He said it for the system’s sake, he said it for the pastures, he said it for the moles he had seen suffer and the moles who would never know the Stone; he said it for Bracken, and he whispered it for Rebecca. And if its effect was to bring quiet and silence, this was the third strength that came into Curlew’s burrows and accompanied Bracken and Comfrey and Rebecca on her journey through the plague.
And though its talons may have cast her down, they took with them, when they finally left her three days later, the power that Mandrake’s dreadful death had held over her. After two long days and nights she began to breathe easily, and on the fourth, she smiled again at last, and all of them could smile. And she had the strength to tell them both that they were her loves, as they had always been, father and son.
On the fifth day in Curlew’s burrows, when Rebecca had almost recovered, a mist unlike any mist Bracken had even seen came over the surface from the marsh. It was thin and swirling at first, noticeable more for its smell than its sight. It was dry and woody and smelt like some musky flower. Sometimes it was stronger, sometimes weaker and sometimes minute black dusty particles, light as the seedsails of rosebay willowherb, floated down in it.
Bracken did not know it, but it was the smoke of a fire that was spreading slowly across the dried-up marsh, crackling inexorably among the husky tall grass and reeds, curling and licking its way from reed stem to stem, its flaming reds and oranges paled by the sunlight. Here and there, where the reeds were thicker and the fire caught hold better, the smoke curled in thick waves of choking blue-grey, then rose and swirled away, revealing the brighter red of flames as they turned the yellow dry vegetation black and travelled on, leaving smouldering charred remnants behind.
Creatures ran in panic and confusion before it, many waiting as long as they could, for they had never seen a fire, then running before its heat and in the waves of panic of other fleeing creatures; fieldmice, a couple of voles, a hare that had strayed on to the dry marsh in search of food, and hundreds more.
A long olive grass snake delayed too long and its back-and-forth snaking became quicker and more rushed as it tried to escape, until smoke came into its throat and its shaking became a thrashing as the fire ran over and under it and its body curled and blackened into an agonised death, the skin cracking as the life in the flesh hissed out. The fire passed on, leaving the snake’s burnt corpse behind with the other distortions of life among the ashes.
As the afternoon progressed, the mist by Curlew’s burrows grew thicker and more difficult to breathe in, and the sounds in the wood no longer seemed right. The mist was beginning to smell in the burrow and though it smelt cleaner than the plague, a mole would be foolish to stay there too long.
Rebecca was strong enough to move—indeed, for a full day she had begged Bracken to let her go out, but he had resisted the idea: best to take it easy. And anyway, where could they go that wasn’t plague-ridden? Best to stay still. But now things were different and he was going to lead them up through the wood, away from the marsh, which he had never liked and from where this mist was drifting in.
‘We’re going,’ said Bracken. ‘Now.’
The smoke on the surface was getting steadily thicker, but the evening sun could still penetrate into it, giving the wood a luminescent blue appearance, with the trees looming out of it paly. Black sooty specks of burnt grass drifted along with the smoke towards the interior of the wood, and Bracken led Rebecca and Comfrey along with them, instinctively following a route away from the advancing fire—which had now reached to within a few moleyards of the wood and whose urgently sharp crackling could be heard.
‘What is it?’ asked Comfrey, curious rather than afraid.
‘I don’t know,’ said Bracken, ‘but it’s dangerous. Now come on.’
But though Rebecca could move, she could not move fast, and with Comfrey unable to keep in a straight line for continually snouting after things and trying to satisfy his curiosity about them, their progress was slow.
