Duncton Stone by William Horwood

rutted root-bound roof the cracks in which were the general source of light in the Ancient System; these indentations twisted and swirled, bent and retreated, so that a mole could not long look at them without his head seeming to swim as the walls did, and his eyes losing their focus. Then it was that the Dark Sound might start, catching the stress of his breathing, or the scuff of a nervous paw upon the ground, and he had to flee before the darkness of his mind overtook him.
    “But how did they delve such things, and so high?” Cluniac asked Pumpkin on many occasions. But Pumpkin did not know – that was a mystery only a Master of the Delve might satisfactorily explain.
    The winter had proved hard, and though the Newborns had not attempted any systematic pursuit of the followers, their patrols were always about and Pumpkin and his friends felt the constant stress of having to be careful about where they went and what they did. Then, as spring advanced and the weather improved, the Newborns began regular sorties into the High Wood.
    March was a terrible month. Three of the elderly followers died, suffering perhaps from the cold and the inadequate diet that the High Wood soils provided, and one had been killed by Newborn guards. This more than anything had distressed Pumpkin, and though he did his best to appear cheerful and optimistic, privately he suffered much.
    “Will we be rescued by moles from beyond Duncton Wood?” he was often asked. “Will a time of peace return when we can go back downslope to Barrow Vale, and the tunnels we loved?”
    “Yes! That day will come!” he would tell them, but how much it cost him to say it! How uncertain were his prayers to the Stone! How much he felt it had failed him!
    If he had any consolation, though a cold one, it was that Sturne, now Acting Librarian in the service of the Newborns, was even more isolated than he was. Pumpkin alone knew the truth about Sturne, and how Master Librarian Stour, before his death, had entrusted him with the future of the Library, and the care of texts that between them they had managed to hide away from the Newborns’ cleansing.
    Day after day, molemonth after month, right through the winter years, Sturne had had to stay at his post, pretending to be one thing so that he might protect the others; so too that he might inform Pumpkin of any dangers or changes he should know about. But their meetings were difficult, for nomole could be allowed to know the truth about Sturne, none at all.
    So it was that Pumpkin had continued his lifelong habit of going to the Stone alone – to pray and contemplate he said, but also now to give him opportunity to slip away across the dangerous surface of the High Wood, and meet Sturne in some fretful shadowed place, or draughty tunnel, and exchange information.
    How little these two old friends guessed how much these meetings meant to each other. Pumpkin, friendly, modest, worried, great-hearted, was reminded that Sturne was far more alone than he, witnessing painful things among the Newborns, and forced to tell terrible lies, which offended him deeply. No, Pumpkin could not have carried on alone for long in such circumstances.
    While Sturne, unbending, unsmiling, his face etched with severity and too much scholarship, compelled to seem a traitor to all he believed in, was given the chance to pass a few hurried moments with the library aide he trusted and admired and, yes, loved, more than any in the world, the only mole he had ever dared call a friend. The mole with whom, in better days, he had spent the festival days, like Longest Night or Midsummer’s Eve, when he felt lonely. Then he had thanked the Stone with all his heart that he could, in his severe and uncommunicative way, share the hours with good Pumpkin.
    These two then were partners in the strangest secret in Duncton Wood, each a support to the other, though their time together was snatched from the jaws of the Newborns themselves, and passed always