But a healer’s life may sometimes be a lonely one, and in recent moleyears Rose, who had been getting older, had felt the weariness of forever being a prop to other moles and never being able to seek support for herself when she needed it. Naturally she scolded herself for such thoughts, or chewed some dried flowers of yellow meadowsweet which she gathered from where it grew down near the Marsh End and blossomed in summer. ‘Nothing like this to cheer up a mole,’ she would tell herself, but some melancholies will never quite leave, even from the heart of a healer.
On the dawn of this particular day, Rose had been drawn out of her burrow and over to Duncton Wood by an impulse compounded of unease and excitement. She never questioned such impulses—they had a will of their own, and a purpose, too, which it was beyond anymole to fathom. A mole resisted them at her, or his, peril. All she knew was that somewhere in the system there was a mole in deep trouble who in some way needed her help. Where the mole was, what the trouble was, or what mole it might be she had no idea. But the need to pick ramsons was part of the impulse and that in itself was unusual, since she had already gathered her stock of ramsons for drying in June, when they were flowering most widely. Still, with ramsons the fresh plant is always best, and if the impulse said ‘Go and pick some’ Rose would do just that.
She had not been at all surprised when another mole joined her—though she had half expected whatever mole it was to be the one in need of help. That, however, did not seem to be the case.
To add to her puzzlement, and subsequently to create a sense of awe in her, Rebecca said several things that suggested she knew a great deal instinctively about plants and their powers, which she did not yet know she knew. Sensing this, Rose had deliberately not elaborated on several of the more important questions that Rebecca had raised almost unconsciously. The question of why the smell of wild garlic may seem stronger further off than close by, for example, involved explanations of why it is that the smaller the dose of a herb a healer gives, the more potent may be the impact.
Rebecca’s understanding of the fact that plants talked to her was also difficult to explain to her without, in a curious way, jeopardising her ability to listen.
For knowledge, Rose had painfully discovered, was a very different thing from wisdom and common sense and may often come in the way of both. The sight of such innocent wisdom as she saw in Sarah’s and Mandrake’s child made Rose hesitate to try to explain these things. Faced by it, she felt her own ignorance, not as a negative thing but as a simple fact. And she saw again what her weariness, age and occasional loneliness had made her forget: that each mole is graced with different virtues, just as each herb is. She sensed that Rebecca had many graces and the awe she felt was of the power of the Stone that had put them there.
These thoughts ran through Rose’s mind while she considered Rebecca’s question about the stars. She wished she had more power with words to explain the answer, though it was a wish that did her an injustice, since Rose could often explain things that other moles, who seemed more articulate, could somehow never grasp.
She sighed and wondered where to start. She looked around her, at the ramsons, at the cluttered undergrowth of thorns and dark leaves, and at the light sky above and beyond.
It was the gentle sound of a warm breeze in the trees that helped her. ‘Do you know what the top of a tree looks like?’ she asked Rebecca.
‘Well, of course!’ said Rebecca. ‘We’ve all been shown fallen branches with leaves on—they look like that.’
‘Can you remember the first time you saw one?’ asked Rose.
‘Oh, yes, it was disappointing!’ She paused, but Rose stayed silent, so she continued. ‘Well, I mean… before you see them, you imagine them, don’t you? And the roots of trees were so big, and the noise their tops made in the wind so powerful, that I imagined that trees went up and up for ever into the sky, and their tops were each as big as the whole of Duncton Wood put together. So when someone said “That’s a top of a tree” I was disappointed!’
Rose laughed sympathetically—she had once felt just the same. ‘But really, my dear, treetops aren’t just branches and leaves, are they? Did you see the noise of the wind, for example? I’m sure you didn’t. Did you see all the branches together? Well, of course, you couldn’t have. There are a lot of things, the most important things, which you can never see and can only learn about in your own way. Just as the treetop you saw couldn’t tell you everything about treetops, so the starlike flowers of ramsons only hint at what stars are really like.’
‘But how does anymole know what they’re like?’ persisted Rebecca. ‘How can a mole be certain that they’re there?’
