There was a nomole’s-land of rough grass and stunted hawthorn between the wood and the pasture where they petered out into each other and it was here that they spent the last five days of their wait for Midsummer Night. Each made a burrow for himself, grubbing about in the wood itself for food. Bracken didn’t like them to go back into the wood proper for fear that Rune or some other henchmoles might find them, but none ever did, nor did they see anymole. In fact, the only life they saw was rabbits, which Bracken had often heard about but never seen close. They scampered about, squatted still feeding, and shot their ears up with a start if Bracken so much as poked his snout out of a tunnel near them.
Until now Bracken had tended to sleep long and irregularly. Now he fell in with Hulver’s habits, which consisted of three sleep periods every day. Hulver liked to check the burrows and tunnels in the afternoon, but these were temporary and not extensive, there wasn’t much to check, and Hulver got into the habit of using the afternoon period to tell Bracken scraps of history about Duncton, something about the great elders of the past, and of the famous fights and the notorious worm-poor years. He told of the coming of Mandrake and other tyrant moles of the past—‘though none I’ve heard of was ever as malevolent as him’. Bracken had to ask what ‘malevolent’ meant, and when Hulver told him, he thought to himself that it sounded as if Rune was malevolent as well.
It was from Hulver that he first learned of Rose, the healer mole who occasionally came in from the pastures to work her magic on sick or diseased moles. ‘You’ve probably never seen her, because she tends to go only to the Marsh End, where they believe in her more than most other Duncton moles. Anyway, she comes mainly in the autumn and spring—one of which you haven’t experienced and the other which you won’t remember.’
‘She’s a Pasture mole?’ Bracken was surprised, because all Pasture moles he had ever heard of were treacherous and aggressive and if they ever tried to visit Duncton, they would surely be attacked.
‘Ah, yes. But Rose is a healer and that’s very different. Healers live by their own rhythms and ways. Anyway, Rose wouldn’t hurt a flea and nomole would want to hurt her. Mind you, I’ve only seen her a few times myself and only in passing. She’s never laid a paw on me!’
‘How many Longest Nights has she seen?’ asked Bracken.
‘Mmm, well… she’s certainly not young, and yet she’s like a youngster all the time. She sings, you know, and dances, too, on occasion. She tells stories to the youngsters, if they can persuade her to.’
‘When does she come?’
‘Ah, now, that’s a good question. It’s a bit of a mystery, because nomole ever knows when she’s going to come, even the ones she comes to heal. In fact, some of them don’t even know there’s anything wrong with them. You see, as she lives somewhere out in the pastures, no Duncton mole ever goes and gets her, and yet, when she’s needed, she suddenly appears, as if by magic. Of course, she doesn’t come for every hurt and illness, otherwise she’d be here all the time.’
A day or two after this, Hulver let forth another scrap of information about Rose. They were talking about aches and pains, and Hulver was explaining that he found it helpful to chew various plants like the seeds of dog rose (‘Excellent when you’re run down; you’ll find them over on the Westside edge of the wood if you want to risk it’) and sanicle (‘Good for wounds after a fight—and plenty about in Duncton’), and Hulver got to telling Bracken about how he loved the smell of some of the plants and herbs in the wood, especially the sunnier clearings and then said, ‘And you know that Rose I mentioned, the healer, well she always has the sweetest smell of herbs about her that I’ve ever come across. Makes you feel good just being near her! Mekkins is the one to talk to about Rose. He knows her best of all the elders, coming as he does from the Marsh End.’
Hulver sighed. He often felt when he was talking to Bracken that his words didn’t say what he wanted them to. He wanted to tell the youngster so much. He became irritated with himself because he seemed to know so little and there was so much for a youngster to face.
At such times, Bracken imagined that he was tiring Hulver, or annoying him. So much of what Hulver said he found hard to understand and when he tailed off in the middle of something after trying to explain it two or three different ways, he felt the loss as much as Hulver felt the irritation. But then Bracken was beginning to love the old mole so much that it didn’t much matter what he said. He would have listened with reverence anyway.
Since they had moved to the furthest point of the wood, indeed almost out of it, they felt much safer and the days passed by peacefully.
