As the chanting music of her voice fell away, Celyn spoke the final words and then there was a long silence, Bracken never taking his eyes from her as the images she had invoked of age, and of quest, and of Mandrake, to whom she spoke as if he were still alive, melded in his mind and soared to the Stones of Siabod where he knew he must go.
But most of all he felt her love for Mandrake and her sense that in some way she, who had saved him, had yet failed him. And in hearing her speak, and understanding this truth behind her words, he understood at last Rebecca’s love for Mandrake, which was the same. He remembered again, as he had so many times, that terrible cry by Mandrake when he was by the Stone, a cry he had heard but not known how to listen to. How can a mole answer such anguish? Where does he find the strength? So he looked on Y Wrach anew and wondered if there was anything that he might say to her, anything that would bring her some comfort.
‘Tell her about Rebecca,’ he said suddenly, his voice breaking the silence. And then, turning to Celyn, he said, ‘Did you tell her?’
‘She knows,’ said Boswell softly, and Celyn nodded.
‘No,’ said Bracken, ‘I mean you must tell her I love her,’ for he knew it was the only way of letting this mole, who had waited so long, know that there was something of Mandrake that another mole loved.
‘Tell her,’ said Bracken to Celyn.
Celyn spoke softly to Y Wrach, who put out to him an aged paw which he held in his own before she turned and faced Bracken directly. Then she came over to him slowly, her back paws moving with difficulty, and touched his paw with her own.
‘Dywedwch wrthyf sut un ydi Rebecca!’ she said softly.
Bracken looked over to Celyn for a translation.
‘She says “Tell me what Rebecca is like”,’ he said.
Bracken looked at Y Wrach and wondered what he should say, what he could say. She was like… she was like…
‘She is full of love and her fur is thick and glossy grey. She is big for a female but graceful as a rush in the wind. Her laughter is like sunshine. Life flows through her and she is powerful with it, and moles are afraid of the life she has but they come to her because they need it… ’ He trailed off into silence and Celyn’s soft translation came to an end soon after and there was silence among them.
Bracken wondered at what he had said, because he had never thought those thoughts before about Rebecca. Was he afraid of her himself? Was it simply the life she had that he wanted?
He wanted to carry on speaking to Y Wrach but felt embarrassed with Celyn and Bran and Boswell there, and uncertain of his feelings. He tried to think himself back to the Stillstone with Rebecca, but it seemed too far away, so long ago, that it had happened to another mole. He wanted to cry. He wanted to sigh. He wanted Y Wrach to hold him. He wanted Rebecca.
‘I love her,’ he mumbled, and Celyn repeated the words in Siabod. Y Wrach smiled and then looked a little fierce and then said something to him.
‘She says she knows you love Mandrake’s child Rebecca,’ said Celyn, ‘and that one day you may know it too.’
Then Y Wrach began speaking again, though not in the chant she had used before.
‘I did not want him to go, and warned him against it,’ repeated Celyn, once more translating her words, ‘but you who never saw him then, nor ever watched him grow, can perhaps not understand the power that he had. The sky and the wind were in his fur, and though black clouds raced there, the sun lit its way as well. He had a power of life before which I saw that sad and empty Siabod, the system that you call one of the seven great systems, was but the carcass of a crow dashed against slate cliffs by a cold wind.
‘They grew angry that I would not let him see the Stone crushed between the dead talons of their rituals or join their hopeless song. I told him that the Stone soars on Castell y Gwynt, not in these slated, wormless tunnels now fittingly punished by plague.
‘But he grew to hate me as he hated them, and sought to mock us all by going there. Yet I knew that even Gelert, Hound of Siabod, could not rob him of his life; none could or ever will.’
‘But he’s dead now,’ said Boswell softly, Celyn saying the words back to her.
She shook her head and laughed, her first laugh among them, a laugh as stunted but strong as hillside gorse.
‘You have things to learn, Boswell. And you,’ she turned unerringly towards Bracken and raised an ancient paw at him. ‘You have things to learn, and things you must do, you who say you love Mandrake’s child.’ She came forward slowly to Bracken and touched him, and this time her touch was like a warm, rippling breeze on his fur and he knew that she knew all that was inside him.
‘You may have to lose her, Bracken of Duncton, before you find her. Just like I lost my Mandrake. And found him.’
With this final mystery, which threw only fear into Bracken’s heart, she fell silent and Celyn signalled that they should leave her.
