Duncton Wood by William Horwood Read Free Book Online

he shouted, gasping for air, running down the tunnel and out of the nearest entrance onto the surface in Barrow Vale. “Rebecca!” he roared, as if he could not escape the name, slashing the base of an oak tree with his talons as he charged blindly into it.
    Sarah heard him, licking her young, curling them into her and sighing in satisfaction. “Rebecca,” she whispered, “Rebecca,” as gently in the darkness of the burrow as, for the briefest of hidden moments. Mandrake had once whispered to her “Sarah.”
    From the first, Rebecca held a strange fascination for Mandrake, who would often stare at her from the tunnel by the burrow where Sarah nursed her litter. Sarah would sometimes waken and find him there, or see his black shadow move away down the tunnel as if, seeing her beginning to awaken, he didn’t want to be seen simply watching over his daughter.
    Yet as the days and molemonths went by, no one would have guessed, least of all Mandrake himself, that he loved Rebecca with a passion as strong as a gale across a moor. For he treated her harshly, disciplining her unmercifully to try, it seemed, to break her down to a mole of obedience. At first it was easy, for she was but a tiny pup who quailed and backed away from his deep-voiced commands. Her paws would fall over themselves in their anxiety to escape from her great father as she ran desperately back for the protection of her mother’s flanks.
    Sarah would hold her and say “She’s only a pup, only a young thing.” But this made little impact on Mandrake.
    “A pup will do what I say, as I want,” he would roar, glowering darkly at the cowering Rebecca. But never once did he try to wrest her from Sarah, or hit her when she was young.
    Such threats had their effect and for a long time Rebecca did Mandrake’s will, frightened of him not only when he was there, but also when he was out in the system with Rune or other henchmoles doing system business.
    She grew quickly, so that by late autumn she was already nearing adult size. Not as big as moles born the preceding spring, but not so small that she could not put up a fair fight if necessary, though the youngsters still fought for fun rather than for real. The real fighting came only with the mating season or when one mole was trying to wrest away another mole’s territory. She stayed in her home burrow longer than spring litters, who could take advantage of the good summer weather to leave their mother and find their own territory. Rebecca stayed at home, close by Sarah and Mandrake, kept innocent, childlike and cowed by Mandrake’s continual aggression toward her.
    Through the following January and early February, when the wood was at its bleakest, it seemed to her almost everything was bleak, for she could never please her father. It was then there occurred an incident about which she never told another mole until years, lifetimes, later and that deepened forever her relationship with Mandrake.
    In mid-February the weather turned suddenly bitterly cold and hoarfrost delicately picked out the stalks and veins of the decaying leaves on the wood’s floor. While other moles slept and kept warm, or grumbled at the cold as they hurried to find food, Rebecca snouted about on the surface, awed by the chill beauty of the frostbound wood. Then the lightest of snowflakes began to fall, feathering down through the leafless black branches from a gray sky, settling for a second on the back of her paw before melting with her warmth. As she tried to catch them falling about her she seemed to dance with delight in the silent wood.
    “Like it, do you girl? Think it’s fun?”
    It was Mandrake on the surface behind her, interrupting her reverie, angry. She had done something wrong again but she had no idea what. He came closer, his heavy paws destroying the delicate patterns of frost on an oak leaf she had looked at moments before.
    “Think it’s pretty, don’t you?”
    His voice was getting louder and she wanted to