A particular delight of late summer was to wander on a balmy evening with Brock and Tara to the blackberry bushes that grew round a hollow in the bank in the fields at the back of Silver Wood and to pick these juicy succulent fruits and eat them straight off the bush until they had had their fill. They would then sit for a while looking down on the wood while Brock told a story and the moon moved slowly through the sky.

There were other fruits which summer produced; rosehips, wild gooseberries and, a rare delicacy, wild raspberries. Sometimes, when the first leaves were beginning to turn brown and the smells of autumn began to linger in the air, Brock would take the boy off over the fields to a bank where bilberries grew and they would spend all night picking the delicate black berries off the small bushes and eating them. They would then gather as much as Nab could carry and take them back to surprise Tara who would ruffle the boy’s hair with her paw in delight.

Nab’s eleventh winter was long and cold; the snow had stayed for an age and there had been vicious frosts which had killed many of the year’s young birds. On the very coldest nights, when the savage north-east winds threatened to cut the animals up and leave them on the frozen ground, both Brock and Tara would make their way from the sett into Nab’s bush and lie down on either side of him to keep him warm in their fur. During the short days Nab would venture out for some fresh green plants to augment his supply of nuts and dried fungi and then, if the noon sun was warm enough, would sit outside the bush and look out over the frozen fields where only the rooks and the crows moved. At other times the rains would lash down so that it became impossible to stay dry; little drips would start to seep through the rhododendron leaves and wet the floor of his bush which was made up of a dark brown, peaty mixture of soil and leaves, so that it took the boy all his time to find a dry place to sit. He also had to make sure that the dried toadstools, which were scattered all over the inside wherever there was a little twig to stick them on or a flat surface where they could be laid, were kept away from the wet; otherwise, as Nab had discovered in a previous winter, they would begin to spoil and rot leaving him hungry. Sometimes Warrigal would fly down from his hole in the Great Beech and perch on a thick branch in the bush and talk to the boy or else sit with him silently as they both stared out at the sheets of rain falling down outside; there was something very comforting and cosy about being under shelter while outside everything was a torrent of wet. When the rain finally stopped and the heavy black clouds moved on, the sun would often come out and Nab would leave the bush to wander through the dripping wood and rejoice in the feeling of freshness with which the grasses and the trees and the bushes had been left; the sun would sparkle from all the little raindrops that lingered everywhere and Nab’s mind would be lost in a magical world of golden reflections and sparkling silver crystal.

The cold March winds continued into April, dragging the winter out so that it seemed it would last for ever until, finally, one day the cry of a curlew echoed over the fields, and all over the wood hearts jumped with a thrill of anticipation at this triumphant clarion call of spring. Soon the plovers arrived and the fields were full of their liquid warbles as they strutted about with their magnificent plumed heads arrogantly turning from side to side or swooped and dived through the air, asserting their control of the sky over their fields. As the days grew warmer the larks began to sing their distinctive one-note symphonies as they hovered way up in the blue sky, so high sometimes that Nab thought they had vanished until he would suddenly see a tiny black dot, fluttering delicately.

It was on one of these days of high spring that Nab first saw the race of which he was a member. He was sitting, with his eyes closed, on an extremely comfortable tussock of grasses, listening to the larks and feeling the warmth of the sun fill his body with energy and life, when suddenly he felt a little cuff on the side of his face. He opened his eyes to see Perryfoot jumping around in front of him with his great long ears cheekily erect and his black eyes sparkling with merriment.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Coming for a walk?’

Nab gave a yawn and a stretch. ‘I was enjoying that until you turned up,’ he said and darted forward with a hand to catch the hare on his back thigh, at which Perryfoot skipped to one side missing the hand by a pace.

‘Too slow, too slow,’ he said and, as Nab recovered his balance, he nipped forward again and dealt the boy another smart blow on his cheek with his front paw. ‘Come on; it will do you good – get some of that winter stiffness out of your bones.’

Nab agreed on condition that they try and get Brock to come with them. They both wandered over to the sett and Nab knelt down in front of the tunnel and gave a call, for it had been many seasons now since he had been able to crawl into the sett. There were only three badgers now; the two cubs had left and gone to Near Wood and since Nab had come there had been no more. Brock believed that this was the work of the Elflord; indeed Warrigal had hinted as much when they had been talking one evening. The reason, the owl had told him, was so that he and Tara could devote all their energies to looking after the boy.

Finally, after a number of calls had met with nothing but silence, Nab spotted the black tip and white stripes of the badger’s face making its way up the passage and Brock agreed to go off with them for an afternoon walk. Nab picked a handful of the delicate young beech leaves which were just beginning to emerge and started to chew them as the three made their way from the sett to the old stile. Then they walked along the far side of the brook to where, in a bank in the middle of the new young birches, Rufus had his hole. When they reached the fence at the back of the wood they walked along it until they came to a hedge which ran out across the field and which they could use for cover until they got down to the stream. They stopped there for a while in the shade of a great ash tree and looked out at the wood basking in the spring sun. Nab went off to explore on his own leaving the other two meditating under the tree. He walked down to a thicket of rhododendrons and young birches, made his way through them and emerged on to a carpet of bluebells which stretched over the floor of the wood until they reached a number of enormous elms.

Nab knelt down and buried his face in the heady scent of the blue flowers; he felt he could almost drink their fragrance and as the smell pervaded his senses he could see, in his mind’s eye, every perfect spring day he had ever known. He stayed there for a long while, kneeling with his face on the ground as if he were praying while the sun sent little shafts of golden light through the branches of the trees. He lifted his head and looked around exultantly; these were the times when his whole body seemed so full of energy that he felt he would explode and his soul sang with joy. He got up and ran like the wind back to the ash tree where Brock was sleeping and Perryfoot sat on all fours, his great ears laid flat along his back, quietly contemplating. They woke the badger up and made their way under the rusty wire of the old fence and into the field under the shelter of the hedge. They went past some warrens in a little sandy hollow, where the rabbit, greeted them and asked for news of Pictor and the woodland rabbits, and then walked up a fairly steep slope until they reached the top of the bank. The wood was now quite far behind and below them and ahead there was a gentle slope down to the stream. It was a perfect afternoon; little white clouds scudded about in the blue sky and there was a gentle breeze which blew delicious gusts of warm air against their faces. Nab’s heart was light and free.