‘Bracken, from the Westside.’ The answer was, in his own mind at least, untrue, for he was really of the Ancient System now. But ever cautious, Bracken had worked out that if he should meet another mole, he would first find out where they were from and then say he was from anywhere else but the Ancient System.
‘I knew Hulver,’ he added, by way of explaining why he was there. There was a pause while they considered what to say next. Then each asked a question simultaneously.
‘Who’s Hulver?’ asked Rue. ‘Who’s the Stone Mole?’ wondered Bracken. They laughed, their mutual interruption breaking the awkwardness between them. They each sensed that the other meant no harm.
‘It’s a bit unsafe staying here,’ said Bracken. ‘It would be safer in the tunnel.’
‘Oh, I can’t go in there,’ said Rue, horrified. ‘The owl’s there.’
‘I know,’ said Bracken to her surprise. ‘That’s what I want to see.’
After a lot of persuasion, he managed to get Rue back into the safety of the tunnels, telling her that the owl would not attack her and, should Mandrake and Rune return, he knew a quick way out to safety. But it was more the simple fact that he so obviously intended not to harm her, and even seemed to have her safety at heart, that finally got her back to the burrow at the heart of Hulver’s system. He even went so far as to get her some worms, and without any difficulty either, since he seemed to know the tunnels quite well. Once fed, they snuggled down on either side of the burrow, where they answered each other’s questions about Hulver and the Stone Mole. Bracken told Rue all about Hulver and Rue explained what she knew, and had heard, about the Stone Mole. He realised long before she got to her own experience in these very same tunnels that he, himself, was the Stone Mole.
‘Show me where it happened,’ he asked her.
‘Oh, I couldn’t,’ whispered Rune, who had worked herself up to a terror just telling the story.
‘It won’t hurt you,’ said Bracken. ‘It’s only an image.’
‘How do you know?’ asked Rue.
A mole like Rune would not have answered this question, for he would have known that a mole’s power often lies in keeping others ignorant, and that it was in Bracken’s interest that nomole knew who he truly was. But Bracken was not aware that he had an interest, being more concerned to reassure Rue, who was the first mole who had been friendly towards him since Hulver himself.
However, there is a difference between naivety and ingenuousness, and Bracken’s fault, if fault it was, was that he was naive. He told her no more than that he had been into the tunnel behind the great flint and possibly what she had heard had been his noise and actions on the other side—as he had heard Mandrake’s earlier that day. As for the sights he had seen in the Ancient System, and the sounds he had heard, there was something about them that warned him to keep them secret. Some things, especially when a mole does not understand them, are best honoured by being kept secret in the heart rather than scattered to the winds as words.
Rue would only go so far as the last curve in the tunnel leading to the great flint seal, peering on from there nervously as Bracken went on to the end, raising his voice over his shoulder to keep her reassured.
He told her ‘It is just an image, just a carving—something the ancient moles used to do to frighten other moles away.’ He raised his talons to the flint on a level with the curve of the beak and scratched it very slightly to show how the sound was made, and its screech whispered round the tunnel like a distant echo of the terrifying sounds he had heard before. She started to cover her ears again, and Bracken stopped. He looked at the owl face, surprised to find that it held no fear for him as the other one had. Looking at it, he felt a different mole from the one who had looked at the other, and he hoped that at last he had found the strength to delve back into the tunnels and make his way to the Chamber of Dark Sound, and beyond.
‘Is there a giant mole in there?’ asked Rue.
‘There aren’t any moles in there at all, not a single one.’
‘But the Stone Mole lives there!’ Rumours die hard, even when the subject of them is there to put the record straight.
It was late and both of them needed sleep. Bracken thought it wiser to abandon the main burrow, since Mandrake and Rune might come back at any time, and so they occupied instead tunnels to the west of Hulver’s system, where a few abandoned ones remained from some system of the past.
Even then, Rue might have been reluctant to stay there had not Bracken said that he would stay on a few moledays to help her seal up the connection between these tunnels and the others, so that Rue would have the makings of a system of her own. It was no hardship to him and, indeed, sometime before dawn, he awoke briefly to hear Rue’s deep, peaceful breathing in a burrow near the tunnel where he slept, and was grateful to have company again, even if only temporarily.
