‘No, no, I didn’t die,’ he said, sensing precisely what she was thinking. ‘If you survived, why shouldn’t I? Perhaps the thought of you kept me alive. You know how much I always admired you, Rebecca.’
She shuddered at the way he said it, an old weariness coming over her as she realised he was Rune, and he was back in the system he had once nearly destroyed. And she wondered if she had the strength for such things any more.
‘Well, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to. You always had a will of your own, Rebecca, I remember.’ He laughed again, the sound of it like cold grey clouds blocking out the sunshine.
‘A good time for an old mole like me to come back, isn’t it? Well, you know, the start of the mating season… a few fights… you know? Now I think I’ll go and explore the system you must all have so patiently been creating… ’ And he slipped away with cruel humour in his narrow eyes, his body lithe as a youngster’s and cunning as evil.
Rebecca shook for a while in disbelief, then turned away back towards the slopes, towards the sound of Comfrey coming down through the wood towards her.
‘Rebecca-Reb-b-becca,’ he said, beginning to stutter as he saw the tiredness that had suddenly come over her. ‘There was a m-m-mole I met who said he was l-looking for you. I told him you were down here and that I was tr-trying to find you…’
She nodded.
‘I d-d-didn’t like him, Rebecca.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘His name is Rune. There was a time when he would have killed you if he could.’
‘I d-don’t like him,’ said Comfrey. But his misery was not for himself, because that never worried him now, but for Rebecca, for whose happiness he cared so much and who had lost the joy that shone from her earlier that day.
It seemed to Bracken that the yellow cowslips that shook and waved in the April wind outside the shallow tunnel in which he had first hidden when he had crawled out from the stone circle had sprouted, leaved, and blossomed overnight.
He looked at them puzzled and felt the warm air about them, wondering where he was and how long he had been there. So late into spring already? But surely, there was a hoarfrost only yesterday…
Next time he went to admire them, two of the florets were already withering and brown, and there was an unaccustomed blue in the sky, which echoed to the high rise and fall of a skylark’s song. On and on it went, all day long it seemed, on into another day. So whole days had passed by, whole weeks had stolen away, most of which he forgot because he was not conscious most of the time. He slept; he pulled himself into the adjacent ploughed field whose soil was sparse with flints and chalk subsoil but where he managed to find food. He crawled back to sleep away the pain.
Kestrels and crows had wheeled and dived, suns and moons had come and gone, until, at last, he was all there, and his body ached and throbbed with hurt.
There was not one wound but two—one at the top of his shoulder where the joints had been broken and ripped, one out of his chest, where the fur seemed to have been misplaced and there was a scar. He could move his right paw, thank the Stone, but two of his talons in it were stiff and would no longer respond as well as those in his left did.
Then he noticed that another three florets of the cowslips had died, and he knew that spring was passing. What dreams he had had, what nightmares! All so pointless and comic. He saw himself as he had been, different moles at different times, nervous or brave, serious or sad, indifferent or loving. Sometimes one, sometimes another. The mole that left Duncton wasn’t the one that arrived in Uffington; and the one that had left Uffington again wasn’t the same as the one who went up Cwmoer. Each one searching for something Bracken could only smile about now as he looked at the grey earth of his tunnel, thinking there was nothing more real than that.
One dawn he went back up to the stone circle, just to see if it was as he remembered it. It wasn’t. The stones were smaller and they did not vibrate or become suffused with light. It grew dark in the time he crouched there so he must have been there a long time, since he had come at dawn. Strange… where had time gone?
Then a day came when he woke up and ran his talons through the soil and saw what magnificent things his paws were, and how wonderful they felt. One sweep and the soil crumbled and broke up before his snout; another, and he thrust it behind him. His body ached and yet he had never in his life felt its power so strongly! He played like this for hours before he knew he was playing, and then he stopped and that was the first moment since he had been caught by the Talon that he had thought of Rebecca.
