Then suddenly, as their song gained strength, Tryfan entered the circular tunnel, the only completely calm and silent one among them. He stared for a moment at one of the entrances into the Chamber of Echoes by which so many of the moles had been crouched hesitating. He was strong and purposeful and, moving without pause or apparent hesitation, he boldly entered into the echoing tunnel from whose darkness the sounds of stressing destruction were coming. He did it so naturally that, seeing him, a mole might have thought he had been that way before…
The strange thing is that afterwards each mole in the circular tunnel swore, and would have sworn by the Stone, that it was the entrance that they were standing nearby which Tryfan entered—which is impossible, for how could Tryfan or anymole enter all seven entrances at once?
As he disappeared from sight the song fell away from them and they waited in terrible fear as the root-pulling and stressing reached a climax of destructive sound. Yet although many of them wanted to run away to a place of safety not one moved, for they sensed they were witnessing a moment of profound change, a moment of wonder.
And then back out of the tunnel Tryfan came, half carrying and half pulling old Boswell of Uffington, who was covered in dust and grime and barely conscious from the power of the forces that had so nearly overwhelmed him. And who carried, clasped against his old chest, a small pebble or stone that looked as if it had nothing special about it to make a mole want to carry it out from such destruction.
Up on the surface by the Stone, where he had watched the storm continue into the first light of a wild, grey dawn, Comfrey saw the beech by the Stone finally sway back and back, and back and down, as its crown and branches and trunk crashed through the surrounding trees, and one by one its roots tore themselves from the soil around the Stone, which swayed and rocked on the edge of the crater they had left.
Then, as he watched, the Stone slipped back and down into where the roots had been until it stood firm and upright, no longer tilted by the roots towards Uffington, but upright as it must originally have been, with its great sides and top thrusting straight up into the sky.
But even though the crashing tree thundered and shook through all the tunnels of the Ancient System and the walls of the circular tunnel where the moles had gathered cracked and fissured from the shock, that was not what the moles noticed. What made them gasp in awe, and sing the sacred song that all moles thought they had forgotten, was that they saw that Boswell was changed. In the time he had been caught in the violence of the Chamber of Roots and seen the Stillstone’s light pass into Bracken and Rebecca, he had become a Holy Mole surrounded by silent love; and they saw that his fur had turned completely white. The White Mole had come. So they sang in exaltation and reached out to touch him.
Duncton Wood stood quiet, bedraggled by the storm as last drops of rain dripped on to the damp leaf mould and the sky cleared to the west. Every tree, every bush, every plant seemed battered and shaken and there was a silent, almost wounded, air about the wood, as if a great mole were resting after a very long fight. Boswell crouched with Tryfan and Comfrey by the Stone. The other moles had finally gone back to their burrows, reluctant to leave the wonder and love they found in the presence of Boswell, beloved Boswell, Blessed Boswell, the White Mole of Uffington. Now only Tryfan and Comfrey remained, one who was in deep awe of Boswell and the other, Comfrey, who accepted him matter-of-factly, just as he had accepted Rebecca’s return to the system and her final departure with Bracken into the Stone where all moles must go.
‘So you found the seventh Stillstone but not the Book?’ said Comfrey, looking at the smooth, flinty stone that Boswell had placed on the ground before them; it did not look special at all.
Boswell smiled wryly. ‘No, I know where the Book is, Comfrey,’ he said simply. ‘I have to scribe it myself.’
‘Oh,’ said Comfrey, ‘yes, of course.’ He should have thought of that. Bracken and Rebecca and Boswell had made the Book together, so it couldn’t have been scribed before. A mole couldn’t scribe a book until it was ready—it was probably just like picking herbs.
Boswell had told them both something of what had happened, and Comfrey had understood that finally Rebecca was safe and so he could stop worrying about her. She was all right now.
He looked at Boswell and thought what a contrast he made to Tryfan—one frail and white, the other strong and black-furred. He smiled, too, because he saw that Tryfan watched with love and care over Boswell’s every move, as if he were afraid that a puff of wind would blow Boswell away. Well, one day he would know Boswell better than that.
