Duncton Wood by William Horwood

the wood,” but there she would be found.
    “You’re to stay in the home burrow today because there are things to do,” but she wouldn’t.
    She managed to do terrible things without even trying. Just before the April elder meeting, for example, she couldn’t resist having a peek about the elder burrow, somewhere she had never seen and which, since every-mole was always talking about it, she thought she would have a look at. So she did, and very impressive she found it. After she left it to wander off around Barrow Vale, a terrible cry went up: “The worms, the elders’ worms! They’ve been eaten. Somemole has been into the elder burrow and eaten all the worms!”
    She heard it, and it was true, dreadfully true! She had eaten them! Well, she had seen them in a pile in the corner of the burrow, squirming about in a delightful way and, yes, she had had one, but she had hardly thought about it because, well, she was looking around the burrow and yes, then she did have another one; no, it wasn’t intentional; yes, she did eat it, the burrow was so interesting you see and, she was hardly thinking, and... Oh dear, another one, were there really five missing? She couldn’t possibly have eaten five perhaps another mole came in... No? Well, she could always...
    Only old Hulvar laughed when he heard about it. It was a sign of the times, he thought, that everymole took the whole thing so seriously. Mandrake attacked Rebecca viciously and also hurt Sarah, who was trying to protect Rebecca; the elder meeting was held in an atmosphere of acrimony, though it was no mole’s fault among the elders.
    If that had been the only incident it might not have mattered, but despite her sincere good intentions, Rebecca did other things as bad. One day, for example, she managed to lose not one of her brothers in the wood, but all three. One of them nearly got killed by an owl and the other two were gone for two days and were only brought back to the home burrow by, of all moles, a Marsh End female. “It was Rebecca’s fault,” they wailed, though they were by now nearly adults.
    Rebecca tried to explain to Mandrake: “It was only a game of hide and seek and I thought it would be fun to go a bit farther than usual in the tunnels and perhaps for a moment or two onto the surface I’m terrible sorry I didn’t know where we were but it wasn’t hard to find the way back I don’t understand how they got lost for two days and there weren’t any owls about I’m sure please...,” but Mandrake was furious. Indeed, so furious was he that few moles have ever seen him like that and survived. His anger with her on these occasions was always out of proportion to the crime, if crime it was. Yet still her spirit seemed to thrive on it.
    But while she grew big and headstrong like Mandrake himself, she also became smiling and graceful like her mother. She loved to touch things and to dance or find some quiet spot in the spring sun and lie softly, with the ecstasy of it on her snout. She would chase her brothers like a growing male yet comfort them when they were hurt as the kindest female did.
    There was a fine lightness of spirit, of life, about her and perhaps it was this that Mandrake, in his black anger, would try vainly to catch and crush. As she grew older. Mandrake’s only recourse was to increasing violence toward her, and as the spring advanced, she found it best to keep her snout down, and well out of the way.
     
    There came a time in April when suddenly there was wild blood in the air, and Rebecca found it exciting. Mating time was starting. She knew she shouldn’t go onto the surface, but Mandrake himself seemed to be gone more these days and her mother was losing interest in the autumn litter because it was almost full-grown now. So though Rebecca felt tied still to her home burrow and was still not really an adult, she was drawn by the life in the air up into the busy wood.
    Busy and noisy. Birds darted and flitted about the trees,