Chapter 4: The Amazing Mr Toad's Hall

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A/N: Foolishly, I've decided to try my hand at NaNo again this year, so I thought I should post the next chapter of this before I vanish in a puff of OG story shenanigans for the next month. Enjoy!

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For several days, the excitement of Toad Hall's boating house had been quite enough to satisfy Mole's curiosity, and the Wild Wooders (who enjoyed celebrating their successes as much as, if not more than, the actual success itself) were content to sit on their laurels until the next bout of chaos was due. Mole heard details of his 'daring escape' being reiterated several times over, with each version becoming more elaborated upon than the last until he overheard a stoat tell another how 'that mole took on half a dozen of Toad's rabbit lackeys.' Mole would have corrected this dramatic exaggeration except… well, he was somewhat flattered by the awestruck look it earned him.

In the relative peace that settled over the Wild Wood, Mole turned his focus onto the tunnels that ran rampant beneath the forest floor. As things stood, most of the Wild Wooders left such tunnels to their own devices, being above-grounders by nature and as uncomfortable in the earth as any other non-undergrounder, and the only remark that had lent him pause was the warning that some of the tunnels might well lead into Badger's home.

"Badger's home?" he had asked. He'd heard of the badger who lived in the heart of the wood; the pups told of knock-and-run games on his doorstep, while the adults spoke with wary disgruntlement.

"Right," the Chief said, "it's huge and old–"

"And haunted!" piped up Lesser.

"–and underground," the Chief finished, glaring at Lesser for the interruption. "He keeps out of our way and we keep outta his."

"Just as well really, 'cause he's scary as–"

The Chief snarled, and Lesser wisely didn't finish the sentence. "We could take 'im on any day," he snapped. "We just decide not to."

"Right, Chief."

"Wouldn't it be good to have him on your side?" Mole asked. "After all, he does live in the Wild Wood–"

"But he's not Wild Wooder," the Chief said.

"Or even a wild wooder," Cheryl added, and the lower case was audible.

"He thinks he's too good for the likes of us," the Chief sniffed. "Not even sure he's an Undergrounder; he got too used to rubbing shoulders with the Riverbankers, if you ask me. Anyway, for the likes of you it's best to steer clear of 'im."

"Oh."

And so Mole made a merry time of exploring the almost-forgotten tunnels, the act of returning to his underground habitat energising him as instincts eager to of use rose back into being. For there was nothing to a mole quite like roving through dim and buried passages, paws tracing the curve of the dirt walls and claws scraping past protruding rock that the tunnel's initial creators had deemed unmovable. It was difficult for him to explain to the Wild Wooders (although he tried) the homely scents that navigated him along, from the moist, claggy smell of waterlogged earth (to be avoided) to the still air of abandoned routes, to the dusty, scuffed scent of paths recently-used.

It was all going quite smoothly until one of his expeditions led him just a little further from the Wild Wooders' home than usual.

He'd been circling eastwards (while his sense of direction on the surface left something to be desired, his navigational instincts beneath-ground were well-honed so long as he didn't think too hard about it) and had encountered the usual suspects – predominantly dead ends, collapsed walls, and overgrown roots. He had been humming one of the ditties that the stoats had taught him (they'd omitted some of the words, and Mole hadn't had the heart to tell them he'd overheard the full ditty (and the omitted words) several times since his arrival into the wood) when the tap of his claws along the wall took on a suddenly stony scrape.

He brought his light up to the wall and instead of the earthen tunnel he'd become so accustomed to, interspersed with root and rock, he was staring up at a stone surface. It was old and chipped, but it had definitely been formed with purpose once upon a time. It wasn't the design of animals; it was too angular, too uniform for that, carrying on in spite of the earth, not working with it.

He should really turn around.

Maybe if he'd been born a little less curious, he would have – but, then again, stories are rarely told about the inquisitively-indifferent. Instead he raised his snout to the air and when there came no scent of any animal having passed by that passage in recent time, he pressed on. And when that changed – when he caught a whiff of something earthy and musky (that of a badger, but he wasn't to know that yet) – he detoured deeper into the tunnels until he lost the scent entirely. Further and further he went, down paths that had once paid passage to a city of human people, but now saw no more than the occasional badger, until the walls changed substance once again.

To wood.

Not entirely wood, but wood enough. Beams of it was built into the sides and along the ceiling, held in place by iron and nails and giving the whole passageway a metallic tang.

Now, Mole was sure there was nothing wrong with wooden walls. The Wild Wooders liked their homes built into the trees, either sunken into the hollows between roots or, within some of the ancient trees, nestled right into the deadened interior of the heartwood. It was just, well, a very surface-dweller sort of solution. For starters, it was all a lot of faff to go dragging planks down tunnels (not to mention the acquiring of aforementioned planks) and, for seconds, there was a lot in the dirt that would simply see the wood as either a free meal or free real estate.

Simply put, if there ever was a shorthand for a tunnel being built by an above-grounder, this was it.

Mole considered all of this, and then considered that he now had even more questions than before and that he still had oodles of time before he would need to turn around (he didn't. It was already late afternoon, verging on early evening, but the Wild Wooders had become accustomed to his appalling time-keeping and rarely worried unless he missed breakfast the next day) and barrelled merrily onwards.

Onwards and, apparently, upwards.

He hadn't realised just how upwards he'd gone until he reached a hatch in the ceiling above and, in pushing it open, was greeted by sunlight streaming into a large, empty banqueting hall.

It was larger than any room Mole had encountered, built of stone and wood, and with glass chandeliers catching the last streaks of daylight and scattering it to all four corners. It held that scent of a place too large for its occupants; well-cleaned, but not well-lived-in, all soap and water and empty space. To compensate for the solitude, portraits crowded the walls and at least a dozen painted toads watched the intruding mole.

And that was when it dawned on him.

He was inside Toad Hall.

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For what it was worth, Rat told himself as he slipped in to the back entrance of Toad's home, he wasn't doing this for Toad. He was dropping by to pick up a book on boating that he'd lent Toad (which evidently wasn't required any longer) and if he so happened to check in on the empty house in his friend's absence, well then, that was just sensible multitasking.

A few of the staff animals had been left on at Toad Hall, but with no meals to prepare, no mess to clean, and no asinine amphibian to cater to, they didn't need to spend much time in Toad Hall, save for a quick dust and other upkeep chores. The majority of the rabbits had either been given the time off or had accompanied Toad on his daft caravanning craze, the latter ensuring that Toad's experience on roughing it on the open road included a neatly-made bed and readied meals.

Rat couldn't remember the last time he'd heard Toad Hall being so quiet in… well, ever.

He paused by a set of bay windows on the second floor that looked out over the river and savoured the view. He'd never noticed that before – but, then again, stopping by Toad Hall usually entailed encountering Toad himself, and there was little time for window-gazing in Toad's world. He tapped the reclaimed book subconsciously against a table. Eventually he caved to the impulse and gathered up some paper and pencils from an ancient bureau (finally locating paper that wasn't toad-green) to retreat onto the bay window seating and attempt a spat of poetry.

Evening drew in and he was just regretting ending the previous line of his most recent attempt with 'purple' when a crashing cacophony sounded off from the floor below.

In the otherwise empty house.

In the dark, huge, old, otherwise empty house.

Rat froze, the pencil hovering over the paper.

"It's probably just the staff, come to settle the house for the night," he said, and the realness of his voice helped banish thoughts of ghosts and ghoulies. Still, the pencil hesitated. "That, or it's just the house. Everyone knows old buildings shift when it cools down; it's probably just the evening cold sinking in."

He wondered if he sounded surer than he felt.

Another set of pandemonium, of clanging and clattering and smashing, jolted Rat from any pretence at continuing his poetry, and he set the stationery to one side with no shortage of grumbling.

"He's not even here, and I can't have a moment's peace," he complained to the world at large. He grabbed the lantern he had been using for lighting his writing. "Knowing my luck, he's probably returned this evening." He slammed the doors open onto the hallway and stalked towards the landing. "I swear, if I have to listen to him herald the virtues of caravanning – or worst still, a new fad – I am going to lose my–"

He never got to finish that sentence, for at that exact moment the cause of the cacophony became visible.

More or less.

Rat raised his lantern higher and the meagre sphere of light fell across the suit of armour. Originally, it had stood proudly as one half of a set, atop the grand staircase that bypassed the first floor and pooled on the ground floor entrance hall. Now the armour lay scattered across the steps. The gauntlets were tangled in the chainmail, the breastplate had slipped between the railings and was exploring the first floor, and the sabatons were merrily bouncing their way down to the entrance hall.

The helmet was the only piece not making its escape, and that was because it was in the paws of the very animal responsible for the chaos.

They scurried just at the edge of the light, half in the motion of chasing after the rest of the scattering suit and all Rat could make out was the swish of their purple-almost-black coat and the silhouette of a snout. Then they took note of the light and stilled. Their head turned Rat's way and, in the half-shadowed room, Rat recognised the uncanny weasel face.

"You," Rat snarled.

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Mole hadn't meant to knock over the suit of armour. Really. He'd only meant to take a look at it.

Although, in much the same way he'd intended to only take a look at the Wild Wood that early spring morning, these things tended to get away from him.

After discovering that he had somehow stumbled upon a Secret Passage into Toad Hall, Mole had decided to make the most of it, especially since the owner was currently away on the open roads. Scripting in his head how he planned to retell this story to the Wild Wooders (and the severely-abridged version for his mothers), he had explored the majority of the ground floor (marvelling over the extensive range of the pantry and the size of the kitchens) and was just moving onto the first floor when his attention had fallen on the suits of armour guarding the upper landing.

The armour had been stylised to give it a froggish appearance (or toadish, Mole supposed) and had left Mole wondering if they were indeed supposed to be practical suits or if they were sculptures. Naturally, Mole had attempted to remove the helmet of one to see if it detached.

Answer: It did.

But so did the rest of the armour.

The whole thing had collapsed right before Mole's eyes and he'd only had time to mutter a perfunctory "oh dear" before he went running after the wayward pieces. His bid to catch the suit only resulted in it scattering yet further in an echoing, cacophonous clamour. Mole cringed.

The thought 'loud enough to wake the dead' had passed through his mind just as light fell on him from above. He froze and looked up. The weasel mask tipped over his face, shielding his eyes from the worst of the sudden light. At the top of the staircase stood a figure, silhouetted behind the glow, and his mind whispered in Lesser's voice, 'haunted.'

The figure took a half-step forward.

"You," it growled.

Mole did what any sensible animal would do under the circumstances.

He ran.

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The Wild Wooder (for now Rat was sure that's what they were) turned tail and fled – and had the light been a little bit brighter or Rat's temper a little more tempered then he might had noticed the lack of any weaselly tail in the fleeing. Instead Rat focused on the pursuit at hand, taking two steps at a time, and the crashing descent drowned out nearly every other word he threw at the animal.

"What the – do you think you're – here, you–" He tripped over one of the armour's greaves in the dim lamplight and the rest of his verbal outrage was duly derailed. He regained his balance just in time to see the Wild Wooder falter at the base of the stairway, visibly flummoxed by the selection of doors before them.

"Come back here, you – you cur! You caitiff! Come back and answer for what you did to my boat!"

The Wild Wooder threw another glance back at him, read the room, and evidently decided any room would be better than this one. They vanished through a staff door, helmet still in paw.

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Mole had been wrong; it wasn't a ghost.

He'd been quite sure nothing could have been worse than a ghost but, with the incensed water rat on his tail, he rather wished his pursuer was of the more intangible type. The poor mole would have cried back and told the water rat that the damage to his boat had been of a purely accidental nature, but he was an animal made for digging, not running, and so he had little enough breath to keep ahead of the water rat, let alone speak also.

The space on the other side of the door was not the banqueting hall that Mole had been hoping for, or even a room at all, but instead was a set of narrow steps intended for staff use. They were certainly not made for daring chases. But if Mole had one advantage on his side, it was that he was accustomed to the dark (admittedly, steps: less so) and so long as his glasses stayed firmly on his snout then he could navigate the dimly-lit stairway with relative speed.

His pursuer slowed down a smidgen as he acclimatised to the swinging shadows cast by his lantern, lending Mole just enough of an edge to keep ahead of him.

"–wrecked the seat and stole an oar!" Mole heard the water rat accuse briefly, before he rounded the stairs and the voice faded momentarily. Mole just had enough time to get miffed that he was being blamed for the oar's absence, when all he did was knock it accidently into the water, until the water rat gained enough on him for his shouts to be heard. "–my father's boat, and what did it ever do to you?"

The stairs ended at a door, and Mole pushed through it to what appeared to be a statue gallery. (And, like the portraits back in the banqueting hall, they were all toads.)

"–probably here to cause more trouble, to steal the silverware and wreak the galleries–" the water rat continued to charge. "It's just like you weasels–"

At this point, Mole was really becoming rather frustrated with the baseless tirade. He had never meant to harm the boat (well, not that boat, anyway) and if the water rat had tried talking to him, instead of chasing him down, he'd have happily explained, but no. And besides, his little legs were aching something rotten. So when he saw another servant door at the far end of the corridor, he yelled, "Catch!" and threw the helmet he'd still been carrying high into the air. There was the crash of the water rat's lantern being dropped as the animal instinctively moved to seize the helmet, and suddenly the only light was that of the moon through the upper windows.

Mole ignored the verbal barrage his little stunt earned him and slipped through the staff door. As he'd been expecting, he came to another set of stairs which he descended rapidly. A column of weak moonlight momentarily lit his way as the water rat appeared at the top of the stairwell and halted at the nigh pitch-black way before him.

Mole couldn't help it; he cackled triumphantly at the animal's predicament and gave a farewell wave before disappearing fully into the darkness.

Which, in hindsight, wasn't his wisest decision.

There was a muttered cuss and he heard the water rat move into action, presumably spurred on by Mole's mocking actions. Unlike Mole, however, who had plenty of practice navigating by sound and scent and touch alone, his paws trailing the curving wall and reading the trajectory before him, the water rat had no such experience. As such, he made good progress until the door swung shut behind him and he was thrown into absolute darkness, and then he managed all of six seconds before he made a miscalculation and missed a step.

After that, gravity took over.

Mole heard the water rat slip before he realised just what had happened, but that didn't give him much time because by the time realisation had struck, so had the water rat. The animal cannonballed into Mole and the rest of the descent was made in a matter of moments, ending finally in an ungainly heap at the bottom of the stairs.

There was muffled grumbling from the both of them, which shall not be repeated here partly for profanity, but also because there's no proper way of transcribing, "mphffmpf" onto page. Mole untangled himself from the mess, grabbed his mask and his hat, and made a run for the door before the water rat could re-orientate himself. The room beyond the staff stairway was the kitchen, and Mole could have danced a jig right there, for every animal knows that every banqueting hall needs a kitchen – and in the aforementioned room beyond lay his ticket out of there!

It was only as he was ducking back down into the Secret Passage out of Toad Hall, surprisingly non-followed, that he realised there was one very important fact he'd forgotten earlier. He had a mask. But he didn't possess a hat.

He glanced down to his paws and stared at the black hat caught in his grasp.

Dimly, he recalled grabbing at everything within his reach, assuming in that madcap dash that it was all mess of his own making, including (apparently) a hat that was almost certainly the water rat's.

He considered returning the item for all of half a second before remembering the rat's previous less-than-friendly greeting, and decided that it'd be better for everyone involved if he dropped the hat off by the water rat's home later. (Preferably in the dead of night with no witnesses. The fact that he didn't know where the animal lived was neither here nor there; the Wild Wooders would probably know and, even if they didn't, he was sure he'd work it out somehow. Probably.)

Anyway, he'd had quite enough excitement for one day.

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By the time Rat had regained his feet, the Wild Wooder was quite well and gone. He paced through the kitchens and out into the banqueting hall, before admitting defeat and pacing back the way he'd come, just for good measure. He would have gotten to his feet after the fall a good deal quicker, only… well…

As he traipsed, empty-pawed, back out of Toad Hall, he tried to convince himself that what he had seen had been a trick of the light – or, rather, a lack of it. That the beetle-black eyes had been dimmed in the dark, and that the fur surrounding those aforementioned eyes had not changed to black, but rather had been caught up in shadows.

And, most prominently, that he hadn't seen the wickedly-sharp claws that were owned by no Wild Wooder, but instead belonged to the realm of monsters told by mothers to unruly pups.

(It didn't occur to him that Badger, also being a digging animal like Mole, possessed claws just as long, if not longer, than the mystery Wild Wooder. This was partially because Badger was larger in general, so such claws fitted his form, partially because Badger was a friend (at least, Rat hoped; it was hard to tell with Badger sometimes) and partially simply because he hadn't seen Badger in some time. But mostly it was because he had never seen Badger's claws quite so close and personal to his face as he had just now after his collision with the Wild Wooder.)

(And in his fragmented, shadowed memory, the encounter was already beginning to morph.)

He ran his paw along the raised hackles on his neck, and suddenly came to a halt when he didn't brush against the back brim of his hat. It took him several belated moments to register, in as many words, its tangible absence, but once he did he was already swinging back the way he'd come. He was sure he had been wearing it during his chase after the Wild Wooder – he'd nearly lost it in catching the helmet – but after that… after the fall…

He threw open the door to the staff stairwell and stared at the empty space.

"Damn Wild Wooder."