Most of it was still there, the tunnels and the burrows just as they had been, though dusty and unkempt. Empty of sound and with a few scatterings of bones and many roof-falls. A dead place where Bracken had once been leader, after Rune and Mandrake.
They looked around it together, staying close to each other, and occasionally one or the other would say ‘Look!’ and point to a place they both remembered, where so many things had happened. But the voices of the past did not come back, just a shimmer of memory that was gone for ever almost the moment it returned.
‘One day other moles will find this place and recolonise it—they might call it something else, or perhaps somemole will remember being told there was a place called Barrow Vale… but I doubt it. Why should moles remember?’ wondered Bracken aloud.
They peered into the elder burrows, which were thick with soil dust and partially collapsed from a tree that had fallen on to the surface above, perhaps during the fire.
‘It’s strange,’ said Bracken, ‘but when I first explored the Ancient System it wasn’t like this at all. It felt alive there, waiting for something. This all feels dead. It is dead.’
‘It never found the power of the Stone,’ whispered Rebecca.
‘No,’ said Bracken. The tunnels and the burrows of
Barrow Vale fell away from him, for nothing was more real, or ever had been, than this love he was in now.
‘I love you,’ he said softly, and she felt he had never said it before to her: he said it with the wisdom of his whole life.
‘If there was a mole you wanted to bring back, just for a moment here in Barrow Vale, who would it be?’ he asked.
Image on image came to her as she thought of the question, and remembered the moles she had loved. Rose? Mekkins? Cairn? She hesitated for a moment and then said another name to herself—‘Mandrake?’ She shook her head.
‘Hulver,’ she whispered finally.
‘Why?’ Bracken asked, surprised, for it wasn’t a name he would have expected her to say.
‘Because it was near here just before a June elder meeting that I met and talked to him and he mentioned your name. It was the first time a mole ever mentioned it to me.’
‘What did he say?’ asked Bracken.
‘Nothing much. But…’ She stopped to think about it. What had he said? It wasn’t that he had said anything, it was that he had somehow shown her, without either of them seeing it, that he loved Bracken. Now how did she know that?
Suddenly Barrow Vale was over for them. The tunnels were just tunnels, any tunnels, and they had no more need to see them. Bracken led the way out, back into the spring sunshine, to the surface, where Rebecca started off towards the Marsh End.
‘But it’s miles!’ said Bracken.
‘Oh, listen!’ said Rebecca excitedly, for from far away towards the north they could hear the soft cawings of nesting rooks.
They didn’t go into the tunnels at the Marsh End; there was something too derelict about the place without a mole like Mekkins to greet them. But they wandered as far to the east as Curlew’s tunnels, which they couldn’t find but whose position they could guess at roughly. They remembered the fire, the flames, and then they remembered the plague. They wondered whether to go back west towards the pastures or perhaps… but there was no need. The memories were falling away from them. It was Rebecca Bracken wanted, and she was there in the early spring warmth with him; it was Bracken Rebecca wanted… ‘And he is here, here with me now,’ she thought.
‘There’ll be bluebells soon and daffodils after the wood anemones.’
‘These trees will leaf again,’ said Bracken, ‘starting with the chestnut over by the pastures.’
‘It’s gone,’ said Rebecca. ‘Comfrey took me there last summer.’
‘It’ll come back. They’ll all come back.’
They crouched down near some tiny shoots of dog’s mercury; they found some food; they dozed in the sun; morning slid into afternoon, as time started to matter no more.
They were dancing together in the wood they loved, but which, they knew, was no longer theirs. Its trees were blurring, its plants waiting to delight the hearts of other moles, its scents and sounds, lights and shades, darkness and night and returning dawns were all one thing, Rebecca; Bracken, my love. Were they tired? They didn’t feel it, not when they were so close and the woods and the lovely spring day were fading.
Were they old? Yes, yes, yes, my sweet love, by the Stone’s grace; or young as two pups, if you like. Young enough to make love with a touch and caress and nuzzle of familiar paws and claws and fur that feel as exciting as the first spring day, whose light catches a mole’s fur if she’s in love, or he’s in love to see it, Rebecca; Bracken, you came back; we’re here now, my love.
There was a tremble of wind among the buds of a sapling sycamore; the sun was lost behind returning cloud. Evening was starting early and the light had the cast of a storm about it.
‘Will you show me the way back?’ whispered Rebecca.
‘Will you help me?’ he asked.
