Moments later he blundered out of the portal and found himself almost collapsing towards Stour, before whom he gladly let go of the Book, just as Sturne had done.
“Hmmph!” said Stour, barely glancing at it. “The Book of Darkness. Sturne? Can you do better?”
“What am I to seek, Master?”
“Well, the Book of Silence would do nicely, but I happen to know it’s not there. Never was. Might never be. So the first Book will do...”
So it went on, one after another, time after time, until between them Sturne and Pumpkin, with increasing difficulty and distress, had managed to bring forth the Six Books and place them down to Stour’s satisfaction. He, for his part, had appeared to grow more lighthearted as this work continued, onerous and exhausting though it was for the other two. It would scarcely be an exaggeration to say that he was dancing about from one paw to another towards the end, when the last of the Books (‘Ah, at last we have it, better late than never: the Book of Earth!’) finally arrived. Meanwhile, poor Pumpkin, who had portered it, collapsed from the effort and took some time to come round.
The Master Stour, now cool, calm, and collected, smiled benignly, his thin wrinkly skin, like crushed and dusty birch-bark, crinkling into a thousand creases around his eyes and mouth. He touched the Book of Earth with his paw, but gently, for its covers and folios were the most ancient of all the Books, all dry and grey with time.
“Earth is first to go in, then Suffering, then Fighting, then Darkness. After that, if I survive them all and still come out alive, there’s Healing – too late for me! – and finally Light.”
“Er, Master,” enquired Pumpkin, “what happens if you don’t “survive”?”
“You two will have to take whatever Books remain into their final resting-place so that they cannot be desecrated by false mole, whether Newborn or otherwise.”
“Us, Master?” said Sturne, glancing at Pumpkin uneasily and then towards the Chamber of Roots.
Stour nodded indifferently. He looked at the Books, then at the nearest of the seven entrances into the Chamber of Roots, then at his paws. He was suddenly sombre.
“What’s the weather like outside?” he asked. “Still quiet? It affects the roots you see, and my chances.”
Pumpkin was only too happy to go and find out. A moment’s escape from the Books and the threat that Sturne or even himself might have to set paw into the Chamber, was more than welcome. He ran back down the way Sturne had first brought him, climbed up to the surface, and peered out. The scene had changed little. A shade lighter perhaps, but the mist was still thick and the trees rose up as they had before, grey, looming for a time, and then thinning into the white nothingness.
Except, oh dear, except now the mist was moving, shifting, swirling slowly among the trees, growing thicker for a moment and then thinner once more. It was a subtle thing, almost unnoticeable at first, but then when Pumpkin did see it, it felt as if the Wood was subject to massive movement, the mist being still and the great trees advancing eastward through it.
“Westward,” whispered Pumpkin to himself, “it’s moving before a westerly wind.”
Then, from the direction of the Stone Clearing, he heard a muted call.
“Brother!”
Then, “Over here! Here, Brother, near the Stone.”
Without pausing to try to see or hear anything more. Pumpkin ran back down below, his pawsteps echoing loudly ahead of him, scurried through the tunnels back to Stour and Sturne and told them what he had seen and heard.
“Well, then, the wind of change is coming from the west,” said Stour, “but the air is stillish for now. But only stillish. Now each of these Books must be taken in by a different entrance, just as, I have no doubt, their complementary Stillstones were in decades past. Pray for me.”
He said this last softly and quickly, and the moment he had done so he took up the Book of Earth, without any apparent difficulty, and carried it straight into the nearest of the entrances and went in amongst the labyrinth of roots. As he did so he touched one, which vibrated and whined above him, and set off others, so that there was a whisper of sound and a tremor of movement and one of those sudden shifts within the place in which all the roots seemed to move momentarily at once, with the result that their patterns and forms were changed. In that moment Stour disappeared, any view of him blocked now by the shifting, trembling roots among which he wended his way to the innermost holiest place in moledom.
Time passed, the sounds of movement and moles somewhere above were heard, and Pumpkin and Sturne looked at each other, and the precious Books they now guarded, with concern.
“He will come back, won’t he, Sturne?” said Pumpkin.
Not being a mole to mouth platitudes, Sturne said nothing, but pursed his mouth and frowned, and stared stolidly at the texts, and then uneasily upwards towards where the Newborns went back and forth, making their preparations for Longest Night.
Then, just as they were beginning to think that they had seen the last of Stour, he reappeared, but not at the entrance by which he had entered. His snout poked out from another portal; he eyed them and said, “Here! Help me! Phew!”
They went to him, supported him, and pulled him clear of the roots.
“Better get on. It’s the turn of the Book of Suffering. Ah yes...”
He went to the Books, took another up rather too quickly, staggered back off balance and nearly went flying.
“Master!” said Sturne.
“Master of nothing!” declared Stour. “Not even myself. This is going to be a long day into Longest Night!” Then, puffing and panting with the Book, he went back to the entrance by which he had come out and went in among the roots again, and was gone as mysteriously as before.
But this time for longer, and he emerged, again at a different entrance, very tired, and looking as if he had suffered a rough passage to and from the base of the Stone. In his absence Pumpkin had gone off and found some food, and this they persuaded the Master Stour to take. He was lost in his own thoughts as he ate it, muttering unintelligibly to himself, staring round in a frowny way at the Books occasionally, and then towards the dark portal into the Chamber of Dark Sound.
“Scribed a journal,” he said suddenly. “Left something for you, Sturne, so you will know what it was like in here all that time alone. Not good for a mole. Needed all the strength I had, and have none left. Good that I knew you were there, for you are a worthy mole, and will be my successor. None worthier. Go and find my journal when you are ready, it will be the making of you. It’s safe in the Chamber of Dark Sound. Now...”
Then the old Master Librarian was up once more, and lifting the Book of Fighting, with which Sturne had had great difficulty when he had gone to collect it. But Stour took it up as if it were light as a feather, and tottery though he was, made his way without difficulty to another entrance, for another journey into the Chamber of Roots.
So the day passed on, and when they checked up above as they sometimes did they saw that the day was still cold, the mist remained thick and was still swirling its slow way westward through the High Wood and beyond.
By the time the ante-chamber began to darken towards dusk, and Sturne to fret that he must depart for the surface lest the Newborns miss him, and his secret support of the traditional followers of the Stone be discovered, the Master Stour had succeeded in transporting only five of the six Books to their final place with the Stillstones beyond the Chamber of Roots.
Of what he had seen or experienced there he had said not a single word, but both moles had noticed that when he had emerged after taking in the fifth Book, the Book of Healing, he was very tired and slow, and barely able to talk at all. A mood of resignation, even lethargy, had come over him, and despite prompting from Sturne, now so anxious to assume his duties on the surface, Stour only shook his head, and kept his snout low, unwilling even to look at the Book of Light, which was his final task.
“Master,” whispered Pumpkin, going close to him, “Keeper Sturne wi
ll have to go soon and that’ll only leave me here with you and this sort of thing really needs a more important kind of mole than me! If I could fulfil the Keeper’s task by the Stone with all those wretched Newborns I would, I really would, but I’m just Pumpkin and they’d laugh. So you must try and take the Book while he’s here so that when you’ve finished, we can... well, then we can... you see...”
“What then, eh mole?” said Stour, looking up bleakly at Pumpkin.
Pumpkin could only stare and look desperately about the place, for he did not knew “What then”. He felt only fear, and an impending loss that seemed echoed by the bleak look in the Master’s eyes. But he knew he was afraid to be left all alone down here, waiting for the Master to come back again, with the sounds of the Ancient System, and that dark portal beyond which ghostly moles seemed to lurk. Oh dear...
“Keeper Sturne.. whispered Stour, turning painfully to him. “You must go. Library Aide Pumpkin has served me well in the past, and he will serve me well now, despite his timidity and fears. He is a stronger mole than he thinks he is. I could wish for no better mole present here when I decide to take up that Book – which I have no wish at all to take up – and venture for a final time into the Chamber of Roots. Therefore go now, Sturne...”
“Master, I do not wish to leave you.”
“But I wish it, mole, I wish it,” said Stour wearily. “My strength is fading quickly now and I have none left to argue with you, or persuade you. I am sure that your task in the Stone dictates that you go up to the surface, and take part in whatever celebrations of Longest Night the Newborns intend to have, so that you are not missed. Leave us, mole. We are protected by the Stone. Leave us now.”
Pumpkin, discreet and tactful mole that he was, moved a little way off so that Sturne and Stour, who had worked together so many moleyears, might say a few words of Longest Night together, and perhaps words of farewell too, for though none of them had said as much, the truth was that Sturne and Pumpkin felt it possible, as perhaps Stour did as well, that he would not return from the Chamber of Roots once he entered it again with the sixth Book.
The two moles touched paws; Stour smiled, Sturne looked most troubled, and then he turned away, patted poor Pumpkin briefly on the shoulder and was gone down the tunnel by which they had entered, his pawsteps fading away. Immediately he had left, a sense of relief seemed to come to Stour, who signalled Pumpkin over to him.
“The Keeper has served me faithfully, just as you have,” he said. “Yet I sometimes feel I failed him. He is not a mole who ever smiled easily, nor seemed to know the meaning of happiness.”
“No, Master,” said Pumpkin with feeling.
“See to it, will you. Pumpkin? When I am long gone, and the Book of Silence is come to ground, and all this business is sorted out...” here he waved a paw about as if to indicate the Newborns, the lost Book and the crisis in moledom all in one go... “as it will be I am sure, if you moles have courage and keep your snouts pointed in the right direction – show Keeper Sturne what happiness is. Will you do that for me?”
“I’ll try. Master. I had thought of it already.”
“Of course you had. Pumpkin, I didn’t really need to mention it. But... well, I’m nervous, you know. I don’t know what I’m going to find. I... don’t... kn...”
To Pumpkin’s alarm and dismay Stour let out a choking cry, pathetic in its weakness, and tears filled his downcast eyes, and coursed down his dry, wrinkled face.
“Master,” said Pumpkin, not sure whether to put his paws round the old mole or not, and finally deciding that he would. “Master, I don’t know why I feel afraid of so many things when you have done so much no other mole could do. It has been the great honour and privilege of my life to serve you. When I was afraid up there of the Newborns, these moleyears of autumn past, it was your example that gave me courage. If you cry tears now, just as I have, well, it only shows what courage you really have.”
Stour nodded, and his weak paw patted Pumpkin’s flank gratefully, and he sniffled a bit before he eventually said, “I better take the Book now. But I want you to promise me something because it will keep me going, so to speak, to know that you have.”
“If I can do it I will, Master Librarian,” said Pumpkin.
“Good, good.”
With new-found vigour, of which it was plain there was not much, Stour stanced up and went to the sixth Book. He took it up and said, “Wait for me, mole, will you promise to do that?”
“Is that all. Master?”
“It will keep me alive,” said Stour; “knowing a mole I trust and like is waiting here will bring me back and I want to pray before the Stone one last time. Things to say, things you must do... wait for me!” With that he was gone into the sixth of the seven entrances of the Chamber of Roots. Pumpkin, fearful of the sounds about him, and the sudden muted Newborn chant of celebration coming from the surface above, stanced down as calmly as he could and began to wait.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Pumpkin! Pumpkin! Mole!”
A distant voice woke Pumpkin from the deepest of dreamy sleeps, in which moles had chanted by the Stone, night had gathered and advanced, crowds had collected and then dispersed, and a whole Longest Night had been, and now was almost gone.
“Yes?” called out the library aide nervously into the gloom, trying to orientate himself.
“I need your help...”
The voice was Stour’s and Pumpkin was instantly awake, realizing that Longest Night was almost over and a new dawn was coming over moledom, even if the sky up on the surface was still dark. Now his Master Librarian needed him.
“What can he have been doing for so long?” Pumpkin asked himself, as a diversion from the awful fact that if the Master was where he thought he was then he was still in the Chamber of Roots and needed help getting out.
“Which means I’ll have to go in there myself and give him a paw,” muttered Pumpkin to himself in a miserable way. Aides get all the worst tasks and in a long career this was the worst of all, Pumpkin thought.
He heard a scurrying and heaving, and headed for the nearest portal into the Chamber, which was the seventh, and peering in he called out, “Here I am! Where are you?”
Oh, but he saw Stour at once, and all his fears fled as he saw how old the Master looked now, and how terribly frail; half fallen in his effort to get out from among the confusion of roots, he clutched on to what support he could, his thin fur seeming a strange luminous green, like ancient lichen, in the sub-dawn light that filtered in from above.
“Master!” Pumpkin cried out in horror, rushing in amongst the roots without a further thought for himself
“Almost gone,” muttered Stour grumpily, reaching out a shaking paw to Pumpkin, “almost lost my strength. Help me out of here, mole, for I’ve completed my task and can do no more. The six Books are safe, all safe now...”
“Master, Master Stour!” cried Pumpkin in dismay, for Stour was sobbing, a raspy, dry kind of sob as of a mole who has no tears left. It might have been with relief.
Together the two moles escaped the last few paces from the Chamber of Roots and Stour said, “It was knowing you were there, Pumpkin, knowing you would wait and not desert me or be afraid. That’s what kept me going.”
“I was asleep, Master,” said Pumpkin honestly, “and Longest Night is almost over. As for being afraid, well I was, you see, and I am. This place makes me very much afraid.”
“Yet you stayed.”
“I wouldn’t leave you, Master Librarian, never. Never will.”
“But I think I must leave you now, mole,” said Stour gently. “Help me to the surface and to the Stone. Help me this final time. But something I forgot to say. Should have told Sturne... My journal in... in...”
“In the Chamber of Dark Sound,” said Pumpkin. “I was here when you told him.”
“Yes, yes. For Whillan, there’s a text for him with it. To tell him what his mother said. To tell him...”
“You mean Privet?” br />
“No, mole, I mean his mother. Tell Sturne to give it him unkenned. It is for his eyes only.”
“I will. Master.”
“Now, we must go to the surface.”
“I better see if there are any Newborns about.”
“There’s nomole about that will hurt us,” said Stour with complete certainty. “There’s just the Stone waiting, as it waits for all of us. Now, I think I can manage this last bit by myself... I certainly want to try... I... yes, yes, that’s right... that’s right...”
And with only an occasional paw from Pumpkin to keep him steady, Stour climbed the last short distance out of the tunnel and up into the High Wood, and from there across the surface to the Stone Clearing.
“Now...” he said, and he turned to Pumpkin with a look of relief and joy: “I was so afraid I would not see the Stone again. So afraid...” He sobbed a little once more, shook his head, grinned in a strange rueful way, reached out a paw and patted Pumpkin’s and with a firm step went towards the Stone.
“Here I found my faith and my destiny,” he said. “Here I saw the path I must take. Here, this coming dawn, I shall know the seasons have turned again and that my task is done. Here my faith has found its resolution and others will lead the followers on.”
“Shall I try to find Sturne?” said Pumpkin, suddenly nervous as he realized the drift Stour’s words were taking.
“He’s near enough, Pumpkin, and anyway it’s you I need, you I must talk to. Not that words mean much now. You’ll know what to do.” He settled on the surface before the Stone.
“Me?” said poor Pumpkin uneasily.
“When the Book of Silence comes, you’ll know how it should be served.”
“But Master, you’re not... there isn’t...”
Stour smiled, suddenly much weaker: “I am, and there will be a Book of Silence. It is coming, Pumpkin, or trying to come, and the circle of Books beneath the Stone awaits its coming. Privet, she will find where the Book is, she will bring it back to Duncton Wood. But you, Pumpkin —”