‘Well, well,’ he muttered to himself. ‘This is odd. What am I going to do with you?’ He looked curiously at the little face. His first thought was that it had been left temporarily and that the two Urkku who had brought it would come back for it soon; he realized now that they must have been its parents. But it was too cold to leave a young thing out in the wood and there had been something strange in the way the two had parted from it; something very final and sad yet beautiful. Brock felt all this intuitively, for badgers are known throughout the animal kingdom as the most sensitive of creatures; it is this, coupled with their wisdom born of centuries of history, that gives them their special place.

Now all his senses combined to give him that feeling of excitement which had come to him when he first saw the little bundle. In the recesses of his mind he was certain there were legends and prophecies which began with just such an incident as he was now witnessing and a thrill ran through him, making the hackles on his back rise.

He was still thinking about this when suddenly the night was shattered by an unearthly noise. The only time he had ever heard such a cry before was when the hares who lived in the fields round Silver Wood were injured by the Urkku with their death sticks. He looked down quickly to see the little face that had previously been one big smile transformed into a bawling horror. Brock concluded quickly that it was the cold; even he, with all his fur, was beginning to shiver. There was no time for thought; he must quickly get the baby warm and that meant he would have to take it back with him to the sett, where it would have to stay, at least for the remainder of the night. He gave a little snuffle of laughter as he thought what Tara, his sow, would say when he brought home a human baby: he had done some strange things in his time but nothing to compare with this. The baby was still crying away at the top of its lungs and Brock was afraid that soon all the creatures of the wood would be aroused and flock round to see what was causing the noise. The hatred that some of them felt for the Urkku was so strong that they would kill the baby on the spot, so Brock must quieten it down. He leant over it and, with his two big front claws around it, began to walk backwards, pulling the little creature along under his front legs with its body nestled against his chest. The warmth that came from his fur seemed to do the trick and it was soon gurgling happily again. There was no chance now of taking the short cut back across the log, so he began to go the long way round, through the new part of the wood and round, by the stile. The journey took a long time; Brock had to be careful not to get too much snow on the baby and to try to hold it up off the ground to keep it from getting damp and cold. Despite these difficulties, however, he enjoyed it; the baby kept putting its hands out and pulling at his fur or stroking the front of his leg and sometimes he would stop for a second or two and rub his wet nose under the baby’s chin or around its neck to which it would react by breaking into a wide smile and giggling. He met no other creatures on the way, for which he was extremely grateful, as it would not have been easy to explain exactly what he was doing walking backwards with a human baby tucked under his legs. Finally, just as the clear silver light of the moon began to give way to a pale yellow sun, he arrived back at the Old Beech, exhausted, and braced himself to face the barrage of questions which he knew would come from the rest of his family. Weary but satisfied he began to descend backwards down the hole with his little human friend gurgling and smiling, blissfully unaware of the part that destiny had chosen for it to play.

Brock’s forecast of Tara’s reaction to his ‘find’ turned out to be completely accurate. As he came into the main chamber bearing his little charge she simply got up on her hind legs, put her two front paws on her hips and rocked in silent astonishment from side to side. She had thought none of the antics of her boar could shock her any more, ever since the time he had gone off with their two cubs Zinddy and Sinkka to explore the streets of the nearby village and brought back with them a dog they had befriended. This dog, who was called Sam, still visited them at fairly frequent intervals with news about the village. His master was one of the men who waged war on the wood and Sam would bring them advance knowledge of when he and the others were coming. The friendship with Sam had therefore turned out to be very useful; but this!

‘This time you’ve gone too far. An Urkku; a member of the race that has persecuted and tortured our ancestors for generations, and not only ours but the ancestors of every living creature in this wood. Have you forgotten the tales of your great-great grandfather who was chained to a barrel and then had fierce dogs set on him to pull him to bits? And when he beat one lot, they set another lot on to him, and another, and another, until finally he was tom apart. And have you so soon forgotten the story that reached us of the killing of the entire sett over in Tall Wood that happened some ten full moons ago. They pumped some kind of poisonous air down the sett which made them vomit and which scorched their lungs so that they died a most horrible death. And this little thing here when it grows up will be a member of the Great Enemy! What are we going to do with it? How will we protect it from the other creatures in the wood, who hate the Urkku, if anything, more than we do? What will it live on?’

But somehow, when she looked at the helpless little creature lying on the earthen floor of the sett, it seemed so remote from the race of which she had been speaking that it seemed a different animal and her heart went out to it. It met her eyes with its wide smile and happy gurgle, putting out its little hand to grab at the air. She looked back at Brock, who had said nothing in reply to this avalanche of questions because there was nothing he could say. He was not the kind of badger who could leave a creature to die in the cold, and the only thing he could do was to bring it home. Besides, and he hadn’t explained this yet, partly because he didn’t quite know how to and partly because he wasn’t certain whether Tara would understand anyway, he had a feeling that the whole thing had somehow been meant to happen and that he was really only playing a part that had been chosen for him.

He went up to her and they rubbed noses; she closed her eyes with pleasure and Brock thought how much he loved her. He began to stroke her head with his front paw. ‘Our cubs aren’t due until the Awakening and I thought perhaps it could have some of your milk until then. We could have it in here with us until it grows too big and I am sure that berries and fruits and toadstools will be as tasty for it as they are for us. Don’t worry; it will be all right.’ He wanted to say more but he was so exhausted that his eyes had closed against his will and he began to drift off into the world of sleep. ‘Wake me at Sun-High,’ he managed to mutter and then he rolled over on to the heap of dead bracken that was piled into the corner and began to snore heartily.

Tara then took the baby over to the far side of their large round room, and laid it to rest on the cushion of meadowsweet she had collected and saved from last year for her own cubs. The smell of the meadowsweet tended to overpower any other smells and so was extremely useful for cubs and, she supposed, human babies as well. She then took off the various layers of clothing and material with which it had been wrapped and put them in a comer to take out and bury later on. There was one article, though, which she decided to keep; it was a beautiful multi-coloured silk shawl and Tara liked both the colour and the feel of it. In later years, she thought, the little male creature lying there so peacefully might be glad of some reminder of his past; some link with his heritage. This shawl she carried over to one of the walls of their room and, having dug a small hole in the wall, placed it in and then covered it with soil. By the time she had finished, the baby had begun to screw up his little face again and started to cry. ‘He must be famished,’ she thought and lay down next to him. She hoped that her teats were full enough with milk; if not, she would really be lost as to what to give him to eat. Still her own cubs were due not too far away, as Brock had said, so she should be all right. She pulled the baby up towards her and drew his face near her teats with a paw. For an agonizing minute or two nothing happened but then, to Tara’s intense relief, he began to suck. Physically he could have been one of her own cubs suckling, but emotionally she felt very strange; here she was, giving food from her own body to a baby human. It would have been odd enough if she had been suckling another sow’s cub but this was a different animal and an Urkku at that!