Quest for the Faradawn - страница 19

Brock and Warrigal would spend many hours in there with the young boy talking and explaining about the ways of the wood; and often the other animals would come in and spend time with him also, for the Council had decided that although Brock and Tara would always be his special guardians and protectors, he was also the responsibility of the entire wood and was not to be brought up as a badger, or any other animal for that matter, but was instead to be allowed to develop in his own way with all the animals helping him and teaching him in their own particular skills. Thus from Perry-foot the hare Nab learned the art of running and also a lot about humour. The boy laughed a lot naturally but with the hare he could play games like hide and seek and they would cuff each other in fun.

Pictor would come and have long serious talks with him about the art of organization and of running a community while from Sterndale the Fierce he came to understand the rightful place of pride and aggression. Often in the evenings Nab would be sleeping soundly in one comer of his bush when he would suddenly feel the presence of something and, waking up, would be thrilled to see the triangular face of Rufus the Red looking at him intently. After his initial doubts, the fox had become extremely fond of the boy, and now delighted in spending time with him, teaching him the arts of cunning and stealth. The boy would sit spellbound as the fox recited tales of adventure and excitement about the amazing and daring tricks his ancestors had used to avoid the savage packs of dogs which the Urkku sent out to kill them. Rufus also spent long hours teaching him how to walk without making a sound, how to merge with his background, how to use whatever cover was available and how to freeze whenever there was the slightest sign of danger. Most important of all, perhaps, he taught Nab the art of alertness: how to remain constantly on guard and what sort of sounds to listen for as signals of Urkku. While Rufus was talking to Nab, the boy would sit close and run his hands over the fox’s soft fur or bury his fingers in it and pull them backwards so that the fur stood up in little spikes on his back.

Nab also loved talking to Warrigal and sometimes, on summer evenings, Wythen himself. From them he learnt wisdom and wood-lore and they explained to him, slowly and gently, about the Magical Peoples and the Urkku and the relationship between them. The Elflord knew about him, they said, and it was he who was helping the animals to bring him up. At some time Warrigal would take him to meet the Elflord and they would have a long talk but that would not be for quite a few seasons yet. From the time he had left the sett Nab had been aware that he was not a badger and that in fact there were no other animals like him in the whole wood. The owls had explained to him that he was of a quite different type of creature and that his race lived separately in their own area some distance beyond the hill they could see at the far end of the fields at the front of the wood. They told him he had been found under the Great Oak one snowy winter’s night by Brock and that he had taken him in to look after him. Whenever he wanted to he could leave the wood to join his own race, they said, although of course the boy had no desire now to leave his home and his friends. They took him to the brook and showed him his reflection in the dark brackish water so that he would have some idea of what he looked like for he had not yet seen an Urkku. Whenever the shoot came they took him back down the sett where he stayed with Tara until it was all over. When he asked about the noise they told him that it was thunder and lightning and that they were keeping him in the sett to protect him from it, for they did not want to influence him in any way against his own race. This had all been explained very carefully to Wythen by the Elflord. ‘We must let his attitudes and opinions towards the Urkku develop entirely independently; they must come from him,’ he had said. And so, until he was slightly older, they had decided not to let him see the Urkku killing. There was another reason why they put him in the sett when the Urkku were around; although no one had come looking for Nab they were afraid that if he were found he would be taken away and they did not yet think that he had enough skill to be able to escape detection while men were in the wood.