Night had fallen and the first thing he saw—and it made him retreat into the tunnel—was the glare of a roaring owl’s eyes racing towards him out of the darkness, and the growing crescendo of its rumbling flight. The noise was so loud that it stunned him and the stench was many times more nauseating than that in the tunnel. It made his eyes water and his snout ache. And below there was the roar of running water.
He retreated down into the tunnel.
‘Well, we can get out, but it’s so dangerous there that we had better work out what to do before we start,’ he said.
‘There is little you can do except move as fast as possible,’ said Boswell. ‘From what I’ve seen, we’ll have to cross the owl paths and head off along their edge to the west. We’ll be very exposed—not only to the roaring owls but to crows and other predators that may be about.’
‘At night, up here?’ queried Mullion.
‘Death hangs in the air at any time,’ said Boswell. ‘With luck we’ll be able to get off the path by the way I originally came and there’ll be food to find when we get there. But whatever you do, do not look directly into the eyes of a roaring owl, as it will instantly hypnotise you.’
The climb up the burrowed tunnel was no problem, since it was small enough for them to flex their limbs against the sides, but once out on to the wet slope they were in continual danger. The passing owls were snout-shatteringly loud, and each one left its wave of noisome smells which so disorientated them that they nearly lost their grip more than once. Indeed, Bracken, used as he was to the clear air of Duncton Hill, started to faint and had not Boswell, at risk to himself, put his paw hard against Bracken’s back, he might easily have slipped back down into the wet running darkness from which they were trying to escape.
Thus, slowly and dangerously, they climbed a mountain whose top they were afraid of reaching. When they got there it was far worse than either Bracken or Mullion could ever have imagined. The noise, the stench, the flashing owl gazes! They all kept their snouts down and their eyes averted for fear of being transfixed by the owls’ gaze—but even so, they could see the light of the owl eyes flashing and shooting on the grubby wet grass that grew on top of the embankment, and the ground continually trembled with their passing.
‘Whatever you do, and whatever happens, do not look round at the roaring owls,’ repeated Boswell. ‘Once they have transfixed you with their gaze, they will crush you with their talons. ’
The owls passed intermittently from both directions—the ones on the nearer path going one way and on the further path the other. The three moles waited for a lull before looking up and across—but it was too murky to see much and their snouts were so upset by the fumes and vibrations that they could not snout out much either. Bracken felt a lassitude growing over him. His will to move was fading. He wanted to crouch down and sleep. He wanted… until Boswell nudged him. ‘Come on, we must move. They are so powerful they can confuse you and put you to sleep without even touching you. Come on!’
It was suddenly Boswell who was leading them, for he seemed to have the power to fight the weakness this terrible place put into a mole.
‘Listen!’ he said urgently. ‘We will run across to the area between the two paths…’
‘But if they see us,’ faltered Mullion, looking up just a little at the owl gazes about them.
‘They mustn’t, and you mustn’t let them. Wait until I start and then follow, and do not look towards them, however near they may seem.’
Boswell waited for another lull and then was suddenly off through the grass and on to a hard, wide path that smelt of death. In the distance an owl’s gaze shone up into the sky, round across the marshes behind them and then along the path towards them, casting their three shadows before it. ‘Run!’ gasped Boswell, hobbling across the road as fast as he could, the road so wide, the danger getting so near. ‘Run!’ The path stretched hard and black ahead of them as the roaring owl grew nearer, its noise shaking the air about them and its gaze bright and moving on their fur.
Fast as they ran, the roaring owl seemed to fly faster towards them, getting bigger as the edge of the path they could now just see ahead of them seemed to retreat. Each pawstep forward seemed to take a lifetime, each second made the owl bigger and nearer, its eyes brighter as they tried to reach the centre, as Boswell trailed behind the other two.
‘Run!’ It was Bracken’s voice shouting out over the owl noise, urging Boswell on to the safety of the central edge. And he was almost there, his paws almost amongst the sparse vegetation that scraped a living there, when the roaring owl loomed mightily above him and roared past, the wind from its wings so powerful that he was bowled several moleyards along the road.
