‘But it is his real spirit,’ said Medlar, ‘and it is therefore a powerful one, but it is not the spirit of a fighter. Win the loyalty of his spirit, however, and you are strong indeed.’
Bracken found that Stonecrop, on the other hand, had a very hard and powerful spirit, though one that was inflexible and therefore, in Medlar’s terms, fairly easy to get round. In his own mind, Bracken came to understand this by thinking of Stonecrop as a series of burrows and tunnels, not unlike the Barrow Vale, where, if a mole kept his head and spirit firm, he would eventually find a way through. It was understanding this that cleared Bracken of his fear of Stonecrop—and simultaneously made Stonecrop more respectful of Bracken.
As these insights about fighting came to Bracken, he began to understand other things that Medlar had taught. One of them was the idea that there is no such thing as a talon lunge by itself: a proper fighter lunges with his whole body, which for Medlar meant with his whole spirit.
‘If you understand this, Bracken, you have the way into your true strength. So many moles think that they will succeed by making their lunges more and more powerful—but a gentle touch from the paw of an old mole like me is a thousand times more powerful because I make it with my whole spirit, whereas they use only their muscles.’ And, as if to prove the point, Medlar seemed to do no more than touch Bracken on his shoulder and he found himself tumbling back across the chamber.
Sometimes Bracken saw things suddenly as if a rush of sunlight had all at once filled a gap between trees—and this often happened when he was watching Medlar instruct one of the others. One day, when Boswell was the willing victim, Medlar suddenly yawned and crouched down. Involuntarily Boswell followed suit, thinking that Medlar was taking a rest. Or was it just that? As Boswell relaxed, Medlar attacked him viciously and, taken by surprise, Boswell almost crumpled up before them.
‘A weak spirit will follow a strong spirit and copy what it does,’ said Medlar. ‘You tense up, he will tense up; but you relax and he will relax, as Boswell just did. In a fight, if you gain dominance of spirit and then relax, your opponent will do the same, and in that moment you can kill him, as I could have killed Boswell. Learn to read your opponent’s spirit.
‘It will help you do this if you make him strike at you first with his talons. Indeed, among great fighters the one who strikes first will always lose the fight. Striking betrays weakness of spirit.’
‘Well, that would mean that really great fighters never need to strike a blow,’ said Bracken dubiously.
‘Exactly,’ said Medlar.
One day, Medlar invited Stonecrop to kill him. Stonecrop thought it was a joke, or some kind of trap—which, in a sense, it was, though not quite as Stonecrop imagined. Medlar became angry with his hesitation (or seemed to be, none of them was ever sure with Medlar) and he started viciously attacking Stonecrop, who became angry in his turn. In the midst of the fight, Medlar dropped his guard and repeated, ‘Kill me, Stonecrop,’ and crouched quite still, waiting. There was a hush lasting a long time as Stonecrop’s talons hung poised above Medlar’s upturned snout. Suddenly he dropped his talons and relaxed, saying, ‘You want to die!’
Medlar laughed and said ‘Perhaps I do, but do not turn your back on what you have learned. You see, I am no longer afraid of death and for another mole to meet that attitude is a very fearful thing. A mole who no longer fears death is very powerful because his opponents are then faced by nothing but their own fears. This is very hard to understand, very hard to feel. When you can see that there is no difference between life and death and that you are already dead, then not only will you be more alive than you have ever been but it may be that at last you can accept the task that the Stone has got for you. When that happens you will be a warrior.’
Bracken found it hard to understand these ideas but the exercises Medlar gave him to do made him feel the truth of them and so come to know them from within rather than from without. Discussing them with Boswell, he discovered that while Boswell often understood them better, he found it harder to feel them—neither was sure which was best, or worst.
So the molemonths passed, and the meadow grass on the surface of the Nuneham system began to grow green and lush with the coming of June. More and more grasses and flowers appeared, as the early spring plants gave way to red and white clover and the waving pink flowers of ragged robin, while white clusters of sneezewort and pink cuckoo flowers grew down nearer the river where, in moments of relaxation, the moles occasionally explored. While the river itself flowed more languidly, tiny whirlpools of water catching and circling into nothing at its edge, where the shadows of tall reed, reedmace and fluttering yellow flag fell; and the occasional chub or roach took food on the surface, the roundling circlets of their rise travelling and fading slowly with the flow.
Then, quite suddenly, Bracken began to miss Duncton Wood. He missed the high cover of green leaves, always rustling above, and the different sounds of birds—blackbird and thrush, treecreeper and chaffinch—scurrying and hopping, some on the surface, others on the branches, their massed song at daybreak sharper and much clearer than the more diffused song of a system out here in the open. He missed the beech trees he had grown to love. He missed the darker rich smell of the tunnels, where the worms moved easily, and the surface litter, so much richer in grubs and insects than green grass.
He missed the sound of a Duncton voice. He missed Rue. But most of all, and most mysteriously to him, he missed Rebecca. The more he sat and didn’t think, as Medlar insisted that he should; the more he learned to feel the spirit of Stonecrop or Boswell, and of himself; the more he turned to face the world about him through learning how to fight… the more he missed Rebecca.
There were days when her memory would nag at him, and he would look about him as if the world was incomplete, and there was something just outside his reach which needed to be put in place for it all to be right again. He remembered running through the Chamber of Roots beneath the Stone, when she was ahead of him. He could feel her touch on his shoulder and her voice, gentler and yet fuller than any birdsong he had ever heard, as it spoke again to him. ‘My love. My sweet love.’ She had said those words to him, she had, she did. ‘My love, my Rebecca.’ And the stone beneath the Stone, the stone that had glimmered and played its light around them! The Stillstone! He had touched it, he could still feel its pattern on his paw, and could scratch it on the ground and wonder at it, thinking of her. She had touched his fur, and he remembered touching her, he did, he had, his love Rebecca.
Talking about her did not help, or any other of his Duncton memories. One day he suddenly took it into his head to tell Stonecrop about Cairn. He told him just as it was, the terrible love and ache of it all, his spirit turning weak from the telling. He said again what he had said then about Rebecca, and Stonecrop nodded because he remembered her. Stonecrop didn’t say much but just heaved his body sadly, the look in his eyes a mixture of loss and anger, and disgust at the memory of Mandrake’s odour in a temporary burrow by a wood’s edge, a smell he had not forgotten.
No, talking was no use. Bracken tried to tell Boswell about the stone in the heart of the Ancient System but the words died in his mouth and he could not take Boswell past the Chamber of Echoes in his account, lying—‘No, no. I couldn’t get through, it’s impossible’—and the lie was better than betraying the memory of the glimmering stone where he and Rebecca were… what? ‘Where we were was the best way he could tell it to himself. Bracken wanted to leave Nuneham.