Bracken had an unpleasant childhood. He was always struggling for food and losing, ending up with scraps. As a result, he was slow to grow, which perpetuated the situation, making him the skinny runt in the family, always ill and whining when very young, frightened and crying when older. However, he was at least intelligent (‘cunning,’ Burrhead called him) and quickly learned to avoid being attacked when danger threatened or his bigger brother was feeling aggressive. He found that there was no point in fighting back, because he always got beaten, so he took to hunching up into a defensive stance so that he was always ready for the blows and scratches that came to him from all sides. He adopted a low snout, keeping eyes averted and playing the fool so that Root and Wheatear were bored with him.
His task of survival was easier because his two siblings, like their father, had a complete lack of imagination, which meant that he could usually work out well ahead of them what they would do and then take appropriate avoiding action.
At the same time, he had enough sense to work out what would please them—worms, new places to play, new tunnels to explore—and put it their way, which meant that they relied on him, grudgingly, for ideas. That didn’t stop them thumping him quite a lot and ignoring him a great deal, but that was better than out-and-out assault. Still, he did often end up in tears, and it was then that Aspen came, for a rare moment, into her own. For along with her untidiness went a certain romantic whimsiness which meant that she loved telling stories. And when Bracken was upset, she would comfort him with mole legends and tales, simple stories of honoured, brave moles, or tales of fine males fighting for their mates.
Many were traditional mole legends, of which every system had its version; others were peculiar to Duncton and were usually set in the long-distant past, when the moles lived in the Ancient System up on top of the hill. Aspen entered into the spirit of these tales to such an extent that she would often moan and weep as she told them, and Bracken, his head against her flank, would feel her breathing getting heavier and faster as she neared a climactic end, and for a while he would forget his tears and the bullying in the drama of the tale.
He would enter into them as she did, his eyes perhaps half closed or affixed to some distant place beyond the walls of the burrow, and soon he would be there, fighting to the death, weaving magic with his talons, facing the most dreadful dangers. Aspen loved to paint in the rich colours of her own whimsy the scene when the hero mole returns from his quest across the wood to fight owls, or outfox foxes, or find worms to save the system. This would move Bracken deeply, for he wished he might return home one day as his heroes did, to a snug burrow, warm with love, friendly and wormful. Wanted, not an outcast.
It was from these beginnings that Bracken’s fascination with the Ancient System grew, and when he ventured on to the surface, he would often stop and stare dimly up in the direction of the top of Duncton Hill, far beyond his sight and hopes, and wonder if he might ever climb there himself. One day Aspen told him about the Stone that was said to stand there, ‘though it’s a long time since anymole but the elders went up there, and then only at Midsummer and Longest Night. It’s probably just legend, but a nice one, don’t you think?’
The idea of the Stone fascinated him so much that he gathered his courage and dared ask Burrhead about it one day when he seemed in a mellow mood. To his surprise, Burrhead was very ready to give an answer: ‘Aye, the Stone’s up there right enough. I’ve seen it myself, though I don’t suppose that’ll happen much more because, if I have my way, we’ll stop the Midsummer trek.’
‘Why?’ asked Bracken tentatively.
‘Owls and worms, two words you should get into your head, my boy. Owls is dangerous up there and worms is scarce. No point risking ourselves for some ancient ritual which nomole but old stick-in-the-muds like Hulver can remember.’
‘What’s the Stone like?’ demanded Bracken, encouraged by his father’s unusual willingness to talk. And noticing that Aspen was listening too.
‘It’s nothing, really,’ said Burrhead, ‘just a stone. Well, a big stone. Tall as a tree, shoots straight up into the sky. It’s grey. It turns dark blue as night falls and then pitch black, blacker than night itself, except where the moon catches it and it’s silvery grey.’
So there were moments of stillness for Bracken in his burrow, when Aspen would talk to him and even Burrhead would tell him things, and he was unmolested.
But as May advanced and Root and Wheatear gained in strength, such moments became rarer, and he had to use all his ingenuity to avoid being hurt in their rough-and-tumble fighting, which always had him as the butt.
