Rooster saw the moles she had come across, and Rooster laughed.
“Friends!” he said. Even as he said it, he went forward and touched one of the moles with his big right paw, and nodded at the other, and the three of them moved off among the scree as youngsters will who wish to be free of the adult world to explore and journey into those discoveries of place and community which are such moles’ challenge and delight.
Yet moved as she was, Samphire watched with a grave concern tinged with horror. For though the two moles that Rooster had made companions of were youngsters like himself, born no doubt at much the same time, they were anything but normal moles and by going with them as he now did it was as if she were watching him take a turning into alienation and abnormality for life; as if, in fact, her son Rooster had declared that he too was abnormal and deformed, he too would always be an outcast.
What was it that Samphire saw first? First, and only slightly the less strange, was the bigger of the two, a mole already larger than Rooster, a hulking thing, its reddish fur patchy and in places so thin that pink-grey bald areas mottled its body. Its protuberant eyes were milky-white and blind, and its great head hung down beneath hunched shoulders. Its reactions seemed so slow and strange that Samphire rightly guessed the mole was stone-deaf; she could not know that it was dumb as well.
“It’. Such might well have been its name, so alien did it seem to her. But the mole was male. Even as she watched, Rooster put his left paw to this seemingly helpless mole’s flank and spoke. The lumbering male raised its slow head, stared out of its blind eyes, and reached out to touch Rooster’s face and snout with surprising gentleness. Its paws at least were good strong things, their talons shining black, all well-formed. So the two moles greeted one another, and life, of a kind, came to the blind mole.
This brief, touching, and to Samphire, tragic proceeding was watched by the second of the moles, a female. That much at least could be said for her. For the rest … Samphire stared in horror despite herself, for she had never seen such a thing, such a mole, in all her life, or imagined it, though from time to time she had heard that such things had been born and quickly destroyed, for they have little hope of survival into adulthood.
She was thin and small, and most strangely shaped, more like rat or mouse than mole, her snout barely formed, her paws extenuated and weak. And she was pink-white.
“Albino,” whispered Samphire to herself.
Indeed she was, and with it went pale white talons, and such snout as she had was pink-white. But her fur was more yellow than white.
“But her eyes …” whispered Samphire again, for she knew enough to know that albinos’ eyes are pale and the fur about them white. Yet her eyes were shining black, alert, amused, sharp, intelligent. But that was not all, nor what made the two of them so compelling to watch. No, it was that those intelligent black eyes, so alive, so aware, seemed all the time upon the hulking male, and filled with care, concern and … adoration. An alien pair, perhaps, but the more Samphire stared and got used to them in those moments, the more she thought they were a striking pair as well.
Now, as Rooster made his easy hello to the big male, the albino’s eyes filled with pleasure too. Clearly she liked mole who liked her companion and made contact with him. Then, after reaching out and touching the male briefly, she darted away from him, moved around Rooster’s flank and fixed a stare on Samphire.
“Your mother?” she said.
Rooster looked round with some embarrassment and grunted a reluctant acknowledgement, as if he wished his mother were not there.
Youth! That much, at least, was normal here, thought Samphire.
“Ha!” said the strange female in a disconcerting way, and then, “Ha!” again. Her voice was softer than her look, and the sound she made seemed to express the sense of ‘Ah, now I know, now I see, so that’s the mole who came from the Reapside; I see!”
With that the three moles turned their attention to each other and moved off among the boulders in a tight, exclusive group, affirming Samphire’s sense of a day or two before that freedom of a kind was coming back to her as Rooster began to make his own life.
But, when the youngsters were gone, and she looked across the grim undulations of the Charnel towards the rising spray of the Reap, and beyond to the Reapside, which that day was bathed in soft spring sunshine, and then back up at the cliffs that towered above her, she had pause to ask herself, “Freedom for what?”
Rooster’s venture that day with the two Charnel youngsters began a pattern that was to recur day after day, as April grew warmer and May approached. In time the two youngsters grew used to Samphire, and she to them, and though they were lost in their own strange world of silence and whispers, touches and disappearances among the rocks and tunnels, they became part of her new world, and expanded it.
Since Rooster had become morose and unforthcoming in his mother’s presence, Samphire only found out their names when she asked the albino directly, having found her alone one day.
“Me, I’m Glee,” said the albino.
“And your friend?” said Samphire.
Glee’s eyes grew both serious and warm. “He’s Humlock,” she said, unwonted shyness creeping into her look.
Samphire wished suddenly, and irrelevantly, that she had given birth to a daughter just once. Now she knew she never would. She stayed silent. Glee’s bright-dark eyes studied her, and seemed finally to trust her.
“Humlock and Glee,” she said with a lilt to her voice, almost as if it were a snatch of a familiar song: “Humlock and Glee! I protect him and he protects me!”
Samphire smiled and Glee grinned back and giggled, and suddenly all her abnormality seemed gone, and it seemed to Samphire that she had touched for a moment those past days so long ago in Chieveley Dale, before Ratcher came, when she had siblings and parents and friends, and the sun shone, and the little river through their vale was gentle, and all was good.
Then a cloud went across the sun that seemed to shine from Glee’s black eyes and she said, “He can’t hear, or speak, or see, but I know he thinks. He thinks a lot. My mother and his mother don’t believe he does, but I know he does. Rooster knows it too. One day me and Rooster will find something useful that Humlock can do better than any other mole. We will!”
Little Glee’s pale pink face had aged, there was a defiant frown between her eyes, and she stared at Samphire as if daring her to say different.
Samphire said judiciously, “I’d like to meet your mother. Is she the one who comes sometimes to the shadows in the lower slopes?”
Glee nodded. “She’s afraid of you, and doesn’t want a mole like you to see her. She’s a goitre.”
Samphire’s gaze remained steady, though she knew well enough the horror of what a goitre was. Those had been goitres she had seen in the shadows when she had first crossed the Charnel to make her tunnels up here on the slopes. Goitres died a terrible death — breathless, bloated though starving, ulcerated.
“But she wasn’t always a goitre. She told me to come and look at you because that’s what she was like once. Will you become a goitre?”
“Tell her I would like to meet her. Will you tell her that?”
“She won’t come.”
“I let Rooster go with you,” said Samphire with sudden purpose in her voice, “so you bring your mother to see me!”
“That’s fair,” said Glee after a moment’s thought. “She might come if Humlock’s mother Sedum comes. She’s dying to see you. She’s probably the one you saw downslope.”
“Bring them both then,” said Samphire firmly. Glee was a mole who seemed to appreciate strong moles.
“Will do,” said Glee, “but you’ll regret it. My mother’s all right but Humlock’s, well … she can only talk of one thing: Midsummer.”
Suddenly Glee’s eyes were cold, clear, and purposeful.
“Midsummer, my dear?” said Samphire, fearful that she knew what Glee meant.
“When Humlock’s got to go t
o ‘peace’,” said Glee as if repeating an oft-heard turn of phrase she did not like. “In other words, die in the Reap with the other youngsters judged to be too … abnormal. Get it?”
“Umm …” began Samphire, unable to think what to say.
“Well, I won’t let them. Not then, not ever. There’s nothing really wrong with Humlock, not where it matters, not in his head. And he’s very brave, because he’s clever enough to know what his mother thinks must be and he’s not giving up like some do. We’re all working on it.”
“All?”
Glee grinned. “Humlock and Glee and Rooster, though I don’t think Rooster knows yet.” She giggled again, looked sharply at Samphire, and said, “Course, he’s odder than either of us two. By comparison with him we’re positively normal.”
“Really?” said Samphire.
“Without a shadow of a doubt,” said Glee very firmly indeed.
Privet might have continued rehearsing Rooster’s story as she then knew it in her mind but the sudden unmistakable sound of approaching mole broke through her reverie, and brought her back to the present with a jolt.
Night had gone, cold dawn had come, the mist was clear, and somewhere nearby were moles, galumphing heavy moles, alien moles. She quickly reached out to touch Hamble awake, and then went over to her father, whose restless heavy breathing seemed suddenly dangerously loud.
“Wh … what?” he began, before Privet and Hamble shushed him.
All three started silently forward to the edge of the little place that Sward had insisted they made their night’s temporary burrow, and Privet was grateful for his prudence. In the dawn light on the dewy path beneath them, along the bank of the stream, there passed by four great dark moles, ugly of snout, cruel of talon, unpleasant of mien. One of them, the second in line, was considerably older than the rest, his fur partly grizzled grey. But where the pale dawn sun caught it, it had a reddish tinge.
Privet stared in horror and alarm, even as Hamble’s paw tightened on her shoulder and pressed her lower to the ground. Yet even with the soil and grass pressed into her mouth and snout she still managed to see the moles pass by and out of sight, set it seemed on a murderous and malevolent mission.
But it was that reddish fur, that most cruel and brutal of profiles, that aura of ruthless power about the older mole that had her heart thumping in her chest, and beads of sweat pricking at her neck.
“Was that …?” she began, when they had gone.
“It looked like the mole they described as …’ continued Hamble.
“Red Ratcher,” said Sward grimly, “and heading for Chieveley Dale.”
“What are we going to do?” said Privet.
“Follow them,” said Sward, “it’s the best way not to get caught!”
“Follow them!” gasped poor Privet.
Hamble chuckled and buffeted her rump towards the path below. “If it’s Rooster you want to meet this is likely to be the quickest way!” he said, taking the lead for the first time in their long journey, as the three of them set off in discreet pursuit.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“At least the mist has cleared!” said Privet, as much to take her mind off the frightening notion of tracking the four huge grikes who had just passed by, as to express her relief that the day was a little brighter than the previous ones.
“It hasn’t cleared, my love, it’s just that we’re not so high up now,” said Sward, pointing a talon back up to the Tops from which they had come the evening before, where the mists still swirled. Privet shivered, for the dawn was cold, and she felt stiff and aching from the dark hours of the night and she wished she might rest some more … Then there was a prod in her rump from her father behind, to tell her to follow on after Hamble, who had already cautiously set off after Red Ratcher and his moles.
Although such tracking of other moles was not within Privet’s previous bookish experience, even she could follow the fresh and heavy pawprints that the four moles had made before them in the soft ground along the stream’s bank.
Even more ominously, she could scent their rank smell hanging in the air, especially where the pine trees of the forest came down to the rushing water’s edge, and the air was trapped and still. It somehow made more real, and almost too close for comfort, the nature of the dangers that had confronted Rooster and Samphire when they left the Charnel, as Turrell had told the story.
But she could not think of that now, as they trekked on downslope, the pines growing ever thicker, and the vegetation along the stream’s banks ever more lush the further they went down. The tracks, and the evidence of freshly-broken ferns and bracken, suggested that the grikes were either in a hurry, or did not care if others saw where they went — or both.
“If you ask me they’re hurrying like this because they’re meeting other moles,” whispered Sward during an enforced halt, when Hamble had thought he heard voices ahead and had gone on to check. The path had veered a little from the stream, whose muted babble was off to their right, and they had stanced down in the russet shadows of pine-tree roots.
Hamble reappeared, his fur untidy with dry pine-needles, his eyes excited and resolute.
“I think we’re near to Chieveley Dale,” he said, “for the forest stops ahead and opens out on to a secluded vale just like the descriptions we’ve been given. The Ratcher moles, if that’s who they are, have gone ahead into the open, but not very far. If you follow me we can observe them and decide what to do next. But the going’s rough, because there’s no way we’re staying on this path. Others might be coming down it …”
He had barely spoken these words before the unmistakable sound of more large and lumbering grikes came to them from the way they had come, and with a calm gesture to remain as silent as they could, Hamble led the other two off the path and out of sight.
The way took them through musty mounds of pine-needles, which pricked at Privet’s snout, and past whipping branches which flew at them from all directions, until the sky lightened ahead and they found themselves on the forest edge, looking down at hummocky Chieveley Dale, which had been their objective for so long.
Not far downslope, their voices but not their words audible, were now not only the four moles they had been following, but several more who must have been there already. Then, with a crash through the undergrowth along the path to their right flank, five more Ratcher moles appeared out of the forest, and went forward to join the others. They were greeted with rough salutes and boisterous buffetings at each other before the older one Privet and the others had seen earlier raised a massive gnarled paw and called them to silence. A hush fell on the grikes and they turned to face the older mole, as Sward whispered, That’s Red Ratcher himself all right. No other mole could hold such sway over such a mob of moles as those.”
Ratcher’s words remained frustratingly indistinct, and the ground beyond the forest was too open for them to risk trying to cross it to find a better vantage point; but such was the nature of the meeting, and so frequently did Red Ratcher point downslope towards the centre of Chieveley Dale as he spoke, that the grikes’ intention became all too clear.
They’re planning an assault,” said Hamble, “and there’s nothing we can do about it, nor any warning we can give. We can only watch.”
“But if the Chieveley Dale moles are below ground perhaps we could find a way of reaching them,” said Privet, her natural fear giving way to concern for the moles who could not see this mounting threat, and a desire to help them.
Hamble turned to her and said, “None of us knows this ground and if we started wandering round now looking for the way into the Chieveley Dale system, the Ratcher moles would pick us up in no time at all. And the grikes don’t take prisoners.”
“I’ll warrant that if the Chieveley Dale tunnels are as well constructed as we’ve been told,” said Sward, “then the moles inside them will already know that the Ratcher moles are here. The best we can do is wait and see if we might be of help to any survivors or refugees later. The
only advantage we have is that our presence is not known, and that fact may yet prove useful.”
They watched for some time more, until at last Red Ratcher led most of the moles off downslope to begin whatever operation the three Crowden moles were so reluctantly witnessing. But he left several behind, who quickly dispersed themselves across the slopes of the Dale.
“They must be posted to watch for survivors, like us,” whispered Hamble, “so we may be doing the right thing staying here.”
“We could disperse a little as they have,” said Privet, surprised at her own calmness.
There was a respectful twinkle in Hamble’s eyes towards his friend. “Just what I was thinking,” he said, “so if you’re both willing we’ll spread out a bit. You stay here, Privet, I’ll go down nearer the stream and main path into the Dale, and you, Sward, go further along the edge of the wood — and don’t wander off too far!”
He pointed to a dead pine that leaned out from living trees a little behind them and said, “Let that be the point where we all meet again, whatever happens. All right?”
Sward grinned, his eyes excited. “It’s like old times, when I was young and wandering and dodging grike patrols. They never caught me then, and they won’t now. Just remember, you two youngsters, surprise is on our side so they’ll take time to work out how to respond to us. But if they see you and give chase, keep your heads and keep changing direction until you get back to base, which is here with you, Privet. In this situation a few always have an advantage over many.”
With a final grin at Privet he went off along the edge of the wood and out of sight, and shortly afterwards Hamble went off downslope to the stream, and Privet found herself utterly alone, but for the two or three grikes in the Dale below, whose skulking rough backs she could just see.
She looked behind into the shadows of the wood, and resolved that if mole saw her she would burrow under the cover of the pine-needles and stay very still indeed. But with all in view before her, and the safety of the trees behind, she felt surprisingly secure.