‘There’s no smell of plague in the tunnel!’ And it was true—the dead moles were still there but somehow they were dry and did not seem ever to have been moles.
‘There’s no fleas, either,’ said Bracken in wonder.
It was true—the smoke and heat from the fire had cleared the tunnels of plague.
The entrance they had come in by had gone beyond recognition, for a great branch had shattered through the dry soil and the tunnel was open to the air, its roof torn and black, warm ash and occasional swirlings of smoke playing where the roof had been.
Then they were out, on to what had once been the surface, but now lay black and waste, with not a hint of green in sight; just blackened roots of trees that had become no more than huge black thorns pointing ruggedly to the bare sky.
The surface felt exposed, as it did over on the pastures, and its air was heavy with the passage of the fire. They passed over the ashes of their wood, their black coats making them seem no more than shadows against its dark grey wastes. Where fire still smouldered at a root or branch, the smoke was swirled this way and that by a wind that seemed unable to make up its mind which way to blow. And the air hung heavier and heavier while the sky grew darker and more overcast. Ahead of them there was still an occasional crackle of fire, but it was sporadic and non-threatening and anyway, they could go no way other than up the slopes, for behind them their devastated wood stretched black and defeated, dead of all life.
The fire had stopped by the top of the slopes, turned back by the wider spacing of the trees and the lack of undergrowth. It had smouldered its way up among the first one or two beeches but could not get hold of the carpet of beech leaves or make headway against the massive bare trunks of the trees. One or two were charred, a few more blackened by soot, but none took the fire and it had stopped. It guttered and crackled still, but they were able to pick a way through it without trouble.
Rebecca let out a cry of sheer delight when they were able to get their paws on unburnt leaf litter once more, and Bracken’s pace quickened. His mind was a whirl of thoughts and feelings as tiredness mixed with relief, sadness with delight, excitement with apprehension. They headed straight for the Stone, the air about them faintly hazy from the smoke that drifted up from the wood.
Then they were there, the clearing ahead, the Stone looming up into the haze and then the Stone clear before them—and at its foot, in a motley cluster of all shapes and sizes, the moles who had survived the fire and, before it, the plague.
And Boswell was there. Their Boswell, greeting them with a touch and smile as a gasp of wonder saluted their arrival and they were surrounded by the moles, some of whom knew Rebecca, while others recognised Bracken and welcomed their leader back.
What mole can remember the laughter and blessings that were spoken then among the moles who had survived so much? What mole ever remembers such moments, when the past and the future are gone in the delight of life rediscovered and reclaimed? Each had a story to tell, each had struggled through surroundings of death. Not one mole there, save Boswell, failed to tell a story of how he or she had nearly died a dozen times. Only Boswell stayed silent, for he had come to the Stone before the fire even started, and prayed in its shadow, asking that the plague might go and knowing that however his prayer was answered, it would not be in a way he could predict or understand. Fire was not part of his prayer, but a prayer answered is a grace, for it takes a mole beyond himself and his present life and starts him on his way again.
Boswell’s prayer had been answered for good or bad—and who was he to question the Stone? The results now clustered about him. And he was their silent centre. As he watched them, he began to understand better than any scribemole before him what the seventh Book must be about, and why the colour of its light was no colour at all, but white. The colour of silence. In the exultant activity of survival around the Stone, Boswell understood at last the name of the book he had sought so long. It was the Book of Silence, but where he would find it he could not guess.
Bracken, Rebecca and Comfrey were not the last moles to arrive. Some fifteen more came finally from off the pastures where they had crept as high as they could to escape the plague and then waited while the smoke and fire came up through Duncton Wood.
Their own system had been decimated by plague, and they brought the news that Stonecrop had died of it, and all the Pasture elders. And somemole said that little Violet had died of it as well. So many gone! They were all gone but these few. Leaderless and lost. So they turned to the Stone.
As evening fell, the moles about the Stone began to whisper, ‘What shall we do now? Where can we go?’
