The two cubs stood in silent wonder for a second and then ran after him chattering and fighting as they went. They always went foraging with Bruin now for he had more time and patience than their father to teach them the ways of the wood, what was good to eat and what was poisonous and where to find the berries and juicy roots that they so enjoyed. There was also the chance, when they got back to the sett, of a story about the time Before-Man when the land was one vast forest and the earth was full of strange creatures with magical powers; creatures which flew as high as the sun and which ran so fast that the eye could not see them. He might also tell them again, for they never tired of hearing them, stories about the time the Great Enemy first arrived in the world.

Now that the sett was quiet again Brock had time to think about how Bruin had seemed to accept the baby Urkku so easily. He was relieved but also puzzled: his grandfather liked all young creatures and they in turn loved him, but his acceptance of this baby was more than that; he had almost seemed to have been expecting it. Warrigal had said that Bruin might know the legend of the Urkku Saviour, and the old badger’s strange request to them to ‘look after him’ could only mean that he, as well as Warrigal, believed that this little thing was he. He wondered how much Bruin knew of the rest of the legend. Brock went over to Tara and the baby; he was asleep again after his last feed and lay, looking blissful and secure, snuggled deep into Tara’s soft hair. She was awake. ‘It’s all too much for me,’ she said. ‘Why was grandfather so strange and nice to him; I thought he’d go into a towering rage.’ Brock told her of his conversation with Warrigal and at the mention of the Elflord she shook her head in disbelief. When he had finished she looked at him affectionately, as she always did when he related his grandiose schemes to her, and said sweetly, ‘Well, you see to all that side of it and I’ll feed him and wash him and keep him warm and teach him when it’s safe to go outside and. ’

‘You can scoff,’ interrupted Brock, ‘but we’ll see who is right when the time comes. This time I’ve got a feeling, and I’m not the only one, that something really important is in the wind and I’m hot going to ignore it simply because you’re too hardheaded to see it. ’ He began to move towards the passage. ‘You’ve no imagination,’ he added caustically. ‘I’m off to the Council.’

When he’d gone Tara looked down at the little pink creature lying against her black fur. ‘Well,’ she said to him softly, ‘whether you’re what they say you are or not, one thing is certain, you’re no different from any other cub; all that bothers you is eating, sleeping and playing.’ But though she said it, she couldn’t help feeling that perhaps, this time, Brock was right and that something legendary was happening to them all.

When Brock emerged into the cold night, the moon was shining down in between the great belt of rhododendrons to his left and the trunk of the Great Beech; there was still time enough to walk to the Council before Moon-High, when the meeting would open. He gave a little bark from the foot of the tree to tell Warrigal he was on his way and the owl answered Toowitt-Toowoo’ before flying off through the trees. Brock made his way along the front of the wood to the old wooden stile at the comer, where he turned right and followed the little stream back into the wood until he was almost at the fields which lay at the rear. He had decided tonight not to take the short cut over the little stream; it would not bear thinking about if he fell in and turned up at this meeting, of all meetings, looking like a large drowned rat. Besides there was no hurry and he wanted time to think before he arrived. The little stream, which was really a drainage ditch dug by the Urkku, formed a large T and so divided Silver Wood roughly into three different sections, each of which was very different in character. Above the horizontal stroke of the T the wood was full of fairly new birches, very close together so that they had grown tall and thin and straight as they competed for light. The wood was dark here as, even in winter when there were no leaves, the light found it hard to penetrate the thick web of branches and twigs. In autumn the floor of this part of the wood was full of all types of toadstools but very little grew at any other time of the year. The front of the wood, to the left of the perpendicular stroke of the T, was where Brock lived. This part again had two different sections and the Great Beech was at the centre of the division. To the right of it there were few trees, mostly oaks and elms and ash and the floor here was made up of large tussocks of grass with the odd clump of heather. To the left of the beech there was a large bank of rhododendrons which went right back to the little stream, and where these petered out at the edge of the wood there were some more enormous beeches along with some splendid elms. The whole of this front part of the wood looked out on to a square flat field, then another field which rose sharply into a bank. To the left of that stood the pond surrounded by hawthorns, hazel trees and elders. The back of the wood contained a large number of tall silver birch trees and it was these that gave the wood its name. Many of them had died and their trunks lay slowly rotting year by year. Fungi grew out of them, and ants, beetles and woodlice made their homes there. The floor of this part of the wood was nearly all bracken which in the summer formed a lush green jungle and on frosty winter days a crackly brown matting which crunched with every step. This area eventually gave way to another of giant elms and ash where the ground was peaty and grew grasses, mosses and, in the spring, a carpet of bluebells which scented the whole back of the wood with their perfume. The fields at the back formed a steep bank which led down again into a sandy hollow and then, in the distance, to the stream where Tara went in the summer to collect meadowsweet and rushes for the sett. And beyond that was Tall Wood where none of the animals had been and where it was said that the Elflord lived with the other magical peoples.

The Council Meetings were always held in the back part of the wood in a fairly large open space bordered on one side by the little stream with the rhododendrons behind it on the far bank and, on the other three, by a semi-circular belt of smaller rhododendrons, old tree stumps and new young birch and ash saplings. As Brock walked along the bank at the back of the wood he could hear hundreds of little crunching and rustling noises as the inhabitants of the wood made their way over the frozen snow. Suddenly, from behind him, he heard an enormous splash and he turned round to see Sam, the dog from the village, swimming vigorously and noisily across the stream.

He had spotted Brock on the far bank and now he bounded up to greet him. ‘What a creature!’ muttered Brock under his breath as the dog stood shaking himself and sending a shower of little drops of water spinning out which almost hit the badger. Brock then watched in amusement as the big dog started to roll on his back, his legs flailing from side to side in an effort to get thoroughly dry. Standing up again he gave himself another shake, which seemed to start from the tip of his tail and work its way slowly along his body until his whole head rotated and the black tip of his nose span round. He stood still for a second and then said, ‘Hello Brock, how are you?’ in a loud voice, so that Brock had to move close to him and tell him to keep his voice down. In general dogs had little to fear from the Great Enemy provided they were kept in a good home, and they had lost the natural instinct of all wild animals to be as quiet as possible at all times and their desire to remain unnoticed and unknown which had developed over the ages of man’s domination of the earth. Dogs occupied a strange place in the relationship between man and animals in that they were to all intents and purposes allies of man and even helped him when man was out killing with the death sticks, running to pick up the dead or injured animal and taking it back to their human to save him the effort of going to fetch it. Sometimes whole packs of dogs would be used to chase and kill a fox or a hare while the Great Enemy rode behind on another animal ally, the horse; or when a hare was being chased man would run behind, shouting and yelling. For these reasons dogs were, in general, feared, hated and despised by all wild animals and at first, when Brock had tried to introduce Sam to the Council, he met with great resistance. However, as time passed and Brock brought to the Council more and more extremely valuable information which Sam had given him about the details of future killing times, the Council had finally relented and allowed Sam to attend. Warrigal would fly over the house where Sam lived and give him the call and the dog would bark in reply to let the owl know he had received the message. Some of the animals still did not completely trust Sam, but he had earned from most of them a grudging respect and a few had begun to count him as a friend. Of course, when the Killing was taking place Sam would be with his human but the animals now recognized this and realized that it was the only way the dog could keep bringing them the information they found so useful.