The incident by the stream had dominated everyone’s thoughts all summer. At first it had been thought by the elders of the Council that it would be unwise to tell the wood of what had happened for fear of causing panic and even anger at Nab; but it had not been long before rumours had begun to spread and, as most of these wild and exaggerated tales were different, it had eventually been considered the best policy to call a Council Meeting and clear everything up by disclosing the truth. It had been a somewhat unruly meeting with Wythen having to use all his authority to control matters, but Nab, at his first Council and feeling extremely nervous, had given a good account of himself in his attempts to explain exactly what he had done and why he had done it. This, coupled with the fact that most of the woodland animals now knew him and liked him, eventually won the day and it was decided that the only danger was the possibility that the little girl would have told her parents and the Urkku would come searching for him. Thus the guardians of the wood, Warrigal and Brock, were asked to keep an especially careful look-out, but since it was now almost the end of summer and there had been no Urkku in the wood since the affair, it was believed, to everyone’s relief, that the little girl had kept the meeting secret.
The incident had had a particularly marked effect on Nab. Although he had been aware before that he was a different type of animal from any of the others in the wood, it had never before seemed to matter very much. Now he had seen other Urkku he was filled with a curiosity to find out more about them for himself. He thought constantly of the little girl and was unable to clear his mind of his golden image of her as she had stood waving at him and smiling from the banks of the stream with the breeze ruffling her dress and blowing in her hair. But his memory was always bittersweet as he recalled the confused turmoil of emotions that had made him snatch away his hand and run off. He also began to realize, for the first time, that he had not been born in the wood and that he must have two parents somewhere of his own race. Why had they left him under the Great Oak so many seasons ago?
Where did they come from? What were they like? These questions repeated themselves over and over in his mind and he spent much time thinking about them while he was walking through the wood in the evening or musing in the daytime under the bracken. One night Tara had gone into his bush for a talk and found him sitting in a corner looking completely lost in himself. She turned round and without being noticed made her way back to the sett. There she began to dig in the wall where, so many seasons ago, she had buried the multi-coloured shawl in which he had been found. The walls of the sett were rubbed smooth and hard but her strong claws soon felt the cavity in which she had placed it. Taking it out carefully she shook it to get any soil off and then, having repaired the wall, went back up the passage and once more into Nab’s bush. She went up to him and rubbed her nose against his neck. He looked up slowly and stared into her warm black eyes; ‘Hello, it’s nice to see you,’ he said.
‘Nab, I’ve brought you something. It’s for you, to keep.’ She produced the large gaily coloured shawl and handed it to him. He took it and, standing up, held it so that it hung straight and the pattern of the colours could be clearly seen. His eyes widened in amazement the more he looked and he began to feel it, running his fingers up and down the soft silk and through the long fringes that hung down all around it.
‘It’s for me,’ he said, ‘to keep? I’ve never seen anything like it before. Where did you find it?’
‘It’s for you because it belongs to you. When you were left in the wood you were wrapped in many layers of cloth because, as Brock has told you, it was a cold night and the snow was heavy on the ground. When Brock carried you back to me I took the outer layers of cloth off until I found, next to your skin, this shawl, and I buried it in one of the walls of the sett, ready to give to you when the time was right. So you see, it was given to you by your mother and father; it belonged to them and they gave it to you. It is a link with your parents.’
Nab sat down clutching the shawl tightly against him and he began to cry softly to himself. Tara went up to him and put her paw on his shoulder.
‘What were they like?’ he asked. ‘Brock saw them, didn’t he?’
‘They were good Urkku. Brock felt no sense of danger or fear when he was near them.’ She described the events of the first night as Brock had told them to her. At this moment he was out with Warrigal walking round the boundaries of the wood; it was a pity he wasn’t here now to tell Nab at first hand but the boy could talk to him later.
When she had finished, Nab put his arm around her shoulder and buried his face against her neck. He stayed like that for a long time and when eventually he raised his head he smiled and there was a sparkle in his eye. He removed the layers of bark which formed his clothing and, before replacing them, tied the coloured shawl around his waist.
Summer in Silver Wood seemed to last for ever. The days became too hot for the animals to do anything except lie in the shade around the edge of the wood where there was a breeze. In the centre of the wood there wasn’t a breath of wind to relieve the intensity of the heat and the stillness hung so heavily one could almost touch it. The only sound was the constant buzzing of the insects as they hovered and darted over the tall canopy of green bracken that filled the wood. Sometimes, as Nab lay under it staring up at the sky, he would see the topmost branches of the tallest silver birch trees waving gently in a breeze that only existed in heaven and he would stare at the movement of the leaves until he fell asleep. Occasionally something would startle a blackbird and it would chatter loudly as it flew off to settle on another branch. Nab would then wake up and decide to go for a little stroll; it was impossible to walk through the bracken so he would crawl on all fours beneath it until he found another spot where he felt secure and there he would again fall asleep. Under the ceiling formed by the interlaced bracken leaves there was a different world, a cool subterranean jungle where the green stems of the bracken were like trees and the floor was of rich dark brown peat under a light brown carpet made up of the sharp and spiky remains of last year’s dead bracken. As Nab made his way through this jungle he would find his hands and knees criss-crossed with their imprint and he had to be careful not to let them cause splinters. He would see spiders scurrying about their business and metallic green beetles walking slowly along the bracken branches. As he moved he could feel the bracken dust which he had disturbed catch in his throat and he could smell and touch the damp peat, still moist under its covering of dead bracken. Sometimes he would come across a cluster of wood sorrel with their delicate white flowers and would pick a leaf and chew it to refresh himself.
Eventually Nab began to notice the first harbingers of autumn; although the sun still shone and it was hot during the day, the evenings grew damp and chill where before they had been balmy, and now there was a dew on the ground. By the stream, meadowsweet appeared with its tall stalks and clustered heads of creamy white flowers which scattered as they were knocked, and in the wood the autumn toadstools made their way out of the mat of damp decaying leaves on the floor; the blusher with its scarlet cap covered in little rough skin-like flakes and the great orange boletus which felt shiny and shone in the dew but whose flesh, when the spongy gills had been removed, was one of the treats of autumn. In the mornings and evenings the hollows filled with mist which disappeared as the sun fought its way through to light up the golden leaves; Nab would lie on his back in the warmth of the midday sun under the great beech and watch the leaves gently floating down; if they appeared to be drifting near he enjoyed trying to guess whether or not they would land on him, and he was always surprised at how few, out of the hundreds that fell, succeeded.
