‘No,’ replied Brock. ‘It’s too late now; he’ll do what he wants and we can only hope it turns out for the best.’

Nab was now at the foot of the tree and he crouched among the roots hardly daring to breathe and listening to the stream just by his left elbow running over its sandy bed. Very slowly, as Brock had taught him, he raised his head so that he could just see over the edge of the ditch. The little girl was some eight paces away, humming quietly to herself and thoroughly involved in picking the primroses and red campion that were growing on a little tussock which jutted out slightly into the water. She was bending down with her back to him; across the stream the green meadows rolled gently upward until they met the great beeches that stood at the edge of Tall Wood. Sheep were grazing contentedly, their white fleeces standing out clearly against the green, and overhead the larks hovered, singing the songs of spring as they had since time began.

Nab stood up and walked silently over the grassy bank of the stream until he was only a pace behind her. Suddenly, sensing that someone was near, she stopped humming, stood up quickly and turned round.

‘Oh!’ she cried in alarm. ‘You frightened me. Who are you? I don’t think I’ve seen you in the village. Are you playing a game – dressed like that I mean? Come on, tell me, who are you?’ She stared at him in growing amazement as she tried to understand what she saw. His hair, a dark golden brown, hung in gentle waves down around his shoulders and three or four fresh green rushes had been tied around his forehead to keep the hair out of his eyes. About his waist was a wide length of silver birch bark threaded through with a new willow branch, thin as a reed and fastened somehow at the side. His feet were bare and his hands were large with long fingers and broken nails, and they hung loosely by his sides. But his face! his face was the colour of the autumn beech leaves and out of it shone two smouldering dark eyes which roved ceaselessly around her and burned with a wild intensity. She felt she ought to have been scared but her instincts told her there was nothing to be afraid of and she was, in any case, too mesmerized by his restless eyes to do anything but stare.

‘Who are you?’ she said again, slowly and gently. ‘Why are you frightened? Where do you come from?’

Nab was quivering with fear from head to foot and yet, he did not know why, he was bursting inside with the need to communicate with her and tell her about his home and his friends and the wood and the bad days of last winter and everything he had ever done or seen or heard. But when he tried to speak in the language of the wood she shook her head and appeared not to understand; she simply kept opening her mouth and uttering strange sounds and noises which he had never heard before: this must be the Urkku language which he had heard about. But he loved the sound of her voice; he could have listened to that gentle happy sound for ever.

The little girl listened in astonishment to the series of barks and whimpers and yelps and growls that came from this strange boy. She thought he was trying to talk to her; it was obviously no game but she was puzzled beyond words by it. He apparently didn’t understand her either; she must be kind and gentle and patient as she was with animals. She decided to try and take him over to meet her mother; perhaps she could explain everything. She moved slowly towards him with her hand outstretched and tried to grasp his arm; as she got close she realized that he smelt of moss and leaves and sunshine and grass and somehow she understood then that he was not from the village, or indeed any village. As she placed her hand on his arm he snatched it away and his dark eyes flickered.

When she touched him and he could smell her gentle fragrance Nab became so overcome with embarrassment, confusion and fear that he was finally panicked into a full realization of what he was doing. He pulled his arm away from her hand savagely and looked round to the holly bush where he had left Brock and Perryfoot; there was no sign of them. With a quick glance back to the little girl, who was looking deeply at him in a most strange way, he took off back along the ditch and up the gentle slope towards the top of the hollow and the shelter of the gorse bushes from where he had first watched the girl and her mother. He looked down into the hollow and saw the mother lying flat out on the grass enjoying the sun and he turned back to where he had left the girl. She was standing, looking straight at him; her red gingham dress was blowing in the gentle afternoon breeze and her hair glinted golden in the sun. She raised an arm and waved it at him, and Nab, not knowing what he was doing, responded by waving back and then sensed with a thrill of joy that he had communicated with her. Finally, after what seemed for ever but was only in fact a heartbeat, Nab took a last precious look at this delicate vision and, tearing his eyes away with an effort that made him feel sick, he ran down the slope to the holly bush.

‘Well, so you finally decided to break off your discussion with the Urkku,’ whispered Perryfoot fiercely, ‘and not, if I may say so, before time. We thought you were never coming.’

‘Come on, ’ said Brock, ‘but there’s no panic; she hasn’t told her mother yet. Go carefully, quietly and quickly.’

At the sound of his two friends’ voices, Nab felt the sense of warmth that only arises from coming home after being away and, almost overcome with love for the two animals who were standing in front of him, he felt tears welling up in his eyes. ‘Come on,’ said Brock again, gently, and he turned round and began to make his way back along the stream with Nab following him and Perryfoot bringing up the rear.

It was late evening when the three weary creatures found themselves back at the top of the ridge that looked down into Silver Wood. They sat down and Nab told his companions about the events of the afternoon; at least, he tried to tell them but he found it hard to express the feelings that he had experienced and explain why he had so recklessly approached the Urkku. But Brock seemed to understand and, despite Nab’s disobedience, he did not appear to be cross. In truth Brock was really very satisfied with the way things had gone; it had been purely accidental but it had solved the problem of how Nab was to learn about his own race in a most fortunate manner. There had been little or no danger and Nab had had face to face contact with an Urkku of his own age; the only worry was that the girl would tell her mother and news of his existence would go round the village. Still, they would solve that problem if and when it arose. Perryfoot had calmed down after his initial anger and was now enjoying going through in his mind his own part in the afternoon’s adventure and working out exactly how he would relate it to his doe when he saw her later that night. It would make a good story.

And so it happened that when the moon began to shine that night it found a boy, a badger and a hare still sitting looking down on the wood; each of them silently lost in his own different thoughts. Across the fields a little girl was looking out of her bedroom window at the moon and thinking, as she had done ever since the afternoon, of the strangely beautiful boy she had met by the stream. It seemed like a dream but she knew that it had been real. She couldn’t tell anyone, of course; that would spoil the magic, and it was her secret that she would keep with her always.

The fresh green days of spring passed all too quickly and turned into a hot, hazy, dry summer. Nab spent the long hours of sunshine drowsing in the shade under the tall bracken that covered all the top part of the wood or lying at the foot of one of the great beech trees where the ground always seemed cool and there was plenty of refreshing sorrel and chickweed to nibble at. As evening fell he would make his way slowly back home and then with Brock or Perryfoot or sometimes Rufus the Red he would go searching for food.