‘There may be other moles coming,’ he whispered. ‘I can hear something, or rather feel it.’ Hulver looked at the youngster who crouched still before him, his head and snout on one side, body tense and ready; feeling fear for him. For himself he felt nothing; he had little time left now. But this youngster had so much to do, so much, and Hulver trembled for him.
‘We must go,’ said Bracken urgently. ‘Please may we go?’ Hulver nodded and turned up to the entrance and out on to the surface into the afternoon sun.
Hulver led the way, taking the circular route below his own tunnels that Bracken had taken, then up towards the beech trees. At last the beech wood lay directly ahead of them, familiar to Hulver but as terrifying to Bracken in its tall silence as it had been when he had been alone by Hulver’s burrow. Each step they took left the friendly oak wood further behind, with its bird chatter and song, its scurrying blackbirds searching the leaves, its squirrels starting and champing among the oak branches.
‘We had better stop for a while,’ said Bracken, his natural tracking instinct giving him a sense of command he had not felt before. ‘We’ll wait for the evening wind to give us noise cover before we climb on.’
Hulver smiled to himself. Just what he would have done—had he thought of it. Bracken certainly seemed to know his way about the wood. Yet, at the same time, the youngster was very nervous, jumping at every shadow and making Hulver himself start more than once. It was time to stop.
He let Bracken dig a temporary burrow, watching him tunnel away at the mould. The youngster looked vulnerable against the massive oak root that plunged into the ground beyond him.
He had a strong feeling that his long wait since the previous Midsummer, a wait that had often driven him to despair and doubt, had not been in vain.
Often on a dark night he had tossed and turned over in his mind why he, of all his generation, was still alive after six Longest Nights. Six! He shuddered at the number. When the long moleyears of winter had given way finally to the earliest stirrings of spring, the worst time came when the air was chill as ice and he knew he would not mate. Often, then, he would go to sleep in his burrow and wish that he might not wake up. He wanted never again to rise to the aches and pains, fears and doubts that had come upon him in old age. But as spring advanced, the feeling that Rebecca the Healer was there had come over him and gradually a tiny hope had come back that something might happen. Something might happen. He had remembered the stories about her which they had told him as a child when he was sure she was real and walked the tunnels when nomole was there. Now he saw she was real after all, but had gone away for most of his life, only to come back at the end. ‘Old foolish mole,’ he scolded himself. ‘Living in the past.’
‘The burrow’s ready, Hulver,’ Bracken said, breaking into his thoughts. ‘Best go down it until the wind rises.’ Hulver did, meek as an old mole. What could he give the youngster in the time he had left?
Well, he could tell him the old stories and instruct him in the rituals to pass on the heritage that is everymole’s, though so few want to honour it.
Seeing that Bracken was jumpy with waiting for nightfall, Hulver decided to start his education there and then by recounting the tale of Merton, chosen mole of Uffington, just as it had been told to him by his father, and to him by the very last scribemole ever to visit Duncton Wood.
It was a tale that recalled the mole whose task in life had turned out to be to save the secret song of Uffington, which only chosen moles sing and then only once in a cycle of seasons. How Bracken shuddered to hear of the plague that wiped out most of the scribemoles back in the distant past when Merton had lived. How his heart stirred to hear of Merton’s escape from Uffington, and his survival, and his remembrance of the sacred song he had learned in secret and never forgotten. Then of his return, when his days were nearly over, so that he could pass on the song for other younger moles to sing so that it might be known to future generations and perhaps, if the Stone permitted it, finally be sung by all moles and not just a chosen few.
‘Will that ever happen?’ asked Bracken, breaking the silence that followed the end of Hulver’s long tale. ‘And do they still sing the secret song in Uffington?’
Hulver shrugged, for how could he know if the song still lived? Had not most of the rituals in his own system died, and that within living memory?
‘Perhaps, perhaps,’ he said, ‘but I remember one thing my father told me, though blessed if I can make much sense of it. He said there was a special Stone nearing Uffington—the Blowing Stone, I think he called it—which sounds in the wind sometimes. He told me that the scribemole said that when that Stone sounded seven times, then the secret song would be sung by all moles.’
