There they stopped and looked at the sinews and shadows of the roots massing before them, seeming utterly still for once, but even then sounding the whine and shrill of the subtlest of shiftings from some deep crevice or high cleft as the roots responded to the stresses of the trees. The drought extended even down there, for the air was dry and the root sounds were tauter and higher pitched.
‘The buried part of the Stone is beyond the roots,’ said Bracken, pointing half-heartedly at them, ‘and since we’re here, we might as well try to get through. But… well, you’ll see.’
Bracken led slowly off among the roots, taking care to mark the ground from the beginning so that they could find their way out. But, as he expected, they did not get more than a few moleyards beyond the first of the roots before the lethargy and loss of purpose that had affected him before struck them both. A voice kept saying to each of them, ‘What’s the point?’ and, ‘You know you can’t get through, it’s too far,’ until they seemed to veer off the course Bracken was trying to lead them on, round and round, and out again, back to the edge.
‘You see what I mean?’ said Bracken. ‘I was only able to get through there with Rebecca. We just went straight through without any confusion at all. But if you want to get to the Stillstone, that’s where you’ll have to find a way through, Boswell.’
Boswell was not really listening. He was uncomfortable and restless, feeling that something was nagging at him from behind, a looming shadow he could not quite make out.
Bracken said, ‘Come on, I’ll get you out. Another time… I’ll bring you here again. Anyway, there are things to do. I’ll tell Stonecrop he can bring what moles he liked into the ancient tunnels. I’ll go and see Rebecca. It will be all right, Boswell.’
He saw that the things he must do were really quite simple, and as he did so, felt relieved and clear-headed. He might even have felt light-hearted but for the oppression of the drought and the feeling that Boswell, who was now so silent, was full of fear or dread.
He took them out by his own series of tunnels that led over towards the wood’s edge, describing to Boswell how he had escaped through them with Violet. They found a little food there, but ate it quickly because they wanted to get back on to the surface and down the slopes to the main system. When they did, they found the air was still as dry as bone.
‘It’s just the same as it was!’ said Bracken with relief, as if he had expected the whole wood to have disappeared. ‘That place can leave a mole full of fears! Nice to be out again!’ He tried to be as positive and as cheerful as possible, but Boswell did not react.
‘I can’t see what you’re so miserable about,’ said Bracken, exasperated. ‘There’s nothing wrong—except the heat.’
But the system was not quite the same. While they had been in the ancient tunnels, the sky had taken on an eerie, threatening colour, as if a thunderstorm of heat was about to break but could never quite manage it. At the same time, the flea infestation, which Bracken and Boswell had noticed on their tour of the system, had got suddenly worse. A mole could not enter the tunnels and burrows to the north of Barrow Vale without brown-orange fleas hopping on and off his face and paws, bristling among his fur and itching and biting. They seemed attracted to the fine layer of dust and grit that had formed on the floors of the tunnel with the drought, and although not at first easily seen, the floor was sometimes literally alive with them.
It was so bad in some places that moles began to avoid certain of the communal tunnels and even to abandon affected sections of their own tunnels. Many of the Marshenders took the more drastic but effective step of gathering leaves and the yellow flowerheads of the fleabane that few down near the marshes to spread about their tunnels, which had the unfortunate effect on the system of forcing the infestations further towards the centre, where the fleabane did not grow.
Such infestations had happened in summer before, though never so badly, but even this was regarded by the gossips of Barrow Vale as just another annoyance of an aggravating season. Certainly it was not of enough significance to stop Bracken deciding that, once he had had a rest from his tour of the tunnels, he would set off for the pastures to tell Stonecrop and the Pasture moles that they could occupy the ancient tunnels if they really wanted to. Then he would go and see Rebecca, hoping that she would come close to him again.
But he was never to make either journey. As he was about to leave, Mekkins arrived from the Marsh End with some news so strange that he immediately accompanied him back, though taking a roundabout route to avoid the fleas.
