‘This is not the time to leave the home burrow,’ said Mandrake, adding with threatening force, ‘How many times must you be told?’
‘Just what I’ve been telling her, Mandrake, my very words,’ purred Rune, turning with a black smile to Mandrake.
‘It’s not true,’ she said. ‘He wanted…’
But Mandrake ignored her words, going straight at her and striking her so hard that she fell back and hit her snout against the tunnel wall, bringing tears to her eyes. She ran crying from them both, back to her home burrow.
Mandrake turned to Rune: ‘She will not mate this spring,
Rune, not this spring. She is not ready, and I will kill anymole that tries. Whichever mole he might be.’
Then Rune ran off down the tunnel, as ever awed by Mandrake who, it seemed, was impossible to fool. However, he promised himself, a cold laugh in his voice, ‘I’ll have her yet.’
So April ran on towards May and most Duncton females grew big with young, so that when the burrows started to warm up they were ready for their litters. Rebecca had seen the males grow aggressive and her father angry with bloodlust, and Sarah grow excited and running, sighing, nervous, taken in the burrow by Mandrake, and Rebecca near to hear the deep softness in his voice and wonder about the world in a whirl about her, and thinking of Rune chasing her, not knowing where to turn, watching the males who dared not come near, thinking of Mandrake and Sarah, Mandrake so powerful on Sarah, she wanted to run to them. Oh, oh, oh she would sigh alone, drifting into adulthood.
She heard the cries of littered pups and wanted to go near and croon over them as she did over flowers and the sunlight, but she never dared go near for fear of attack. She steered clear of males after her father found her with Rune, for though he never said anything to her directly, she knew he would kill anymole who came near. So, when males did come near, she would discourage them, though often they were young like her and sweet, so sweet that she wanted to dance with them, and laugh as they did to match her desire, and run, her spirit rising and diving like larks did over the pastures beyond the edge of the wood.
As summer started, she felt miserable and isolated, for even her brothers went off for long periods searching for mates across the wood. Sometimes, though, they would return to the home burrow, for they were still youngsters at heart. If they had been beaten in a fight, as they always were by the older, more experienced males, she would delight in comforting them and making them laugh again. But they had changed, becoming more aggressive towards her, and sometimes she sensed in them the same urgent demand that had been in Rune’s voice in the tunnel when he chased her, and she would turn away from them, unhappy.
Bracken was raised on the Westside, where fear was a dirty word and blood (provided it was somemole else’s) was a thing to celebrate. Westsiders were tough and Burrhead was the toughest. That meant his mate’s children had a lot to put up with in the way of fighting, bullying, being surprise-attacked, and generally being knocked about, as mole youngsters learned the arts of self-protection and aggression in the toughest school in the Duncton system.
Bracken’s mother, Aspen, came from the Eastside, Burrhead having fought and killed for her after the February elder meeting. Apart from Mandrake, who killed other moles automatically in mating fights, few of the moles actually killed opponents in fights. One or other retreated before they were hurt. So Burrhead’s performance made him feared.
He was, in fact, unusually aggressive, and in a system without Mandrake might well have emerged as the toughest mole of all. He was, however, brutish-tough rather than cunning-tough, and moles like Rune or Mekkins had more native wit about them than he did.
It is unlikely that they, for example, would have put up with a mate as untidy as Aspen. Her burrow was always in a mess, littered with uncleared droppings, grubby dried worm bits festering in the burrow’s recesses, and vegetation brought in by the youngsters.
Aspen chose the names, as traditionally the females did—the strongest, Bracken’s brother, being called Root for obvious reasons; the female was called Wheatear because there was a very slight discoloration over her right ear—as there was over Aspen’s. And she gave Bracken a name traditionally given to the weakest of a litter of three.
Burrhead was never impressed by Bracken—in fact, he wasn’t much impressed by the litter as a whole, since it only produced one useful male. Still, as he watched the three pink pups struggling at each other and their mother’s teats, he got some satisfaction from the fact that the strongest, Root, seemed very strong indeed. A conclusion which was well justified, as Root developed into just the kind of bullying, aggressive mole Burrhead had hoped for in a son.
