I turned to tree rat and said with great severity, half to myself, needing the severity to convince myself that this was real, “I need all the flood-chucks in the forest, tree rat. I need any that are within reach. We have much road to restore, and I cannot do it alone.”
Then, to bunwit, “If one actor from the old tale was here, bunwit, why should not the others be? I need the largest gobblemole in the forest. Now lead me.” I fully expected bunwit to look at me with that maddening, listening look, and then go dig roots. He did look at me with the maddening look, but then he hopped away, rather slowly for him, waiting for me to follow.
“Well,” I said to myself. “He got something of that.” I thanked the forest for telling him what I needed.
We went southwest, into a part of the forest we had never wandered through. There were vast open tracts there, wide to the sky, meadows of the sort the gobblemoles prefer, where their draggling can be through soft soil. We saw many, but the bunwit didn’t stop. None of them was above average size. I heard sound from the final clearing before ever we came to it, a kind of scrape-chunk, scrape-chunk. From the edge of the trees we could see the earth flying, high on either side of a long, deep trench. It was a great, blind gobblemole, the largest I have ever seen. I came out of the woods to climb upon the draggled bank, remembering what Bartelmy of the Ban had said. Truth in old tales. Rituals of truth.
“What are you draggling away there for, old gobblemole?” I cried, clutching the star-eye in my hand like some luck-piece.
“Draggling for the Daylight Bell, Little Star,” he rumbled, spewing bits of soil all over me. His fur was as close and tight, black as midnight dark, velvet all but his snout and those hard, horn claws. “Draggling for the Daylight Bell.”
“Well then, I’ll help you druggle,” I said, letting go the star-eye to climb down into the trench. It was deep and moist, full of crawly things and ends of root. I pushed in beside the mole and began to druggie, throwing tiny handfuls of earth on either side. I was conveniently placed for him. He caught me in one foot, the horny claws bending around me like so many curved swords, not touching yet, but sharp as any blade might be.
“Now I’ve got you, Little Star,” his voice drummed at me. As he very well did. As the flitchhawk had had me before.
This time I managed a tone of petulance. “Now why did you do that, old gobblemole! just when you caught me there, I caught a glimpse of the Daylight Bell. Right there where you were druggling!”
Then was a long pause, as though the mole didn’t know the words. A long, long pause while Jinian thought she had miscalculated. A long, long time when nothing happened at all and I thought the tale had gone awry or I had not spoken my lines aright.
I was about to give up and resolve to die when it said, “Where, where,” dropping me and starting to druggle again as it had before.
So I put the thong about a back foot and cried out. “Daylight Bell in earthways wan’t be; Daylight Bell in treetop can’t be. Tricksy lie brings tricksy tie, now give me boon or else you die!”
And it said, just as the flitchhawk had, “What boon will you have, child?”
So I told it what needed doing.
“That is not much boon, Footseer,” it rumbled at me. Its eyes were so buried in its thick fur I wondered if it saw me at all, but its claws around me were not threatening. They were huge, hard as stone, and I leaned against them, exhausted, looking up into the great gobblemole face to see a glint of light in those hidden eyes. “We will do as you ask, but a boon is still owed you. Earthways are mine, and things old and buried. If you need help with such things, call on me.”
Then it set me down, and turned back to its druggling, leaving me staggering there, uncertain of my footing or my senses. Bunwit and I went back to the ruin. Next morn early I went to look, and there were a thousand gobblemoles druggling up the earth that covered the road, throwing it to either side, making huge mounds, and leaving the road beneath as clean as old bone. What they didn’t get, the flood-chucks got, and as the days went by, I could walk farther and farther on the Old Road without losing it or having to go barefoot to feel it. It was slow work. The covering hills were monstrous big, but we progressed.
Days would go by during which we got great stretches of the road uncovered, and then a morning would come when the shadow lay everywhere. On every clot of earth. On every stone. Nothing moved in the forest then. No bird, no bunwit. Nothing. The flood-chucks wouldn’t come near us, nor the moles. Everything stopped. On those days, I would lie close to the hearth, the window shuttered, a small fire built, and say the protection words over and over to myself with bunwit and tree rat huddling close at my side and not a sound from the forest. I knew what the shadow could do if it touched me, and I did not want it to happen again.
Then, a morning would dawn with the shadow gone, and we would resume the work as though nothing had happened. After a time, I
