The sun shone through the shimmering young beech leaves from the east to his right, while down to his left lay the Westside and Aspen and Root going about… and Burrhead must be straight ahead down there at the elder meeting, talking talking… and above was the sky bigger than everything, arching away, far beyond even the Marsh End. Bracken saw then, for the first time, how the Duncton system was just a system, not the world. One day he could go beyond it like the sky did, for everything was possible.
He felt a surging pull above and behind him from the Ancient System, whose edge he was on. He felt for a moment like one of the ancients, looking down on the new system. He saw that Hulver’s system was superbly placed in the system as a whole, poised as it was on the edge of the ancient and the modern, the Eastside and the West. Bracken’s heart raced as he felt an urge to run off through the wood, all over the wood, for everything was possible and must be explored.
He might well have done so had not a familiar scurrying sound warned him that a mole was coming up from the oak wood below. Bracken knew it was not Hulver when the sounds veered off to the west and disappeared below ground. Hulver would never enter his own system so stealthily. At this point Bracken was wary rather than frightened, and ran back down into the tunnels, crouching quietly in a side tunnel near the home burrow from where he would hear everything and be able to escape in several different directions. He knew the system well enough to be able to elude any alien mole if necessary.
The mole moved about here and there in the system but finally went up to the surface again, searching back and forth until he found the main entrance. This was only a few moleyards from where Bracken crouched and he waited tensely.
It was a strange position to be in—defending a system not his own. Suddenly the mole came boldly and resolutely into the system and stopped still as death in the main tunnel. Bracken shuffled about a little to establish his presence, for he had no intention of either waiting to be found or running off and leaving Hulver’s burrow to the care of a stranger.
‘Who is there, and what are you doing here?’ the alien mole called in a commanding voice that took Bracken by surprise. He might have expected to ask the same question himself but had neither the presence of mind nor, perhaps, the courage, to do so. The mole was obviously tough and mature, and Bracken quickly persuaded himself that there was no possibility of fighting successfully, even if he had wanted to, which he didn’t.
He had no sooner poked his snout out of the side tunnel, than the stranger was coming towards him—bold, calm, dominant.
‘My name’s Rune,’ said the mole, ‘and you had better tell me what you are doing here.’ He advanced the last few steps menacingly. For the first time in his life Bracken was faced by a mole he knew, with absolute certainty, would kill him if he felt like it. There was such indifferent power in Rune’s gaze that what little courage Bracken felt inside him shrivelled up, to be replaced by a desperate clutching in blackness that simply wanted to escape. Rune seemed huge and all-powerful and, for all Bracken knew, might continue his menacing walk right over him, leaving him like a squashed moth that has happened into a hurrying mole’s path.
Oh, Rune, sir, my name’s Bracken and I came too far from the Westside,’ he whined, his voice high from the tightness and constriction that, in his fear, had invaded his throat. He looked at the terrifying Rune, waiting to do his bidding. If Rune had said ‘Turn on your back and scratch the ceiling’ Bracken would have done it without question. But Rune said nothing, simply gazing searingly at Bracken who, had he had sufficient wits about him to consider the matter, might have concluded that it would be better if he had been asked to scratch the ceiling. Instead, he chose to fill the silence with another catchphrase from his stock of ‘little mole lost’ excuses for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. ‘I also ran out of worms and this burrow was deserted so I stayed here.’
Rune knew perfectly well that Bracken was Burrhead’s son, and though the lad was by all accounts an idiot (a good reason for killing him there and then) he had no wish to aggravate Burrhead and the Westside needlessly. The time was not yet ripe. Though as he watched the stuttering youngster making his excuses, Rune was inclined to think he would be doing Burrhead a favour by getting rid of him.
‘Well, it’s not deserted, because I’m here now and I suggest you return to the Westside fast,’ he said slowly. ‘Moles shouldn’t leave their territories and it’s only because you’re a youngster that I’m making allowances. If you get stopped on your way back to the Westside you can tell them that I sent you back. But don’t try this kind of exploration again; it’s not safe. Now get going.’
