But let the name of Capel Garmon send a shiver down the spine of anymole who knows what it feels like to crouch on the edge of a dark country into which he must, for whatever reason, reluctantly travel and from which death is a more certain gift than a safe return.
The two moles paused there for only two or three days before the hour came when Bracken crouched on the surface, his snout due west, and said: ‘We are near to Siabod now, Boswell; I can feel it, and we must go while we still have strength.’ He was shivering and his voice was strained because he was afraid of the power of Siabod. ‘We must go now.’
Boswell smiled and nodded, for he had often heard Bracken say the same thing when they faced a danger ahead and he wanted to face it and get it over. Bracken always found it hard to wait. But even Boswell felt a sense of dread, for there was something worse than forsaken about a place where a system had once thrived (according to the record of the Rolls of the Systems) but of which there was now barely a sign. The soil was soggy with rain and thawed snow, and there had already been long stretches, many molemiles wide, in which they had had to scratch around for hours to find a decent worm. Now there was just the sodden rustling of last year’s bracken and heather and the plaintive bleating of grubby, dung-caked sheep among the scattered bleakness of rocks whose colour was so dead that when light from the sky touched them they seemed to turn into shadow. Yet, with the prospect of Siabod before them, even Capel Garmon seemed a haven. But finally, wet, cold and hungry, the two moles made the turn west for the last part of their journey. Yet, even at the grimmest moments, a mole may see some reminder of hope, and Bracken saw it. Among the lifeless stones through which they passed he came upon a wet and stunted bush of gorse on which, joyous in the April murk, was a cluster of orange-yellow flowers, fresh as a happy spring. ‘They grow like that, only bigger, up on the chalk downland above Duncton Wood,’ he told Boswell, ‘and one day, if we ever get out of this alive, I’ll show you. I’d give anything to be able to be there now!’
Although in the final stages of their journey to Capel Garmon they had managed to avoid all contact with roaring owls, the route on which Bracken now led them took them steeply down into a river valley in which, as they knew from experience, they would sooner or later have to cross a roaring-owl route. In fact, it came so oner, right at the bottom of a steep valley side. They were glad to reach the bottom, for the valley side was wooded with coniferous trees, never a good place to find food. They pressed on over the roaring-owl way without difficulty, using the technique they had developed over the moleyears—a long touch of the snout on the hard, unnatural ground they found in such places and then, when both agreed that there was no vibration, a fast dash across.
Once on the other side, they found that the air was heavy with the scent of a deep, cold river and though tempted to press on and find it, for rivers were a good place for food, Bracken insisted that they stay higher up the valley by the roaring-owl way and follow along by the side of it. It was a wise decision, for this route took them to a bridge over the river from whose height they could hear that it would have been too fast and wide for them to have swum across safely. They waited until dusk before risking the bridge, but once across, dropped right to the river’s edge, where they found food on the thin strip of rough pasture fields that ran by its side.
On the side of the river from which they had come the ground rose steeply with massive coniferous trees covering it in darkness and stiff silence, while higher up on their own side a smattering of deciduous trees, mainly oaks and ash, gave way to rougher, starker ground that grew thicker with coniferous forest the higher it went. They pressed on downstream until, after only four or five molemiles, a tributary flowed down into the main river, a tumbling, rocky stream too rough for a mole ever to cross.
‘But then, we don’t need to,’ said Bracken. ‘That’s where Siabod lies, off up this valley somewhere.’ He pointed his snout upstream and they both headed westwards again, wondering what lay up the valley above them.
