With a terrible sob, Bracken ran over to Bindle, who was moaning and whispering, trying to raise himself on a shattered paw, the paw sliding out uselessly from under his weight. Bracken bent low over him and heard him whisper,
‘Bindle, my name is Bindle. I came back to say the ritual with my oldest friend. We almost finished it, didn’t we?’ His breath came rasping and painful, and Bracken’s heart ached to hear it. ‘We almost finished it. And in the end I knew the words. He never thought I knew them all, but I did. When they came at the end I remembered the words.’ Bindle tried to say more but he rasped and coughed, and gasped in his terrible pain. Bracken pressed against him, supporting his torn body, blood on his fur. Bindle started to speak again, each word a massive effort: ‘Listen, youngster, and try to remember them: “We… bathe… their… paws… in…”’
Bracken looked up at the Stone and across to the body of Hulver, whose wisdom he now began to see. And then, at first very softly, but with increasing strength, he joined his voice to the dying Bindle’s:
‘We bathe their paws in showers of dew,
We free their fur with wind from the west,
We bring them choice soil,
Sunlight in life.
We ask they be blessed
With a sevenfold blessing…’
Bracken spoke the words now with power, with the voice of an adult. They filled the clearing and carried on beyond it loud and clear, until they stopped Mandrake and his moles in their tracks.
‘The grace of form
The grace of goodness…’
A wild storm of racing blood and blizzard cold swept through Mandrake’s head and body; he seemed possessed by rushing darkness. With a mighty roar he turned back, thrashing up towards the clearing, tormented by the powerful voice that carried words that agonised his soul.
‘The grace of suffering
The grace of wisdom
The grace of true words
The grace of trust
The grace of whole-souled loveliness.’
Bracken had moved to the Stone and now stood in its dark shadow turned towards Uffington, aware of everything about him: the dead Hulver, the dying Bindle and the agonised rushing of Mandrake fast approaching him, but he ignored it all.
It seemed to Mandrake, as he arrived back at the clearing and saw at first only two moles lying on the ground, that the Stone itself was speaking:
‘We bathe their paws in showers of light,
We free their souls with talons of love,
We ask that they hear the silent Stone.’
It was only with these very last words of the ritual that Mandrake saw Bracken in the shadow, and with a roar as agonised as it was angry, charged upon him.
Bracken stepped forward for a moment into the moonlight, where Mandrake saw him clearly for the first time, and then ran behind the Stone, beyond the great beech tree, and into the wood in the direction of the chalky escarpment.
As Mandrake followed after him, Bindle moved for the last time, stretching a paw towards his friend Hulver, his snout turned towards the Stone into whose silence and light he felt himself flowing, away from the rasping breathing that was no longer his and numbing cold that had been spreading from his paws and flanks towards his heart, and thinking that the youngster somehow knew the words as well, and that was how it should be.
On Bracken ran, his strength failing rapidly. He could no longer think clearly and his breath was coming in pants and rasps as Bindle’s had done. Behind him he could hear Mandrake getting nearer, carried forward as he was by an indescribable rage and malevolence, beech leaves and leaf mould scattering in his wake.
To his left, Bracken could hear other moles running towards him through the undergrowth, Rune, Dogwood and the others. To his right, the hill rose towards its final height, where he and Hulver had lain in secret before tonight. But he knew he had no strength left to climb up and away from Mandrake. So he ran straight on, straight towards the void of the chalk escarpment, his heart pounding in pain and each breath harder and harder to grasp hold of. Mandrake could see him now, just ahead, paws scrabbling over themselves, back almost within talon range. With a final push forward Mandrake reared up to try to bring his talons down on the failing Bracken.
Sensing what Mandrake was about to do, Bracken turned in mid-flight to make a valiant effort to ward off Mandrake’s blows. But as he raised his own talons to defend himself, he felt his back paws continue forward into nothing, sliding downwards through loose soil and vegetation, attempting, it seemed, to keep hold of nothing. As Mandrake’s talons crashed down towards his upturned snout he felt the nothingness of the void swallowing him, pulling him down into the blackness as his front paws flailed desperately at the cliff face to retain a hold. He felt a terrible pain in his left shoulder and the cliff face slipping past his snout, felt loose vegetation and flints scratching at his face.
