Duncton Found (4 page)

Beechen pondered this, relaxed, and eventually said doubtfully, “But I don’t know where I am.”

Mayweed beamed with pleasure as if Beechen had fallen into a trap he had intended him to.

“Befuddled Beechen, wrong yet again. Crucially wrong. Think and learn, for this is the only way to become a route-finder. Don’t say, ‘I don’t know where I am’ but ‘I don’t know where
this place
is’. See? Understand? Appreciate?”

“Sort of,” said Beechen, who sort of did. Certainly he felt less panic-stricken than he had and, now he saw that his problem was not himself but the place, it was easier to keep calm; and certainly, he realised suddenly, there was something familiar about those walls.

Mayweed watched delightedly as Beechen snouted this way and that, scratched his head, breathed more deeply and, with the sudden sense that might come to a mole who falls headlong into a void and after whirling about lands safe again on his four paws, he saw where he was.

“But we’re
here
!” declared Beechen with a sudden rush of recognition. “But...!” And he felt, and looked, angry at himself and the world for fooling him into thinking he was lost when he was not lost at all.

“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” Mayweed said, almost shouting the words. “You see, you know, you feel, and marvellous... you’ve
found,
young Sir.”

“But...” protested Beechen.

“Ah! Astonished and marginally annoyed youth wonders how humbleness here got him to feel lost in the first place? Humble he is clever at such things. Humble he has made a study of such things. Humble he excels at it. By turning this way and then that way, by taking the young innocent’s mind off the route he was going, by making what was familiar become so unfamiliar that the bemused youngling could not even see correctly what was in front of his paws. We are in tunnels he has passed many times, but have come from a direction abnormal and stopped in a place and at an angle abnormal. Result? Confusion, panic and a sense of feeling lost. Dear oh dear, now bloodied Sir, and this is but the beginning!” Mayweed laughed again, scratched himself, thought a bit, and finally told Beechen to take him to the surface and find him some food.

When they had relaxed and eaten, Beechen asked, “Will I ever become a good route-finder?”

“With persistence and application, and a touch of genius – yes, Sir will,” said Mayweed contentedly.

“Will you teach me?” asked Beechen.

“Will you learn?” replied Mayweed, his eyes bright.

“Yes,” said Beechen seriously. There was a pause, and then Beechen boldly asked, “What exactly is the Stone?”

“That’s persistence!” said Mayweed. “No sooner recovered from being lost than he rushes headlong into a most existential maze. Modest me had guessed that bold Beechen would soon seek the portal to that arcane world, but had vainly hoped that in the bewilderment of getting lost Sir would forget his interest in such things. Me, Mayweed, is not one to say much of the Stone. Tryfan knows it best. He was taught by Boswell.”

“Who’s Boswell?”

“Ah! Quick and speedy brained Sir, the questions will come thick and fast now like sounds in a badly made tunnel, and Mayweed will not be able to cope. Tryfan will give you better answers than Mayweed....”

“I heard Tryfan say to Feverfew that you know more about the nature of the Stone than anymole alive.”

“He did?” said Mayweed softly, his bright eyes suddenly moist. “No, no, great Tryfan cannot have meant that, and anyway youngsters had best keep silent on what they hear until they know it to be true for themselves.”

“What’s scribing?”

“Sir will never stop now!” said Mayweed with a sigh.

Then the sounds of approaching mole across the surface relieved him of the need to answer more and instead he asked, “Whatmole is that, young Sir?”

“Tryfan, and he’s tired.”

“Correct but incomplete. He comes from where?”

“Don’t know,” said Beechen.

“That’s because loquacious lad was talking so much and asking inadequate me so many questions he forgot the route-finder’s cardinal rule, which is to keep half an ear open for sounds and clues, for they help, every one of them. Tryfan comes from upslope, some way towards the Stone.”

Which, when he reached them, Tryfan confessed he had.

“But not from it. Nomole’s been there since Beechen was born. They’re waiting. Eh, Mayweed?”

Mayweed sighed and nodded.

“This mole asks a lot of questions, peerless Tryfan, and so he should. Indeed, humbleness himself asks lots and will never stop. He’ll die asking questions, for that’s the way of route-finders. However, while he knows whatmole to ask (usually himself), burgeoning Beechen here is asking the wrong mole and should in Mayweed’s judgement direct his questions to you yourself, named Tryfan.”

Tryfan laughed but Mayweed did not even smile. Then as Beechen, bored by their conversation, turned from them and snouted a little across the surface, Mayweed said quietly, “Mayweed is made afraid by the youngster’s questioning. The nature of the Stone? Who was Boswell? The truth of scribing? The way to go...?” Mayweed looked full into Tryfan’s eyes, wavering. “When I am with this mole I am full of fear for moledom,” he said simply. “I feel I cannot help him or guide him as I can other moles. I feel close to tears.”

Tryfan nodded and touched his old friend on the flank.

“You are not alone in that, Mayweed. The mole is growing fast, he questions everything. But if he now asks you of the Stone and Boswell, it is more than he asks myself or Feverfew.”

Mayweed grinned and said, “See how he has drifted off... he must ask the questions but is afraid of the answers we will give. Youth, patriarchal Tryfan, is a touching thing but
aren’t
you glad you’ve left it far behind?”

Tryfan smiled.

“When I was first told by Boswell that one day the Stone Mole would come, I thought he would come complete, full grown, ready to guide us. But....”

They stared across the woodland floor to where Beechen, seeming so young in the soft May light, touched a root, gazed up at a branch, scented at some leaves and then simply settled down to look out through the speckled shade that spread over the wood’s wide floor.

Tryfan continued, “But he has come newborn, a pup, and is in all our care. Each one of us in Duncton must give to him what we can, striving to teach him all we know, whatever he asks we must answer it truthfully. When moles fear answering questions asked it is because they fear something in themselves, and do not trust what the Stone ordains. Answer his questions, Mayweed, and tell others in Duncton to do the same. For soon now he will leave the home burrow and I shall take him to the Marsh End. There, as Midsummer comes, I shall teach him scribing as I taught you at Harrowdown one Midsummer that seems long ago. Be not afraid, Mayweed. Here he is among good moles, moles the Stone wished to be here. We are his guardians and until he is ready to guide and teach us, we must all be his teachers.”

They watched Beechen for a little longer until, aware perhaps of their silence, he came running back to them, his eyes alight with the beauty of the wood.

“He’s teaching me to route-find,” Beechen told Tryfan, going close to Mayweed.

“Then you have found the best mole in all of moledom to teach you,” said Tryfan. “Now come, your mother would talk with you.”

As they left, Mayweed watched after them, trouble still in his eyes. He stared at Beechen’s still slender haunches, but finally his look was for Tryfan.

“You I’ll watch until you have no more need of me,” he whispered. “This mole Mayweed loves Tryfan, and what great Spindle began in Uffington this mole will conclude. Who knows what ways lie ahead, but while you trouble yourself with the Stone Mole’s rearing, I’ll trouble myself with watching over you! Slower now you are, Sir, your fur patchy like mine, and Mayweed sees ways ahead for you which may be hard to find and fathom. But humbleness will be there.”

Then, as the two moles stopped at an entrance to go down, Beechen turned and looked back across the wood to the place from where Mayweed watched them. He saw Mayweed, and for a moment his body was quite still and his left paw a little raised. Mayweed saw the look in his eyes, and knew it. It was the look of love, terrible and strong, and before it a mole might quail. And at his raised paw there seemed a light, and Mayweed knew that he was blessed and that moledom would be guided, if only it knew how to see, and hear. That time was yet to come, but for now, here, in beleaguered Duncton, the moles had a task to teach a young mole all they knew, and it was a great and good one.

As June began they all noticed that Beechen grew withdrawn and difficult, asking questions to which he seemed not to listen to the answers, staying near moles he seemed not to want to address, making silence, making sudden outbursts. If there had been other youngsters about it might have been easier for the adults there, since he could have vented his confused needs.

Now, too, he began to wander far, but he seemed not to want to talk to anymole and none reported talking with him, though sometimes he was seen over on the Eastside or near the Marsh End. He seemed not to attempt to go near the Stone or out on to the dangerous Pastures and he came back to Feverfew for rest or food, but she knew his time with her was very nearly done.

“I am muche afeard for hym wandering far,” Feverfew would say when she and Tryfan had time to be close.

“We all are, my love, but it is of more than shadows in Duncton that we fear for him. It is the darkness of which the grikes are a part that I fear. I know Whern’s ways. Rune may be dead, as Mayweed and Sleekit witnessed, but Henbane will have taken charge. Mistress of the Word! She will have cursed her father for not killing Boswell when they could have done. Now his son is come, which surely they must suspect, they will not rest until they have taken him. The day will soon come when they know or guess he is in Duncton Wood and he will have to escape from here. Now he has things to learn, and we must try to teach him, for that is our task. I shall take him to the Marsh End, my dear, and there teach him what I can of scribing, and then too other moles of Duncton – the many who have waited so long and patiently to see him, and who have left him well alone – shall come to tell him what they can. If he is the mole I think he is, he will listen well, and learn, and what he learns from us will give him much that he needs to know when he goes out in moledom and takes word of the Stone.”

“Hee ys myn sonne,” said Feverfew quietly, for talk of learning and journeying, guidance and the Stone, upset her. She who had borne him did not want to let him go. So as the sun of June brightened and grew clear, Feverfew grew apprehensive.

Today, historians of those times seek signs of what Beechen was to become in the few scraps of stories that are told about him then. Some say he had healing powers young, and even by the end of May was curing moles; others say that he made a journey to the Marsh End and spoke words of prophecy.

But it was not so. Tryfan himself, who left records that make the matter plain, tells us that until a certain day in mid-June, Beechen was pup and youngster like any other with nothing much to mark him out except, perhaps, a certain grace of form and the common sense intelligence of a mole who needed to be told things that mattered only once.

In the last few days before he first touched the Stone, as if he was beginning to understand that he must at last turn his back on puphood for all time, he slept badly and suffered nightmares, but recovered soon enough. Whatever darkness passed through their tunnels in those final nights vanished and their youngster slept as deep and sound as every youngster should.

At last a dawn had come which called Tryfan and Feverfew out into the wood. The whole of moledom seemed to wake about them as they groomed and ate, a day of beauty and change when a mole might take up his task. They felt that in travelling through the dark nights past they had grown nearer each other and nearer a joyful day to come.

“A day of sunshine such as this one,” said Tryfan softly, looking about the wood he loved, “a day when Duncton is found once more. I think I shall be gone by then, and you, my love! Our tasks will be done and other moles will be where we are now, to turn about as we do and rejoice in what they see. Theirs to inherit what we leave behind, as we have, and our parents before us. Theirs to guess at what we knew; theirs to know what we cannot.