Chapter 5: Autumn
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A/N: Brewday and several of the characters named here are lovingly borrowed from the witw novel, Wild Wood, by Jan Needles, an interesting take on the witw plot from the perspective of the Wild Wooders. This will be the last update of 2021, so have a great xmas/new year :)
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Mole had honestly intended to return the water rat's hat. Truly, he had. But once he arrived back in the Wild Wood, several things happened that put the thought quite out of his head.
Firstly, there was the telling (and subsequent re-telling) of his impromptu exploration into Toad Hall. That in of itself caused quite the stir, even before he shared the ensuing encounter of the water rat.
"A secret passage," the Chief had asked, his eyes glinting with opportunity, "into Toad Hall?"
"Well, yes," Mole said. "Only I'm not quite sure where. I found it by accident, and I left it in such a hurry that I didn't really pay any heed to where I was coming from."
"Even so–"
"But I do remember it was round Mr Badger's way," Mole had added, and that had been the end of that, since no animal wanted to be caught sneaking too close to Badger's sett, not even for the chance to steal into Toad Hall.
"It'd not be much use anyway," the Chief had said, working hard to make it sound like that was the reason they weren't pursuing this avenue, and not because of any wariness regarding Badger. "Toad's back now, and so's all his staff. The place'll be crawling with animals."
The hat, naturally, made its rounds the moment Mole admitted to its accidental theft.
Lesser tilted it between his ears and affected an accent that might have been an attempt at a water rat voice, but certainly not the water rat who Mole had encountered. "Now who's a Riverbanker?" he preened. "Oh, look at me, with my boats and my river and my picnics–"
Cheryl swiped the hat off him and set it to a jaunty angle atop her own head. "Nah, you've got it all wrong, it's more like, there ain't nothing, absolutely nothing, half so good as messin' about in boats," she said, veering into cockney pirate territory.
"It's the only thing!" Lesser chimed, his voice careening wildly between accents.
Amid the laughter, the Chief Weasel stole the hat and placed it on Mole. "Good on ya, rookie. You've made your first nemesis."
Mole faltered. "My first what?"
"Nemesis!" Lesser exclaimed. "It's like a personal enemy!"
Cheryl cackled and pulled the hat over Mole's face. "Aw, pup's first nemesis."
Mole pushed it out of his eyes. "Really? I mean–" he added, seeing past the congratulations long enough to register just what the cause was – "I didn't really do anything; he's just got the wrong end of the stick–"
"Welcome to being a Wild Wooder," said the Chief. "Yer get used to that eventually."
And the second reason that Mole clean forgot about the hat's return was that autumn arrived.
Not that he realised it at first.
In the depths of the Wild Wood, where beneath the smothering canopy the light took on a perpetually twilight hue, the shortening days did little to portend the shifting season. Instead autumn was ushered in on golden leaves and misty breath, on blossoms exchanging for berries and swallows for south-setting geese. For those animals driven to migrate, a restlessness took hold which trickled down through the fauna until finally all but the most stalwart individuals felt an echo of that instinct unsettling in their bones.
Except for Mole, who missed all of these seasonal signposts and thus was thoroughly nonplussed when one morning he woke to encounter a hubbub in the kitchens. The usual scent of breakfast had been replaced with a thick, yeasty aroma, and multiple animals fussed around large cauldrons bubbling over fires.
"Oh my, whatever's going on?" he asked.
"We're malting!" came the busied reply.
"Moulting? Isn't it a little out-of-season for that?"
His comment earned him a round of squeaking laughter. "No. Malting," a weasel said, pointing to the cauldrons. "We're making malt."
"For barley wine!" a youngster piped up as they ran by with an armful of firewood.
"You make it yourself?" Mole asked. "How jolly!"
There came a laugh. "How exhausting, more like," said a stoat manning one of the cauldrons.
"Then let me help," Mole offered, for while there was indeed a sense of frantic action, there was also good-natured humour and excitement bubbling throughout the room. "I've never made barley wine before."
The stoat shrugged. "Ain't never had barley wine made by mole either."
Mole certainly did turn his paw to helping, although it quickly transpired that the Wild Wooders would probably go on never having had barley wine made by a mole. For he tried keeping watch over the cauldron, but the steam fogged his glasses and the heat stifled his nose and it nearly sent him into a sneezing fit. Once he had been securely bundled away from the malt, he had been tasked with helping to move the vast sacks of grain that were needed for the process. And he tried. He certainly tried! But being a mole of his stature, and not a weasel or stoat, the hessian sacks were simply too heavy to manoeuvre. He was hurriedly moved along when his efforts finally yielded results in the form of an upturned bag and barley scattered across the kitchen floor.
"Never in all my years have I had such chaos in my kitchens!" exclaimed the stoat who appeared to be the closest to being 'in charge' of the brewing. At least, she did the majority of the shouting. She swatted at the youngsters who had come to admire the mess. "And be off with you, pups; I know you have jobs to do too!"
"It's alright," one of the weasel pups said to Mole, evidently deciding the dejected mole was a kindred spirit by nature of his telling-off, "you can come help us collect the firewood."
"Are you quite sure you're meant to go out into the Wild Wood alone?" Mole asked as a tiny pup paw caught his and confidently led him towards the exit. Mole thought of all the dangers the Wild Wooders had taken pains to explain to him before they decided he was no longer in danger of falling down the first mine shaft he encountered.
The pups released a cacophony of squeaky laughter. "Nah, it's only stupid Riverbankers who don't know their way around," the weasel pup said.
"And 'dergrounders," another pup added.
"And 'dergrounders," the weasel pup agreed. She patted Mole's paw in a decidedly 'there there' way. "But you're alright."
"That's very kind of you," Mole said, trying not to laugh.
"Even if you did beat our Dolly's record for exploring the old tunnels!" a stoat pup said gleefully.
The weasel who was presumably 'our Dolly' swiped at the other pup. "Adults don't count!" she snapped. "And even if they did, it ain't fair 'cause he's a 'dergrounder!"
"You went into the old tunnels?" Mole asked. He wasn't sure if he should be reprimanding or commending her bravery, so he took the easy route and so did neither. "Why?"
"For fun, of course!" Dolly said, as if it were the most obvious answer in the world – and to her young mind, the thrill was certainly reason enough. "You get a lantern that'll last an hour and you gotta see how far you get before you run out." She grinned toothily at another weasel. "Or wimp out."
The other weasel scowled. "That ain't fair! I told ya I heard something!"
"Yeah, like a spider."
"It was bigger than a spider!" the weasel squeaked, and he tugged on Mole's free paw. "Tell 'er! Tell 'er that there are real monsters down there!"
Mole briefly floundered, both paws in his demanding for validation. "Well," he said, drawing the word out to give him a chance to think, "I don't know about monsters, but there are plenty of dangers. Collapsing tunnels, for one, especially in places that haven't been kept well. And flooding–"
"But monsters!" the other weasel yelped. "Tell 'er about the monsters! You're a 'dergrounder, you should know!"
"I've never met a monster," Mole said, and there was a triumphant 'ha!' from Dolly, "but there are definitely animals I wouldn't want to meet in the tunnels. Like adders. And Mr Badger. They're certainly reason enough to head back."
The other weasel echoed Dolly's triumphant cry, and Dolly glowered. "Yeah, well, I wouldn't worry about getting eaten by no adder or badger, Billy; you're so scrawny you wouldn't even make a snack for them."
"Hey!"
"Let's see about that firewood, shall we?" Mole asked, interjecting before the two pups could resort to a full-out brawl. "I think we must be far enough now for there to be plenty for the finding."
Dolly straightened, acting as if she hadn't been one more petty insult away from tackling the other pup to the ground. "Quite right," she said in a tone that sounded like the kind of voice her mother probably used on the pups. "Mr 'Dergrounder, you stay here and we'll bring the firewood to you."
It occurred to Mole, some time later as his arms were being laden down with sticks and under-ambitious branches, that Dolly's plan had set him up perfectly for being the carrier of all the aforementioned firewood. When she next stopped by with a fresh batch, he told the makeshift leader that he would have happily agreed to carry all the kindling if she'd simply asked.
She had just wrinkled her nose and said, "Yeah, but you also might've said no," before disappearing back between the trees.
"Fair enough," Mole mused. He shifted his grip and hoped they were nearly done; anymore and he'd be more firewood than fauna. While waiting for 'our Dolly' to decide they'd gathered enough to warrant returning, he turned his attention to the wood about him. There was a brisk, clear scent to the air, carrying notes of pine needles and bonfire wood smoke that he suddenly realised had no place among the summer aroma he'd come to know in the Wild Wood. When the next youngling deposited an armful of firewood into his, Mole motioned for the lad to pause.
"What season is it?" he asked.
Billy looked at him as though he was being daft. "It's mid-autumn," he said, and then added, "Mr 'Dergrounder," as he suddenly remembered he was talking to An Adult. (Mole had considered telling the pups that 'Mr Mole' or simply 'Mole' would work fine, but he was quickly becoming quite attached to the mispronounced nickname.)
"Oh."
A seedling of discomfort took root between his heart and lungs, labouring both, and he wasn't quite sure what to make of it until he was returning back to the kitchen chaos and it matured into fully-fledged malaise. By then, the malting had progressed along, and now the yeasty scent had yielded to a heavy sweetness that somehow seemed inherently autumnal despite its novelty to Mole. To another animal, even to Mole any other time, it would have been a comfort, but at that moment it reminded him of other autumnal aromas that were absent from that scene.
"Why the long face?" Lesser collapsed down on the bench beside Mole. His eyes were bright from the busyness of the brewing, and an ale stain discoloured his otherwise immaculately-white tie. "Did Daisy banish yer from the kitchen?"
Mole figured Daisy was the stoat who had been overseeing the malting, and Lesser's comment implied he wasn't the first animal to have been sent scurrying from her domain. "Apparently she's never seen such chaos in all her years," Mole said.
Lesser gave a toothy smile. "Unless yer released a bagful of live grasshoppers in there, I doubt it."
"Why–"
"Seemed like a good idea at the time."
Mole pondered briefly on the very visual image that presented, before Lesser elbowed him rather pointedly (probably not intentionally, but subtlety was not a strong point among the Wooders) and added, "I wouldn't worry about it. She's always like that whenever it's Brewday. Thinks she's the bloody queen of the castle." Despite the language, the tone was nearly affectionate, helped somewhat, Mole suspected, by the thought of the barley wine at the end of it.
"And you do Brewday every autumn?" Mole asked.
"Every year!" Cheryl claimed the other end of the bench, arriving in her usual whirlwind of noise and abrasive chaos. She elbowed Mole, and now he had matching bruises forming on both shoulders. "If yer stick around to the end of it, last year's batch will be making the rounds soon too." She scowled when this news didn't have the desired effect, and glanced over Mole's head at the other second-in-command. "Here, what's he doing looking so down in the dumps? What did yer do? Try your paw at poetry again?"
"I did nothing!" Lesser growled. "Daisy kicked him out of the kitchens."
Bypassing sympathy entirely, Cheryl cackled and slapped Mole on the back. "That ain't anything to be sad about! It's practic'lly a rite of passage. Did she tell you she'd never seen such a mess in all her years?"
"Something like that," Mole said.
"What did you do? 'Cause if it ain't involving grasshoppers–"
"You too?"
Cheryl scowled over at Lesser. "Have you been takin' credit for my plan?"
"I did all the catching!"
"Yeah, it's called delegation," she said, pronouncing the last word with pointed care.
"Yer couldn't have done it without me."
"And yer wouldn't have thought of it without me."
"Anyway," Mole said, quickly reading the pre-storm waters they were treading, "I'm not troubled by being asked to leave the kitchens… although it would have been nice to help," he added.
"If you say it's 'cause you don't like barley wine, we can't be friends anymore," Cheryl said.
"We're friends?" Mole asked.
"Associates," she remedied.
"It's just, well," Mole said, deciding to shuffle the conversation along, "usually during autumn, I make jams and other preservatives out of fruit and such that the neighbours bring round. But the last couple of months–"
It had been half a year at this point, but neither Wild Wooder attempted to correct Mole's miscount.
"–have simply been so busy that I lost track of time and now it's too late." Now that he had begun to speak, he found he couldn't stop, and his tone took on an unexpected plaintive air. "The season's nearly passed, and all the decent fruit will have been picked by now, and even if my neighbours back at Mole End have thought to drop off any extra pickings, it'll be long rotten. I know jams may not seem like much compared to your barley wine brewday, but it's something I make every year and it just makes a place smell like home in autumn and–"
Cheryl snorted, which was not quite the response Mole had been expecting. "All this fuss over a bit of fruit," she said derisively, "as if there ain't plenty to still be found."
Mole sniffled. "Where?"
Lesser looked over at Cheryl. "We'll have to tell the Chief. He'll want in."
"He'll want in where?"
Both Wooders grinned. "Why, Toad Hall, of course."
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It was dark when the small party of Wild Wooders snuck onto the grounds of Toad Hall. Mole made a mental note that one of these days he would have to see the illustrious mansion during daylight hours, if nothing else but to see what all the fuss was about. As things stood, however, the building was not on their agenda today.
"Are you quite sure no one's going to notice?" Mole asked as they singled out the walled garden.
The Chief cackled. "Perhaps a gardener or two, but it ain't as if the master of the house is gonna care."
"Yeah," Lesser said. "He's too busy with those damn motor cars."
"I've never seen a motor car," Mole said.
"And hope you never will," said Cheryl. "Ugly, smelly things."
"Dangerous, too," Lesser added. "My uncle got hit by one once."
"Which uncle?"
"The dead one."
"Explains why he only got hit the once," Cheryl said.
The Chief hissed at the pair before they could really get into their bickering, and unlatched the garden gate. Mole was faintly surprised that there was no lock on such a grand gate but, then again, perhaps Toad was unaccustomed to his grounds being the target of theft. That, or he didn't notice when it happened. He followed in after the Chief, and soundly stopped when he saw the contents of the walled garden.
Mole was a decent gardener, by undergrounder standards, anyway. Back at Mole End, he'd been in possession of a neat little garden, although it perhaps was not the kind of garden that many animals would recognise as one. It had been dug into the ceiling of a specialised room that ran closer to the surface than most, with a trellis and netting applied above to keep the soil in place, and the roots of his crop weaving through the lattice. For obvious reasons, he tended mostly to root vegetables, being easier to harvest from beneath-ground and generally longer-lasting than the more sugary produce of fruits. So it was hard for him to put into exact words the shock that hit him when he saw the sheer vibrancy of the walled garden, even in late autumn.
Sheltered from the season's chilling shift, the plants there had yet to get the memo that winter was on its way, and a sea of green blanketed the world before him. Flowers were still blooming, bright and brilliant and only just beginning to wilt, and the air was heavy with the scent of their fragrances interlacing with that of the herbs which bustled over the stepping stone walkway. Along one path, young fruit trees were ripening the last of their harvest, twisted into interesting shapes, courtesy of the gardeners, and along the far wall ran fig trees, leaning into the warmth of the bricks.
Mole's awe was curbed by Lesser and Cheryl pushing past him, whooping (as loudly as they dared) and running riot across the garden. They sniffed and picked the fruit (a good number of them finding their way to mouths rather than baskets) and raced against one another while Mole took his own time gathering up a fine harvest. When he had filled his basket and Lesser and Cheryl had drawn to a tie, he located the Chief. The head weasel had scrambled up onto the wall's ledge while Mole wasn't looking, one poor fig tree bearing evidence of the climb, and was watching the darkened exterior of Toad Hall.
"Chief?" Mole called. "I think we're good to go?"
The Chief stared over at Toad Hall for several belaboured seconds longer, his tail twitching irritably, before he suddenly bounced to his feet and descended the wall, dealing double damage to the poor fig tree as he went. "It took ya long enough," he sniffed, and none of the other animals thought to point out that it would have gone quicker with an extra pair of paws. He glanced down at the basket in Mole's paws. "Yer got enough to keep you going?"
"And then some." Mole grinned. "Usually the neighbours drop off whatever spare they have, usually from bushes – strawberries, raspberries, one year we had a good batch of bilberries – but I've never tried making anything with figs or plums before–"
"Yeah, well it better be worth it after all this," the Chief grunted, and he turned on his tail, leaving the others to follow in his wake.
"I wouldn't take it personal-like," Lesser said. "He always gets funny on thinking too much about Toad Hall."
"Yeah, and who can blame 'im?" Cheryl asked. She bounced ahead, rotating on her toes to regard the weasel and mole as she skipped backwards. "Just look at all the fruit we got back there and that ain't even all of it! What's one animal need all that for?"
"Maybe Mr Toad shares?" Mole offered.
"Like he has any room in his head right now for anything but his cars," Cheryl scoffed. "Betcha he hasn't thought twice about his gardens all season, lest enough to share it out. Ain't right for any animal to have so much he forgets what he has."
"Ain't doing any harm taking it if he don't even realise he's lost it," Lesser cackled.
They came to the edge of Toad Hall's grounds, where a countryside road ran along the borders. Since Toad's latest foray into all things motoring, the track had been well maintained, the previously-common potholes smoothed out, courtesy of Toad's own pocket, all to enable his wheels to fly all the faster over it. Since the increase in upkeep, it had become busier, carts opting to detour a little further out to avoid using the smaller roads that were too narrow for Toad to drive along, even if occasionally they had to compete with the amphibian's reckless driving itself.
A strange kind of mechanical rumbling thundered in the distance, and Mole paused. He tilted his head. "Do you hear that?"
The other Wild Wooders faltered now too, the Chief already across the road and Cheryl not far off. Lesser was beside Mole, and a strange shudder that looked suspiciously like fear ran through the length of the animal. "We should go."
"Go? Go where?" Mole turned to face the oncoming sound just as the origin crested the corner and roared along the country road.
He registered, dimly, that Lesser had fled from his side. A flash of his tail and he was safely on the road's verge, but Mole–
Mole stood frozen in the road's centre as the twin lights of the mechanical beast – of the motor car, his mind informed him numbly – barrelled towards him, turning the corner too fast and careening too wildly, and Mole–
Mole should run.
He knew this, deep down. Deep beneath the sudden paralysing fear that had taken over, beneath the part of him not mesmerised by the ever-advancing double-suns; his survival instinct spluttered at being faced with this motorised beast which evolution had never accounted for. He was going to be run over, dammit, and his last thought was going to be wondering who on earth goes out for a drive this late at night–
Something slammed into him and he hit the grassy verge just as the motor car screeched past him and vanished off around the next corner. Breath and rationale returned to him in a dizzying rush and he rolled over to see Lesser crouched beside him, paws leaning heavily against his knees and gasping for breath. Out in the road, Mole's basket lay ruined. Fig and plum juice was smeared across the tarmac, bruise-blue and beyond recovery.
Lesser glanced to Mole and grinned.
"Yer should've run," he wheezed, "when I said."