Otters swam lazily in the Abbey pond, culling edible water plants (but mostly gambolling and playing. You know what otters are like). Small hedgehogs and moles were around the back at the east side orchard. I could hear them singing as they gathered ripening berries or collected early damsons, pears, plums and apples, which the squirrels threw down to them from the high branches. Pretty little mousemaids and baby voles tittered and giggled whilst choosing table flowers, some making bright posies which they wore as hats. Frequently a sparrow would thrum past my head, carrying some morsel it had found or caught (though I cannot imagine any creature but a bird eating some of the questionable items a sparrow might find). The Foremole and his crew would arrive shortly to dig a baking pit. Meanwhile, the bustle and life of Redwall carried on below me, framed at the back by our beloved old Mossflower Woods. High, green and serene, with hardly a breeze to stir the mighty fastness of leafy boughs, oak, ash, elm, beech, yew, sycamore, hornbeam, fir and willow, mingled pale, dusty, dark and light green hues, the varied leaf shapes blending to shelter and frame the north and east sides of our walls.

Only two days to the annual festivities. I begin to feel like a giddy young woodlander again! However, being historian and recorder, I cannot in all dignity tuck up the folds of my habit and leap down among the merrymakers. I will finish my writings as quickly as possible then. Who knows, maybe I’ll stroll down to join some of the elders in the cellar. I know they will be sampling the October ale and blackcurrant wine set by from other seasons, just to make sure it has kept its taste and temperature correctly, especially the elderberry wine of last autumn’s pressing. You understand, of course, that I am doing this merely to help out old friends.

John Churchmouse (Recorder of Redwall Abbey, formerly of Saint Ninian’s)

2

Afternoon sunlight slanted through the gaps in the ruined walls and roof of Saint Ninian’s old church, highlighting the desolation of weed and thistle growing around broken, rotted pews. A small cloud of midges dispersed from dizzy circling as Slagar brushed by them. The fox peered through a broken door timber at the winding path of dusty brown which meandered aimlessly southward to meet the woodland fringe on the eastern edge.

Slagar watched silently, his ragged breath sucking in and out at the purple-red diamond-patterned skull mask which covered his entire head. When he spoke, it was a hoarse, rasping sound, as if he had received a terrible throat injury at some time.

“Here they come. Get that side door open, quick!”