glow. Badger took his place in the centre of the room, flanked by Fox and Tawny Owl as his self-appointed committee. The other animals spread themselves evenly round the Chamber against the hard earth walls. Most of the fieldmice and voles and rabbits took care not to sit anywhere near Adder or Weasel.
Without ceremony, Badger opened the meeting. ‘This is only the second Assembly called in my lifetime,’ he began, ‘and for most of you it will be the first you’ve attended. My father called the last Assembly five years ago, when the humans first moved in to lay waste our homes. In those days there was a Farthing Heath, as well as Farthing Wood. I don’t have to tell anybody what happened to the heath that once surrounded the whole of our wood.’
‘Gone. All gone,’ hissed Adder from the corner where he had carefully coiled himself up, and was resting his head on the topmost coil.
‘All gone!’ echoed the voles.
‘But the humans weren’t content with that,’ Badger went on bitterly. ‘They began to fell our trees. They continued to do so, at regular destructive intervals, until what was once a large wood had been cut back to the present sad remnant, not much larger than a copse.’
‘What do you think will happen, Badger?’ asked one of the rabbits timidly.
‘Happen?’ Badger echoed. ‘Why, the same thing that has been happening. They will cut down more trees, and build more houses, and shops, probably a school, and offices and roads, and ghastly concrete posts and signs everywhere, faster and faster and faster still, until eventually . . .’ He broke off with a despairing shake of his head.
‘Until eventually we are destroyed with the wood.’ Tawny Owl finished the sentence with determined pessimism.
‘And all this – how long will it take?’ asked Hare.
‘The very question I myself asked yesterday,’ nodded Badger. ‘Though all the time I suppose I knew the answer. We animals can never accurately forecast what the humans will do; we only know what they are capable of doing. And they’re capable of cutting down the remainder of Farthing Wood in twelve months, perhaps less.’
There was a stunned silence for a moment, then one or two animals coughed nervously. Kestrel began to preen his wings. His livelihood was not as completely threatened as the others’ by the advancing destruction.
‘And on top of all this,’ Badger said in pained tones, ‘comes a drought.’
‘The very last straw,’ said Mole.
‘Merely accelerating the end,’ Tawny Owl muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.
‘Friends, we are up against a brick wall,’ Badger intoned with deadly seriousness. ‘Leaving aside the threat of our extermination, if we don’t, in the next couple of days, find a safe, secluded place where we can all go to drink, we’re going to find ourselves in the worst kind of distress.’ He coughed huskily, already feeling his throat to be unusually dry. ‘This is why I’ve asked all of you to join me tonight. The greater the gathering, the better the chance we have of finding a solution to end our immediate danger. So I entreat you all: don’t be afraid to speak up. Size and strength have no bearing on anyone’s importance at an Assembly. The only important fact is that all of us live in Farthing Wood, and so we all need each other’s help.’
The smaller animals seemed to receive some encouragement from Badger’s remarks, and began to murmur to each other and shake their heads in bewilderment. But none of them seemed to have any definite ideas.
Badger looked at Tawny Owl, and then at Fox, but they were both scanning the circle of faces to see who was going to be the first to make a suggestion.
‘Surely you birds can help us?’ prompted Weasel. ‘You cover a wider stretch of country than we ground dwellers. Can any of you say where the nearest water is to be found outside our boundaries?’
Pheasant’s dowdy mate shifted uncomfortably, as she felt many pairs of eyes turning towards her. ‘Say something, Pheasant,’ she whispered to him.
‘My mate and I don’t really venture outside the wood,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Being game birds, there is always the danger of being shot at.’ He thrust out his gaudy breast. ‘I’m told we’re considered to be a great culinary delicacy by all well-bred humans,’ he added, almost smugly.
‘Kestrel, can you offer a more worthwhile piece of information?’ Badger enquired, directing a withering glance at Pheasant. ‘Of all the birds present, you spend more time than any outside the wood.’
Kestrel stopped preening and looked up with his habitual piercing glare. ‘Yes, I can,’ he said evenly. ‘But I doubt if it will be of any real use. There’s a sort of marshy pond on the enclosed army land on the other side of the trunk road. I haven’t hunted over there for some weeks – it’s never very rewarding at the best of times – and for all I know that, too, could have dried up. Apart from that, the most secluded expanse of water is a goldfish pond in a garden near the old church.’
‘But that’s in the old village, well over a mile away!’ exclaimed Badger. ‘Is there nowhere else?’
‘Oh yes,’ Kestrel replied without concern. ‘There’s a swimming-pool in one of the gardens on the new estate.’
‘How close?’
‘I suppose, for you, about fifteen minutes’ travelling.’
‘There’d be no cover: no cover at all,’ Fox warned.
‘I know,’ Badger answered worriedly. ‘But it’s nearer. The smaller animals could never walk as far as the church and then back again, all in one night.’
‘We could try!’ piped up one of the fieldmice.
‘Of course you could, and you would be very brave to do so,’ said Badger kindly. ‘But that would only be one journey. If this drought continues we’ll all have to make several journeys to drink what we need.’
‘The only suggestion I can make,’ said Hare, ‘is for the larger animals to carry the smaller – as many as we can manage.’
‘Yesss,’ drawled Adder. ‘I could carry several little mice and voles in my jaws, and I should be so gentle, they wouldn’t feel a thing.’ His tongue flickered excitedly. ‘I should so enjoy carrying the plump ones,’ he went on dreamily. ‘And Owl could manage a young rabbit or two in his talons, couldn’t you, Owl?’
‘You’re not looking at the situation in at all the right frame of mind, Adder,’ admonished Badger, looking with some sympathy at the smaller animals, who were huddling together as far away from Adder as they could manage without actually bolting into the tunnel. ‘You’re merely thinking, as usual,’ he went on, ‘of a way in which you can benefit personally from it. I know what you’re thinking, and it won’t do. It won’t do at all. We’re a community, facing a dangerous crisis. You know the Oath.’
‘Just a suggestion,’ hissed Adder, with a scarcely disguised leer. He was quite undismayed by the effect his words had had on the fieldmice and voles.
‘Now calm down, mice,’ soothed Badger. ‘Calm down, rabbits. You’ll come to no harm in my set.’
When the Assembly appeared to be more relaxed again, one of
