As they crouched there, they heard from behind them the soft sound of the ancient tree, stirring and stressing in slow, long sounds, sounds more beautiful than either of them had ever heard, for in its movement it carried both the sound and the silence of life itself: the sound of old winds, the sound of new life, the sound of moisture, the sound of warm wood, of cold wind, of the sun.
While they could see above them, on the roof of the hollow cave blocked by the root, a glimmering light like the sun shimmering from a moving stream up on to the gnarled bark of a willow that stretches out over it.
Bracken moved forward and began to burrow under the root—which was easy, because the ground was loose and dry while the root itself was soft with age. Rebecca joined him, burrowing silently by his side, each pushing out the soil and debris behind them, advancing towards the sealed cave of the Stone. It was easy, so easy. Until at last one of Bracken’s burrowing thrusts pushed forward into nothing and he stopped and held his paw there and turned to Rebecca, who stretched her own paw forward and through, and together they pulled the last of the soil and root seal down.
As they did so their fur, their outstretched talons, their eyes, the tunnel about them… all was covered in a glimmering white light, whose source lay on the floor of the hollow cave into which they had found a way.
It was a stone, no bigger than a mole’s paw, oval, smooth and translucent, and from its centre came a light that was not bright like the sun, nor cold like the moon, nor fierce like an owl’s eye. Rather, it was a light like that which fills a raindrop caught by a soft, warm morning sun. As they advanced towards it, it seemed to change a thousand times each second, as the quality of light on a spring day changes with each station of the sun and shift in humidity in the air. Its glimmering had the endless fascination of the shifting windsound in an ash tree, whose leaves seem to dissect the wind into a thousand different whispers.
It’s rays shone and shot about the burrow in which it lay, lighting up first this side and then that, casting shadow here and chasing shadow there, always changing, never ending.
Bracken slowly, fearfully, stretched out a talon to touch it, but Rebecca ran to him and pulled him back, whispering, ‘Don’t. There’s no need to touch it.’
But Bracken only smiled, for never in his life had he seen or dreamed of anything so beautiful or felt at such peace, and he reached out again. Rebecca’s paw rested on his shoulder, her breath held still, for she, too, wanted to touch the stone. Then, as his paw touched it, its light was suddenly gone, and the burrow was plunged into a darkness so thick that a mole could not breathe.
Rebecca gasped, Bracken pulled back, and as his paw left the smooth stone, the feel of it like the softest moss on his skin, the light in the centre of the stone glimmered dimly again and then, like some creature that has curled up in defence and uncurls when the danger is gone, it slowly came to life and light once more, the light advancing about them like a new dawn.
They looked at each other in wonder, and then round at the burrow, noticing for the first time that its floor was strewn with vegetation and material so dry it fell to dust almost as they moved. Yet from it came the subtlest and the sweetest fragrances that either had ever smelt.
Verbena, feverfew, woodruff and thyme, camomile and bergamot, germander, mint, and rose… blending into the fragrance of a warm spring and a celebration of summer, with a hint of the fruits of autumn and a touch of winter snow. It was so subtle, yet so essential to the burrow, that Rebecca stretched out her paws as if to touch it, and failing, turned back to Bracken and touched him.
She caressed him with a wonder that made her gasp and sigh, for by the glimmering light of the stone he seemed more beautiful than anymole she had ever seen. His fur grey and his eyes soft. Bracken turned to her and touched the soft fur of her face, his eyes alight with a sense of the life that he saw within her which was a force and power he had never before felt within himself. They moved closer to each other, the stone to their side and the wonder of the world within each other’s gaze.
Then they crouched nuzzling each other and sighing, saying words of trust and love, joy and intent, the jumbled words of love whose nonsense makes a greater sense than any reasoned sentence ever can.
They drifted in and out of their newfound world, talking and laughing softly together, Bracken sometimes raising himself and looking down at Rebecca, running his talons through her fur, almost shoving and pushing at her as if he disbelieved that anything so beautiful could be at once outside his body and within his heart. They were pup and mother to each other, father and mate, friend and lover all at once, coming closer and closer to each other in their discovery of trust and love.
