Duncton Found by William Horwood Read Free Book Online

Warren, and guardmole though you be I know that could never be your way. If you can’t come with us, then bless us and say goodbye for to the Stones we’re bound as you too should be. There’s light all about today, and it protects us and guides us. I’m old and unafraid and I’ll touch the Stones once more, and show them to your lass.”
    Poor Warren, strong though he was of limb, felt weak before his mother’s words and the day’s clear light. Troubled, too, and much afraid, for he loved them both and would not see them harmed.
    “Go then, and I’ll watch over this way the best I can until you come back. There’s not many grikes about, nor guardmoles, and I don’t even know why I came myself.”
    “The Stone sent you,” said Violet with a smile. Then she touched her son, as he did her, and Mistle touched him too.
    “I’ll watch over you,” he called after them, “but be quick about it.”
    So Mistle led Violet on the way among the Stones whose lights and shadows fell before them and made a way where time seemed to have no purpose, and where each Stone they passed whispered its strength into Mistle for the days and the years of the life she would live; a way whose light and direction would lead her not only to the very heart of this history of Duncton Wood, but on to the heart of the Stone’s purpose itself.
    They came at last to the Stone Violet instinctively knew to be the one within whose orbit she was raised. High it rose, and the sun was golden on its flanks, the sky blue beyond and white where drifting cloud went by.
    “Will you touch it?” asked Mistle, still awed but unafraid.
    “For now we’ll crouch before it, and later, perhaps, when the time is right, we’ll touch it, you and I, and this old body will have done its work and seen the Stone’s Silence into another mole’s heart.
    “That’s it, you see, my dear: we may not be much in ourselves – too troubled by life and one thing and another – but we always carry Silence somewhere in our hearts and, however humble we may be, and unfulfilled, we can pass the feeling of it on. Mayhap one day a mole will come who can know that Silence and still live. That’s what my good father told me, and it’s what I’m telling you. So crouch now and listen out for Silence, and when the moment comes we’ll touch the Stone.”
    “Can I touch you while we wait?” asked Mistle.
    Violet did not reply, but only nodded and looked tired, the sun seeming almost too bright for her old skin and fur.
    “Are you all right?” asked Mistle going closer and seeming in a subtle way almost to grow up as she spoke these words.
    “I’m tired, my dear, and I’ve been from the Stones far too long. But I’m here now and you’re with me, and we’ll just stay until it’s time to touch the Stone.”
    Then paw to paw and flank to flank they waited, old and young as one, and Violet’s Stone rose silently before them, its shadow shortening towards itself as the sun rose higher still.
     

Chapter Four
    Now we turn our snouts to Rollright, another of the ancient Seven, and a place where a mole lived who was much liked by Tryfan and his friends, though they had not met for many a moleyear.
    His name was Holm and he was a muddy, marshy mole who lived in comfortable squalor with Lorren, herself of Duncton born. Both had survived the coming of the grikes under Henbane and the tragic evacuation of Duncton Wood that ensued. Holm was without siblings, but not so Lorren, and since those days she had seen neither Starling her sister nor Bailey, whom she remembered fondly as a stolid and determined younger brother.
    But that was past, and now, today, this bright day, we are in Holm and Lorren’s burrow, and find Holm silent. He usually was, leaving words to Lorren, who liked to talk. But when Holm spoke he said what he meant and all moles knew it. A mole of few but pertinent words, and one renowned as a route-finder, taught by no less a mole than great Mayweed