Read Online The Golden Flight by Michael Tod - Free Book Online Page A

here, earlier in the year. These playing the game now were youngsters from Second Litters. Were these dear little ones going to grow up loutish, like the three at the Council Meeting? Would they think of her as Miss Hoity-Toity? She heard the chant coming from behind her.
     
    ‘I honour birch-bark
    The island screen. Flies stinging…’
     
    The Island’s Queen … She corrected mentally then turned and went to seek the Ex-Kingz Mate. Marguerite was sure that the old Royal knew something that she might be persuaded to tell.
    Ex Kingz-Mate Thizle was not on her branch in the sunshine when she arrived at her drey so Marguerite said the Calling Kernel–
     
    ‘Hello and greetings
    I visit you and bring peace.
    Emerge or I leave.’
     
    She waited, ready to go if there was no response.
    ‘Marguerite,’ called a feeble voice from within the drey. ‘Come yew in, pleaze. Uz’z glad to zee yew.’
    Marguerite wriggled in through the entrance and found the old squirrel inside, very feeble and weak.
    ‘Thank the Zun yew came.’ Thizle said, struggling to pronounce the words. ‘Uz’ll be Zun-gone zoon and ther’z zumthing uz muzd tell yew.’
    Marguerite propped her up and tried to make her comfortable. ‘Yes,’ she said, I’m listening. What is it?’
    ‘Woodlouz knowz…’ The old squirrel stopped and Marguerite repeated her words.
    ‘Woodlouz knows…’
    ‘How the muzhroomz of the moon…’
    Marguerite repeated this, ‘How the mushrooms of the moon…’
    There was a long pause, Thizle breathing with difficulty. Marguerite waited.
    ‘Controlz the breeding.’ The words were very faint and indistinct.
    ‘Controls the bleeding?’ Marguerite queried.
    ‘No, no! Controlz…’
    Thizle’s head fell back against Marguerite’s shoulder and the old Ex-Kingz-Mate drew a last rattling breath and slumped down on the mossy lining of her drey.
    Marguerite put a paw on Thizle’s thin chest. It was still.
    She laid the body out straight and went to tell the others and to get help to carry the body down to the ground for burial. The loss of her friend and confidante left her feeling as though a piece had been painfully bitten out of her own chest.
    ‘Woodlouz knows how the mushrooms of the moon controls the bleeding.’ Marguerite repeated the message again and again as she went. Was that what Thizle had said? It was almost as confusing as Wally’s prophecy about honouring birch-bark.
    Woodlouse was the original name the Royals had given to her friend Wood Anemone, one of the zervants who was now on the Mainland with Rowan. What did she know about the Moon Mushrooms, whatever these were?  And how did they control bleeding? Why had old Thizle suddenly thought it important to tell her about them as she was dying?
    Marguerite had reached the Council Tree.
    ‘Clover, Old Thizle is Sun-gone. I’ve just come from her drey.’
     
    Thizle was buried at the foot of her drey-tree and most of the island squirrels were present. One of the ex-zervants had brought along a small feather from a peacock’s tail, with a gleaming eye in the fan, similar to the feather once carried so proudly by Thizle in the days when she was Kingz-Mate.
    Thizle’s son, Just Poplar, took the feather and laid it alongside the body of his mother before saying the Farewell Kernel –
     
    ‘Sun, take this squirrel
    Into the peace of your earth
    To nourish a tree.’
     
     
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN
     
    Hickory was waiting at the Little Pool when the Rowan and the other Reds arrived back, tired and dirty, in the early dawn.
    He listened to the story of the escape and looked at Meadowsweet with a new respect. To think what that old fool Malachite had said about natives!
    ‘What do you plan to do now?’ he asked Rowan.
    ‘We’ll need to get cleaned up first,’ he said, seeing his life-mate looking ruefully at her claws, torn and broken from the night’s digging, ‘then decide on action.’
     
    Indecision kills.
    Act positively and lead.
    Action