Free Duncton Wood by William Horwood

and forever going on about the fact. So Mandrake took on a dark and sinister role in Bracken’s imagination rather than a benevolent one.
    It was for this reason that Bracken was both surprised and fascinated when, one day toward the end of May, he heard a westside female say, with the indirectness of a gossip who deliberately invites a follow-up question by the mystery of what she says: “Mind you, there’s one mole who can stand up to Mandrake and there’s nothing, I tell you, absolutely nothing, he can do about it. Not a single solitary thing.”
    “Who’s that?” asked Bracken, amazed.
    But she continued her train of thought, piling on the mystery for her own delight: “Yes, he can huff and puff all he likes, but I don’t think he can do a thing.”
    “But who is it?” asked Bracken, eaten up with curiosity.
    “Why, Miss Stuck-up-Rebecca, that’s who. His darling daughter. Twists him round her talons she does. Mind you dear,” his confidante placed her snout close to his ear and affected to look down the communal tunnel in the direction of Barrow Vale, “mind you, all that won’t last much longer, if you know what I mean,” digging him in the ribs.
    Bracken didn’t know what she meant and wanted very much to know. “Do you mean.. He hesitated encouragingly, and she obligingly continued.
    “Yes, you know I do. We all know she was an autumn-litter mole, which means she’ll be nearly ready to leave her home burrow by now. What’s more, it wouldn’t surprise anymole if Sarah, Mandrake’s socalled mate, had another litter this summer. Mandrake’s not one to hang about, is he? And Sarah isn’t going to want Rebecca round with another litter of her own to bring up.”
    So, piece by piece. Bracken built up a picture of the system and its leading moles. He learned about Rune – “cunning as a stoat”; he heard about Bindle – “sulking over on the eastside now”; he delighted in the stories about Dogwood and Mekkins; they told him about Hulver, about how the owls were most dangerous on the edge of the wood, and about how dangerous the pasture moles were.
    He often heard about Rebecca as well, especially from the males, who reveled in the scrapes she got herself into, causing Mandrake to tear a strip off her again and again, so they said.
    She was, so he was variously told, wild, nearly as big as a male of her age, an autumn mole (which meant that she was tough), obstinate, always laughing, inclined to dance about Barrow Vale on the surface, the bane of her brothers’ lives, and frequently punished by Mandrake.
    Bracken, who naturally grew increasingly curious about Rebecca, might have been tempted to go and find her had she been any other mole’s daughter and had he himself been more sociable. But despite his ability to wheedle his way into other mole tunnels and occasionally even their burrows, he was rather shy of his own generation. Talking with adults was one thing, consorting with his peers was another, and much more difficult. Still, for a while he looked out for her in the communal tunnels and ventured once or twice onto the surface at Barrow Vale thinking he might see Rebecca there, but nothing ever came of it.
    Soon, other things about the system caught his interest. The stories Aspen had told him about the Ancient System and the occasional mentions it got as a long-unvisited place fascinated him. Also, there was something about the way moles talked about the Duncton Stone, and the mystery of why they mentioned as something separate from it, “The Stone,” which was powerful and held all moles’ lives in its power. Was there, then, a Stone a mole could never see?
    “Where is it?” he would ask, “What is it?” But no mole gave him an answer. He thought he might find it if he went to the Ancient System, but as yet he didn’t actually,, want to try to go there – it was far too dangerous – but he did want to meet a mole, apart from Burrhead, who had been there.
    It was this