As this happened, the mole Rebecca was watching turned to face her, looking at her in an abstracted kind of way. Neither could have known how unutterably weary the other was. But just as Bracken sensed that the mole before him was anxious and lost, so Rebecca sensed that he, too, had been lost and lonely. It gave her the strength to speak to him, and in other circumstances would have been enough for Rebecca to run forward and make his eyes light up with her own vital joy, just as she had done sometimes with her brothers, and Mekkins, and Rose. And even, had she known it, with Mandrake.
But she was too tired to follow this impulse and instead came forward just a little and said ‘I’m lost. How do I get back into the system?’
The mention of the word ‘system’ made Bracken look past her in its general direction down the slopes, as he remembered that it really was no longer his system. He was not of it. He had little desire or need to return to it, but then, what did it matter? And anyway, it was a pleasant feeling to have a mole ask him to do something to help. He looked at Rebecca and thought to himself that he wanted to help her because she… well, there was something warm about her that… but he didn’t have words for it, or even clear thoughts.
‘I’m a Duncton mole, you know,’ she added. He knew that—he could tell by her fresh wood scent that reminded him of the sunny surface of Barrow Vale when he had seen it at its best in early summer.
Bracken was especially pleased to be asked by a mole from the system to find a route. It was the first time (apart from the odd occasion with Root and Wheatear in their puphood) when somemole had asked him the way and there was almost nothing Bracken liked better than to exercise his unusual ability to navigate.
‘Come on,’ he found himself saying happily. ‘I’ll show you.’ And he was off past her, leading her down by a way he remembered to an entrance which must lie just beyond the slopes and from where she could find her own way on. He liked the feel of running down the slopes, this way and that, through the wet foliage, with another mole following who depended on his skill. He enjoyed it so much that he was sorry when they got there and he had to turn to her and say, ‘There you are! I told you it was easy!’
He looked at her looking at him and wanted to stay and ask all sorts of things. But somehow the way she was looking at him stopped him asking the questions he was framing and left him mute, as she came forward and touched him on his shoulder where the scar was fading under cover of new fur. She did it with such gentleness that the words he wanted to say were quite gone and he felt suddenly achingly vulnerable as he let a route into his heart open up that pride, or fear, or vanity, would never again quite be able to close. He wanted to go up close to her and touch her in his own turn, nuzzling his snout into the soft fur of her neck. The feeling frightened him and he wanted to run away from it, and from her, and the system.
‘What’s your name?’ she asked gently.
‘I’m Bracken,’ he blurted out. Then he did run, turning away from the entrance where they had been crouching and making for the slopes. As he ran, he felt a relief that he was gone from her, but he could still feel the touch of her caress on his shoulder where once his terrible wound had ached so much; and though he was glad she was gone, he wished he had asked her name.
He did not hear her call out to him, ‘My name is Rebecca,’ or see her run a little way towards the way he had gone, nor did he see her stop and look up towards the slopes to which he had returned before turning away herself into the tunnels of the system.
The silence of the Stone. A mole may listen for a lifetime and not hear it. Or it may touch him at birth and seem to protect him with its power for the tasks that he must face.
Such a mole was Boswell, scribemole of Uffington, where the Holy Burrows lie, who is now known and beloved of all moles as Blessed Boswell.
Yet there was a time when his vow of obedience had shaken his heart as day after day he prayed and meditated in solitude by the Blowing Stone that lies at the foot of Uffington Hill—a stone whose special power for truth everymole knows. He was seeking the guidance he needed before making his now legendary decision to break his vows and make the trek over chalk hills and clay vales, across river and marsh, to the ancient system of Duncton.
