The Willows in Winter Page 7

  But the Rat did not, feeling only some surprise at the roughness of their passage, and then alarm and doubt as the machine tore down towards the river and threatened to crash straight into it till, with a last despairing shudder, it pulled itself up into the air, more of its own volition than by Toad’s skill.

  Then they were up and away, tearing once more into the sky, with Toad so exultant that he half rose in his seat to wave one hand and turn to the horrified Rat and laugh in his face.

  “I’ve done it! I can fly! I can fly!”

  V

  Terra Firma

  Any thought of actually looking for Mole that might originally have been in Toad’s head went right out of it the moment he took off. Even then, he would have had to be able to keep the machine steady, low and flying slowly enough for the Water Rat to have any chance of looking over its side at the ground below But Toad could do none of those things. The machine had a will of its own, rushing forward and up through the air as Toad clung on to the joystick with one hand and his seat with the other, disregarding utterly his own safety and that of the Rat, and most of all the reason they were there in the first place.

  But so fast was their ascent, and so steep, that far from looking over the side the Rat was forced down into his seat and would have disappeared from sight altogether had he not clutched resolutely to the varnished wood of the fuselage that surrounded it.

  “Toad, you terrible and wicked Toad!” he struggled to call out, though recriminations now were too late to be of use, too late perhaps to save either of them from the dire consequences of Toad’s selfish action. Which was all made worse for Rat by Toad’s wild cries of triumph and delight as the machine wobbled this way and that as it flew upwards ever faster, and then, just as the Rat was at last finding strength to pull himself sufficiently high to see what was going on, plunged downwards, almost hurling him out into the sky.

  “Toad!” he shouted, grasping Toad’s leather-clad shoulders and puffing the wretched animal as near to him as he could — though this had the effect of sending the machine into a banking turn so that the whole spectacle of the river, the meadows, the Wild Wood and then Toad Hall came into view not quite beneath them so much as sliding by at an angle to them. “Toad, take us down immediately!”

  “I shan’t and I won’t and I — can’t!” cried Toad exultantly, oblivious it seemed to the dreadful implications of what he was saying.

  “Well, at least —”

  The Water Rat was going to tell Toad to attach his parachute strap to the fuselage, for it was flapping uselessly in space, when he realized that his own was doing the same. Always sensible and practical in a crisis, the Rat attached Toad’s strap to a hook that he found, and then his own. Not that Toad was interested to be told such things, for he ignored the Rat’s further cries and warnings and turned to face the tilting, racing, wonderful world of ground and sky.

  The machine ducked and dived ever lower; it circled Toad Hall; it soared again, whether at Toad’s command or of its own volition none could say. Any hope of seeing the ground below for more than a few moments was gone, and the only hope that remained was that they might by some miracle get down onto terra firma once more and —But that was as far as the Rat’s thoughts got before something happened that took him over completely. They had soared high once more when, quite suddenly, the engine stopped. One moment everything was all noise and confusion, and the next, with a splutter and a grumble, the world was silent but for the most ominous sound the Rat had ever heard in all his life: the sinister squeal and whine of wind in the wires, and through the motionless propeller in front.

  Then, before the Rat could say a thing, or even think what he might say in so hopeless a circumstance, the world turned slowly upside down before him, quite unaccountably, it seemed, and he felt himself falling out of his seat into cold air.

  “O!” was all he had time to say as the machine, with Toad hanging upside down inside it and looking as ridiculous as the Rat had ever seen him look, appeared to shoot away above him and was gone.

  Then, with the roaring of wind in his ears, the Rat, as if in a dream, felt himself turning in the air and found he was gazing down at the ground far below, and at the River, his beloved River, and the very stretch he knew best of all.

  He knew it at once: the bridge, Toad’s estate beyond it, which looked large to the Rat even from so high above the ground, the dark trees of the Wild Wood, and softer woods and meadows where Mole End was, and the river, shining below him in the winter light. And —”That’s my boat loose on the water!” he said crossly to himself, as if it was the most natural thing to make such an observation as he plummeted towards the ground. But it was loose; the little rowing boat he loved so much, which he remembered in a flash he had failed to moor properly because the sound of Toad’s machine had distracted him and had now been floated off the bank by the flooding river and was drifting rapidly downstream.

  “Drat!” said the Rat to himself. For his boat was turning and turning about on itself, and from where he saw it now it was as plain as could be that once it had passed one side or the other of the island it would be sucked down over the weir and smashed to bits.

  Then, another surprise. Above him a by now all too familiar roaring came to him through the steadier sound of the wind in his ears as he fell, and he looked up in time to see Toad’s machine righting itself as it turned back his way and, though he could not quite see properly, the engine once more coming to life.

  Toad, he presumed — he did not exactly hope — was still inside it. The machine wobbled a couple of times above him and then was gone off eastwards and lost in the bright light of the sky.

  All this seemed to take a very long time indeed, and the Rat was beginning to think that falling through air was not unlike swimming underwater. He reached out his arms and legs, much as he did sometimes on a hot day when a little dive in the river served to cool him off, and turned to face the ground once more. As he did so, and tried to fix his gaze once more on the river below him, he saw to his surprise that it had moved a little away from directly below him, or appeared to have done, and that he was now above the Wild Wood. The adjustment was slight, but enough to make him shift his gaze from what he knew to what he did not, which was a place that was not part of the Wide World, but which he instinctively knew was that other place — Beyond.

  He looked first downstream, past the weir towards which his boat was drifting so rapidly, and he saw all the great panoply of life — roads, towns, and railway lines, smoke, and people.

  Then he looked upstream, past the island, past his own home, past the bridge and Toad Hall, on and on to a place he had only ever imagined might exist. Pale winter sun shone upon it, and it alone, so that in a dull grey roaring world that uncharted part which he felt must be Beyond, the bit he had only ever imagined before, seemed special and separate.

  What he saw quite took his breath away. The river wound its way into it, its meanders growing smaller one by one, and where they went was all green and hazy blue, and in parts still white with snow In some parts too there was a golden sheen where the sun shone down and reflected in his eyes. And there were what seemed mountain heights.

  “O!” he whispered, for in all his life he had never seen anything so beautiful. “O!”

  Then, as if he had glimpsed a world he should not have seen, and that too long, there was a violent jerk at his shoulders, and that secret lost forbidden place, that ethereal place, was snatched from him and he saw it no more.

  Above him, with a great Whoosh! and Crack! the parachute opened and the roaring in his ears fell away to silence once more. “O dear!” he said aloud, for suddenly there seemed no time to think.

  The trees came nearer and nearer as he was carried across them, right over the Wild Wood towards its farthest edge.

  “Must keep an eye on the river so I know in which direction to go back,” said the ever resourceful Rat as the trees came nearer still and the river disappeared rapidly behind him — over
— round — and then with a scrape and a bump, a rise once more into the air, and then a final branchy, scratchy, tangly descent, he landed somewhere on the far side of the Wild Wood.

  Meanwhile, distant calls — shouts would be far too strong a word — finally brought the Mole out of the strange beshadowed world he had been in, and he opened his eyes onto a cold and dusky sky.

  He had some notion that within the long dream in which he had been lost there had been a great fierce bird flying in the sky, rumbling and roaring, and this had been what had finally urged him towards consciousness. But it was the calling of his name that truly caused him to wake.

  Where he was he had no idea, and that he was in the real world of earth and river, tree and weather he rather doubted. Where he had been, well now, that was a different thing again.

  He closed his eyes and pondered the question. But he soon gave it up because the strange and comforting images of gentle hands that had caught him and pulled him from the icy silent world of the river into which he had fallen, and strong arms that held him as he was carried and placed him in a soft, warm sweet-smelling bed of reeds and grass, were very hard to retain for long, and they slipped away into the shadows of his mind as those calls summoned him back once more into the waking world.

  “Mole! Mo—ole!” they came, drifting out of the dusk, from far far away, yet he did not want to listen to them; he wanted only to slip away into the place he had been and never leave it more.

  “I remember —” he whispered to himself, “it was so warm and He —”

  Mole felt tears well up in his eyes, and he sniffed, and he cried, for he was waking up despite himself, and he knew that wherever he had been, and Whoever had been with him there, was leaving him now and he could not return.

  “I don’t want —”

  “Mole!” cried the strange sharp voices, further off now, and moving further away.

  Mole tried to wiggle his toes, and they did wiggle. Then he tried to move his paws, and they did move, and he said to himself, “These toes must be mine, and these paws too. I am alive!”

  He whiffled his snout and opened his eyes once more and saw the sky was growing darker by the moment, and felt the air growing colder.

  “Mole!”

  Now their voices were further off still and the Mole was suddenly wide awake. He sat up with a jolt and promptly sank back again into —”Grass. Reeds. Water nearby My, I do not feel well.

  But they — they are calling my name — they —”

  Mole sat up again, shook his head, and looked about him. Definitely grass, and beyond it reeds.

  “Mo —”

  But now their voices were the barest whisper.

  “It’s me!” called the Mole, his voice so weak and hoarse that it was not even a whisper.

  “It’s me, Mole! I’m here!”

  He got up, feeling very weak indeed, and poked about amongst the vegetation and saw he was near the river and that he could just see across it. It seemed wide and flowed fast and he did not like the look of it at all.

  “Over here!” a voice cried. “This way back, lads!” The Mole peered across-river, saw some shapes flitting through the dark — thin, narrow weaselly shapes, stoaty shapes, the kind of shapes the Mole did not like, and yet it seemed it had been they who had been calling him.

  Badger! He had got them out and searching! That was it. Why else would weasels and stoats stray so far from their miserable lairs in the Wild Wood?

  The Mole broke through the reeds, teetered on the very edge of the fast-flowing water and tried to attract their attention.

  “It’s me! I’m here! Mole is here!”

  But he seemed to have no voice at all, for they did not hear what little he had, but faded away into shadows, into darkness, and then were gone.

  “I’m here!” said the Mole finally, only then realizing that he seemed unable to speak at all. Or rather, he spoke but no real sound came forth.

  He had never felt so ill, so thirsty, so woozy, so strange, and so lonely and forlorn in his whole life. That world he had come out of felt gone forever, and he missed it already; and the real world into which he had come did not seem to want him at all.

  “Where am I?” he wondered, and began to flounder about, splashing in the well-puddled ground, unable even to find that warm dry place where he had been before.

  “O dear! O dear! I am lost and lonely, and miserable and — and I shall make a hole, and hide away into it till day returns.”

  He snuffled about, scented at the gloaming, turned back the way he had just come, saw to his alarm that the water was nearer to him than before and was rising, and finally, completely awake now, made his way to slightly higher ground. There he found some willows and beyond them drier ground, and then some ash trees. Beyond them the ground dropped away towards the rising river again.

  “I’m on an island, and on it I shall have to stay!” he said aloud. “For tonight at least.”

  The Mole went back to the highest point he could find, made a serviceable scrape and, covering himself with what old leaf-litter and dried grass he could find, settled down to sleep.

  If he saw that Being who had saved him beckon him once more, if he journeyed back to that place wherein he had almost melded and become part of something far greater than himself or anything he knew, and if now he was only able to observe it as if he was but a temporary visitor whose time had not yet come to be a resident — he did not quite remember it when he awoke the following dawn to the soft chucking of mallard ducks, and the rustle and chirp of coots down by the river, whose flow he could hear nearby as a sure and purposeful rippling, but further off as a torrential roar.

  “That must be the weir,” he said to himself, “and I must be on the island. O dear! O my! How will I ever get off?”

  He did not move, indeed he did not open his eyes for more than a moment, but lay where he was, snug yet apprehensive, hungry yet just a little bit excited. It was the excitement of the survivor for whom the worst is over, who though he feels his life is no longer threatened knows he still has some way to go.

  He knew he had fallen through the ice, and that he had somehow managed to get — or be helped — onto the island. Now, alone but safe, he must somehow get back to his friends and his home. He had not forgotten that his original intention had been to try to find Rat and Otter, who were in trouble.

  “Some help I have been to them!” he scolded himself. “I am a foolish mole to have tried to do so much alone. Now they may well still be in trouble — or worse! worse! — and I myself seem to be the subject of a search — or a hunt! not a hunt! — by the weasels and the stoats. I must up and away from here!”

  With such purposeful thoughts as these the Mole rose to his feet and set off to explore his new domain. It was many years since he had been there, and that only when Portly was very young and had got lost and found his way here just as he had now done. The island was a place animals tended not to go, not that they were afraid so much that they felt a certain awe and respect when near it, sensing that if ever help and succour were truly needed, it was here that He who could provide them might surely be found.

  Mole soon saw that the island seemed somewhat smaller compared to his last visit, for the river had flooded and broken its banks, and made incursions into the little reedy inlets all around it which were, Mole remembered, secret placid places in the summer and autumn, where bees buzzed, and flies hovered, and the blue and violet dragonflies flew, settled, and flew on again.

  Now all seemed to be submerged beneath a flood of muddy water beyond which, where the river raced, dangerous waves and rapids showed, and no creature, not even the Water Rat, would risk venturing. The sky was blue in parts, cloudy in others, so that once in a while sun shone down fleetingly on the island, or over the racing river and across the willows and meadows beyond. Mole looked for signs of life, or someone to wave to, to show that he was alive and safe, but all in vain. Nobody was about at all, and he could only wander about from one side
of the island to the other, from top to bottom, to the water’s edge and back to where he had made his base, in the hope that he might eventually attract someone’s attention.

  He found a little food, just enough to give him sustenance, though not enough or of quality sufficient to satisfy the gnawing pangs in his stomach and prevent him suffering all kinds of unwelcome remembrances of happy fulsome repasts that he had enjoyed at Mole End. Every time he settled down for a snooze he found himself thinking of plum pudding, or sizzling sausages, or leek and potato soup laced with a little —”O, but I mustn’t!” groaned the poor Mole, opening his eyes once more and restlessly setting off again on his little round to see what, if any, signs of life and help there were.

  Later in the afternoon, with the river showing no inclination to rise further and Mole, returning from his latest tour, beginning to feel decidedly better, that the errant sun shone briefly once more across the island and he caught a glimpse of something through the crowding sedges beyond one of the inlets.

  It was no more than a flash of blue — but of a colour and at a height that seemed somehow familiar, somehow comforting. He stopped, peered, negotiated the flooded ground, pulled aside the tall sedge grasses and there he saw it, plain as could be: the Water Rat’s rowing boat.

  “It cannot be!” Mole exclaimed, for none knew better than he how very careful Rat was with his boat, and how he never ever left it without mooring it fast, not Rat! Why even when it had once been sunk while under Toad’s command the Rat had gone to the pain of salvaging it and then making it as good as new again.

  But there it now was, its bows thrust in among the sedges, its painter trailing out into the water towards the open river, rocking gently to and fro. It swung a little, then heaved forward as a wave pushed it, and then back, back towards the river’s flow as the wave retreated.