They went first to the Westside, then down to see Mekkins in the Marsh End. They talked to mole after mole, getting a detailed picture of what effect the drought was having on the system. Then back to the tunnels of Barrow Vale, where the moles were at first surprised to see Bracken so personally interested in what they had to say, then falling over themselves to tell him their woes. Finally they went to the Eastside before starting on the trek up the slopes towards the Ancient System.
By then the picture they had formed—not only from what they had been told but also from what they had seen—was a grim one. The system was on the verge of disarray and fights over food were already becoming more frequent.
Along the wood’s edge, the normally green grass and burgeoning brambles had turned yellow in the dryness. Everything creaked and crackled for want of moisture. The very air itself seemed to be made of oppressive dust, the light was harsh and bare—though because of the pall of white haze that seemed to have fallen on the earth, the sun rarely shone directly. On some of the more exposed trees, particularly on their south-facing side, the leaves had dried and crinkled and turned prematurely autumnal. The moisture that normally stayed throughout the summer just beneath the first layer of leaf litter seemed all to have gone, and what grubs there were had buried themselves deeper than usual, along with all the worms, making the normal summer surface runs useless for getting food. The worms also seemed to have bred much less prolifically, so that there was a general shortage. It was not acute, but to survive a mole had to spend much longer each day, and range much further, to find enough food. As a result there were more fights, for territory was more valuable, and anyway, any shortage of food makes moles aggressive and irritable. At the same time, the number of owls in the wood seemed to have increased—summer was always a bad time as the tawny owls’ own young were learning to fly and feed, and took any young moles in the wood or on the pastures they laid their yellow eyes upon. By the end of August, however, this bloody threat was normally over, for the youngsters that were going to be taken had gone, and most moles were sensibly underground. This time, however, the weather seemed to have prolonged the owl threat, whose hanging presence added to the grim atmosphere in the wood.
Mole after mole complained to Boswell and Bracken that something was wrong, very wrong, and they were afraid, very afraid. The Stone was angry and something was going to happen to them. And everymole they met complained of something they themselves had noticed in Barrow Vale: there was an unpleasant infestation of fleas in the tunnels all over the system.
So it was in a mood of foreboding that Bracken and Boswell turned at last up to the slopes and towards the Ancient System. The slopes were more populated with youngsters than Bracken could ever remember having heard of. Unable to find territory in the main system because its residents were keeping a larger portion of it for themselves, many youngsters had come to the traditionally impoverished slopes and established a meagre existence for themselves in the dilapidated tunnels that were distant remnants of the original migration from the Ancient System. They were a skinny, frightened, sorry lot, somehow symptomatic of the arid days through which the system was going. Most ran away and hid when Bracken and Boswell approached.
‘The whole system’s falling apart,’ growled Bracken once when this happened, unaware that just as once he had been afraid of fully mature adult males, so these timid youngsters were afraid of him. Had Boswell been by himself, the story might have been different, for Boswell was the most approachable of moles.
Hulver’s old tunnels were unoccupied and they entered the ancient tunnels by the route carved out by the side of the owl face by Mandrake. As they did so, Boswell felt obliged to reveal to Bracken what Rebecca had told him about their experience together in the central part of the system and what they had found together under the Stone. But whereas before Stonecrop’s visit Bracken would surely have been angry, now he seemed, if anything, relieved.
‘Did she tell you all that? Well, it’s true enough, though it seems so removed from me now that I sometimes think all that happened to two other moles. You can’t go backwards, Boswell.’
Ostensibly they went to find out what the food supply would be like in the Ancient System, but having quickly established that it was no better there than anywhere else, the journey became a tour of the system conducted by Bracken for Boswell’s benefit.
