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After each conversation I returned home and recorded, as faithfully as I could, every detail of what he had told me. I determined early on that I would attempt to put my notes together in the form of a book and to this end it has been necessary to make certain changes in the way the story was told to me. These relate however only to style and format and I trust that I have remained true to the spirit in which it was related. Any errors there may be are of course entirely mine.
From the first I challenged the truth of his story but he simply smiled and told me that whether I believed his tale or not was of no consequence though he would be grateful if I would at least listen. This I did and as the story progressed I grew more and more fascinated and began to look forward to our meetings so that I could hear the next part of the tale. I also became less convinced that it was untrue until towards the end I became almost certain that it was, at the very least, based on fact. This, of course, must be left to the reader to decide for himself; it is not my intention to attempt to prove either way.
Our meetings lasted approximately two years; the first one taking place on a cold January day when I was making my way, in the late afternoon, up a steep path through the forest, and the last two years later in December when the snow was thick on the ground and I was sitting on the moors by a little brook that raced its way along through high banks of snow-covered heather. Since that day when he finished his story, I have not seen him, although I have spent as much, if not more time walking through my old haunts as before. Sometimes, however, I have felt aware of a ‘presence’ as if he was watching me and have been grateful for that knowledge. I am certain that someday I shall meet him again.
When he came to the end of the tale there were a number of very important questions which I wanted to ask him. Firstly I was anxious to learn what had happened to the animals and the Eldron after they had entered the tu
‘They had not gone down many steps,’ he said, ‘when they seemed to be walking in space as if they were floating through the darkness. Then, without realizing it, they drifted off into a deep, dreamless sleep and they slept for many, many moons in the arms of Ashgaroth. They did not grow old for Ashgaroth had frozen the passage of time for them and when, eventually, they awoke they found the sun streaming down upon them where they lay in their resting places in the Scyttel. When they walked out on to the face of the land it was to a new world; a world free of the Urkku, a world of infinite colour and magic.’
I remained intensely curious as to the fate of Nab and Beth and the other animals and still not wholly satisfied by his explanation of this ‘new world’ to which they had gone. ‘Were they happy there?’ I wanted to know. ‘Was it what they had dreamt of and suffered for so much?’
The icy wind blew little flurries of snow through the air which settled on our hair. The sun shone pale and watery in the steel grey winter sky. He looked up at me and smiled and as I gazed deep into his eyes I suddenly realized with a huge shock of amazement that the old man was Nab. My head spun for a second or two and I was unable to think straight but when I collected my wits again a further revelation came to me. If this old man was Nab then the world to which they had come was the same as that from which they had escaped – our world. A great wave of disappointment spread through me.
‘Then it was all for nothing,’ I blurted out. ‘Ashgaroth failed you.’
Nab looked down at the ground and was silent for a long time. When he spoke again there was sadness in his voice but there was also hope.
‘The Urkku,’ he said, ‘were created out of hatred, for revenge. They had no choice in the way they acted. But they are no more and because of what we did there is now a world peopled only by the Eldron. They have a choice; that is what separated them from the Urkku. The story then is not yet ended, for whether or not we have failed is for you and yours to decide. You are all the children of the Eldron.’
‘What of Beth and Brock, Warrigal, Perryfoot and Sam?’ I asked him. ‘And what of the elves; did they perish with the old world?’
‘When the old world destroyed itself, ’ he said, ‘the elves remained. They cured the wounds and healed the scars left by the Urkku and gradually they, with the help of Ashgaroth, brought the world back to its natural state. All this time we slept and it was only when the task had been completed that Ashgaroth released us from sleep. The elves are always here. As for the rest of us, Ashgaroth granted us the immortality of the elves. We live together still in the forests and the hills. They have seen you and sometimes you may have seen them though they, like all the other animals, have become wary now even of the Eldron for many of them have denied their true nature and grown similar in their ways to the old Urkku. ’ He paused and then as the sun began to sink in the evening sky he got up. ‘I must go now,’ he said. ‘Beth will be waiting for me,’ and he walked off over the snow towards the edge of the trees. I sat, still shaken by all that he had told me, and watched him go. He was about to enter the darkness of the forest when I thought I saw, coming out to meet him, a little group of animals. With my heart thumping wildly in my chest I stared hard through the gloom of the evening and was almost certain that I could make out the shapes of a badger, a dog, a hare and, flying low over their heads, a large brown owl. Then just behind them another figure; the figure of an old lady with her arms outstretched to greet him. I watched them for a second or two and they seemed in turn to be looking at me. Then suddenly they were gone, swallowed up by the forest.