Brian Jacques - Rakkety Tam

“Good morning, Abbot. Doesn’t our orchard look pretty today? Here, let me help you with that tray.”

Humble willingly allowed the sturdy mouse to assist him. “Thank you, Brother Demple. My word, I didn’t realise one tray could be so heavy. There’s breakfast for three there.”

Demple took up the tray. “Thank goodness for that. At first I thought it was all for you, Father!”

He guided Humble to a sunny corner where he had set up a potting bench. “Friends for breakfast, eh? What’s the occasion?”

Humble sat on the bench alongside the tray. “We’ve arranged to try and solve a puzzle.”

Demple rubbed his paws together eagerly. “I love a good puzzle. D’you need any help?”

The Abbot smiled, eager to accept such a ready offer. “By all means, be my guest—the more the merrier. Ah, here they come now.”

Gordale arrived with Walt and Jem. Slightly behind them came Armel, with Skipper’s niece Brookflow. The fine, strong ottermaid had brought along an extra tray piled high with more food. Brookflow, or Brooky as she was known to all, was a jolly creature, possessed of an infectious laugh. Carrying the heavy tray on one paw, she waved with the other.

“Yoohooeeee! I heard there was a riddle t’be worked out, so I worked myself in. Is it alright if I join these other duffers, Father? Hahahaha!”

Humble raised his paws in mock despair. “Come on, you beauty, come one come all! Soon we’ll have everybeast in the Abbey here!”

Breakfast was shared out, as there was plenty for everyone. In the middle of it, Humble smote his forehead and groaned. “Sister Screeve has the written copy, and I forgot to invite her along. What was I thinking of?”

Yet even as he spoke, Screeve entered the orchard waving a parchment, the one she had recorded the rhyme on. “Friar Glisum told me you’d be here, Father. Hope you’ve not started without me!”

Brooky giggled into a scone she was demolishing. “Teeheehee! How would we manage that? I think old Screeve’s gone off her rocker. Teeheeheehee!”

Jem looked over the rim of an oatmeal bowl at Brooky. “You could do yoreself a nastiness, gigglin’ an’ vittlin’ like that, marm!”

Breakfast was taken in leisurely fashion, chatting, laughing and gossiping. Wandering Walt tapped his digging claws on the bench impatiently. “Yurr, b’aint us’n’s apposed t’be solven ee riggle t’day?”

Sister Screeve spread her parchment upon the ground. “Thank you kindly, sir. If Miss Brookflow can stop her merriment for just a moment, I’ll read the rhyme. Are you finished, miss?”

The jolly ottermaid stifled her mouth with both paws. “Whoohoohoo . . . Oops! Sorry, Sister, just once more. Whoohoohaha! There, that’s better. Right, let’s get on with unpuzzling the riddle, or unrizzling the puddle. Whoohaha. . . .”

Brooky looked about at the stern faces. “Sorry.”

Screeve took up where she had left off. “As I said, I’ll read the poem, er rhyme. Right!

Where the sun falls from the sky,

and dances at a pebble’s drop,

where little leaves slay big leaves,

where wood meets earth I stop.

Safe from the savage son of Dramz,

here the secret lies alone,

the symbol of all power, the mighty Walking Stone!”

Brother Gordale scratched behind his ear. “Well, where do we start with all that jumble?”

“At the beginning, I suppose. Hahahaha. . . .” Humble silenced Brooky with a stern glance over his glasses.

Then, suddenly, he mellowed. “An excellent idea. Very logical, too, miss. Where the sun falls from the sky. Anybeast got an idea where that may be?”

Walt answered. “Hurr that bee’s in ee west, whurr ee sun be a-setten every h’evenin’, zurr.”

Demple swept the horizon westward. “That’s a massive area. Any way we could narrow it down?”

Whilst they sat thinking about this, Gordale quoted the second line. “And dances at a pebble’s drop.”

Armel fidgeted with her apron strings. “Maybe it carries on to link up. What’s the next line?”

Sister Screeve supplied it in her precise tones. “Where little leaves slay big leaves. Dearie me, I’m really puzzled now!”

Brooky interrupted her. “Well, if the entire thing is a puzzle, yore supposed to be puzzled—that’s why puzzlers write ’em. Haha, we’re looking for a Walking Stone, and nobeast’s ever seen one. I wouldn’t recognise a Walking Stone if it fell out of a tree and hit me over the head. Oh, hahahahoohoo!”

Screeve wagged her paw severely. “Really, Brookflow, you aren’t helping the situation by sitting there laughing!”

Armel, very fond of her ottermaid friend, spoke up in her defence. “Don’t be too hard on Brooky, Sister. She has a point, you know.”

Gordale shrugged. “Right then, Sister Armel. Perhaps you’d like to tell us—just what is her point, eh?”

Armel’s pretty face creased in a frown of concentration. “Er, we, hmm, er . . . Maybe if Walt and Jem described the area where they found the dying beast, we might gain a clue from it.”

Humble agreed. “Sounds reasonable to me. This Askor, the beast who died, it’s likely he may have concealed the Walking Stone not far from where the tree fell on him. Jem, Walt, could you recall anything special about the place?”

Wandering Walt wrinkled his nose. “Nay, zurr, it bee’d loike many bits o’ furrest we’m parssed throo t’gether. B’aint that so, Jem?”

The old hedgehog shook his grizzled spikes. “Gettin’ old ain’t no fun. I fergits a lot o’ things now’days. It were someplace in sou’west Mossflower Woodlands, I’m sure o’ that. Aye, an’ there was a big ole rotten sycamore a-layin’ there, that was the one wot fell on Askor. More’n that I’m a-feared I can’t say, friends.”

Sister Screeve pushed the written rhyme under Jem’s snout. “Mayhap this’ll jog your mind. Try to recall if you noticed any of these things—a place where the sun falls from the sky, where it dances at a pebble’s drop, where little leaves slay big leaves. . . .”

Brother Demple suddenly exclaimed, “That’s it . . . ivy!”

Jem stared at him curiously. “What’s that supposed t’mean, ivy?”

Demple’s explanation shed the first tiny ray of hope on the riddle. “Plants and growing things are both my hobby and my life as a gardener. So I ignored the rest of the puzzle and concentrated on the one line, ‘Where little leaves slay big leaves.’ Father, do you remember that old willow tree, down by our Abbey pond, on the south side? The tree I had to chop down about ten seasons back? It was an ancient, weak old thing, with ivy growing all over it—right from the ground, around the trunk, through the branches, until the whole willow tree was covered thickly in ivy vines and creepers. Not a single leaf could grow there as a result of that ivy. It had been strangled.”

Humble remembered. “Ah yes, poor thing. Nobeast likes to see a tree felled, but it was becoming a danger, especially to our Dibbuns. I recall I took some of the branches to use as caulking for small casks. There was a lot of ivy, though.”

Demple smiled triumphantly. “You see, a clear case of little leaves slaying big leaves. Jem, can you or Walt recall seeing such a tree near the scene, one all choked by ivy?”

Hitheryon Jem pondered a moment, then laughed aloud. “Hohoho! The wasp, Walt, remember the wasp?”

The old mole rubbed his stubby tail ruefully. “Bo urr, oi b’aint likely to furget ee likkle villyun!”

Jem warmed to an account of the incident. “ ’Twas the day we found Askor, but earlier on. We’d just sat down to take a bite o’ brekkist. I sat on the cart shaft, but ole Walt, he sat down with his back agin a tree. Aye, ’twas a big sycamore, there’s quite a few in that neck o’ the woods. But this’n ’ad been gripped by the ivy, just as you described, Brother Demple. From root to crown that tree was wrapped thick in the stuff. Walt should’ve knowed better, ’cos ’tis a common fact that wasps are very partial to ivy, somethin’ in the scent of the leaves I’ve been told. Well, he’d no sooner sat down when out buzzes a wasp an’ stings pore ole Walt right on the tail!”