after so many generations, had at last opened its tunnels to a mole again.
Chapter Nine
Rebecca’s bleak mateless spring had become an early summer of delights. When Sarah’s litter by Mandrake arrived in April, Rebecca had the excuse she wanted to leave the home burrow to scrape a living for herself in her own tunnels. She had wondered whether to leave Barrow Vale altogether, to get away from Mandrake, but when it came to that, she had no real desire to do so. Perhaps she sensed that beneath his brutal hostility to her he loved her, the very viciousness of his assaults a sign of how deep his feelings ran.
Certainly she was pleased when he gruffly took her aside at the end of April to say, ‘You’ll be leaving the home burrow now, but you’ll not go far, Rebecca—I want to keep an eye on you. There’s a burrow not far from here which I’ll show you…’
She was surprised that one should be so conveniently free, and only long afterwards found out that Mandrake had driven away the mole who occupied it—an older female called Rue—threatening her with death if she tried to win it back. Not knowing this and flattered by Mandrake’s sudden interest in her wellbeing, she settled down happily to wait for summer. She cleared out the runs and burrows in her new tunnels, replacing the nesting material with sweet-smelling grasses and leaves she found on the wood’s floor. She opened up a new entrance which caught the morning sun, and another which threw light and fresh, cool air into her burrows towards the end of day.
All this occupied her so much that she hardly missed not seeing Sarah during May and early June, by which time Sarah’s second litter was beginning to roam, and the two became friends again. They would talk of flowers and trees, and Sarah would tell her the ways of shrews and voles, laughing at their fights and antics. She warned of weasels and owls.