‘Oh!’ she sighed. ‘How beautiful!’ Near her a cluster of celandine, yellow petals half open, reached up softly to the sky. The mist thinned before her eyes until it was almost gone, and she ran across the surface among the trees feeling she was part of the spring excitement of the wood. From afar off to the Eastside, the soft caw-caws of rooks carried to her, long and slow compared with the trilling of the blackbirds and thrush that darted in and out among the trees as excited as she was. She ran to the centre of Barrow Vale to watch the wood wake up as the last of the thin wisps of mist swirled away into the sunshine. A warm, moist, nutty smell had replaced the rotting smell of winter, which she now saw, for the first time, was unpleasant and hung about the tunnels still.
Duncton Wood spread away all around her—over to the Westside and the East, down to the south where her brothers had got lost, and up towards the slopes leading to the top of Duncton Hill. Oh, she wanted to sing and dance and call everymole together and celebrate! Duncton Wood! The name was magical in the sunlight. The winter’s years had gone! She laughed, or rather smiled aloud, her joy shaking among the yellow petals of the celandine which were now open, and echoed in the constant calls and whistles of the birds. The great oaks, round and solid at their bases, rose high about the edge of Barrow Vale, and somewhere among their branches a woodpecker drummed its territorial rights from a tree and then flew direct to another oak to drum again.
‘It’s my wood,’ she whispered to herself, joyfully. ‘My wood!’
‘And mine too,’ said a voice behind her, the voice of Rune. She turned round, startled, but as usual found it hard to see him immediately, so good was he at hiding in impenetrable shadows, even on a sunny day.
‘You shouldn’t be here, you know,’ he said coldly, but with a smile to his voice that only seemed to underline the threat it carried.
For Rebecca, Rune, who still smelt of winter, spoiled everything she was enjoying about the morning, and so she ran off without a word, across Barrow Vale. Rune followed urgently, easily keeping up with her but hanging behind two or three paws’ distance. Rune wanted Rebecca, he wanted to mate with her. His desire was not lust, for Rune did not give way to simple lust, the lust he felt for any female in mid-March, but a kind of sick sensuality based on the fact that she was Mandrake’s daughter. He felt, in some way, that his position in the system gave him the right to take her and also that it would make him equal with Mandrake.
Sensing at least some of this, Rebecca’s joy in the morning died within her and she ran anxiously down into the tunnels towards her home burrow, trying not to appear too disturbed by Rune’s presence. He followed behind her, the sound of his paws on the tunnel floor liquid and smooth. Her breath became irregular; she could smell Rune behind her and hear his chill voice calling after her, ‘Rebecca, Rebecca, I was only joking about you not being allowed out on Barrow Vale. Stay and talk.’
Rebecca scurried on, ready now to turn with her talons on Rune and draw his blood if she had to. Imperceptibly the scamper along the tunnels turned into a chase, until they were travelling at speed, and Rebecca had to think very fast to twist and turn in the right direction. Sometimes Rune would disappear down a turn in the tunnel, only to reappear ahead or to the side of her, so she had to turn away from the direction of her home burrow to keep clear of him. Sometimes he would laugh or call after her, ‘It’s all right, Rebecca, I won’t hurt you.’ She was out of breath with running and becoming confused as to which way to turn, everything rolling round in her mind as her chest heaved and panted with the effort of the chase. ‘I want you, Rebecca. I want you,’ Rune called, his voice seeming to echo darkly from all directions, as if there was a Rune down every turn in the tunnels.
Finally she could stand it no more and stopped in her tracks, turning round to face him, with talons raised but shaky. He eyed her calmly and, inching forward very slowly, got bigger and bigger. He smelt of the dead of winter and she felt as if she was falling back into a pit, her talons soft and useless, scrabbling ever more weakly above her head as she fell back and back. Somewhere, far, far away, she thought she could hear the urgent drumming of the woodpecker on the oak’s side, but it was only the pounding of her heart, which no longer seemed to be part of her. Rune came nearer, smoothly nearer, looking down at her, petrified before him, lusting in his power before her.
But the moment was suddenly broken by the terrible shout of, ‘Rebecca!’ It was Mandrake, suddenly Mandrake, and now she did hear her heart thump, thump, thumping, and she felt terribly frightened as the two male moles she most feared in the system loomed above her.
