‘You’ll have to wait a week or two more yet before the first ones start coming, my sweet thing,’ said Rose, ‘though I expect you’d find a few snowdrops here and there now. And winter aconite. But soon there’ll be celandine and bluebells, and after that, in April, there’s ground ivy, bugle, all sorts of ferns starting up and oh! you’re so lucky!’ Rose suddenly looked sad and nostalgic, as if she knew that she’d never see such delights again.
‘Of course you will, Rose,’ said Rebecca. ‘The warm weather’s nearly here now. Why, there’ll be the sound of pup cries in Duncton soon, and probably in the pastures as well…’ But Rebecca couldn’t go on. Rose was looking at her with eyes that said she knew how old she was and how near the end. And Rebecca could never say anything but the truth to Rose.
Now, subtly, their relationship changed and deepened. It was as if Rose felt there was no more she could tell Rebecca— her beloved Rebecca—and now she must trust to the Stone that Rebecca could find her own way. There were long hours of silence between them; times when the best words were silent. A time when Rose showed Rebecca that she trusted her and in doing so helped Rebecca learn to trust in life again. A time when Rebecca began to see, and fear, that she might soon have to take over Rose’s task of healing. Oh! She knew so little! A time when Rose’s sleep grew longer and more troubled with pain, and her talk began to wander and her sense of peace to deepen, so that the very burrow seemed to hush and grow more still: its shadows darkening, its aromas and scents more delicate and distant, and Rebecca now rarely leaving Rose alone as she slept in her nest.
The Pasture moles seemed to sense that Rose’s work was nearly done, for they shushed the youngsters in the tunnels outside and the Pasture moles spoke in low voices, and brought food to save Rebecca from having to get it.
Some of what Rose whispered to herself aloud in those last days Rebecca understood; other parts she remembered, and somehow made sense of in later years when she had greater wisdom; and some made no sense at all.
She was old Rose now, her breathing shorter and shallower, her snout hardly moving, the bliss of having Rebecca near her in the dark, moving gently in her burrow, soothing her pains, laughing still with that Violet, naughty minx, and Cairn and Bracken of the Ancient System; ‘My love my sweet thing,’ she said to him, ‘do you remember Bracken? Up in the dark tunnel where I lost so much strength giving it to Bracken so he could learn to love?’ So many moles had come her way one by one so much fear so many unnecessary things. Rebecca knew everything already poor child she didn’t know no good telling her sweet child her Bracken she would love…
‘Rebecca! Rebecca!’ she whispered in the burrow where the scent was sweet.
‘Yes, my love,’ said Rebecca. Her fur on mine, nuzzling me my love my words her love in me Rebecca Rebecca shivering a shiver where’s your Bracken who I saw, where…
‘What is it, Rose?’
…where’s Bracken do you know… ‘Where’s … Bracken?’
‘I told you, Rose, he’s gone, he’s gone, but I know he’s safe. I can feel it like the beech trees, like I knew before when…’
‘I went to him on the hill and you helped me you did…’
‘Yes, Rose, sleep, Rose, sleep, my dearest Rose.’
I stayed by the Stone afterwards looking darkness in the night great trees beech trees sway and roots and… ‘I knew it was you and Bracken around us you and Bracken Rebecca you and Bracken would be around us all…’
‘Yes, Rose.’
You wept at last and I knew it would come like you did to the hill your wet tears had to come on your face on my fur at last.
‘Now, no need my dear no need.’
And her old voice died away, leaving only the sound of Rebecca’s tears, muffled by sweet Rose’s fur.
‘Where’s Rose gone?’ Violet asked the guardmole, who hesitated because he didn’t know.
‘She’s gone to the St-Stone,’ said Comfrey, angry with himself for always stuttering on the word that mattered most.
‘How do you know?’ asked Violet.
‘I just d-do,’ said Comfrey, who did know, because Rose had told him once that all the plants come from the Stone and plants were no different from moles, and he had asked, ‘Where do they go when they wither and die in the winter?’ and she said, ‘They go to the Stone, which is everywhere,’ so they must do, and that’s where Rose had gone. But it was no good telling Violet that, because the words wouldn’t come out right.
But he could tell Rebecca, because she knew and he could find her up by the entrance on the surface in the sun where she went afterwards and was now. He would run, he was running, running into tears, and he couldn’t help it. Oh, where was Rose, he sobbed.
Rebecca would know.
