To reach the centre of the system he would have to face the living roots he could hear but yet not see; and to reach them he would have to pass by this massive skeleton that seemed to carry the very essence of the root sounds themselves.
But not now, not at this moment. The fears he had so far controlled exploded inside him and turning, breath gasping, he started to run from the mole body in panic, heading across the great chamber and making instinctively for the tunnel to the northeast, which carried the scent of oaks and worms, and of a life that was now and that he needed.
August is an untidy month in Duncton Wood, when the leaves of the trees have lost both the virgin greenness in which they gloried up until June and their rich, rustling maturity, which was one of the pleasures of July. Now they are past their best. Here and there, passing August rain brings one or two leaves down, green but limp, on to the wood’s brown floor to die among the great blowzy fern and insinuating ivy into which they have fallen.
Birdsong wanes down to the fidgeting of yellowhammer and greenfinch at the wood’s edge and along some of its more open paths and vales, while in its heart only the call of rooks, with the flapping of their wings, makes a noise that carries. Still, on the occasional hot day, when the sun forms warm pools of yellow light in the rich green undergrowth, a stag beetle may suddenly rise and buzz through the air, or ants rustle, or gall wasps drone. And then a mole in Barrow Vale may yawn and stretch and another may affect to ask what the fuss is all about.
A mole on the surface might think, as the vagrant sun catches the pink petals of bramble flower, that spring is suddenly back again and it is wild cherry blossom that is on show. But not for long. Let the high banking clouds smother the sun and the brambles look again like what they truly are, a tangled untidiness bearing wavering petals which never seem quite to know how to stay crisp and neat. Still, what’s it matter? What mole cares? There must be something better to talk about…
Chatter. Gossip. Rumour. The three consorts of August. One for the lazy, one for the idle, and the third for the bored. For the older moles of Duncton, the ones who have seen at least one Longest Night through, the main source of chatter and gossip in August lies in the doings of the youngsters. They have by now left the home burrow far behind and, after a molemonth or two of scurrying about in shallow runs and burrows, are just beginning to establish themselves—the ones who have survived, that is. For many have been taken by owls or lost strength in territorial fights and, unable to find sufficient food, died a lingering death in hot July, to be pecked at by crows or colonised by carrion flies and egglaying beetles.
These struggles go on into the middle of August and many a Barrow Vale mole, complacent in the knowledge of having his or her own territory (though not too complacent because some of these Westside youngsters are still very hungry indeed for territory), will pass the time of day with the kind of talk that begins ‘Have you heard what happened to… ?’ or ‘One of them Marshenders had the effrontery to… ’ And so on, and so forth.
In an August when things are well settled by the third week and when there is enough food about and a mole gets bored, rumour may take over from gossip. Who can say where it comes from or why one story seems more fascinating than another? Some rumours fly on a breeze of hope to float about the burrows brightly and give pleasure to those who hear them, and those who pass them on. Others sneak in on the winds of discontent, shadows on whispered conversations whose dark pleasures lie in the fact that if what they say will happen really does, it will be somewhere else, to some other poor mole.
Occasionally, very rarely, a rumour may come which contains both the seeds of hope and the germs of discontent, and seems to herald change of a kind that will affect everymole, not just one.
Such a rumour arose that August in Duncton Wood, and unknowingly Bracken was the cause of it.
His panic flight from the Chamber of Dark Sound (as he now called it) took him towards the slopes, and the pleasant woodland scent of the tunnel lured him finally outside. But his surface senses had been dulled by the long time underground and by his illness, and without realising what he had done, he went straight into the path of a Westside youngster who was establishing his territory. Bracken looked so wild and desolate that the youngster (who was no older than Bracken himself) fled back to his home burrow with a garbled story of a wild monster mole he had seen coming from the Ancient System. The story soon got round the Westside, and what a good August story it was for moles to get their teeth into!
