Quest for the Faradawn

CHAPTER IV

When Brock emerged into the cold night, the moon was shining down in between the great belt of rhododendrons to his left and the trunk of the Great Beech; there was still time enough to walk to the Council before Moon-High, when the meeting would open. He gave a little bark from the foot of the tree to tell Warrigal he was on his way and the owl answered Toowitt-Toowoo’ before flying off through the trees. Brock made his way along the front of the wood to the old wooden stile at the comer, where he turned right and followed the little stream back into the wood until he was almost at the fields which lay at the rear. He had decided tonight not to take the short cut over the little stream; it would not bear thinking about if he fell in and turned up at this meeting, of all meetings, looking like a large drowned rat. Besides there was no hurry and he wanted time to think before he arrived. The little stream, which was really a drainage ditch dug by the Urkku, formed a large T and so divided Silver Wood roughly into three different sections, each of which was very different in character. Above the horizontal stroke of the T the wood was full of fairly new birches, very close together so that they had grown tall and thin and straight as they competed for light. The wood was dark here as, even in winter when there were no leaves, the light found it hard to penetrate the thick web of branches and twigs. In autumn the floor of this part of the wood was full of all types of toadstools but very little grew at any other time of the year. The front of the wood, to the left of the perpendicular stroke of the T, was where Brock lived. This part again had two different sections and the Great Beech was at the centre of the division. To the right of it there were few trees, mostly oaks and elms and ash and the floor here was made up of large tussocks of grass with the odd clump of heather. To the left of the beech there was a large bank of rhododendrons which went right back to the little stream, and where these petered out at the edge of the wood there were some more enormous beeches along with some splendid elms. The whole of this front part of the wood looked out on to a square flat field, then another field which rose sharply into a bank. To the left of that stood the pond surrounded by hawthorns, hazel trees and elders. The back of the wood contained a large number of tall silver birch trees and it was these that gave the wood its name. Many of them had died and their trunks lay slowly rotting year by year. Fungi grew out of them, and ants, beetles and woodlice made their homes there. The floor of this part of the wood was nearly all bracken which in the summer formed a lush green jungle and on frosty winter days a crackly brown matting which crunched with every step. This area eventually gave way to another of giant elms and ash where the ground was peaty and grew grasses, mosses and, in the spring, a carpet of bluebells which scented the whole back of the wood with their perfume. The fields at the back formed a steep bank which led down again into a sandy hollow and then, in the distance, to the stream where Tara went in the summer to collect meadowsweet and rushes for the sett. And beyond that was Tall Wood where none of the animals had been and where it was said that the Elflord lived with the other magical peoples.

The Council Meetings were always held in the back part of the wood in a fairly large open space bordered on one side by the little stream with the rhododendrons behind it on the far bank and, on the other three, by a semi-circular belt of smaller rhododendrons, old tree stumps and new young birch and ash saplings. As Brock walked along the bank at the back of the wood he could hear hundreds of little crunching and rustling noises as the inhabitants of the wood made their way over the frozen snow. Suddenly, from behind him, he heard an enormous splash and he turned round to see Sam, the dog from the village, swimming vigorously and noisily across the stream.

He had spotted Brock on the far bank and now he bounded up to greet him. ‘What a creature!’ muttered Brock under his breath as the dog stood shaking himself and sending a shower of little drops of water spinning out which almost hit the badger. Brock then watched in amusement as the big dog started to roll on his back, his legs flailing from side to side in an effort to get thoroughly dry. Standing up again he gave himself another shake, which seemed to start from the tip of his tail and work its way slowly along his body until his whole head rotated and the black tip of his nose span round. He stood still for a second and then said, ‘Hello Brock, how are you?’ in a loud voice, so that Brock had to move close to him and tell him to keep his voice down. In general dogs had little to fear from the Great Enemy provided they were kept in a good home, and they had lost the natural instinct of all wild animals to be as quiet as possible at all times and their desire to remain unnoticed and unknown which had developed over the ages of man’s domination of the earth. Dogs occupied a strange place in the relationship between man and animals in that they were to all intents and purposes allies of man and even helped him when man was out killing with the death sticks, running to pick up the dead or injured animal and taking it back to their human to save him the effort of going to fetch it. Sometimes whole packs of dogs would be used to chase and kill a fox or a hare while the Great Enemy rode behind on another animal ally, the horse; or when a hare was being chased man would run behind, shouting and yelling. For these reasons dogs were, in general, feared, hated and despised by all wild animals and at first, when Brock had tried to introduce Sam to the Council, he met with great resistance. However, as time passed and Brock brought to the Council more and more extremely valuable information which Sam had given him about the details of future killing times, the Council had finally relented and allowed Sam to attend. Warrigal would fly over the house where Sam lived and give him the call and the dog would bark in reply to let the owl know he had received the message. Some of the animals still did not completely trust Sam, but he had earned from most of them a grudging respect and a few had begun to count him as a friend. Of course, when the Killing was taking place Sam would be with his human but the animals now recognized this and realized that it was the only way the dog could keep bringing them the information they found so useful.

Brock and Sam now made their way towards the comer of this back part of the wood, and they could see clearly, in the moonlight, the other animals heading for a gap in a belt of trees; this was the only way in for the larger creatures although the smaller ones like the rabbits and hedgehogs could squeeze through anywhere. When they went through the narrow gap, knocking some snow down on to themselves as they brushed against the branches of a little ash tree on one side, they saw that many animals were already there, arranged against the outside of the semi-circle. Facing this semi-circle, sitting along the straight side of the amphitheatre with their backs to the stream, on the far side of which stood the huge solid bank of rhododendrons, were the Council. Here were the legendary figures of the wood whose names had been linked with so many heroic stories and deeds that even they themselves had forgotten which were true and which imagined. They had arranged themselves along the far side of a large fallen tree-trunk which ran parallel to the stream and were now fully engrossed in conversation amongst themselves. The members of the Council were not so much elected as elevated; there was never any dispute as to who was entitled to sit; if there had been then that animal would not go on to the Council for he could not have earned his proper place. Meetings were held once in every season so that the necessary arrangements for that particular season could be made, but they were also held when there was a special need.

These extra meetings were usually concerned with matters such as security when they knew there was a Killing due, or with other emergency items such as plague or upset of the wood when the Urkku were carrying out some new operation such as digging a new drainage ditch or putting up a new fence. The meeting tonight was one of these extra meetings, as the regular winter one had already taken place. Any animal from the wood could go to a meeting and sometimes when an animal had a particular contribution to make or where it was of special interest to him, he would be specially asked to attend.

Brock loved going to these meetings; he always got a great thrill from seeing the famous names whose stories had been told to him when he was a cub by old Bruin, himself a member of the Council for the last three seasons. As he settled down now with Sam, their backs against a large elm and next to them some young rabbits, Brock could see Bruin at one end of the log talking to Rufus, whose magnificent russet red coat shone, in the moonlight so that it almost looked polished.. Here was the fox who had outrun and outsmarted every pack of hounds in the area and who was a master in the arts of doubling back, water-running (to conceal his scent) and sheep-mingling, which consisted of hiding in the middle of a flock of sheep to confuse the hounds and annoy the farmer whose land was being used for hunting. On one memorable day in the autumn many seasons ago Rufus had actually been caught by the leading hounds in a particularly fast pack and had been brought to the ground by them: snarling, he had sunk his teeth into the necks of two of them and broken the leg of a third before running off again like the wind to vanish in the wood, leaving the furious and disappointed huntsmen nursing their wounded dogs and shaking their fists at him. Recently he had taken to going into the village at night and getting food from the bins of rubbish which the Urkku kept; while there he would look through the windows of the houses and had learnt a lot about the ways of the Urkku. But he was getting old and he was losing that edge of speed which had made him famous and kept him out of the clutches of the hunt for so long. Brock, looking at his fine noble head with its two sharp triangular ears and long pointed nose, pondered with great sadness that it could only be a matter of time before Rufus was caught by the hounds and tom to pieces by them.

Brock put this distressing picture out of his mind and looked at Perryfoot the Fleet, sitting some few paces from Rufus. Perryfoot was a brown hare; another near-legendary hero whose speed, as his name implied, had earned him his status. He sat on his own, lost in his secret thoughts, with his body hunched over into a great grey-brown furry ball and his two long ears tucked down so that they lay along his back. Apart from his speed he was also famous for his sense of humour which, particularly in March, led to his performing some strange antics. It was felt by the wood, although no one actually knew this, that he had some knowledge of and connection with the Magical Peoples and for this reason he was regarded with some wonder and awe by the others. His home was in the field at the front of Silver Wood but he was known to wander far and wide and his knowledge of the area surrounding the wood was second to none. He went regularly to Tall Wood and was rumoured to have gone even beyond there to The Heath.

Next to Perryfoot sat Pictor the Proud, a large rabbit who, as the head of a large colony of rabbits in the wood, was a highly respected figure. He had brought a new structure and organization to the rabbits of Silver Wood so that now their defences and warning systems against the coming of Urkku had become famous. Other colonies from the other woods would come to look and to learn so that losses to the Urkku were decreasing season by season. Recently however there had been a number of setbacks since the Urkku had begun to use that nightmare of all tunnel creatures, gas, and Pictor was under some pressure to come up with a new scheme which would combat this horror.

Perryfoot was talking to Bibbington the Brash, a hedgehog who had once been captured by a family of Urkku and had stayed with them for an entire season. While there he had actually gone into the house and walked into all the rooms, looking around and memorizing what he saw. While with the family, he had watched, listened and learnt all he could of the ways of the Great Enemy and this knowledge had since proved to be invaluable to the Council in their discussions on defence and other matters concerning the Urkku. Since the virtual disappearance of the wandering Urkku known as Gypsies who used to eat them, the hedgehogs’ only real enemies were the enormous noisy creatures which the Great Enemy rode to get from place to place and against which there was no defence.

Perching on top of the log next to these two, Brock could see the long magnificently coloured tail feathers of Sterndale the Fierce, King of the Pheasants. He was lost in conversation with his great friend and ally, Thirkelow the Swift, a magnificent steel-blue wood-pigeon with a chest like a tree trunk. It was an achievement for either a pheasant or a pigeon to survive more than four seasons and these two had now lived for more than twelve each. Knowledgeable in the killing ways of the Urkku and with an instinctive inborn cunning, they were the natural leaders of their two species. Thirkelow’s speed was almost magical; he would streak across the sky like lightning and be gone before you could blink. The great Stemdale had acquired his title from an incident when he had attacked an Urkku who had just wounded one of his hens. He had stalked his way up to the killer through the undergrowth and suddenly flown at his face beating with his wings and biting and scratching with his beak and claws. The Urkku had dropped his gun, which went off and alerted other Urkku who, hearing the gun and the cries for help, came running through the wood. Instead of flying off, in which case he would almost certainly have been killed in the air, Sterndale had scuttled off through the undergrowth and watched, hiding, while they carried the killer off. This incident had earned him great admiration from the wood and he had set about using the knowledge and experience he had gained from it to try and lessen the enormous losses which the pheasants, in particular, suffered every autumn. He had attempted to train them not to call out when they were alarmed or when they took off and, most important of all, to keep dead still when the Urkku were in the wood. If they really had to move then they should walk, slowly and quietly, rather than fly off, presenting a perfect target for the death sticks.

Brock could also make out the other members of the Council; Digit the Grey Squirrel, Cawdor the Crow and Remus the Rook. Remus, like Bibbington, had been taken in by a family of Urkku and looked after by them for some three seasons before but, with some regrets for the safety and security of life in this particular household of Urkku, he had flown off and settled in Silver Wood where his knowledge of the Urkku had rendered him an extremely valuable member of the Council.

Suddenly Brock’s thoughts were broken into by the realization that all the shuffling and muttering around him had slowly quietened until there was now an expectant silence. The only sound he could hear was the rustling of a light wind which blew through the bare branches of the tall silver birch trees surrounding them. Perched in the middle of the old trunk was Wythen the Wise, Warrigal’s father and the leader of the Council: an owl who had lived for as long as any member of the wood could remember and whose links with the elves of Tall Wood were well known. Indeed it was even rumoured that he himself had some magical powers and, looking into his enormous brown eyes which seemed to see everything both visible and invisible, it could well be believed. Now he turned slowly round from his conversation with Rufus to address the meeting.

‘Welcome to you all on this cold night,’ he said in his clear magical tones. ‘We are here to discuss two matters; the first, the question of preparations and defences for a Killing that is due to take place tomorrow and the second a matter which I would rather not mention until we have disposed of the first. I will now call upon Sam to inform us as to what he knows of tomorrow’s shoot.’

The owl turned towards Sam as the dog stood up and began to relate all that he had heard his human saying to the Mistress in their kitchen yesterday morning. The main target was to be pheasants and there would be a large number of Urkku from the village involved. There would also be beaters, men with sticks who would walk through the wood from the back, hitting the undergrowth and making strange shouting and whistling noises. This was intended to force the animals to fly up or run away towards the front of the wood where the Urkku with their death sticks would be waiting for them. It was a standard procedure for the big killings and was greatly feared by the animals as, unlike the situation where there were just two or three Urkku walking through the wood, there was nowhere for them to run and hide. Although the main victims were the pheasants, no animal was safe and, if seen, would almost certainly be shot at.

When Sam had finished he was thanked by Wythen and he lay down again next to Brock. He was shaking all over from nerves and panting heavily, little drops of saliva running down his chin. ‘Well done,’ whispered Brock, who himself hated public speaking and knew how his friend felt; particularly as in Sam’s case there were still a number of animals who mistrusted him and would seize any opportunity to criticize.

‘The Killing tomorrow is then one of the most dangerous and none of us is safe,’ said Wythen in a stern and angry voice, remembering the time five seasons ago when one of his sons had been shot. It was not common for owls to be killed but by no stretch of the imagination could they be called safe and it was only an extremely unwise owl who would let himself be seen by the Urkku. ‘You must all organize yourselves as best you can; now we have foreknowledge we at least have a chance of diminishing our losses. Sterndale, you must once again attempt to impress upon your flock the importance of not moving and of staying on the ground as much as possible and explain to them the folly of calling out when frightened. Thirkelow, your pigeons have more chance in the air than the pheasants but the best plan is still to use ground cover. Pictor, you must tell your rabbits to go in their burrows and stay there, and your hares, Perryfoot, would do well to stay under cover where they are and only to risk a bolt for it if they are a good distance away from the Urkku and out of range of their death sticks. Rufus, you and the foxes must stay in your holes; if Sam’s information is correct there will be no hounds, nor will they be using the gas on any of the animals; but still both you and Bruin’s family would do best to remain well hidden. You know what the Urkku are like on these mass slaughters of theirs; anything moves and they’ll try and kill it. This of course applies to all the rest of you animals. We’ll have the usual signalling system; my son Warrigal will be roosting on one of the trees by the pond: as soon as he spots the Urkku he’ll call out four or five times and that will be the signal for everyone to get out of sight and stay quiet.’

There was dead silence in the snowy glade; the moon, shining down bright and silvery, showed all the intent, anxious and fearful faces of the animals as they tried to absorb the instructions given by Wythen. Little clouds of breath froze in the cold air and Brock could hear the frightened panting of the rabbits next to him. ‘Whose turn will it be?’ they were wondering, and through their minds flashed pictures of those they had seen in the past shot and killed or, worse still, injured and left to die with their back legs in pieces. And over all their fear, the eternal question which none could answer, not even Wythen — Why?

‘And now,’ broke in the owl, realizing that he must bring the minds of the meeting back to the second item for discussion, ‘there is another matter to which I would like to draw your attention. I already know something about it as my son Warrigal has had a talk to me, but I would like to hear the matter from the beginning, first hand.’ Brock’s heart missed a beat; he looked for Warrigal and saw him perched low down on an elder branch to his right. The owl looked back and shrugged his shoulders.

‘Brock,’ continued Wythen, ‘would you please relate to us all, slowly and clearly, exactly what occurred last night.’

Very nervously and shakily Brock moved slightly forward into the clear space in front of the Council and began to tell them the events of the previous night. He stuck strictly to the facts, leaving out all his ideas of ‘destiny’ and ‘fate’, because he would not be able to find the right words to express them and in any case they were private feelings which he didn’t really want to share with all the other animals. By the time he had got to the part about going up to the baby and touching it, Brock was dimly aware of hundreds of little whispers and mutterings and he could see the Council all leaning forward intently to catch every word he said. When he got to the end, about taking the Urkku down his sett and his being suckled by Tara, there was a positive hubbub of raised voices and angry interchanges as this extraordinary tale began to register itself, with all its implications, in the minds of the animals.

Wythen let the hubbub continue for some time as he knew it would be useless to try and stop it, for it gave them all a chance to express their opinions before the discussion went any further. When the noise began to subside, he called out for silence and eventually the last mutterings died away. Brock was not so afraid as he felt he ought to be; in fact he felt strangely confident, although this may have been partly due to the fact that he was almost certain Wythen was on his side.

‘I shall now ask Warrigal to give you his opinions and views on the matter before us,’ said the owl, ‘and you may then ask questions. Before we go on, however, I would first like to ask Sam to tell us whether there has been any talk of this in the village.’ Sam stood up again and said that no, there had been no mention of it at all and it was the first he had heard of it.

Warrigal then flew down and stood in the centre of the open space. As he talked he turned round and round slowly so as to address every part of the meeting in turn, and he opened his wings when he wished to gesticulate or emphasize a particular point. His speech was masterful; it was full of references to legend and the time Before-Man and he sprinkled it with many veiled allusions to the Magical Peoples and the Elflord. He recited the legend of the Urkku Saviour with its ending which had been lost with the passage of time and which no one, save perhaps the Elflord himself, knew. Warrigal knew that the animals loved legends and stories and that the thought that they might actually be about to observe a legend at first hand would be enough to at least partly persuade them to allow the Urkku to stay in the wood. Coupled with this, the fear and respect with which all animals treated the name of the Elflord and the implication that he both knew of the Urkku and wished it to remain, should convince the Council and the other animals that it was right for the Urkku to stay.

When he had finished, he remained where he was and Wythen thanked him (feeling secretly very proud of his son for this extremely clever speech) and asked if there were any questions. At first there was only an embarrassed silence as every animal tried to pluck up courage to move forward and speak what was on his mind. Eventually Rufus broke it with a slightly nervous cough; he thought to himself that he would rather face six hounds than speak in public like this.

‘I, ’ he started, and gave another cough to clear his throat, ‘I think I speak for most of us when I say that none of us likes the idea of having an Urkku in the wood.’ Little murmurs of approval greeted this statement and gave him courage to carry on. His voice grew bolder and louder. ‘The Urkku have never done anything but harm to us; they destroy our homes, they poison our food and they try and kill us by any one of a hundred ways, all of which are liable to cause us the most horrible pain and suffering. Why then should we help any Urkku, even if it is only a young one?’ He stopped for he could think of no more to say: the thought of the Urkku made him angry and when he was angry he found it hard to think clearly; a fox must always remain cool and unflustered.

Pictor then voiced another point which was on all their minds. ‘How can we trust him?’ he said. ‘While he’s a baby I agree he can do us no harm but as he grows he will learn all our secrets and our defences and, worse still, he will find out where our homes are. What if then he joins the Urkku; he could destroy us all in a single day with what he knows. I don’t like it.’

Then Sterndale spoke. ‘I agree with everything Rufus and Pictor have said but I feel that we must put our trust and our faith in the opinions of our two “elder statesmen” Wythen and Bruin. In any case the Urkku can do no harm for a number of seasons yet, and if things turn out for the worse we shall have to kill him before he goes over to the Urkku. But I, for one, would like to wait and see for a while: if the legends are true then we would be foolish to get rid of him now.’

The rest of the Council agreed that the decision should be left with Wythen and Bruin. Bruin spoke first and said that, like his noble friend Sterndale, he thought that ‘wait and see’ was the best policy, although secretly he believed that the little baby in the sett would prove in some way, although he didn’t know how, to be the friend and ally of which legend had spoken ever since he could remember.

Wythen, of course, agreed. When Warrigal had told him the news he had known immediately that the time had come of which he had dreamt for so long. The baby should stay with Brock, he told the meeting, because it was obviously safe and happy there and they could all trust Bruin’s grandson whom they knew to be a brave and imaginative badger with a practical partner who would look after and guard the baby in the best possible way. The baby’s progress would be reported to the Council at the seasonal meetings and decisions as to his future would be taken then.

With that he wished them all good luck for tomorrow and, as the moon began to sink in the night sky, all the animals of the wood made their way thoughtfully back to their various holes and setts and roosts, where they pondered over the strange story they had heard.

Mystery was in the air and there was not one of them who, beneath his overriding fear of the Killing tomorrow, did not feel a little thrill of anticipation as he settled down for what remained of the night.