Yet despite this strangeness she also felt the warmth and tenderness that Brock had experienced earlier towards the baby, and she undeniably felt a sense of excitement and adventure as she sat cradling this strange head in her paw and feeling the baby suck.
He was soon satisfied and Tara laid him down carefully on the meadowsweet and covered him with strips of birchbark on top of which she laid dead bracken. He was very soon asleep and Tara set about cleaning the room; dragging out all the old and soiled bedding and putting new fresh stuff on the floor from the piles around the outside of the room. She occasionally ran her paws along the roof to clear it of cobwebs for the ceiling was latticed with the roots of the Great Beech and the spiders liked to build along and at the side of them. She finally went over to the entrance to the tunnel and ran her paws down the three large roots that framed the doorway; one at the top and two down either side. This had been done so often through the centuries that they were now a wonderfully rich dark brown colour and they shone and felt smooth to the touch. There were also little gashes down them where, on the darkest wettest nights, badgers had been unable to go to the scratching post outside the sett and so had sharpened their claws on the two old hard roots at the side. These scratch marks always reminded Tara of the past generations of badgers who had lived here. She wondered how they had died; how many had been killed by the Great Enemy and how many had simply gone peacefully in their sleep.
When she had finished her housecleaning she went through the door and up the short passage which led out to the wood. She put her nose out into the air and immediately had to screw up her eyes to protect them from the glare, for the sun was shining brightly from a clear blue sky and was reflecting up from the snow which lay in thick white smoothness all around. She could tell without looking that the sun was high in the sky, shining down through the branches of the Great Beech. It was time to rouse Brock. She backed down the passage (for there was no space to turn round) and had to wait awhile when she was back in the room to let her eyes adjust to the light. She went over to Brock and gently placed the tip of her nose against his. He awoke without a start, yawned, stretched and got up.
‘Hello,’ he said sleepily and then saw the baby. ‘Oh my goodness,’ he exclaimed as the events of the previous night began to come back and the full impact of what he had done dawned on him.
‘You wanted me to wake you at Sun-High,’ Tara said.
‘Yes; there’s a lot to do and not much time. I heard the Midnight Bells last night and you know what that means for tomorrow, so I must call a Council for tonight. And then there is this baby Urkku. Did you manage to feed him?’ Tara nodded. ‘Good. But some of them won’t like it and they may even try to kill him. They will have to be told, of course; we could never keep him secret when he gets bigger and it’s better to tell them now when he is so helpless and harmless than later when he begins to grow and look more like an Urkku. It’s a bad time, though, with the deaths and injuries that the Enemy will cause tomorrow. I must go and tell Warrigal to summon the Council and then we’d better have a talk with the rest of the sett.’ He went towards the door. ‘Everywhere looks very clean,’ he said, and vanished up the passage.
He emerged into the day and, like Tara, was almost blinded by the glare from the snow. ‘It’s too bright,’ he muttered, ‘too bright.’ But the warmth of the sun felt wonderful on his back and face. It seemed to spread through his body and fill him with new life. He barked quietly twice, looking up at the Old Beech. There was no reply. ‘He’ll be fast asleep,’ he thought. He barked again. Suddenly he felt someone behind him and turned round. It was Warrigal the Wise, standing blinking at him. ‘Don’t do that,’ Brock said. ‘You frightened me.’ You could never hear Warrigal; it was almost uncanny the way he could fly, even through branches and thick rhododendrons, without making a sound.
‘You want me to summon the Council,’ Warrigal said. ‘I heard the bells last night as well.’
‘Yes,’ said Brock. ‘Call them for tonight. And listen, Warrigal; there’s another matter which I want to raise and which I should like to mention to you briefly now.’ Brock felt it would be prudent to tell Warrigal about his strange guest and get him on his side before the others were told. Everyone admired Warrigal for his knowledge and what he advised was always regarded with respect by the rest of the wood, albeit somewhat grudgingly by some of the loners like Rufus the Red. He also felt that a private chat with him might clear his own mind on a few matters before the whole affair came out into the open. Badgers and Owls had been allies in the protection of the Wood as far back as the beginning of legend. The Badgers’ knowledge of the ground and the Owls’ command of the air made a good combination. They were both creatures of extremely ancient heritage and tradition, unlike some of the more recent additions like the pheasants and squirrels, and between them they could muster a great deal of knowledge and intuitive wisdom. Brock therefore felt that if anyone could understand his feelings of the previous night, it was this trusted friend. Besides, the fact that he had a baby Urkku down in the sett this very minute was quite a devastating piece of news and it was a nice change to be able to tell Warrigal, who always seemed to hear all the news first, something which he did not already know.
Surprisingly, and to Brock’s annoyance, the owl did not seem very shocked although he obviously had not known. He merely listened attentively, occasionally giving a long slow blink, while Brock told the whole story. When he had finished Warrigal looked down at the snow and shifted his feet slightly on the root where he was standing. He stood like that for a few seconds and then turned his head round, first to the right and then to the left, as if looking for anyone who might be listening. Then he stared hard at the badger. ‘Well,’ Brock said impatiently, ‘what do you make of it?’
‘If I am right in my belief,’ he said, with the air of someone who knew he always was, ‘then you, Old Friend, have been picked for a task which will go down in legend as the most significant event in the history of the animal kingdom. An Honoured Badger indeed; one whose name will live for ever along with the names of the great heroes of Before-Man and whose role in history may be seen perhaps as even greater than theirs.’
‘Stop, stop, for goodness sake,’ the badger said. He had begun to feel extremely alarmed; it was one thing being a Guardian of the Wood who shared responsibility with Warrigal and whose task it was to call the Council together for emergency meetings, but quite another to be told of all this stuff about legend and history and how he would become famous. The owl exaggerated, of course; he took everything seriously and tended to make the simplest of events take on significant proportions. Still he really did look grave.
‘But all I’ve done is rescue a human baby from dying of cold,’ he said, not really unaware of the enormity of that event but trying now to make it less important by talking about it as being less important. ‘Oh dear,’ he said, as Warrigal just stood there, looking at him.
‘Legend tells of an Urkku Saviour who arrives in the way your young friend arrived last night. I know no more than that. Your grandfather, Bruin the Brave, probably also knows of it but it is not a tale that is told often; partly because it is too unbelievable and partly because the ending has become lost in the mists of time. No one knows it,’ he added, remembering with a sigh that sometimes his poetic turns of phrase, of which he was extremely proud, were misunderstood. ‘The Elflord must be told; he, of course, knows of the legend and he will tell us how to proceed. I will see to that. In the meantime we must simply get the Council to agree to his remaining here, unmolested. Don’t breathe a word to anyone, except Tara, of the legend or of the Elflord. We must keep things as quiet and normal as possible, otherwise the Urkku might sense something different about the wood and begin poking around. Leave things to me tonight; I know how to handle the Council. Till Moon-High then,’ he said, and flew silently away.
