The Silver Tide (The Dorset Squirrels) Read online

  THE SILVER TIDE

  Book One in The Dorset Squirrels Saga

  by

  Michael Tod

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Cadno Books

  The Dorset Squirrels Saga

  Copyright © 2010 Michael Tod

  This book is available in print at michaeltod.co.uk

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  CHAPTER ONE

  The year was nineteen sixty-one. Humans symbolised this as 1 9 6 1 but, as all humans know, such symbols are meaningless to lesser creatures.

  Rowan the Bold was lost. Not the heart-thumping, stomach-twisting feeling of being lost that hits a dreyling when it first looks around on the ground and cannot see its parents, but the ‘Where, in the name of the Sun, am I now?’ sort of being lost.

  It was bad enough to be on the ground amongst all this heather, where he felt vulnerable, but he must get his bearings or he could wander around lost for hours and that would be a poor way to finish his climbabout.

  Standing up to his full squirrel height, he could just see over the tops of the heath plants and he looked for a tree, as a shipwrecked sailor on a raft searches for an island and the security that this implies. The only tree that he could see was a stunted birch about the height of a Man, growing out of a bank of whitish-grey clay further along the path. The peaty dust from the parched soil tickled his throat as he hopped towards it, glancing over his shoulder from time to time to make sure that no hungry fox or playful dog was following. ‘Come on.’ he said to himself, ‘don’t be a squimp, remember your tag. You’re Rowan the Bold’.

  He scrambled up the bank and climbed the tree, feeling the comfort of being off the ground and the joy of his claws biting into the smooth bark. He climbed until the tree started to sag sideways with his weight, then paused to enjoy a tiny breeze which ruffled his fur and fluffed out the hairs of his tail.

  Now, where am I? he wondered, peering around as he clung to the swaying stem. Through the heat-haze he could see a line of pine trees but not in any familiar pattern, and turning his head he could see the ridge of the Purbeck hills. Studying their outline, he knew that he had come too far west. He was about to drop to the ground and head off eastwards onwards home, when he caught the faintest whiff of water-scent on the air.

  Rowan turned his head slowly, testing the scent and trying for a direction. It seemed to be floating to him from just beyond the pine trees. His mouth was dry and the idea of a cool drink drove thoughts of home into second place. Dropping on to the clay bank, he headed towards the pines.

  The line of trees formed, vanished and re-formed in the haze ahead as he followed a twisting path through the heather, bracken and furze in the shimmering desert of the Great Heath.

  Reaching the trees, he was tempted to rush down to the water and slake his thirst, but instinct and training had taught him to proceed more cautiously.

  In a strange country,

  Be careful. Time spent looking

  Is seldom wasted.

  He climbed the nearest tree and ran out along a branch to look down on to the pool below. It was not quite as big as the one at home, the Blue Pool, and certainly not as dramatically coloured. This one was a delicate orangey brown, but the water was clear enough from above for him to see the white of the clay bottom, well below the surface. It was surrounded by a low sand-cliff and in one place, where the clay must have been of too poor a quality for the long-dead quarrymen to have bothered with it, an over-grown mound remained, surrounded on all sides by water, and topped by three well-grown trees. Across the pool where the cliff had collapsed in places, the quartz particles in the sand caught the rays of the sun, now quite low in the sky, making them sparkle and gleam.

  Air smelling of warm damp moss rose from the water’s edge to mingle deliciously with the resin-scent of bark on the hot pine trunks. Huge pink and white flowers set amongst dark green circular leaves fringed the pool, leaving a large clear area in the centre.

  Rowan watched a green dragonfly alight on a lily pad to rest for a moment, curl its tail under the leaf and lay an egg before rising and circling away. There were many damselflies flitting over the water, smaller than the dragons, some flying in mating pairs.

  From high above, the pool was the shape of a hunched animal, perhaps a rabbit with his ears down, thought Roman, the hump of land above the water being just where its eye would be. There was no scent nor sense of danger but he went slowly down the trunk head-first, looking about him as he did so.

  A watchful squirrel

  Survives to breed and father –

  More watchful squirrels.

  He drank at the water’s edge, glanced at the sun to measure its angle and decided to stay there for the night. He could be home in one or two days at the most. There was plenty of food about, no sign of other squirrels having foraged there, and he ate until comfortably full, then chose a tree to sleep in. It was too warm to think of making even the most rudimentary drey for shelter, so he made himself at home in a fork of one of the tallest of the pines and fell asleep; to dream of the beautiful pool below him, with its sparkling sand, water-flowers, dragonflies and the ‘Eyeland’ at the far end.

  Marble sat on top of the World. Actually it was a fence-post with slack strands of rusting wire joining his post to those on either side of him, on one of which his companion and acolyte, Gabbro, was sitting, tearing the limbs off a fledgling with his sharp yellow teeth.

  The World around them was Dorset, in the south of England, or New America as his kind liked to call it.

  A male grey squirrel in the prime of life, Marble licked the blood from his lips and looked out across the Great Heath to the hills of Purbeck beyond. Out there was Adventure, Advancement and Achievement!

  He flicked his tail at the blackbirds, the parents of the babies he and Gabbro had just taken from their nests in a hawthorn bush and killed, annoyed at the way they flew at his head in protest, shouting ‘Chit, chit, chit. Chit, chit, chit.’

  ‘Chit to you too,’ he shouted back and Gabbro, sworn to silence for the journey, grinned over at him.

  Marble had invented the ‘Vow of Silence’ on the second day out as noisy, inquisitive youngsters learned more if they kept their mouths shut and their ears and eyes open.

  ‘Tomorrow we probe Purbeck,’ Marble called across, proud to be an Explorer, Missionary and Disturber of the Peace.

  There had been patches of snow on the ground under the trees when Marble and Gabbro had left Home-Base at Woburn Park, moons before. Having received his instructions from the Great Lord Silver, he had wasted no time in leaving; better to be out adventuring than hanging about in idleness with the plotters and hangers-on.

  He had chosen a promising youngster with the name of Gabbro to be his acolyte and, when they had set out together, he had only glanced back once at the cluster of dreys forming the New America Base. These dreys were almost completely hidden amongst the branches, each round, woven mass of twigs and l
eaves the retreat of one of the senior governing families. Each so high and well concealed that human Visitors passing underneath seldom noticed them.

  Ever since the first grey squirrels from America had been released there, in what the humans called the eighteen nineties, Woburn had been the centre of their operations.

  The toughest, meanest Grey in that first batch had taken charge and called himself Lord Silver. It had seemed to him that grey was a drab sort of colour and it was true that in certain conditions, the light-coloured guard-hairs projecting through the squirrels’ fur made them look silvery. Anyway, he was chief and could call himself by any name he wished.

  Lord Silver had soon become Great Lord Silver and there had been a Great Lord Silver at Woburn ever since. When one died, others fought for his rank and position. The winner, if he survived his wounds, would then impose his ideas and prejudices on the others.

  Marble had been glad to be away. He hated the intrigue and the plotting of the Oval Drey, and the current occupant was far too permissive in many ways for Marble’s taste. Maybe, when he, Marble, had made a real name for himself he might … No – get on with the job in hand! Purbeck was a real challenge. Somewhere where he could prove himself.

  His training had finished with his return from that trip to the west, keeping north of the Great River and penetrating as far as the Ford of the Oxen, though the name of the place, once given to it by the native red squirrels, seemed inappropriate.

  It was an honour now to have been given the chance to explore and soften up this place the natives called Purbeck. Very little was known of it and he and Gabbro would be the first Silvers to probe there.

  On that first day out he had hopped along, Gabbro chattering excitedly at his side.

  ‘No – I don’t know why it’s called Purbeck! Yes – it is a long way. No – I haven’t been there before.’ An acolyte was all very well, they could be useful at times, and every ambitious youngster had to learn, but…

  Marble had scented an acorn under the leaf litter, probably buried by a fellow squirrel, or perhaps a jay, the previous autumn. He had dug it up and eaten it rapidly while Gabbro had searched around until he too had found one. Marble then moved on, Gabbro following, awkwardly holding the acorn in his teeth, snatching a bite whenever Marble stopped to choose a route. Gabbro clearly had a mass of questions he wanted to ask but, with an acorn in his mouth, he had been forced to keep them until later.

  Spring had come and passed as the pair made steady progress towards the west and south. They had passed through Silver country all the way, meeting no native red squirrels. Marble had thought how satisfying it was to see the success his kind had at exploiting the countryside, and with the population pressure behind him building up inexorably, more land was needed. What was the term that the Great Lord Silver had used? ‘Leaping-room!’ That had summed it up precisely.

  He, Marble, had been chosen personally for this mission. He might not agree with all that Woburn stood for now, but if the chief had sent him, it was up to him as a loyal Silver to do his very best.

  There were Reds still holding out in parts of southern New America and there were reputed to be Reds still skulking in this place they called Purbeck, who might never have heard of the Silver Tide sweeping irresistibly their way. They were not dangerous, more of a nuisance really, but they did cling on so to what hey called their Guardianship. Such primitive ideas! How could they be so naïve? And the sun business that he had heard tell of – well!

  They had lingered a little in what the colonists called the New Forest, though it was obviously very old. Had he not had a mission, Marble might have been tempted to stay on and fight for a territory there. Even he had been moved by the beauty of the place when the sunlight, striking through the new green leaves of the gnarled oak trees, had lit up the forest floor and shone on the dappled coats of the fallow deer that passed below.

  It was here that he had shown Gabbro the Stone force.

  Each night, before finding a suitable sleeping place, Marble had instructed his now silent acolyte to collect stones and lay them out in the square patterns, and how to activate the force of his body power.

  Marble enjoyed watching the concentration and concern showing on Gabbro’s face as he had squares with four stones each side and then when Marble told him to, reached out apprehensively to place his paw on one of the corner stones. The invisible Earth force could be whisker-sensed as it was drawn from the ground and diverted upwards to treetop height in the shape of a toadstool. Any creature getting too near was paralysed, although, as Marble himself had learned in his training, a certain degree of immunity could be acquired.

  Gabbro had quickly become adept at laying out the Power Squares and bracing himself for the drain on his body energy as he started the force going. Marble knew that the energy to start a four by four square would be restored by a night’s sleep but, even so, he preferred Gabbro to be the one to supply it. He had expended enough of his energy during his training.

  Between the New Forest and Purbeck they overtook colonising groups also pressing south and west, each group dealing with the few remaining Reds in whatever way they chose, harassing them until they moved on, leaving the best woods to be taken over and settled by the Greys.

  Now Marble and Gabbro had come to the edge of the heathland which was as far as the earlier explorers had penetrated. They had not reported how hot it would be here, but maybe this heat was exceptional. New America was noted for the vagaries of its weather!

  Somewhere across the heather, beyond the birches and the pines, was Purbeck – his challenge!

  Gabbro had finished eating his fledgling, so Marble flicked the ‘follow me’ signal with his tail and leapt to the ground.

  The youngster followed, and the blackbirds, still scolding, flew to the fence-posts and perched there, calling after the two strange creatures as they hopped away along the dusty path through the heather stems.

  Marble ignored their calls. He knew that the birds could not harm him and there were other real dangers to watch for. But most of all, he was alert for signs of native Reds. Their presence would mean good squirrel country – country suitable for colonisation!

  CHAPTER TWO

  Old Burdock, the Tagger Squirrel, sitting in a tree above a lake of sapphire blue water, watched the dreylings at play, the bright early morning sunlight glowing on their ruddy brown fur. Soon it would be her job to give them a tag which would stay with them for their lifetime. Unless, that is, they earned another, better tag through some outstanding act or impressive behaviour. Then a special Council Meeting would consider her recommendation for a change.

  Ambitious squirrels were always hoping and working for an up-tag. This was good for the community. Not so pleasant was when she had to propose a down-tag for unsquirrel-like behaviour or worse.

  She must always remember the code by which she worked, taught in the pattern of words used for all the symbolic and cultural traditions of her race.

  Tagging a squirrel

  As reward or punishment

  Is a weighty task.

  This arrangement of sounds, five, then seven, then five again, had a special authority and all squirrel lore was embodied in Kernels like this.

  Only recently the Council had had to downgrade Juniper and Bluebell, the Guardians of Humanside, for scrounging food from the Visitors who came to the Blue Pool and who ate at the stone Man-dreys in that Guardianship. Since then Juniper and Bluebell, now tagged the Scavengers, had kept to their own side of the pool, lowering their tails in shame when they saw other squirrels, but there was no evidence yet of them mending their ways. Burdock knew how powerful the effect of a bad tag could be. A squirrel carrying the burden of a denigratory tag would have low self-esteem and be unable to mate, thus ensuring that only squirrels conforming to acceptable standards of squirrel behaviour would produce and raise youngsters. It was Old Burdock’s burdensome task, as Tagger, to keep an eye on the behaviour of the whole community, and to allocate ‘True Ta
gs’ without favouritism.

  On the winding Man-paths below her, human Visitors would soon be strolling, admiring the views glimpsed between the trees, most not giving any thought to the possibility of their being watched by squirrels from above.

  These Visitors would come all through the summer, arriving in cars and coaches to park in the field which was part of the Humanside Guardianship. They would wander under the pines, their cameras clicking in an attempt to capture the beauty and the ‘blueness’ of the famous pool.

  The size of a small field, this pool, like Rowan’s, had once been a clay quarry, providing high quality blue ball-clay to make tobacco pipes and Wedgwood pottery and for use in refining sugar as it was made into sugarloaves, those cone-shaped blocks after which so many mountains have been named all across the world. Now, nearly a century after the workings had been abandoned, some unique combination of suspended clay particles and concentrated minerals in the rainwater trapped there gave it the name by which it was known. The Blue Pool was not on the itinerary of all Visitors to Purbeck.

  Burdock looked out over the water, then resumed her watch on the dreylings. One, her own granddaughter, was outstanding, - Marguerite, the only dreying this year of Oak the Cautious and Burdock’s daughter, Fern the Fussy, who were the current Guardians of Steepbank on the opposite side of the pool to Humanside. Oak combined this role of Guardianship with that of Council Leader and was inordinately fond of Marguerite.

  Intelligent, active and charismatic, definitely a youngster to watch. Could be Council Leader herself one day, thought Burdock. Not common to have a female for leader but there is no taboo. If not Leader, then she may take over my job when I am Sun-gone. A mixed batch the rest, though.