‘What’s your name?’ she asked gently.
‘I’m Bracken,’ he blurted out. Then he did run, turning away from the entrance where they had been crouching and making for the slopes. As he ran, he felt a relief that he was gone from her, but he could still feel the touch of her caress on his shoulder where once his terrible wound had ached so much; and though he was glad she was gone, he wished he had asked her name.
He did not hear her call out to him, ‘My name is Rebecca,’ or see her run a little way towards the way he had gone, nor did he see her stop and look up towards the slopes to which he had returned before turning away herself into the tunnels of the system.
Part Two
Rebecca
Chapter Fifteen
The silence of the Stone. A mole may listen for a lifetime and not hear it. Or it may touch him at birth and seem to protect him with its power for the tasks that he must face.
Such a mole was Boswell, scribemole of Uffington, where the Holy Burrows lie, who is now known and beloved of all moles as Blessed Boswell.
Yet there was a time when his vow of obedience had shaken his heart as day after day he prayed and meditated in solitude by the Blowing Stone that lies at the foot of Uffington Hill—a stone whose special power for truth everymole knows. He was seeking the guidance he needed before making his now legendary decision to break his vows and make the trek over chalk hills and clay vales, across river and marsh, to the ancient system of Duncton.
The time was September, the same in which Bracken and Rebecca first met, and the weather was changeable. A storm had come in from the east, the direction of Duncton Wood. It obscured the top of Uffington Hill in rain and mist, leaving Boswell below it, isolated and alone with the Blowing Stone, to make up his mind. At the height of the storm, the wind was strong and it wound and raced around the hollow convolutions of the Stone until at last it sounded the deep vibrating note that cast all doubts aside and filled his heart with the terrible certainty that he must make the perilous journey.
He had already asked that he might do so, going with his master, Skeat, to the Holy Mole himself and begging to be allowed dispensation to risk the long trek to Duncton. But, though with kindness and compassion, he was refused, just as Skeat had warned he would be.
‘You’re far too valuable here, Boswell, for nomole knows the secrets of the libraries as well as you do, or the old language, which even the scribes forget. And anyway,’ and here Skeat looked sadly on Boswell, ‘you know you can never make such a journey and survive. Others might, perhaps, but not you, Boswell.’
Boswell would not have stood a chance. He had been cursed at birth with a crippled paw, whose talons were weak and useless and with which he only barely had enough strength to limp about, always struggling to catch up with the other pups. It was perhaps a miracle that he survived long enough for Skeat to come across him—or perhaps a reflection of the fact that he had the intelligence to steer clear of trouble.
Skeat himself had first found Boswell in a system near Uffington and brought him for his own protection to the Holy Burrows. He said that he saw in his quickness and intelligence, and in his awe of the Stone, something that should not be lost when he grew too old to stay in his home burrow and was forced to fight for a place of his own.
He was put to work in the libraries at Uffington where, before he ever became a scribe, he learned to take care of the ancient books with a love and feeling that other scribes said was a joy to behold.
Some said he was natural-born to the libraries, where his fur, flecked with grey as it was, blended with the white of the chalk walls and made him seem, in some lights, as ancient as the books themselves. They soon grew fond of the sight of his frail form, struggling sometimes with the bigger books but refusing all help, and would smile to see him.
He became a scribe very young and quickly distinguished himself for his work on some of the most sacred texts of all. The Book of Earth, as it now exists in its edited form, is substantially Boswell’s work; the Book of Light, so long an obscure text that few moles understood, was translated and explained by Boswell alone. And all this while he was still young and had seen through only one Longest Night.
But one spring, the same spring in which Bracken was born, Boswell seemed to change. Only Skeat, of all the masters, correctly linked the change with a text that Boswell one day found in the course of his delvings in the dark places of the libraries. It was a piece of bark manuscript and appeared to have been hidden deliberately. It had upon it the most holy seal of all—the seal of white birch bark: the seal of a White Mole.
He took this find to Skeat, his master, who took it to the Holy Mole himself, who opened it in the presence only of Skeat. It was written in the old language and began: ‘Sevene Stillstoones, sevene Bookes makede, Alle but oone been come to grounde…’ which in translation reads:
Seven Stillstones, seven Books made,
All, but one, have come to ground.
First, the Stone of Earth for living,
Second, Stone for Suffering mole;
Third of Fighting, born of bloodshed,
Fourth of Darkness, born in death;
Fifth for Healing, born through touching,
Sixth of pure Light, born of love.
Now we wait on
For the last Stone
Without which the circle gapes;
And the Seventh
Lost and last Book,
By whose words we may be blessed.
Find the lost Book, send the last Stone,
Bring them back to Uffington.
Send a mole in courage living
And a mole compassionate,
With a third and last to bind them
By the warmest light of love.
Song of silence,
Dance of mystery,
From their love one more will come…
He the Stone holds,
He the Book brings,
His the Silence of the Stone.
The enormous significance of this text was immediately obvious to both the Holy Mole and to Skeat. For it confirmed a belief, held by generation upon generation of scribemoles, that there were, indeed, seven holy Books and not six—the number Uffington actually had. And if there were seven Books, there must be a seventh Stillstone, for each of the six Books in Uffington had its counterpart in a Stillstone, as the special stones associated with the seven Books were known, whose location in the deepest parts of Uffington was a secret known only to the Holy Mole and the masters. What the two moles immediately debated was whether this text answered the two great mysteries about the lost Book: where it was, and what its subject was. And also whether or not there was a seventh Stillstone. But, as scholars so often do, they failed to come to any clear answer.
When the system heard that this text had been found and what its contents were, there was an enormous excitement, for surely its discovery was some kind of sign. Inevitably a great many scribes, particularly the younger, more aggressive ones who liked a bit of action, asked to be allowed to leave Uffington to search for the lost Stillstone and the lost Book.
But Boswell, who felt the same urge himself, was excluded from this clamouring, for how could a defenceless mole such as he ever leave Uffington? He lost himself in work in the libraries, pursuing the one course of search for the seventh Book open to him. He began a massive, solitary search for other material in the library in the same script as that of the manuscript he had found. He himself has recorded this search elsewhere, but what is important here is that in the Midsummer after the spring in which he made the initial discovery, he found a reference in an entry which was written in the same script, in one of the Rolls of the Systems, the books that record the findings of the wandering scribes, as they were then known, about the systems they had visited. It referred to ‘Duncton, a system separated from the world by the rivers that surround three sides of it, which has tunnels of great subtlety and wisdom’.