Free Duncton Found by William Horwood

things trying to pull him from his path. What path? Confused again suddenly, beginning to feel tearful, the sound of a mole crashing about nearby hunting him, coming to take him. So soon did Beechen forget Mayweed’s lesson and suddenly, blindly, ran on. The sun was bright and whirling in his eyes, the branches jolting and shaking past him and he might then have cried out in fear had another voice not cried out first:
    “Here. Here !”
    She was there, a young female and an older, too, at a Stone among great Stones, but distant and seeming unreachable as he went, for they got no nearer. Yet “Here!” they cried.
    “What is your name?” he seemed to say.
    “Mistle,” the wind whispered. “Waiting for you to come at last.”
    “No, no, no, but you must come to me,” he said, for as he reached her and her Stone, and the old female with her, she was gone, and the Stone she showed him yet to be, and there was the first hint of cloud in the sky, and dark imminence.
    Then the undergrowth was gone, and the trees seemed to fall away and a thin and ragged mole called out to offer help.
    “Here, mole. Aye! This way. I have waited for you so long! Caradoc’s my name.”
    “But you must come to me...” whispered Beechen again, running towards him but finding as he did that the ground steepened and grey rocks rose where Caer Caradoc had been, and the air was cold and the wind strengthening.
    Above him now Glyder beckoned, and called out directions, and said it was not far to climb.
    “But you...” said Beechen, nearly in despair, for though they were so near they still had far to go, and he was but one to help, and weak, and darkness was looming on them all and his paws were weary and his breathing coming hard.
    Then that wild place was gone, and trees were near again, and another female calling from a circle of Stones. A male was near her, small, eyes bright. Both sympathetic, summoning him to safety among their Stones if only, as they got nearer still, the circle remained substantial and the Stone where the female bid him come would stay where it was and be touchable.
    “Here, Stone Mole, here !” cried Rampion.
    But her circle was gone, and as it went past him there went another, barely seen: Fyfield, where a grike mole strove to touch the Stone and called out for him to come.
    “Here!” said the self-righteous voice of Wort.
    Everywhere were moles who needed him, yet offered help.
    Or almost everywhere. For now Beechen found himself where tunnels once had been and holy burrows, but ruined now and desolate. The white bones of moles were scattered across the great high hill of Uffington and nomole was there. The Blowing Stone was hereabouts but too far off for a lost mole to find and reach before the darkness came.
    Then his paws were running, running where others had run before, but he needed help now for a great grim darkness was coming – too great for him to bear. The moles had scattered from this place, and the sun’s warmth was draining from his fur, and his body was shivering and he was afraid.
    “Help me!” he cried out across the deserted hill, which changed even as he seemed to see it to a place of beauty called Beechenhill.
    “Here!” cried Wharfe. “Here, now...” And Beechen knew the darkest terror of them all.
    But even as it took him and he began to feel the pain, “Beechen!” said a voice so old, a voice he knew, a voice that was the sound he sought. “Beechen.”
    Old, grey-white, limping, his eyes warm, his good limbs bent, rising beech trees all about him across a clear wood floor.
    “Beechen, help me now.”
    The old mole turned and the youngster followed him, turned into the clearing filled with light, light like his eyes, and Beechen caught the old mole up, who turned and smiled.
    “Come, my son,” he said.
    There before them rose the Stone whose sides caught all the colours of the sun as it rose straight and true towards the sky.
    “You know my name and who I am?”
    Beechen