Bracken turned to the south towards the top of the hill where the Stone stood. He went slowly and calmly without one moment of hesitation or doubt, climbing steadily upward towards the slopes, and then up them over towards the top of the hill. Sometimes he turned around for a moment to check that his Rebecca was close behind, but really he would have known if she wasn’t there, for they moved steadily together, like a single mole. Sometimes they rested, and there was no need to hurry.
Up on the slopes they met Comfrey, who began to say a greeting but stopped when he saw them. There was something about them that didn’t need words. Below them, in the Old Wood where they must have been, he heard the wind begin to sway what trees there were and scurry at the undergrowth.
‘Rebecca?’ began Comfrey finally.
But she only looked at him and touched him for a moment as if to say it was all right, he didn’t need her now, it was all right, and as they passed him by, he thought how old they looked and how full of joy.
‘Rebecca,’ he whispered after them. And he trembled, because he knew he would never see her again.
‘I’ll go to the Stone,’ he told himself, ‘that’s the best thing. I’ll go there now.’ But he did not set off at once; instead he hesitated, going back down into his tunnels first and tidying up a bit, and sniffing a herb or two. Then, when at last he felt he was ready, he went.
Bracken and Rebecca climbed on steadily up to where the hill levelled off among the beech trees, the leaf litter between the trees rustling with the strengthening storm wind all about them. As the sky began to darken, brambles that had glowed with the early morning sun now rasped against each other restlessly. They turned towards the Stone clearing without pause, then across it to the great beech whose roots encircled the Stone, among which Bracken had spent his first night near the Stone with Hulver.
Branches had fallen from the tree since then, and some had rotted. Among the gnarled convolutions of the roots he found a pool of rainwater and drank from it. Rebecca looked into it, but didn’t drink.
The wild sky seemed suddenly to be below them, in the reflection on the water’s surface, with a rising of interlacing dark branches and the twists and turns of the ancient tree trunk.
Bracken looked about them, thinking that apart from Rebecca’s words of love there was never, ever any sound he loved more than the sound of the wind in beech leaves. Well, it was too early in the spring for beech leaves, but Rebecca was there near him.
She watched him turn away from the tree roots, his old fur now the colour of the lighter parts of their bark, and she followed him back out of the clearing without looking at the Stone. A single rush of wind caught the trees over near the wood’s edge and then ran high through the trees and into the branches of the tree by the Stone as they found an entrance to their tunnels and went down it.
But neither paused or hesitated. They turned back towards the ancient tunnels as one, taking the route Bracken himself had burrowed long before and that led, finally, to the circular chamber around the Chamber of Echoes. They were old now, but moved with the grace of tall grass before a full wind and with the simple purpose of two mallards rising over a desolate marsh.
From beyond the Chamber of Echoes they could hear the massive sounds of the beech roots, sliding and trembling with the tensions of the mounting wind over the wood, but they turned without thought towards it, in among the confusing tunnels that were no longer confusing but simple as trust itself. No need to remember a way from the past or a way for the future; they could see a glimmer of light ahead of them, growing brighter as they went towards it, showing them the way forward.
Then, when they were beyond the Echoes and into the Chamber of Roots themselves, it seemed to them both that the terrible sound of the roots began to die away before them and another sound grew in power and strength—the sound of the Stone’s silence to where the light was leading them.
They ran on towards it, not even noticing the huge roots above them that pulled and plunged and yet seemed to make way for them.
On through them they travelled, the light ever brighter, their fur growing whiter with it, until they were past the roots and into the tunnels that led through the roots of the beech near the Stone, around whose hollow centre they pattered, their paws almost dancing, as they got nearer and nearer the glimmering of white light that came from the seventh Stillstone.
Then it was there and they were back, under the buried part of the Stone which rose above them and tilted down ahead of them as they ran on towards its centre to the glimmering whiteness of the Stillstone itself.
