The Stone Mole was silent a long time, and then he stirred and said in a rasping voice filled with pain, “Grant that my thirst is satisfied, grant it to me, father.”
The watcher heard the female reply, “Aye, mole, thy thirst shall be satisfied but only by the Word...” Her voice faded as the air was suddenly heavier still and then with a cracking roar the skies opened up with a thundering downpour of rain.
In the first moments of its beginning the watcher turned back underground knowing he must go to the Castern Chambers and tell Squeezebelly what he had seen. The deluge was so great that when he reached the tunnels he was deafened by the rain above, and as he ran on he saw that in places the walls were darkening with wet and great drips were coming down. On he went, and quicker, as Squeezebelly had trained him to, for hanging there by the Stone his system loved was the Stone Mole, and he needed aid.
On and on he went, the sound of his racing paws matching the drumming of the deluge coming from above.
But even as the watcher ran frantically on, the image of the hanging Stone Mole before him all the time, the rain brought havoc into the Castern Chambers, and the worst fears of Holm came true.
Holm had felt the air grow heavier as the afternoon wore on, and again and again had urged Squeezebelly to get them out. The great mole had resisted that, but agreed to evacuate his moles from the deep moister chambers, though that meant they had become short of space and even more irritable, whilst separating them still further from the elderly moles and pregnant females who stayed on in the small and most distant chamber because it was the driest of them all.
“No, no, no!” Holm said again and again. “Out, out, out!”
Yet when the rain first began there had been no change at all in the water in the chambers – the streams flowed the same, the lakes’ levels were unaltered, and all that got wet were the white-green plants underneath the roof fissures, where water fell from outside.
This seemed to prove Squeezebelly’s point, and the moles stayed where they were, though because of Holm’s insistence none yet returned to the deeper and more comfortable chambers, except for one who volunteered to go down through the tunnels and ensure that the elderly moles and pregnant females were dry and safe.
They were, and the little stream that separated them off was quite unaffected by the rain outside. But then a new noise came, and the chambers were filled with a frightening roaring and raging of approaching sound.
“Sir! Out! All of us!” shouted Holm, and his conviction communicated itself to the others.
“Out, out!” they cried and but for Squeezebelly’s mighty shout and command to keep calm they might have panicked and rushed for the exits. This was not like Beechenhill moles at all, but there was something in the oppressive air, something unsettling and violent, and even Sleekit, as calm and disciplined a mole as could be found, felt it now.
But one thing the roaring did was to make Squeezebelly determined to get Harebell and the others back through to them now, and accordingly he deputed two trusted moles to go down to fetch them, along with Sleekit and Harrow, who wanted to be with Harebell, and Holm as well, since he would stay calmer if he did something.
The distance was not far, but it was downslope and each step they took the roaring seemed to grow louder, and the air, previously quite still, was rushing and almost gale force against them at some tunnel turns.
When they came to the greatest of the chambers, the one at the far side of which, through a short tunnel, the others were hiding, they heard and then saw a new flow of water. It was a rushing, threshing fall into the lake from a fault that had been dry before, and it was plain that the lake was rising and inexorably spreading out and flooding the chamber.
At first they tried to skirt it but this took too long and so they splashed their way across what had formerly been a dry floor. The silently moving water’s edge was a mass of fleeing cockroaches, each scrabbling over others in their efforts to escape, and many already engulfed by water and swimming; and some drowning.
Up the short tunnel they went, the roaring ever louder and the sense of imminent flooding greater still, and up into the chamber where Harebell and the others were hiding. There a scene of horror met their eyes.
The stream they had formerly been able to ford so easily was now a torrent rushing by and threatening soon to overflow the eroded channel in which it ran. Beyond, though now unreachable, the chamber was dry enough but where seven or eight moles had been there were now twenty. Grike guardmoles had fought their way in and attacked the Beechenhill moles. Squeezebelly’s plans had gone more than awry: they had failed.
Such future as Beechenhill had was taken now, and with it Harebell, whom they could see rounded up against a wall with others there, including Quince.
Harrow stanced by the torrent of water and cried out his rage and loss as he watched Harebell being pushed from the chamber and out of sight. The helplessness of the watching moles was made worse by the fact that the guardmoles did not hear them against the noise, and worse still as they were forced to stand by as the grikes rounded on the elderly males who had been separated off from the females and now horribly taloned them down towards the rushing, sucking water of the swollen stream. They shouted, they cried out, and then, more terribly still, the seeming loss of Harebell, followed by this cold murder of moles, became too much for Harrow.
As Holm, who knew water better than any mole, cried “No!” and tried to stop him, a madness of anger or loss gripped Harrow and, heaving little Holm off, he dived into the water in a wild, hopeless bid to reach the other side and... and what? What could he have done? This was but the first of the madness seen in the hours just begun.
Harrow’s front paws made only one stroke and then half a second before his body was grabbed and turned in the water, and half sucked down, and then rushed along hard into a rock. They saw him struggle for a moment, they saw his snout gasp up and a paw reach feebly out, and then he was gone from them forever into the dark, sucking place into which the torrent flowed.
Grikes on the far side saw them, and gesticulated and jeered, as Holm and Sleekit and the other two were forced to watch those old Beechenhill moles taloned into the stream that had just taken Harrow.
Numbed now with shock, Sleekit took command of the abortive expedition and, turning them round, ordered them all back the way they had come. Back they went into the great chamber, and found its floor was all wet now and the air was thick with cockroaches seeking to escape the water yet unable to fly far. Through it all the moles half splashed and half swam until they reached the far side, where they paused and looked back and saw water gushing out of the tunnel from which they had just escaped. On, on through a nightmare of flooding, Holm leading now, and Sleekit behind, the place littered, crawling, slimy with dying and drowned creatures which the flood had driven from their subterranean lairs.
They arrived back at the high chambers to find that Squeezebelly and the others had all but given up hope that they were alive. Already half the moles had been got out to the tunnels nearer the surface, and Squeezebelly was overseeing the evacuation of the rest.
His joy at their return was immediately destroyed by the desperate news they brought: Harrow lost, moles murdered, Harebell, Quince and the others, including Henbane, taken....
While their own relief to have reached Squeezebelly again was overtaken by the news a watcher had brought of the barbing by the Stone of a mole who might be, who surely was, from all that the watcher said, the Stone Mole himself.
There was wildness now in Squeezebelly’s eye, the same Sleekit and Holm had seen already so fatally overtake Harrow. At his flank Bramble and Skelder and other such moles were angry and working towards a fight, and it was plain that if Squeezebelly did not lead them out against the grikes they would take themselves there anyway.
But he was not reluctant now, nor doubtful, but rather looked as if the care of years had gone from him and he was ready to do what he must have wished to do long before.
/> He got the moles together in a chamber along the way, with every tunnel off it packed with his system’s moles. Though there was no rain for now on the surface, here below the tunnels were wet and dripping.
“Harebell and the other females with pup have been taken,” Squeezebelly shouted, “and no doubt if we go in search of them up Castern way we shall be ambushed and taken or killed ourselves.
“Our better chance is to attack the grikes in the very centre of Beechenhill: at the Stone. We know they are there because we have news of a desecration before our Stone, news that suggests that the Stone Mole himself is being barbed there even now.” The moles were hushed at this, and angry too.
“For long I have resisted the temptation to fight the grikes, for reasons you well know. Others here have argued in favour of war and today I put my support behind them. I cannot any more resist their call to fight and if I must go by myself I shall. I pray that one day a mole shall come to this place who knows better than I the non-violent way. But I do not, and that way has nearly led to the loss of us all, for surely we would have died here in the Castern Chambers but for the warnings by Holm.
“I do not believe we can win this day. I do not think that if we give ourselves up we shall be allowed to survive. We can only hope that under cover of this ominous weather, and knowing the ground as we do, we can deal the grikes a blow on behalf of all moledom that they shall not forget.”
There was a great and terrible cheer at this.
“Yet one thing I shall ask of you!”
“Ask it, Squeezebelly!” several shouted.
“Then it is this. If the Stone decrees that most of us must fall before the talons of the Word it shall, surely, let some survive. Let such moles, whoever they are, be not ashamed to flee from Beechenhill as opportunities come. They shall have the task of going out to other systems and telling such followers as they can find what they have seen happen here in Beechenhill.
“I believe that one day the Stone will live again across moledom, and if we in this great system can pass on to others news of all that happened here – of our doubts, of our retreat to Castern, of how the Stone seemed to call us out again, of whatever aid we may bring to the Stone Mole – then other followers in other systems shall gain courage from it; and wisdom too. For surely violence is not the way and there shall be a day when a better way is found!
“Now, up and out we shall go, keeping together, having courage to bring our help to bear upon the barbed mole before our Stone. May we be given all the strength the Stone can give, and if we do wrong, may each of us be forgiven!”
With that, and a mighty shout, Squeezebelly led his moles out of that chamber, and up onto the surface to make their final return to Beechenhill from the northern side.
So hard had the downpour been at first that the surface of the Stone seemed surrounded by an aura of mist where the rain bounced off; so hard that the body of the henchmole hanging next to Beechen twisted and turned under its force, and his fur turned gleaming black.
Yet barely a guardmole moved, for the rain initially seemed good, seemed cool and cleansing, and its coming marked a sudden easing of the pressure in the air. They saw Wort stance up in the rain as if trying to combat its might against her body, and they saw her shouting against it, but heard her not for the rain was so loud and violent on the ground.
They saw the Stone Mole pull his head back and open his parched mouth as rain darkened his body and cleansed it, and then shone on him, and reflected the violent light in the sky above.
Down, down it came, in ever more powerful tranches until soon in places across the grass small rivulets began to flow, while lower down the slopes water began to gush out of tunnel entrances and moles and other creatures were forced to come running, blinking and closing their eyes against the violent fall, their paws and fur filthy with yellow mud.
The tunnels underground being flooded, there was no shelter from the rain there and the moles had to stay where they were, and if they moved at all it was to cluster together more and to stare at the Stone Mole, who seemed to command the very rain itself.
Heavier, and yet heavier it came, seeking to bow a mole’s snout down, thundering in his ears, stinging his body, squelching between his talons, splashing up violently into his face.
Yet there was an urge, an addictive urge, for everymole to keep his snout up and stare at the Stone Mole to whom the rain seemed to have brought a strange and awesome kind of life.
His head had arched further back, his mouth was open as if to quench his mortal thirst, and his free paw reached and turned and went up as if in benediction upon the eldrene Wort who stanced beneath, or upon the Stone, or perhaps upon them all.
Then with a sudden rush of wind and lightning in the sky the rain stopped, leaving everything and everymole chilled and dripping. Yet still barely a single mole moved.
They stared instead at something on the northern horizon, far, far beyond the Stone Mole, barely thicker at first than a stretch of taut barbed wire.
Yet it seemed to grow towards them, though how slow or fast none could quite tell.
“Look!”
One mole shouted it, but all saw, all were amazed.
For running, gathering towards them, seemingly carried by the driving wind and cloud itself a force of moles came, a great and commanding mole at their head.
“’Tis the moles of Beechenhill!” cried out Merrick then in surprise.’Tis Squeezebelly himself that leads them!”
As he said these words, the first winds of the new storm hit them. The eldrene Wort reared up again as if against the very storm itself and as the new and heavier rain began to fall into their eyes and faces, and the first shouts of the Beechenhill moles were heard, she cried out, “Tear down the Stone Mole. Kill him! Talon him! Make him die! Now does the Word put us to its greatest test! Tear him down and talon him!”
Her screamed words seemed to release an instinctive fear among the henchmoles, so they felt that if they did not do as she said they would all be lost.
But as they lunged forward to do Wort’s will, the great wave of Beechenhill moles also rushed forward with Squeezebelly’s roaring command in their ears: “Save him! In the Stone’s name, save the Stone Mole!”
The darkness of the heart of the storm came then, and rain turned the ground to mud beneath the frantic paws of moles of Word and Stone as they joined in a killing battle for possession of the Stone Mole.
While he, dying now, hung still and silent above them all, and the rain that was upon him washed his tears and blood into the soil of Beechenhill below. And darkness began to come.
In Duncton Wood, as night fell at the Stone, the madness that had seemed to be with Mistle for several days past began at last to reach a climax of violence and distress. She screamed and cried as if trying to reach out to something she could not touch and Romney, though tired with watching over her for so long, only stopped her from dashing herself against the Stone by exerting all his strength. Instead, she began to sob, “No, no, no, no,” into that dreadful night.
Minutes or hours later, he did not know which, she went quiet, her eyes open as she watched through the long night, her body trembling, and her pain terrible to see.
“Yes,” she whispered, utterly beyond comforting, “yes, my dear, I am with you before the Stone, I am here.”
When Romney tried to speak to her she only stirred and turned, as a mole stirs when another seeks to wake it from deep sleep, its brow puckering, its paws feebly seeking to push the disturbance away.
“He will come back,” said Romney through his tears.
“Yes, my love, I am here,” she whispered.
“He will come back, Mistle.”
“No, I shall not go. No, no...” she whimpered then, “my love is dying.”
“Your love lives still, the mole you love will come back home to you one day,” Romney whispered again and again; when she said “No”, he whispered it more, on and on, his faith confronting her despair.
?
??Stone, help me help her,” he said. “Mistle, he will come back to you.”
Above them in the still clear night the first new beech buds trembled, while below the flowers reached up towards the sky, and had there been light a mole might have seen that the promise of spring was already bright across the wood. But there was none, all was dark, the promise was not seen.
“My love....”
“He will come back,” said faithful, loving Romney. “One day he will, one day....”
On through the night he whispered it, and whatever other comforts he could find as well, holding poor Mistle close, and watching and hoping that when dawn came it would bring respite.
Sometime in that long night of violence across Beechenhill the Stone Mole cried out, “Father, let them know thy Silence now! Father, let them be still at last!”
But they were not still. Madness had gripped them all, a madness that drove them on through rain and storm, through pain and fear, thrusting their talons at anymole that moved, a madness of slaughter in the driven dark in which mole of the Stone and mole of the Word could not tell each other apart, and yet killed on. It was a night of screams lost in the wind, a night when taloned paws grasped the heads of fatigued moles and thrust them at the wire’s barbs; a night of utter shame.
Nomole knows what dread deeds were done in the name of Word and Stone, nor truly why it was that such a bloody mayhem as that was fought around the body of a near-dead mole. Yet so it was, and so history must record it.
And dawn revealed the dead.
Squeezebelly, slumped still near the Stone, with the blood of many a mole of the Word upon his paws. His son Bramble dead nearby. No sign of Skelder though, lost perhaps among that throng of fighting moles who seemed to roll downslope from the Stone and lay there now, all dead, just spread about like leaves in a wet autumn. He might be there.
And yet... look close beneath the Stone. Wort lives, bloodied yet not badly wounded, staring where the Stone Mole still hangs, motionless but alive. Look closer yet: her eyes are full of tears and though she whispers still, her prayers of obsession and hate are all quite spent; her tears are tears of compassion, her words are words of pity.