But these were the vaguest of hopes, for Rebecca lived more in the delightful present than most moles, having little time for reveries concerning herself when there was so much to see, to do, and feel now. And as her journey coincided with the start of autumn in Duncton Wood, there was the excitement of the wood’s sudden surrender to the season of change for her to enjoy.
On the second day, when far off to the east and up on the slopes Rune and Mandrake were leaving Hulver’s burrows after investigating Rue’s story, Rebecca awoke to a morning when the wood’s floor was draped and decorated with a thousand dew-hung cobwebs. They ran in ladders and cascades of wet brightness up and down the untidy brambles, in and out of the ground ivy, over and around the dead twigs of fallen branches. About them the ground was moist and almost steamy, for it was still warm from the summer, and the sun that replaced the drizzle of the previous few days still had the strength to start drying the moisture on to which its light fell.
Sometimes, as Rebecca travelled on the surface, a spider would retreat into its silk-lined nest, its front legs poised tense against possible assault as she passed. Sometimes one of her front paws would catch a long anchor thread from a cobweb, which would stretch as she pulled past and then break, the web to which it was attached trembling as one of its supports was pulled away and the dew caught in its symmetry, suddenly dropping and falling to the bramble thorns or fallen leaves beneath, leaving the cobweb bereft of light.
Later the same morning, in a more open vale of the wood, she found herself face to face with the tiny red fruit of wild strawberries which brightened the shadows of their crumpled and serrated leaves and among which stood a few pink flowers of rosebay willowherb, tall as a small shrub and far beyond Rebecca’s sight. But at least she could sniff at some of the blackberries, still hard and green, whose hairs tickled her snout and stopped her trying to nibble at them.
Rebecca at once grew happier and more restless with each passing sight, each exciting sound; the autumn made her want to run through the wood as fast as a fox, or be blown about it with the random abandon of the seeds of dandelion, which flurried and floated over the more open space.
As for the pastures, well! When she reached them, she found that they were fresher up here than she remembered from lower down by the Marsh End where she had said goodbye to Rose. She did not venture out of the long grass and rough hawthorn bushes that lay just inside under the barbed-wire fence that kept the cows out of the wood, because she was a little nervous of doing so—but the more she snouted out through the grass to the vast sky-strewn openness beyond, the more her excitement began to overcome her fear of the pastures or its moles.
On the third day Rebecca lost all track of time as the autumn continued its slow change about her and, as on different days in the spring and summer, she wandered from one delight to another. Squirrels nervously hopping between trees; starlings flocking and feeding in flurries of squealing sound; leaf-fails from a tall and gentle ash, whose leaves always fall earlier than those of other trees in the wood. While there were some things she had at last got used to and found she could take pleasure in rather than run from—like the crashing about of an old hedgehog at dusk who grubbed about an area of leaf mould she had been interested in and who seemed to make so much noise that she wondered if he would scare away even the trees themselves.
With her fourth dawn away from Barrow Vale, the dew was thick on the pastures and Rebecca woke in the temporary burrow she had made near them, feeling at one with the change that now moved so excitedly about her, rather than just a delighted observer of it. From its first moment, the day seemed to carry her along so that she surrendered to its will and did whatever it seemed to want. She was as hungry as ever on waking, but this put no urgency at all into her stretching and grooming, which became a timeless exercise in self-content. Time did not matter. Eventually, her coat glossy and her eyes happy, she burrowed about for food before taking to the surface to see the day. And the day seemed so free with itself that it almost asked that she should break free from the grass of the wood’s edge and go out on to the fresh pastures, the cool dew catching her paws and belly.
Because this part of the wood faced the west, the sun had not yet reached it, casting instead the shadow of the trees way out across the pasture. Beyond, the sun hit the grass and dried the dew, the area of tree shadow receding as the sun rose higher in the sky and swung south. The edge of the shadow and the area still bedewed shrank steadily from west and south as the morning advanced, and in it, near her burrow but now clear out on the pasture, Rebecca stayed, listening, watching and scenting the day. Behind her, the barbed wire marked the edge of the wood, and here and there along it, tufts of cow’s hair vibrated a little, the only evidence of a morning breeze. Even if Mandrake himself had asked Rebecca to move she might well not have done so, for she could smell a scent of such excitement that she knew without thinking about it that it was the one she had been seeking for weeks past. For as the shadow of the trees shrank towards her, two big male Pasture moles followed it up the pastures, down among their tunnels, then up and rolling across the surface, playing hide-and-seek and catch-as-catch-can with each other. It was a morning in which a mole should dance and smile and forget that summer was yesterday and tomorrow may bring an autumn storm. A morning to live in.
The two moles were slimmer and more lithe than Duncton moles, but just as powerful as the strongest Westsider, their coats just a shade lighter. They seemed to know each other so well that they did not really talk as they played, preferring to laugh and roll and touch and mock-fight with each other as they made their way towards the dark wall of the west side of the wood, its shadow receding before them.
The light morning breeze coming up the pastures carried their scent to where Rebecca crouched. The scent was male and new: strong and exciting. It was distant enough for her to want to run out towards it, to increase the chance that the males—though she did not know there were two of them—might scent her out. And run she did, or rather she danced across the dew-covered grass towards where the shadow stopped and the sun started, the male scent fresh like new-cropped grass, different from Duncton scents. As she danced, she did not even think of the risk she was taking, or how dangerous it would have seemed to most Duncton moles. She was Rebecca, there was the massive exhilaration of autumn soaring in the air around her, she wanted a mate, and a male was so near, somewhere near.
And one of them was. He had run on ahead, in and out of tunnels, towards where the pastures were still in shadow and where the dew had not yet dried out. On and on he ran, laughing and snouting back over his shoulder to see if the other was following near. On and on…
‘Cairn! Cairn!’ the one who was lagging behind called ahead, his voice deep and authoritative. ‘Don’t go too near the wood without me, you never know if there are Duncton moles about near the edge. Cairn!’ The name was called with love and good humour and without real fear that any harm was about. This was a morning in which to live to the full, rather than to sneak about.
Cairn ran on, laughing, snouting over his shoulder to see how far ahead he was and drawn on by such a sweet wildflower smell ahead. When, Oh! And a tumble. And a snarl. And Rebecca. Rebecca and Cairn. Tense and staring at each other, Rebecca’s talons hard in the ground and Cairn looking to see and snouting to scent if there were other males about.