“Not too far!” responded poor Pumpkin, wondering how much longer he could keep them going.
“You can do it, every one of you!” cried out Elynor, who like Pumpkin sensed the group was close to giving up, or at least going to ground until it had recovered sufficient strength to continue.
“Yes!” said bold young Cluniac. “Come on, all —”
But he did not quite finish before a cry of alarm from one of the other youngsters brought the party to a sudden halt.
“Look!” warned the mole, pointing ahead of them through the grey light to where two confident-looking Newborn guardmoles stanced solidly in their way.
Pumpkin and Elynor went boldly forward without a moment’s hesitation, while Cluniac instinctively marshalled the others behind them in some kind of defensive position.
“And where are you going?” one of the guardmoles demanded.
“To the Stone!” said Pumpkin as fiercely as he could – and it was fierce, because he had not come so far to be turned back at the last moment.
“You’re not going further,” said the other guardmole, raising his voice against the roaring of the Wood.
“Oh really!” said Elynor, as angry as Pumpkin, but secretly as alarmed.
“That’s right,” said the first guardmole, his eyes dark and ruthless in the way Newborns manage so well. It was the ruthlessness a mole has when he thinks he is in the right. Like the other he came forward, and Pumpkin could sense his party, even Elynor, begin to falter. It would need little more now to undermine their resolve and he knew there was not much he could do or say. Indeed, a wave of tiredness and despair was coming over him as he felt even himself weakening before the Newborns’ assurance. So, they must have realized some moles had fled, and sent out patrols, just as he had feared. He heard whispering behind him as some of the older ones asked what was apaw, and others tried to explain.
But then the second of the guards, perhaps less experienced and not quite seeing that the moles were rapidly weakening, said in what he hoped was a commanding way, “The Stone does not wish you to go further! Return downslope to the safety of your burrows.”
“The Stone does not wish?” cried out one of the oldest moles there, quivering with rage. “And whatmole are you to judge what the Stone may wish or not, eh? You tell me that!”
“Aye,” chorused several more, pressing forward until they all crowded round Pumpkin and Elynor.
“A young whipper-snapper like you telling us what the Stone thinks!” continued the redoubtable mole. “Get out of my way or grey though my fur is I’ll push you out of the way. Nomole tells us where to worship, and we in Duncton are fed up with all you so-called Newborns.”
“Or when to worship, come to that!” shouted another.
“Aye, well said! Clear off you two!”
“Go on, get lost!”
And as the little group found its courage and its voice once more. Pumpkin raised his front paws and most boldly pushed the Newborns out of the way. If there was a moment in that night when Pumpkin sensed that the Duncton spirit was beginning to rise from the darkness into which the Newborns had cast it down, that was it.
“There’ll be more guards here soon,” said the first of the Newborns, grudgingly retreating to let the group past.
“They’re coming already,” said the second with evident satisfaction.
“Go on, keep on moving!” urged Cluniac suddenly from the rear. There was something in his voice that made Pumpkin steal a glance back downslope. There, to his horror, he saw three Newborn guards coming rapidly towards them, and he knew that their chances of escape to freedom were diminishing by the moment. And yet, the Stone Clearing was not so far upslope now if they could only just...
“Keep on going!” commanded Pumpkin, “and keep together. Look neither to the right nor left, and ignore the Newborns. Go... for the Stone is with us, and will guide us and see us safeguarded!” Such was the certainty and faith in his voice that everymole there was carried on rapidly, upward and forwards among the great trees of the High Wood.
“I’m going to the rear to be with Cluniac,” Pumpkin whispered to Elynor, “so you must keep them together, and moving.” He dropped back, saw that the Newborns were not far behind now, fell in with Cluniac and together the two brave moles pushed and shoved the party from behind, knowing if they once stopped it would be the end.
The Newborns lost no time in closing in on the hurrying group, reaching Pumpkin and Cluniac first and telling them to halt. One or two went so far as to reach out a restraining paw to the moles, but none dared yet physically stop them. As they entered among the great trees of the High Wood, the light of dawn advanced to reveal a troubled, windswept scene, and a path littered with broken twigs and branches, and patches of sleety snow. A strange, nearly silent tussle developed between the two groups; the followers hurried on, panic in their breasts but anger and faith in their hearts, while the Newborns pressed ever closer, trying to detach first one mole, then another, from the group.
“Keep close!” urged the more able moles, “look ahead! Don’t answer them...”
“It will be all the better for you if you stop now,” said one Newborn, his voice gentler than before.
“Where do you think you’ll get to anyway?” asked another belligerently, shoving at Elynor.
Ignoring him, and pressing even closer to her friends, she said, “The Stone’s getting nearer, can’t you feel it?”
She spoke almost as if they were static, holding off the forces of evil, while the Stone was rushing to their rescue, and there was a sense in which this was indeed true, and is always true. The Stone and its Silence wait but for a mole to open his heart, and then its grace comes rushing in with the power of flood-water through a gap in a river-bank that has held fast too long.
Then, only moments later, there was a lightening amongst the trees ahead which signalled the Stone Clearing itself where the trees encircle the Stone at, as one scribemole has aptly put it, “a respectful distance”.
There was only one problem – a Newborn, and a large one, stanced athwart their path, his paws raised and his talons extended. For a terrible moment Pumpkin thought it was Brother Barre himself, but as they approached he saw it was not. Even so, with Newborns at their flanks and this extra one ahead their plight had worsened once again.
But the party had gained a volition of its own and ancient though some of its members were they continued their flight straight at the mole; not aggressively so much as inevitably, as if there was nowhere else for them to go and they would certainly not be stopping. Not that Pumpkin now had any great expectation of this heroic charge, for though he had plenty of faith he could not see how even the Stone, in its infinite wisdom, could find any escape for them here. They would reach the Stone Clearing, and then what? Be scattered on through the High Wood to be chased, harried and assaulted by the Newborns? Or simply put their rumps to the Stone and make a last fight of it as others had in past times, usually at the cost of their lives. No, Pumpkin could not see...
Except, as they neared the solitary mole, Pumpkin did see something, or rather somemole. There, off the path, obscured by roots and the wind-pulled stalks of dog’s mercury, was the very last mole he expected to see: Sturne. His expression seemed one of entreaty, or possibly warning. For a moment Pumpkin faltered, thinking that Sturne had taken this terrible risk of discovery because there was an ambush ahead of which he had forewarning.
But then Sturne mouthed something and waved his paws about urgently, which Pumpkin interpreted as meaning, “Whatever you do, don’t stop. Go on! The Stone will provide!” Then he retreated into the undergrowth, and was gone.
“Humph!” thought Pumpkin, “that promise has been offered us all night.”
But there was nothing more for it but to be bold and face it out, and as the mole ahead stanced his ground, and the party began to slow. Pumpkin once more urged them on, raising his paws and shouting with a certain mild ferocity – which was the most fearsome he cou
ld be. The others followed him, and the mole ahead lost his resolution and moved to one side.
As they burst into the Clearing the Stone at least was easy to make out, since it seemed to have gathered to itself such light as there was, and the great tree behind it swayed and shook in an intimidating, powerful way.
“To the Stone!” cried Pumpkin, pausing to shepherd his charges past him. It was only then, as he turned to follow them, that he was able to take in the disturbing scene which their sudden arrival had interrupted.
There were four Newborns already in the Clearing which, with the one they had passed on the path, and the five who had been pursuing them, made ten in all. All strong, all young, all determined, and all, presumably, trained in the arts of intimidation and fighting, not to mention killing.
Even as Pumpkin surveyed the grim scene, other Newborns arrived, among them Brother Inquisitor Fetter himself, and a furious-looking Barre, while already at the Stone was a huddle of five or six moles, all tired and abject, self-evidently a few followers who lived in isolation; Elynor’s warnings of the need to escape that night must have reached them, it seemed.
Their story was not hard to guess. The Newborns had intercepted them, found out about the “escape” and brought them on up here to await the arrival of the others. It seemed certain too that a Newborn or two had gone down to Barrow Vale to report this blasphemy – as no doubt it would be perceived – and even now reinforcements would be on the way. All for naught then! And yet there had been that cryptic look on Sturne’s face; had it been a warning after all?
“Oh dear!” thought Pumpkin as he joined his friends and felt the fight going out of them as the Newborns now massed opposite them in the Clearing. “Oh dear!”
To fight or not to fight? That was the unpleasant question Pumpkin pondered as his new friends gathered pathetically about him and he realized that though their numbers were greater for the moment, they would not be so for long, and they stood little chance of success. Even if fighting was their way, which it was not, what injuries would it mean? What deaths?
Yet how affecting were the mute pleas of the old moles who now reached out to him! They had given of their last strength this night in their brave trek to the Stone through savage blizzard winds, not to harm others but simply to protect their right to live and worship as they wished. They had wanted to march to freedom and all they had found was this grim dawn of failure and despair.
If it had been just a little before that Pumpkin had first sensed Duncton’s spirit rising to its own defence, it was only now that he felt something more: there were other followers out and about that night, at that very moment, all across moledom, and they were urging Pumpkin and his friends to have courage, and faith, and purpose.
“Yes!” said Pumpkin to himself, looking at the moles who now clustered about Elynor, Cluniac and himself so pitifully as the Newborns began a slow advance, “yes, I am certain of it. We are not alone tonight.”
Then he cried aloud his private thoughts: “We are not alone, moles, others stance with us, here and now. Aye, my good friends, my fellow followers, all across moledom this night are those who hear our call for help, and stance now with us, and touch the Stone with paw, with faith, with hope and add their courage to our own, who are beset and endangered by evil!”
One or two of the Newborns laughed at these words, but the followers with Pumpkin did not. There was something new in the library aide’s voice, something so potent that many of them instinctively looked round and up at the Stone as if in some way it might confirm his words. They were not disappointed. It rose into the dawning light, and against the strange racing sky, and seemed to express the very spirit of what he said. Some of them touched it, others reached their paws to him, and all found their strength and faith renewed, as he himself seemed to have been renewed.
They could not know that even as these surges of confidence came to him, so too did doubts, and he groaned silently to himself, “But Stone, I’m only a library aide, I really don’t know what to do...”
A gust of wind shook the trees around them, and drove down into the Clearing scattered leaves and snow on the ground that separated the followers round the Stone from the Newborns.
Brothers, and Brother Barre in particular!” Pumpkin found himself crying out boldly, though from where he found the words he had no idea, “these other moles are harmless. Take me, for I am the reprobate and sinner here. Take me and let the others go!”
Brave Pumpkin – no! Heroic Pumpkin! – now advanced out from the Stone to face the Newborns alone. How thin his old body seemed in that winter dawn, how weak his paws, how grey and patchy his fur.
He did not see that behind him Cluniac and Elynor had gathered to their flanks the only two or three other moles there capable of fighting, and were about to rush out to his side. Nor did he see what the Newborns saw, that the light about the Stone grew brighter, and the Stone itself appeared ever more formidable, as if to say, “These good moles are in my care and sanctuary now, touch them at your peril!”
Many of the Newborns, including Fetter himself, seemed aware of this strange threat in the air about the Stone, but Brother Inquisitor Barre, never a sensitive mole, was not. He saw only a puny mole who had escaped him once, and once was too much – now he had a chance to make amends by killing him.
At Barre’s flanks were the two moles who had been with him earlier down in the Marsh End, and whose paws had thrust Pumpkin into the water to drown. Their fears seemed to have gone and, encouraged no doubt by the presence of a growing number of Newborns behind them, they advanced with Barre towards Pumpkin.
All Barre saw now was an old mole coming towards him, and he sensed that with a single talon-thrust into his face he could destroy completely the little resistance these blaspheming Duncton moles were about to put up. His instructions had been to kill the mole Pumpkin, and now he would do so. If killing one would make the rest biddable he would do it and anyway... Barre smiled grimly. It had long since been decided that not one of these pathetic, blaspheming followers was going to survive the night. Not one. How fitting that the library aide would be the first; but all made themselves guilty by simply being there.
As Barre began to raise his right paw to deliver a killing thrust Pumpkin’s fear went quite away, and was replaced by regret. For though he might have seen ruthless determination in Barre himself, he saw in the eyes of the Newborns beyond him genuine awe at the sight of the Stone.
“If only I was a fighter!” was Pumpkin’s final regretful thought as he raised his own right paw in peace and said the prayer that seemed to suit the moment best, the prayer of peaceful moles.
“Stone, deliver us from evil! Help us in our hour of darkness. Bring us out of the night of this evil spirit into the dawning light of thy good day!”
“Aye,” whispered those he had sought to protect, “Stone deliver us now and in the moment of our darkness.”
In that moment of darkness two of the followers behind Pumpkin found their destiny. They were the old pair whom Elynor had persuaded to escape with them; they had seemed hardly aware of themselves, let alone of the events around them. Yet now, led by the ancient and doddering male, the two of them broke forth from the group, muttering and shaking their heads.
“No,” said the male almost gently, certainly sorrowfully, “you must not strike the mole who leads us. Cannot you see he means you no harm? Can you not sense the Stone’s Light and Silence all about us? Good mole...”
The raised paw of Barre came crashing down out of the night and struck the old mole in the face. As Barre sought to withdraw his talons and blood began to flow upon the Clearing’s floor one of the guardmoles next to Barre struck a second blow into the mole.
“No!” cried Pumpkin, but faintly, for this was bloody murder before his eyes; this was the worst thing he had ever seen. “You cannot; you must not!”
“Oh, yes we can!” cried Barre, his rage risen, his two friends excited, their three bodies moving together like one evi
l, killing thing as sleet and leaves and blood seemed to swirl about them.
Even as the female reached her dying mate, but before she had time to reach out to him and tend him, and show she was at his flank, Barre and his creatures struck her down too. Their talons thrust sickeningly into her, the scene made more dreadful still by their killing grunts and cries of pleasure at the evil that they did.
But worse followed, even as behind them Fetter cried out to them to stop. Pumpkin raised a paw in protest at their vileness, and somemole among those followers by the Stone screamed out in shame and pity for all who witnessed this depravity.
For Barre, brutalized by power and the cruelty of his life, carried forward by his own violence, driven now by the rage that Pumpkin’s escape had engendered, reached down his great paws to the limp form of the female, lying dead across her dying mate, and raised it up and cried in a voice more terrible than any of those present had ever heard, “For thee, great Stone, we make this just sacrifice.”
But there was worse yet, for thinking that Fetter and the others must approve these evil and obscene acts, and no doubt believing them to be the prelude to the massacre of the secret followers the guardmoles had anticipated since their insubordination on Longest Night, one of Barre’s minions reached down and took up the body of the male. It moved; it bled; it was alive.
“And this as well, Stone, this sacrifice for thee!”
And then he dropped the body, raised his bloodied paws, and he and his friend taloned death finally into that weak, frail, brave mole; and they laughed.
The silence that followed was a void as deep as time, and in it rose and melded, swirled and scattered, a thousand, a hundred thousand evil things. It was a void before which all in the Stone Clearing now faltered, slipping and sliding down towards it as the darkness of revenge and hatred, loathing and abhorrence began to overtake their minds. Yet in the midst of all of that, as followers and Newborns teetered on the brink to which an evil act had brought them, one alone stanced fast.