Mole Digs a Window

Under the meadow, below the grass and the clover and the place where the rabbits sat in the evening, there was a tunnel. In the tunnel lived a mole.

Her name was Mole. She had a velvet coat, two wide pink paws for digging, and a nose that could smell a worm three tunnels away.

She also had very small eyes. They could tell dark from light, and that was about all. In a tunnel, that is plenty.

Every night, when the meadow went quiet, an owl landed in the big oak at the edge of the field. And every night the owl said the same thing, in a voice that came down through the ground, soft and round.

"Hoo. The stars are out."

Mole would stop whatever she was doing and listen.

She had never seen a star. Molehills are for the daytime. At night a mole stays at home, where it's warm.

She had asked the rabbits once. She had pushed her nose up out of a molehill at the end of the afternoon and asked the nearest rabbit what a star was.

The rabbit chewed and thought about it.

"Small," it said. "Lots of them. Too high to nibble."

That was all the rabbit knew. Rabbits are mostly interested in things they can nibble.

Mole lay in her bed of dry grass and wondered. Did stars smell of anything? Were they warm, like a pebble that has been in the sun all day? Did they make a sound when they came out, or did they come out quietly, the way worms do?

Nobody could tell her.

So tonight, when the owl said "Hoo. The stars are out," Mole made up her mind.

"I am going to dig a window," she said. "Then I will look out of it, and I will see the stars for myself."

She chose a good spot, right at the end of her longest tunnel. She sniffed the ceiling. It smelled of dry earth and, very far away, of grass.

She put up her paws.

Scoop, push, pat.
Scoop, push, pat.

Scoop the earth. Push it behind you. Pat the walls smooth so nothing falls in. That is how a mole digs, and Mole was very good at it.

She went up a little way. Then a little way more.

Every few scoops she stopped and sniffed. Earth. Earth. A beetle's back door. More earth. Up here the tunnel smelled new, the way a tunnel always smells when nobody has ever been in it before.

Scoop, push, pat.

Something pink and slow came out of the wall beside her. It was a worm.

"Hello," said Mole. "I'm digging a window. To see the stars."

The worm thought about this for a long time. Worms do everything slowly, even thinking.

"I don't know about stars," said the worm at last. "I know about rain. Rain comes from up there. It tastes of clouds."

"Is up there far?" asked Mole.

"Everything is far," said the worm, and went back into the wall.

Mole kept going.

Scoop, push, pat.
Scoop, push, pat.

Her paw bumped into something hard and cold. She sniffed it. It smelled of nothing at all, which is how stones smell.

Mole did not argue with the stone. Nobody wins an argument with a stone. She went around it, a little to the left, and then up again.

Scoop, push, pat.

Up she went, and up. The meadow above was very quiet now. Somewhere behind her, a long way back, her bed of dry grass was waiting, still a little warm from the afternoon. Mole did not think about her bed. Not yet.

Her paws were getting warm now, and a little heavy.

The earth was changing. It was full of thin pale threads that tickled her nose. Then the threads got thicker. Then there was something in front of her that was not earth, and not a stone.

It was wide. It was rough. It went right across her tunnel, further than her paws could reach on either side. And it was very slightly warm.

"Excuse me," said Mole. "You're in the way of my window."

"I'm a root," said the root. Its voice was deep and creaky, the voice of something that had stayed in one place for a very long time. "I'm the oak's root. I'm in the way of a lot of things. I've been here for two hundred years."

Mole sat back on her haunches.

"What are you doing down here?" she asked.

"Holding," said the root.

"Two hundred years is a long time to hold something," said Mole.

"It goes quicker with company," said the root.

"Holding what?"

"The oak."

Mole thought about the oak. The rabbits said it was the biggest thing in the whole field.

"And what is the oak holding?" she asked.

"Its branches."

"And what are the branches holding?"

"The leaves," said the root. "And the owl, when she comes. And on a still night, if you ask the oak, a good part of the sky."

Mole's whiskers went very still.

"The sky with the stars in it?"

"That's the one."

Mole put out one paw and laid it flat against the root.

The root was moving. Not much. A slow, slow lean one way. Then a slow, slow lean back.

"What's that?" whispered Mole.

"Wind," said the root. "Up at the top. It pushes the branches, and the branches push the trunk, and the trunk pushes me. I feel all of it down here."

Mole kept her paw where it was.

Lean, and back.
Lean, and back.

Then she felt something else. A small bump, light and quick, far, far above.

"Hoo," came the voice, down through the ground. "The stars are out."

"That was the owl landing," said the root. "She's not heavy. She's mostly feathers."

Mole put her other paw on the root too. Now she could feel the wind. She could feel the owl. She could feel the whole tree standing up in the dark with the sky resting on top of it. And all of it, every bit, came down to here. To the root. To her two pink paws.

"Nobody down here ever sees what they're holding up," said the root. "You get used to it. After a while, you start to like it."

Mole did not dig any further.

Instead, she made the end of her tunnel round and soft.

Scoop... push... pat.

She made it just big enough for one mole.

Scoop... push... pat.

She found a few soft root threads and tucked them around herself. Then she curled up in the round end of the tunnel, with her back against the root.

Lean, and back.
Lean, and back.

High above the meadow, the owl fluffed her feathers.

"Hoo," said the owl. "The stars are out."

"I know," said Mole, very quietly. Her eyes were already closed. "I'm helping to hold them up."

And the root held the oak. And the oak held the branches. And the branches held the leaves, and the owl, and a good part of the sky.

And at the very bottom of all of it, warm and small and fast asleep, Mole held on to the root.