It was just the sort of story to stir a youngster’s heart and Bracken asked the question any youngster would have asked: ‘What’s the song about?’
Hulver stayed silent; he had often pondered the question himself. He had asked it of his father, and got no clear answer. He could only answer in terms of Duncton Wood, where he had spent his entire life, and think that perhaps there were times when belief in the Stone and celebration of its life becomes a hidden secret thing, carried forward to new generations by those few who are foolhardy enough, or brave enough, to trust in a power they cannot see, and believe that it is worth far far more than the comforts of food and shelter that a system like Duncton offers.
He was confused about it, so how could he ever hope to pass on anything useful to this youngster? All he could do was to try, and to believe that tales like this one carry truth forward in their own way.
This was the story a long-forgotten scribemole brought to Duncton Wood. It was handed down through the generations as the song it is about was handed down. Until one fraught day it was Hulver’s task to hand it on to young Bracken to carry it in his heart all his life, as Hulver carried the song.
Although Bracken appeared half asleep as Hulver finished the tale, he had never been so awake. The tale had the effect of carrying him far beyond Duncton Wood and making him see again, as he had seen before, that Duncton was just one system, one place, one corner of the world. He wondered where his task lay, for he supposed he had one.
Above them, on the surface, the wind stirred and a beech leaf tumbled noisily against their temporary burrow entrance. It settled for a moment and then scurried off a moleyard or two before eddying to a stop against a beech-tree trunk, joining the others already there.
The evening wind had come and the light was beginning to lose its shine as the sun settled down towards the distant hills no Duncton mole could ever see.
‘It’s time to go,’ said Bracken. ‘Show me the direction, but let me go first, for I’m used to sensing danger and can find my way very quickly.’
They trekked up to the southwest, away from Hulver’s burrow and the danger of Rune. Bracken had imagined his first climb up into the Ancient System, thinking that the sun would be high in the sky and he would walk boldly upwards. Instead, here he was with very real danger about, skulking his way through the twilight. But there was something sweeter than his most delightful imaginings in having as a guide and friend this old mole for whom he was beginning to feel such deep affection and reverence.
It got darker as they rose higher, yet the further they went, the stronger did Bracken feel the pull from the top. He felt it as a good wormhunter feels his prey. They scurried from tree to tree, from root to root, always seeking the darkest shadow. Here and there they came across a bare patch of chalk, white in the evening gloom, and they avoided it for fear that their movement might be seen against it by any predators that lurked in the trees above. Once they passed by a massive tangle of roots rising starkly into the air, the bowl of a tree that had toppled over in some storm. They steered well clear of its long trunk and shattered branches on the ground—what mole could tell what might be nesting there.
As they rose higher, Hulver suddenly stopped and put his paw on Bracken’s shoulder, bringing him to a halt. ‘We are on the Ancient System,’ he whispered. ‘From here it runs upwards and across the hill.’
But Bracken knew it already, for he had sensed they were crossing old forgotten tunnels lost deep beneath the mould and debris of ages. His heart was beating with excitement for he felt as if, after a very long time, he was coming home. He knew the Ancient System was around him, he could feel it. It lay beneath them waiting, as it had waited for generations. And he could feel more than ever the great Stone which they were getting nearer and nearer.
‘We’ll go right to the Stone, now,’ he said quietly to Hulver, ‘and from there we’ll know what to do.’
It was at that moment in the evening when an eyeblink separates day from night. In the moment that a mole might wonder if it is still day, the question is answered by a sudden pall of purple in the sky. Bracken’s snout pointed up through the wood directly towards the Stone, although he had never been there. ‘There is nomole here,’ he told Hulver, certain of himself, ‘and there is none on the Ancient System. Can’t you feel it?’
