Bracken heard them, and though he was still their leader, he asked himself what good he had done any of them.
‘What shall we do?’ They began to ask it of him directly, waiting for him to tell them, to show them a way of living beyond the devastation that had overtaken them all. He heard them, but had no wish to lead any mole anywhere ever again. A mole had best lead himself. He turned to Rebecca and called her name.
She came to him silently, as if she knew what he was thinking, and together they moved away from the other moles to the west side of the clearing. Above them the trees stirred softly with a cool breeze and the air felt fresher than it had for months. The sky was still dark and the fraught colour in it had gone, so that it looked grey with moisture.
‘This is where you were crouching when I first met you here,’ she said softly to him. ‘So long ago now.’
He stared again out through the wood towards the west, as he had then. He could feel Uffington’s pull as he always had and he turned to her and said. ‘That’s where Uffington lies.
Rebecca…’ but he couldn’t finish his sentence or even whatever thought lay behind it, for as he looked at her, and she at him, they knew that they were at one again and that she was part of him now and always would be. But… but… and he stared out through the trees towards Uffington, through trees that shimmered and shook in his tears. He had fought through so much, as she had, but whenever they reached a point together again there was always something pulling. Uffington! Still looking out towards it, he reached out a paw and found hers, not daring to say what he would have liked to say. And anyway, there was no need, for she knew—she could tell.
‘Rebecca?’
He had promised the Stone that he would go to Uffington if she survived, and she had. He had made a bargain with himself. They were at one with each other and yet a promise to the Stone that had brought them together now stood between them. He wished he understood better, and it wasn’t so confused and that he could be at peace with the Stone. Perhaps the answer lay in Uffington, but he wished he could be certain.
‘Rebecca,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m going to Uffington.’
‘I know, my dear,’ she whispered, her eyes fixed on the west whose sky was lighter for the dark angry clouds that now loomed around and above it.
He turned abruptly towards the Stone, and Boswell came towards him. ‘They want you to tell them what to do,’ he said.
‘That’s something nomole can do,’ he said softly, ‘and certainly not me. And anyway, I must leave Duncton.’ ‘Where will you go?’ asked Boswell, though he knew the answer and was smiling before Bracken gave it.
‘Uffington,’ said Bracken. ‘And you’re coming, Boswell.’
‘Yes,’ said Boswell. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
Bracken went to the moles by the Stone and looked gently at them. ‘There is only one place for you to go now that the wood is destroyed, and the pastures are plague-ridden.’ He waved his paw towards the beech trees behind the Stone. ‘A long time ago, for reasons we can never know, the moles who lived in the Ancient System left it. Many must have gone down the slopes and created a new system there, whose tunnels have been the inheritance of many of you. Some, perhaps only a few, must have left altogether, perhaps travelling on the long journey to Uffington, to give thanks for deliverance and to pay homage to the Stone. But they left an inheritance, and it is one that each of you may now accept if you wish it: the ancient tunnels which they left behind. They are yours to make of what you can. They lack only life, and the laughter and dance and cries of the young. I will show you them and leave you there, for I must go to distant Uffington.’ There was a groan among the moles, and a shaking of heads.
‘I will give thanks that each of us has lived. But I will leave behind much of my spirit, which has dwelt already in the ancient tunnels where you will make a place of love; and I will leave behind Rebecca, who was taught by Rose the Healer. Guard her well, for she is your healer. Cherish her, as she will cherish you. And trust the Stone as, slowly, I have come to do.’
When Bracken had shown the moles the way into the Ancient System and left them to discover the tunnels for themselves and create a system born of the union of Duncton and Pasture moles, he returned with Boswell and Rebecca to the Stone clearing.
Night was coming on fast, and the air was pleasantly cool. Approaching them from the west was a front of rain—rain that would end the drought, the first rain of September.
It was a good time to go and they said very little. What need three moles who love each other say when they part?
‘Take care, my love,’ whispered Rebecca. ‘Come back to me.’ They touched and caressed and nuzzled, and Boswell, too, felt the warmth of Rebecca’s great love.
‘I’ll look after him,’ Boswell whispered to her, limping slowly out of the clearing after Bracken as they started on their journey.
