Healer? Well, no more. It wasn’t that she no longer cared for the other moles, or tried to ignore them, or wasn’t helpful when they came to her: but everymole seemed to sense that Rebecca had changed and no longer had the desire or will to support them when, it must be said, they could so often find support within themselves. She seemed now to see beyond their troubles and into their very souls, and it troubled them that she did, and so they preferred to leave her alone.
Only a few of the older moles, and one or two of the young ones, came to her—the ones who understood that the greatest healing she could give was the sense of joy and peace she herself now felt in the wood about her.
So Comfrey now became healer, and it was to him that they mostly went with their troubles, which he was able to help them with in his own eccentric way, giving them herbs that might, or might not, be of practical help.
But once in a while he would take time off—or Rebecca would come and make him do so—and today, on a clear, misty spring morning in April, she had him grumblingly playing hide-and-seek.
Down past the slopes she ran, into the Old Wood where a few trees still stood stark and black to remind them of the fire, but where fresh undergrowth and two seasons of leaf mould had made the grey ashes of the wood a memory. But burrow a little way and a mole could still find the ashes—and they were alive with life now as fronds of the roots of a new spring of anemones grew into them, or young sinewy roots of sapling hazel and the suckers of elm pierced up through them.
She ran instinctively towards Barrow Vale, which she had not found the previous summer but which now, somehow, she knew would be there. The sapling wood was busy and noisy. Birds darted and flitted about the trees, most of which were heavy with bud or catkins.
Still calling, ‘Comfrey! Comfrey!’ her laugh following the sound of his name, she ran on faster than he could, stopping only for a moment to sigh with delight at the sight of a cluster of yellow celandine.
As she ran on towards Barrow Vale, it was as if she were herself the plants and trees and every creature, everything, alive with the sunlight that began to clear the mist and the life that the spring always finally brought. ‘Oh!’ she sighed, just as she had when she had been a pup and had first run with such wonder through the wood. Comfrey! Comfrey! And her laughter filled the wood.
She came to a clearing where the vegetation was lighter because the soil was gravelly, and knew it had been Barrow Vale.
‘Shall I burrow?’ she wondered. But though she tried to start, she didn’t finish, because she was distracted by the last of the morning mist swirling away and then by the sound of the first bumblebee she had heard that spring. Then by a distant cawing of rooks in the trees on the east side which had survived the fire. She crouched in the pale sunshine, thinking she should go and find Comfrey or help him to find her, and just a little sad that he couldn’t play with her like a sibling or a lover because, she knew deep down, it wasn’t quite his way.
But then what mole had ever played with her with the fullness of life that she saw and enjoyed! But her sadness was part of her happiness that there was so much to see and do and enjoy in the wood. So much of the sadness had left her when, on that night by the Stone, she knew with certainty that somewhere her Bracken was alive, even if now he might not come back; and that somehow the love they had known had changed but he was alive, and she had helped him be so. She smiled at the memory of it and laughed aloud again at the distant nervous call of Comfrey, wondering where she was.
She crouched in the sun that grew clearer by the minute, and said aloud, ‘It’s my wood! My wood!’
‘That’s what you always used to say, Rebecca, remember?’ The voice came from the shadows of the roots of a dead oak tree and cast an immediate fearful chill into her heart.
She looked behind to the darkness of the place where the voice came from. His coat was glossy and his smile bland. It was Rune!
‘Hullo, Rebecca,’ he said. She saw that though his face had become lined with the moleyears and his eyes bitter with age, his coat was as unnaturally smooth and glossy as it had always been. His talons were black, there was not a scar on him—face, flank or shoulder—which was unusual in a mole as old as he must be. But then, Rune had a way of avoiding hurt by passing it on to others.
‘So you’re all living up in the Ancient System now, are you, what’s left of you?’ he asked. He smiled blandly as he said it, but still his voice seemed to hold a sneer.
She simply stared at him, unable to comprehend that he was there. He had gone off after the fight by the Stone but hadn’t he died after that, in the plague? Or somewhere else?
