As the line walked back over the field in the watery afternoon sun, Brock’s mind went to the baby Urkku in the sett behind him; it was hard to believe that he was of the same race. He went back down the passage, sad and weary, to find the baby crying frantically and waving his arms in the air.

‘It was the noise,’ Tara said. ‘I couldn’t keep him quiet. Could you hear him?’

‘No,’ replied Brock quietly. ‘No, I couldn’t hear him.’

‘Was it bad?’ Tara said, getting up and coming towards him. She rubbed her nose against his and then pushed the side of her head against his neck, trying to comfort him.

‘Yes,’ Brock murmured, ‘it always is; it seems to get worse. And what can we do? Nothing, Tara, absolutely nothing.’ He lay down on the earth floor with his back curled against the wall and went to sleep. Tara watched him tossing fitfully for a while and then she went back to the baby which was quieter now the Urkku had gone. Soon there was silence again.

Outside the sky had clouded over and it had become warm. In the late afternoon the rain began to fall and on the white snow the crimson streak left by the young cock slowly spread until finally it disappeared with the last of the snow.

The seasons changed and the baby grew into a young boy. They called him ‘Nab’ which, in the language of the Old Ones, means ‘friend’, and he became as one of the animals of the wood. He understood instinctively the joys and sorrows, the sadness and the beauty of each season: the two seasons of stillness; cruel winter, a time of survival when the weak fell and the strong grew weak as the icy winds scythed through the wood, and friendly summer, a lazy time of plenty: a time of drowsy afternoon sleeps in the fragrant green shade under the bracken. Linking winter and summer and leading each gradually into the other were the two seasons of change – spring, with its atmosphere of excitement and anticipation, full of the magic of birth when the trees showed their delicate new buds and the earth covered itself with the glory of flowers – carpets of blue and yellow and pink and white on the woodland floor; and autumn, perhaps, if it were possible to choose, Nab’s favourite time when the wood turned to gold and the air was full of falling leaves and there was a constant smell of woodsmoke and the dankness of rotting vegetation; and above all a feeling of intense and beautiful sadness so exquisite that it made Nab’s heart ache as he watched the brown leaves drifting slowly in the wind down to the floor.

When he reached the age of three Brock and Tara built him a home in the rhododendron bush to the left of the Great Beech as he had grown too big for the sett. The layers of shiny leaves formed a large waterproof canopy over the large round open area inside the bush and when they had cleared some of the branches which ran through the middle there was plenty of space for the boy. Above all, it was well hidden: the branches and leaves were so thick that it was impossible to see through them from the outside although there were a number of places on the inside from which Nab could see out. The entrance to his home was at the back of the bush and it was only possible to crawl through it.

Brock and Warrigal would spend many hours in there with the young boy talking and explaining about the ways of the wood; and often the other animals would come in and spend time with him also, for the Council had decided that although Brock and Tara would always be his special guardians and protectors, he was also the responsibility of the entire wood and was not to be brought up as a badger, or any other animal for that matter, but was instead to be allowed to develop in his own way with all the animals helping him and teaching him in their own particular skills. Thus from Perry-foot the hare Nab learned the art of running and also a lot about humour. The boy laughed a lot naturally but with the hare he could play games like hide and seek and they would cuff each other in fun.

Pictor would come and have long serious talks with him about the art of organization and of running a community while from Sterndale the Fierce he came to understand the rightful place of pride and aggression. Often in the evenings Nab would be sleeping soundly in one comer of his bush when he would suddenly feel the presence of something and, waking up, would be thrilled to see the triangular face of Rufus the Red looking at him intently. After his initial doubts, the fox had become extremely fond of the boy, and now delighted in spending time with him, teaching him the arts of cunning and stealth. The boy would sit spellbound as the fox recited tales of adventure and excitement about the amazing and daring tricks his ancestors had used to avoid the savage packs of dogs which the Urkku sent out to kill them. Rufus also spent long hours teaching him how to walk without making a sound, how to merge with his background, how to use whatever cover was available and how to freeze whenever there was the slightest sign of danger. Most important of all, perhaps, he taught Nab the art of alertness: how to remain constantly on guard and what sort of sounds to listen for as signals of Urkku. While Rufus was talking to Nab, the boy would sit close and run his hands over the fox’s soft fur or bury his fingers in it and pull them backwards so that the fur stood up in little spikes on his back.

Nab also loved talking to Warrigal and sometimes, on summer evenings, Wythen himself. From them he learnt wisdom and wood-lore and they explained to him, slowly and gently, about the Magical Peoples and the Urkku and the relationship between them. The Elflord knew about him, they said, and it was he who was helping the animals to bring him up. At some time Warrigal would take him to meet the Elflord and they would have a long talk but that would not be for quite a few seasons yet. From the time he had left the sett Nab had been aware that he was not a badger and that in fact there were no other animals like him in the whole wood. The owls had explained to him that he was of a quite different type of creature and that his race lived separately in their own area some distance beyond the hill they could see at the far end of the fields at the front of the wood. They told him he had been found under the Great Oak one snowy winter’s night by Brock and that he had taken him in to look after him. Whenever he wanted to he could leave the wood to join his own race, they said, although of course the boy had no desire now to leave his home and his friends. They took him to the brook and showed him his reflection in the dark brackish water so that he would have some idea of what he looked like for he had not yet seen an Urkku. Whenever the shoot came they took him back down the sett where he stayed with Tara until it was all over. When he asked about the noise they told him that it was thunder and lightning and that they were keeping him in the sett to protect him from it, for they did not want to influence him in any way against his own race. This had all been explained very carefully to Wythen by the Elflord. ‘We must let his attitudes and opinions towards the Urkku develop entirely independently; they must come from him,’ he had said. And so, until he was slightly older, they had decided not to let him see the Urkku killing. There was another reason why they put him in the sett when the Urkku were around; although no one had come looking for Nab they were afraid that if he were found he would be taken away and they did not yet think that he had enough skill to be able to escape detection while men were in the wood.

Nearly every night Brock would crawl through the narrow passage into the bush and Nab would see two great white stripes appearing out of the gloom. They would then go out together and Brock would take him all round the wood looking for food. All the animals had told him what they ate and explained to him how to find it but Nab did not like the idea of killing his fellow animals and then eating their flesh, so his diet consisted of berries, fruits, toadstools (which he particularly liked), bark, grass and other plants of the wood. In the autumn he would go round the wood with Digit and the other squirrels collecting acorns, beechmast and the fragrant hazelnuts and these would be buried in one corner of his room to last the winter. He would also go with Bibbington the hedgehog to the dark damp places of the wood where the best toadstools grew and these would be gathered and hung all around the inside of the bush so that the air could circulate around them and they could dry for the winter. Bibbington told him to stay well clear of any white-gilled fungi because if he ate some types of those he would die a painful death, so he gathered only those which the hedgehog had assured him were good to eat: the yellow and ragged chanterelle with its delicate perfume and peppery flavour, the field and horse mushrooms which were his favourite and the oyster mushroom which grew in abundance on the old rotting silver birches in his part of the wood. Then there were shaggy caps, puffballs which Bibbington told him to ‘be sure and gather before the brown powder comes’ and boletus of all sorts which sprouted out of the decaying autumn leaves in their shiny oranges and dark browns and which the hedgehog had taught him to recognize by their tubelike gills and their smell. The dandelion provided him with both a vegetable all year round from its leaves and a root which, when dug up in the autumn, he could dry and use to add some variety to his winter diet. In spring he would rejoice in the abundance and variety of the new foods that were growing all around; the nutty flavour of the young hawthorn leaves, the slightly bitter wood-sorrel and the sweet young beech leaves which he would chew straight off the tree. He would also nibble the fresh young shoots of nettles and collect armfuls of the new season’s chickweed which, although he could gather it all the year round, always tasted better in spring. Sometimes he would scamper down to the big brook over the fields with Perryfoot and there they would spend the afternoon enjoying the nutty flavour of the young burdock stems which grew in profusion all along the banks and collecting watercress to take back and eat in the evening. Perryfoot had shown Nab another very useful plant which grew by the big brook in summer and which was always easily found by its scent; this was mint, which he used to add variety to the flavour of some of his more staple foods. It could also be dried if hung up and he would use this in the winter with his toadstools. Often he found large patches of meadowsweet in the same area as the mint and he gathered clumps to lay on the sleeping comer of his bush and to give to Tara for the sett. Ever since he had first been taken in and laid down on the pile of meadowsweet, he had found it difficult to sleep unless he had that fragrant scent in his nostrils.