Behind Rebecca, to the west, the last of the dark in the sky was going, revealing high scatters of cloud, now grey, then cream, finally white. As the sun started to rise and its first rays pierced through the wood, brightly catching the green, damp lichen on the beech trunks, or the warm brown of the few leaves that had never left the branch, or the dark green of a bramble leaf which somehow took no notice of last year’s autumn, Rebecca stretched and sighed. The air was clear and fresh.
An early spring day! The kind that lulls some moles into thinking that there will not be any more winter! Rebecca knew days like that and that the best thing to do with them was to enjoy their every single moment and forget tomorrow. That could turn into winter again.
But for now there was some blue at last in the sky, and lovely white clouds to set it off, and sunrays that grew warmer by the second and made a mole feel it was time to clear out a tunnel or two, or cast about for a mate.
Bracken stirred and stretched in his burrow. He wondered whether to go and find Rebecca, thinking pleasurably about it for a while before deciding not to, not yet. See what kind of day it is, find some food, groom a bit, listen to the wood. Anyway, these days it took him longer to wake up and he liked to stretch and get the aches out of his body.
Outside on the surface, he headed off towards the slopes as in the distance he heard the sound of carrion crows and pigeons, blackbird and robin, and what might have been a thrush. But it was the crows he heard most of all, for there is something about an early spring day in a leafless wood that makes their call carry. And it was a spring day!
Soon Bracken’s paws felt as light as a pup’s and he wanted to run, so he did. But as he started down the slopes, it occurred to him that it would be more fun running with Rebecca, so he went back to get her.
When he found that she wasn’t in her burrow, he guessed where she would be, and with a laugh, took a route by a tunnel that brought him out on the surface a little below the Stone clearing.
With what sighs and dragging steps did he pretend to pull himself up and into the clearing, with what absurdly mopish snout-lowering and tired weavings here and there did he approach Rebecca, who was crouched in spring sunshine near the Stone! She tried not to laugh, but couldn’t help smiling as she first scented him and then heard him. So sad? Not possible, not him, not today.
With a hesitant cough he finally spoke. ‘I’m lost,’ he said. ‘How do I get back into the system?’ And when she didn’t answer immediately, he added: ‘I’m a Duncton mole, you know.’
She turned to him, eyes alight with her love for him, and came right to him and caressed him on the shoulder, just as she had on the same day she herself had spoken those words near this spot, the first time they ever met. Did he remember them so well?
When her paw left his shoulder, he put his own paw there, breathless—still utterly moved by the way she touched him.
‘Do you remember what I replied?’ he asked.
‘You said “It’s easy” and later you said “I’ll show you.’”
‘And did I?’ he wanted to know.
She nodded. ‘And I think I can remember the way you went,’ she said.
‘Show me, Rebecca.’
And she did. She ran past him, just as he had once run past her, though neither as fast as they had been then, and then by the ancient mole track down the slopes, this way and that, down the hill, until he was quite out of breath following her.
‘You stopped by a fallen oak branch because that was where the entrance into the system was, and I asked your name, because I didn’t want you to go,’ remembered Rebecca.
He smiled, caressing her as she had him. The sun caught her fur, which was as thick and silvery-grey as it had ever been, though her face was lined now. But there was not a single line he would want taken away or changed, for she was the most beautiful mole he had ever known, just as she had always been.
‘Rebecca?’
‘Mmm?’
‘I want to look at the wood again, the places where our lives were first made.’
‘I’m lost, my love, the wood’s so changed. You’ll have to show me the way…’
‘I will,’ he whispered.
Then he ran past her and led her down on into the Old Wood, hesitating at a turn sometimes, stopping still with his head on one side, sometimes whispering to himself, ‘No, it’s not this way,’ until they were back in the heart of
Duncton Wood and she saw they were near clumps of anemones, not yet in full bloom, though one or two white buds were showing.
‘Barrow Vale was somewhere here,’ he said.
He snouted over the surface, which was open and grassy with brambles at its far edges, until he found a spot where he started to burrow. Then he stopped when he was halfway into it and tried a bit further on, suddenly disappearing.
She peered down after him into the tunnels of Barrow Vale which nomole had visited since the plague and the fire.
‘Do you want to look?’ he called.
