And she might have said the blessing for herself as well, for she had a long journey to her own burrow before her and was very weary—more tired than she had ever been.
She left the tunnel by the way she had come, covered over the entrance she had made with leaf litter and soil, and tried to shake the fatigue from her old body. It was dusk, a good time to travel at least, but it was an effort even to put one paw in front of the other as she made for the Stone—the first stage of her journey.
‘I’m getting old,’ she said to herself, ‘and a little weary. Why, my home burrow has never seemed quite so far away as it does now.’ The atmosphere among the great trees of the Ancient System was much calmer than when she had arrived, and less confused.
When she reached the Stone clearing it was night, and she paused there to rest and reflect, feeling the richness of Duncton stretching beyond the slopes beneath her. Something very powerful was going on, bigger than the system she loved, perhaps even more important than all the moles who lived there or had made their lives there in the past, and whom she had so long cared for and tended.
So much was changing. She had known of the change even before Mandrake came—indeed, she saw that he was a part of it and not a cause of it. Hulver and Bindle were both gone, killed near this very spot, and other old moles she knew were all gone as well.
It occurred to her that she was one of the oldest moles in Duncton or on the pastures and she found herself thinking again, ‘I am getting old!’ She looked down at her paws and rubbed her snout and face against them, smiling gently at the silly thought. For above her, the tilted Stone rose in the night, the great tree roots black around its base, and she chided herself with the thought that nomole was ever old in the Stone. ‘Why, you mustn’t make me say such foolish things!’ she said to the Stone, in the chatty way she always spoke to it. ‘Or even let me think them.’
With that she began to make her way slowly and carefully down the slopes by the edge of the wood, taking her thoughts and ageing body to the warmth of her home burrow. And to sleep.
Rose had chosen the moment of her departure wisely, for the following dawn Bracken finally awoke with a clear head but a terribly weakened body. He was aching and wretched, and a little ill-tempered, but at least he could see and hear the waking world around him. See, that is, the dawning light coming into the tunnel, and hear the morning breeze by the cliff and a chorus of wrens and greenfinch and the chunter of a young jackdaw somewhere among the trees.
His shoulder still hurt terribly, but the pain was now confined to the wound itself and did not spread evilly through his body to his very eyes, and snout, and sensibility. He could control it.
He had the feeling that he was not alone, for the burrow smelt fresh and lived in. Curious! He dozed and awoke and dozed again, until he finally awoke hungry as a pup. And there was food ready for him. Strange. ‘I must have got it for myself,’ he thought, though he couldn’t remember… anything.
Yes… yes he could. Illness and dark and a great red cardinal beetle that was coming to him and struggling with him… and a worm and a black beetle much bigger than he that were trying to destroy him, take him away… Bracken shuddered and started to eat the food, asking no more questions of himself.
Though he was hungry, he managed less than half a worm. He was so unused to eating. But he managed to nibble at the stem of a… but he didn’t know the plant’s name. It tasted fresh and good. Strange again. He looked around the tunnel, half expecting to see a friendly mole, but there was none—just high, arching walls and a well-made floor that stretched into the darkness ahead.
For a moment he wanted to raise himself fully to his paws and start exploring the Ancient System which, he realised with a thrill, now lay ahead for him to explore whenever he wanted. But the moment he tried to move, he knew how weak he was and it was several days before he felt able to do more than struggle painfully up and down the tunnel he was already in, picking up what food he could find.
They were strange days of pain and content. His shoulder hurt whenever he moved and yet a restlessness to get started drove him on to use it more and more, despite the pain. In doing so, he learned that pain is a clumsy word, describing as one something that is a thousand feelings, not all of them unpleasant. The ache in his head, the searing pain if he worked his shoulder too much, the dull moaning of his stomach as it became used to food again—they were all different. He learned to welcome the step into pain that he had to take when he awoke and stretched his limbs and worked himself back into his body.
