The Second Wave (The Dorset Squirrels) Page 11

  Clover breathed a sigh of relief and Old Oak slumped further as he felt the burden he had carried for so long transfer to younger shoulders.

  ‘Uz muzt make planz,’ Just Poplar announced, and, as Oak moved out of the Leader’s place, he moved across to occupy it.

  Peafowl, peafowl, peafowl! Blood was sick of peafowl. There were only eight females left now, plus the big old cock bird with the long tail. I must go and find a squirrel, or at least a rabbit, he thought. He was still puzzled by the mysterious disappearance of the squirrels. Occasionally he caught a whiff of squirrel-scent on the breeze, but never enough for him to track down their hiding place.

  He came out of the church into the brightness, blinked and looked about him. Despite the sunshine, he knew that winter was not yet over and that snow and bitter winds could return at any time. Honeysuckle leaves were showing bright green, but no other new vegetation had yet dared to emerge. He climbed a bare-branched oak-tree and scented the air. Ducks and sea birds in the lagoon; that fishy scent was probably from the cormorants who were trying their outspread wings in the sunshine. No – he wanted mammal-meat today. Even a mouse would be welcome. Two mice, or three, would be better still.

  Blood leapt from tree to tree above the swamp, watching the ground but not following any particular route, then, thinking that he was more likely to find live, warm-blooded mammals away from the bog-pools, he turned southwards towards the neglected and overgrown fields. It would have to be rabbit; some would be out in the open today.

  He stopped suddenly, just as he was about to leap for the next tree. Squirrel-scent was rising from below to tickle his nostrils and make his mouth water. He clung to the branch testing the air. This was not normal squirrel-scent; this was dead squirrel-scent, long dead squirrel-scent. He went slowly down the trunk.

  Below him was a willow tree that leaned out over a pool of dark water and mud. He dropped on to the sloping trunk. The scent was stronger now and there was a touch of live squirrel in it – not fresh, a few days old at least. He prowled along the trunk, scratching at the bark and sniffing. Where was that scent coming from? There were no holes visible and yet the scent was clearly coming from inside. It must be hollow. He went to the foot of the tree and looked up. There was a hole on the underside, above the water and mud. So that was where the squirrels had been hiding for so long! No wonder he hadn’t found them.

  The stench of dead squirrel was pouring from the hole, turning his stomach and drowning any live squirrel smells that might be about. None could be in the tree now, so where had they gone? Nose down, he began to sniff about in ever widening circles.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  Tansy was doubly worried. Already sick with concern for her family under threat from the pine marten over on Ourland, now her young friend Chip was being held against his will by Crag and the Greys of the Second Wave.

  How could she help him escape? Marguerite, Alder and the other senior squirrels were now totally absorbed in the problem of finding food. All their reserves and even the Sun-tithe nuts had been scented out, dug up and carried away by the Greys. Her friends had little thought to spare for Chip, who at least was unlikely to starve, and, it seemed, even less thought for the Ourlanders under threat from the pine marten.

  Tansy slipped away through the treetops to the hiding place from where she could watch the Temple Tree. She could see Chip on one of the dead top-branches talking to his mother again. They sat a little apart from one another, not as close as normal Reds would be when talking within families, but they didn’t appear quite a stiff as they had been before.

  Several Greys patrolled the ground below, occasionally glancing up at the two Reds in the high branches. Tansy wondered what Rusty and Chip were saying to each other.

  Rusty had given up ‘trying to talk some sense into her son’, as Crag had directed her to do, though she sinfully lied to him each evening that she had tried her best. She looked forward to hearing more and more about life in the Blue Pool community from the youngster. She had heard all the Acorn stories that her son could remember, and he was now teaching her the Kernels that he had learned. Today he had got to the Mating Kernel:

  Mating is a joy

  Sun-given to squirrel folk

  To make more squirrels.

  ‘Tansywistful told me all about it. Fun, and chases through the trees and then joining together with your favourite. Did you do it on Portland?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Rusty, hesitantly, ‘sort of. But not quite like you say,’ she added, recalling the brief, cold act with Crag, once a year in the darkness of the cave. ‘Yes – sort of.’

  A thought struck her. ‘Have you and Tansy – you know – have you and Tansy…? She could not use the word; it had implications of dreadful sinning and the Sunless Pit.

  ‘Not yet, but I would like to, if she chooses me. But she’s not of my year and may prefer another squirrel.’ He thought a little jealously of Tamarisk the Forthright, and shuddered to think of Tansywistful being pursued joyously through the trees by ‘the Mouth’ whilst he, Chip, who loved her so much, was trapped here, guarded by foreign Greys.

  The two of them sat on the dead branch, each silent with their musings, Chip staring vacantly across the clearing.

  A red tail flicked momentarily in the tree opposite. Or did it? He focused his eyes and raised his tail slowly. The tail opposite flicked again. Chip quickly looked down, fearful that the Greys might have seen what he had, but the patrolling continued as before. He lowered his tail and raised it. Again an answering flick. It could only be Tansy – his Tansywistful – come to see that he was all right. His heart swelled in his chest and he dug his claws deep into the soft wood of the dead branch.

  Tansywistful had come!

  Tansy knew that Chip had seen her, but she was powerless to do anything other than watch, and occasionally, when she judged it safe to do so, flick a signal with her tail.

  After a while she made the ‘farewell’ signal, waited for the half-concealed acknowledgement, then went back through the treetops to the Blue Pool Demesne, her mind full of impossible rescue ideas.

  Rusty and Chip went down and into the hollow of the Temple Tree, their bodies in comforting contact as they squeezed through the hole together.

  Just Poplar was not sure if he had done the right thing. True he had brought the entire group safely from the now uninhabitable Bunker to this place, but was this a safe place for them to be?

  He looked out from the round end of a broken drainpipe and could see Heather and Cowzlip on guard down on the shore, their backs to the sea, watching the trees and bushes on the bank behind him. Once, though he did not know this, a pottery factory had stood on this site and the many broken and badly fired drainpipes and chimney pots had been thrown on to scrap-piles on the foreshore.

  In the seventy-five years since the factory had closed and the pipemakers had given up and moved away, the wind had blown sand, soil and leaves in and over the pipe-shards until little remained visible on the surface. Pines and birches had colonised the new ground, growing from tiny seedlings to mature trees with their roots reaching down through and past the broken pipes, many of which were now deep underground.

  In this hidden labyrinth the young Prince Poplar, as he had been then, had played hide and seek with his brothers, sisters, cousins and the dreylings of the zervantz until they knew every passageway and dead-end intimately.

  In the last two days since he had led his party here he had insisted that every squirrel learn the layout, and know of each exit hole and how to find their way about, even in darkness. At first he had taken them personally through all the passages, then had encouraged games which would last for hours, before he let a few at a time out amongst the bushes and trees of the bank to forage, watched over by alert pickets.

  As Just Poplar was about to turn back into the drainpipe, he saw one of these pickets, Heather Treetops, stand to her full height and peer up the bank, her tail moving slowly from left to right and back. It was the ‘pos
sible danger’ signal.

  Poplar thought quickly. There were no foraging parties out at present, thank the Sun; the squirrels underground were resting after the last game and only the two guards were outside.

  Heather was standing, then crouching, in an attempt to identify something, and the other picket, Cowzlip, was moving closer to her, staring in the same direction. The tails of both were now moving swiftly from side to side. Poplar turned round and called, ‘Danger’, his voice sounding oddly magnified in the smooth glazed pipe. The murmur of voices in the darkness behind him ceased. Then Heather and Cowzlip came bounding across the ground to join him in the tunnel entrance. ‘It’s the marten,’ Heather said breathlessly. ‘He’s found us.’

  Blood paused at the top of the bank, savouring the fresh squirrel-scent all about him. He had seen the two on the shore and had watched them disappear underground. He would have squirrel today! He padded down the bank, then out on to the edge of the beach, aware that he was being watched. His feet crunched on dry black seaweed and old crab-shells.

  He picked a crab-shell up and tossed it in the air. There was no hurry now. He crouched and studied the bank. Holes everywhere, very round and unnatural-looking, but he let his imagination wander. A squirrel in each – just waiting for him to take his pick.

  Saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth as he went up the first hole and peered inside. He paused there, waiting for his night vision to come as his pupils enlarged in the dim light. He could hear movement deep in the bank ahead and waves of delicious squirrel-scent wafted out past him. He was sure that he could see the end of a reddy-brown tail and he went into the opening, his claws scratching on the smooth brown glaze of the pipe which sloped slightly uphill away from him. The tail disappeared around a corner and he followed it; the squirrel was always just out of sight, except for tantalising tail-tip glimpses every now and then. Passages that he was sure would contain a squirrel ended abruptly in a mass of roots, or opened on to the beach, and he had to allow his eyes to readjust again after turning back into the dim light of the labyrinth. There were callings and whisperings down every passage and pipe, but he could never see more of any squirrel than that elusive tail-tip.

  Blood knew by the scent-changes that his quarry was being switched as one grew tired and another took over, but no matter how hard he tried or how fast he ran, the tempting squirrels were always one corner ahead. After what seemed like hours he was dizzy and tired. Mocking squirrel voices came to his ears from above, below and behind him, and glimpses of red tails flashing in side-passages invited him to turn and chase them, yet never once did he actually get within touching distance of any squirrel.

  He was worn out, hungry and, most of all, frustrated. Finally he left the labyrinth at the first open hole he came to and padded off down the beach, glaring back at the open ends of the pipes. It would have to be rabbit today, but tomorrow would be squirrel, definitely squirrel, without any shadow of a doubt – squirrel!

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  ‘I’m sure that he wants to be back with us,’ Tansy was telling the Blue Pool Council. ‘He told me a good deal about what it was like at the Temple Tree before he came to us, and I’ve seen for myself. Why else would the Greys be keeping guard? They definitely seemed to be there to stop Chipling – Chip – from leaving. I could tell by the way they were watching him. They are not honouring the Kernel:

  Squirrels must be free

  To come and go as they please.

  None may be constrained.

  She looked round for confirmation.

  Marguerite agreed. ‘If he is being held unwillingly, then we must release him.’ Others signalled agreement.

  Alder said, ‘I’ll go and talk to the Crag – what does he call himself? – The Temple Master.’

  It was decided that Alder and Marguerite would go, but that Juniper, Tamarisk and Tansy would follow and stay within calling distance in case there was any trouble. Rowan the Bold, now a respectable father, though still loving action of any kind was, to his disappointment, left in charge of the remaining squirrels and the youngsters.

  The part separated into two groups as they approached the Temple Tree, Marguerite and Alder arriving in the clearing just as Crag returned with a party of Greys who were dragging a length of rusty chain between them.

  Crag surveyed the Reds coldly. ‘What are two Blasphemers doing at my Temple?’ he asked. Come to repent for your many sins?’

  ‘We have come to check that your youngster is not being held against his will,’ Alder replied.

  ‘My son is my business,’ Crag snapped back. ‘Now, away. I don’t want you corrupting these repentant silver-furred servants of the Sun. Away with you both.’

  The Temple Master turned to direct the grim-faced Greys as they dragged the chain up the trunk to an upper hole. Alder and Marguerite heard it rattle down inside the tree behind them as the re-entered the woodland.

  ‘What happened?’ Tansy asked eagerly.

  Marguerite told her as they went back to the pool together, discussing what options were now open to them.

  ‘Use the New Woodstock,’ said Tamarisk. ‘Curl their whiskers up – they deserve it!’

  Tansy had never experienced the full range of the Woodstock’s power. Tamarisk explained how different numbers scratched on it after the X had varying effects, from a painful 2, and a whisker-curling 3 or 4, to a killing 6 or 7.

  The original Woodstock, he told her, had been exhausted in destroying the Power Square, but a second one had been found and hidden for possible future need. Perhaps the time had come to use it.

  They discussed the points for and against.

  ‘It does give us an advantage,’ Alder said. ‘They are bigger and stronger than us, and it was one of their kind who broke my tail,’ There was a measure of savagery in his voice.

  ‘But it wasn’t these actual ones,’ replied Marguerite, and she quoted the Focus Kernel:

  The errant squirrel

  Should be punished. Do not harm

  Its friends, nor its kin.

  ‘The Greys are all the same,’ said Tamarisk. ‘They hate us Reds. Look how they treated Bluebell – they killed her!’

  Marguerite glanced at her life-mate, Juniper. Bluebell had been his first life-mate, but she had died while warning other Reds of an imminent Grey attack. Juniper looked as if he would like to take on all Greys himself, with or without a Woodstock.

  ‘We don’t know if there is any force left in the New Woodstock,’ she reminded them.

  ‘We could try it out on Juniper,’ Tamarisk said mischievously, remembering that it was Juniper who had first experienced the whisker-curling effect of the Woodstock’s force.

  ‘Not on your nutpile,’ said Juniper, ‘Clover had to bite my whiskers off before my head stopped spinning and it was weeks before I could think clearly or even climb a tree! You’re not trying it out on me!’

  The mention of nutpiles reminded Marguerite of the acute food shortage which was now following the plundering of their reserves by the Greys. Each time they saw Crag he seemed to have more and more Greys at his command. They must be flooding in from the north and east, part of the Second Wave. Marguerite was regretting her decision to treat them so suspiciously in the autumn and send them to the Lightning Tree area for the winter. But, as she told herself, at that time they hadn’t known that Crag and his family were there.

  Looking behind you

  There is never any mist,

  The view is superb.

  They had to deal with the situation as it was now. They has little food, a young Red was being held against his will and against the ancient Kernel Lore, the land was being overrun by Greys of the Second Wave, all seemingly under the influence of the Temple Master, and on top of all this, Tansy was constantly pressing her to go to the aid of the squirrels on Ourland. So many things to be considered and no clear line of action to be seen.

  They had reached the edge of the hollow in which the Blue Pool lay. The surface was cal
m in the late-winter sunshine and the upside-down reflections of the Beachend trees were green against the blue of the mirrored sky. Even in her agitated state Marguerite felt the surge of joy that always came when she looked at the loveliness of the pool and its setting. The Sun forbid that she would ever have to leave it again. Yet somehow she knew it would come to that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  It was a night for dreaming.

  Crag dreamed of the day when both trunks of the Temple Tree would be filled with metal, safely stowed there to prove to the Sun that he was a worthy squirrel. No Sunless Pit for him! The hollows were filling fast; every day more Greys arrived and were instructed by Ivy that this was the local custom and therefore, in accordance with their instructions from the Oval Drey at Woburn, must be followed. She was also adept at describing the Sunless Pit to the newcomers; he could not do better himself.

  A few feet from him Rusty, on a ledge in the cold hollow of the Temple Tree, dreamed of loving and cuddling, then awoke shivering with fear, afraid that Crag might somehow know of her sinful dreams.

  Chip, in a hollow lower down in the tree, was also dreaming of loving and cuddling, but with no such sense of sinfulness.

  The object of his dreams, Tansywistful, in the drey above the pool, was dreaming of a pine marten eating her family one by one, whilst she watched helplessly from a tree surrounded by water.

  On the island the object of her dream, Blood, had returned from his unsuccessful hunt in the pottery labyrinth to find the church door shut and neither sight nor sound of the peacock and the peahens. There had been a tangle of human scents around the church, and some of the undergrowth that had been invading the building and its surrounds has been cut back. He had found a dry place under a rhododendron bush nearby, and now slept and dreamed of the peacock. His pride prevented him from dreaming of squirrels that night.