Excerpt from the writings of Sister Oxalis, Recorder of Redwall Abbey:

        It is the Autumn of the Copper Beech!
        Though Nameday festivities would have occurred no matter the title, the name this time was rather hard to come by. As seasons progress, elders suggest names which, upon checking the records, have already been used somewhere back in the dust of ages. That’s just what happens, I suppose, when the past is deemed legend rather than history, and therefore less attentive study is paid to it...
        Bransles, our resident hare, scoffer, windbag, and lunatic suggested that the season go down in the records as “The Autumn of the Excessive Ragweed,” thus named because whenever she ventured outside the cultivated grounds of the abbey she’d erupt into explosive fits of sneezing. Though original, the idea was quickly turned down on the basis that Redwall has the tradition of giving positive meanings to our season names...
        Credit for the name ended up going to the young badgermaid Ustela. She is barely past dibbunhood, but is already one of our more thoughtful and intelligent beasts. No doubt she will grow into a strong but gentle leader in the future. Ah, but back to the topic at paw...
        Last autumn, traveling beasts from afar made our abbey a gift of a small tree. They told us it was called a copper beech, though at that point it more resembled a twig. It was planted in the corner between the north and west walls of the abbey, and it was very nearly forgotten. Only Ustela had watched it. She’d been sure to let us know when it got its first leaves, and other such developments. Just yesterday she noted with delight that the leaves had turned the most fantastic metallic copper hue, and what’s more it will eventually reflect the sunlight from its leaves as it grows. A beautiful tree, a beautiful name, a beautiful season.
        The feast was, as always, spectacular. I could go into extensive detail about every dish, every smell, every texture; even though I age, that memory remains blissfully keen. Perhaps too keen, and that precisely is why I offer no more detail than this. It would be quite unseemly for a respectable old mouse to drool all over the abbey records.
        The festivities and antics have been as good as ever so far. Youngbeasts compete in lawn games, while elders sit and relish the soft warm air of early autumn. Our bellringers, the otter brothers Rohan and Gregory have been mooching candied chestnuts off of whoever they can—as if any creature could possibly believe that they haven’t had candied chestnuts for seasons and seasons! Even Bransles wouldn’t stoop to that!
        Though there is no doubt more to say, it will be left unsaid until later. Our abbey Warrior Mattachin will be performing his famous sword dance for all to see. As is the normal for his line—and he is, of course, a descendant of Matthias the Elder—he is strong but light and agile. The great blade of Redwall can serve as a deadly force or a swirling ornament in his paws depending on his mood. And regardless of that mood, even, he can only be described as showy while he’s holding that sword.
        Showy, of course, is entertainment, and so I’m off to watch!

—Sis. Oxalis, Rec’dr 

The quarry snakes were gone. When Matthias had done away with Asmodeus, that had only been the beginning of the solution, but over the series of following seasons many a warrior made it a specific point to find a snake in the area and eradicate it. That almost became a ritual, but it ended with the snake problem essentially going extinct.
Which is why such nonmilitant beasts as Amos Stickley and the hedgehog and Gabbro the mole could head to the quarry without needs for special defenses. The two each had long family ties to Redwall and natural ties to the earth. These criteria made Amos and Gabbro the logical heads of the Redwall Abbey Renovation Committee. Again over the seasons the Abbey itself had become sonewhat worn down from the original. The committee therefore wished to make renovations using material from the primary source.
The foundations were still sound, but weathering against the outer faces of the Abbey was the main issue. The West Wall in particualar had been eroded, battered by more intense wind and precipitation that had faced the other walls. Several of the sculptures along the western wall had been melted down to no particular form and needed to be redone, for the sake of maintaining good old times. Finally, there was damage from various ancient attacks that, while historic, now only threatened to become a structural weakness.
But the West Wall would come first. The plan was to replace the uppermost layer of bricks on the rampart wall, for aesthetic improvement more than anything else. Therefore mole and hedgehog worked with precise movements, tracing chalked lines along the quarry of red sandstone, using careful chipping and chiseling in time-honored practice to break the rock in a neat planar fracture.
An airborne sliver of rock nearly struck the Sparra warrior that glided down to perch between Amos and Gabbro. Unnoticed at first, the bird clicked its beak with much agitation until it was finally acknowledged.
Gabbro’s dark features crinkled into a smile, the creases highlighted by the rock dust in his fur. “Whoi hullo, zurr Nuthead.”
The Sparra nodded fiercely, now swerving his beak upward. “Nuthead see-um flyworms in the sky. Verystrange flyworms.”
Amos Stickley twanged a headspike. “Yeh saw flyin’ worms? That’s definnilly strange.”
“Sparra Warrior no makeup thingss,” Nuthead snapped back.
Digging claws gently patting Amos’ spikes, Gabbro translated. “Ee saw floyin’ things, burr aye. And ee doan’t know whut koind.”
Amos nodded slowly. One dialect isn’t much improvement over another when neither one is your own. “Yeh think they’re dangerous? What’d they want with the mining likes of us?”
“Thissa Sparra dunna know,” Nuthead retorted, shifting his weight from firm feet to foreclaws. “Butta warrior needsto make anythreat nothreat.”
“Doan’t get ahead of yoreself naow,” Gabbro cautioned. “Doan’t start unnything big, hurr.”
Nuthead lifted off with a rustle of feathers. “Quiet, moleworm, you quiet. Thissa Sparra knows whattodo.” And he darted off.
Amos twanged a spike again, then resumed plotting out blocks on the sandstone ledge. “Well, that tweren’t anythin’ but peculiar.”

A common problem in society is that most beasts hold on to good things for too long, at which point those good things go sour and devastate the creature’s purposes. Nyctllr, however, knew of this historical facet. It was under that reason that Nyc deliberately extracted herself from the Windburn’s path after some length of coasting above unfamiliar territory.
Troyte followed reluctantly, watching the path of treetops disturbed by the constant wind. “What was that for? It was going so nicely, and we don’t seem to be at any distinguishable red building.” If it had been anatomically possible for Troyte to have crossed his wings, he would have done so. “What good is this going to do us?”
“You,” Nyc assured Troyte, “are an overgrown baby. I have no idea where Redwall is, or whether or not the Windburn goes there.”
“So we’re going to find it any better by having to think and fly at once?” If Troyte’s beak had the capability to frown, he would have done that as well.
Nyc, however, was perfectly capable of scowling, and that she did. “You’re wasting your energy complaining. If I can fly during daylight, you can certainly do this.” With a broad swoop of her wings, Nyc pulled herself back aloft.
Troyte rustled up to follow her, but before he’d reached the treetops something whacked him squarely on the beak. “Hey! What in blazes was that for?!”
Nyc turned back, utter confusion on her face. “I didn’t...”
She too shut up as a peculiar creature crawled out noiselessly onto a treebranch between herself and Troyte. The creature was vaguely musteline, and clad in various gauzes of forest shades. The contours of its face weren’t distinguishable as either gender, but as the voice slipped out from the strangely serenely smiling mouth, Nyc and Troyte assumed that “she” was the proper pronoun for the creature. “You traverse these regions to the crimson quadrangle, no?”
Nyc and Troyte exchanged puzzled stares. “What? Who are you?”
The creature slipped into a well-balanced crouch on the branch. “RaglÎ I am, RaglÎ the Enigma I am. This plot of land, this lichen bloom is my cartography, in the storage of my synapses. Hearken, hearken to me and need you not trailblaze.”
Nyc and Troyte could only repeat themselves. “What?”
RaglÎ turned her head to the side. “Auralized your directive, I did. You seek the crimson quadrangle, to which you not long arrive. Sail the river, airriver not mossriver. The destination is precognitive, the implementation elementary.”
“Pardon?”
But RaglÎ appeared to be done with her message, upon which she dematerialized into the trees.
“That. Made. No. Sense,” Troyte stated clearly.
“That’s a valid complaint,” Nyc agreed. “Let’s...um...just keep going as we were...”
“Yes...” Even Troyte seemed somewhat repressed after that encounter.
Bat and hawk resumed flying, only to be stopped again by another poke.
Troyte snapped before he turned, “Make it clear this time!”e
“Sparra always clear, hawkworm. You come-a with Nuthead.”
“Nuthead?!” Troyte spluttered disbelievingly, bewilderment changing to amusement. “Calling yourself a nuthead is no way to be fearsome!”
Nuthead, however, was no RaglÎ. His seriousness was not mystical, but grim. “Come-a with Nuthead, flyworms.”

Amos Stickley and Gabbro were more easily convinced of Nyctllr and Troyte’s purposes than Nuthead was. The Sparra’s stubborn instincts would never let him consider that an usnusually clumsy hawk and a peculiarly diurnal bat really were travelers with a direction that they didn’t know how to reach. Mole and hedgehog, however, were completely convinced of their innocence for exactly the same factors.
When Nyc attempted to recall RaglÎ’s “instructions” word for word, she failed miserably. The gist of the confusion, though, was very evident. Amos Stickley, after a great deal of thoughtful headspike-twanging, eventually offered the following advice: “Jest ignore that Enigma beast. Jest foller us and ye’ll get teh Redwall. Ye shoulda asked us first.”
The distance actually was quite small. Nyc and Troyte could have actually walked it alongside Gabbro and Amos without becoming tired. But had they done that their first view of Redwall’s grandeur would have been from the standard terrestrial perspective. From the air the Abbey was a colossal red square surrounded by lush green foliage. The outer wall ringed the inner building, the architectural structures of which splayed out as if in a contour drawing. They could see so much more than that from above, though. They saw Redwall the fortress, the community, the historical site, and alas, the target.
“You have to get us to whoever’s in charge,” Nyc demanded urgently as she flew through the gates.
“No take batworm to mouseworm leader! Up to nogood!” Nuthead stared Nyc right in the face.
Troyte stared right back down at the smaller bird, which silenced him at least momentarily.
Gabbro tugged at his snout. “I carn bring youm to zurr Foremoler.”
Nyc looked up around the Great Hall, expression only becoming more urgent as she took in the details of the room. “But can your Foremole set up sufficient military defenses for an air attack?”
With that Nuthead shot out from under Troyte’s gaze in an irate spasm. “Nuthead nolike the sound of that, batworm. Gonna get mouseworm warrior, get you out plentyquick.”
Gabbro slowly turned his head, regarding Nuthead and then Nyc. “He’m no Wurrier. Maoibe zurr Abbot—”
Amos cut him off. “Attack by air? Yeh said summat about an attack by air?” His spikes bristled in alarm.
Nyc nodded solemnly, but Troyte picked up from her, having absorbed some hysteria from Amos and Nuthead. “Yes, yes! They’ve captured innocent creatures in two huge towers and they’re enslaving and killing those creatures so they can use them to fly and go on the wind and swoop down from the sky and take Redwall completely unexpectedly!” Amazingly, he did not breathe throughout this entire statement.
“You’re doing...what?”
All present looked up to see a hard-eyed mouse with a midwinter-sharp sword.
“Not us,” Nyc returned, voice firm but eyes following the path of the magnificent sword. “A weasel called Nadal ob Insame. His fortress is two identical towers, out far from here, above a cliff between the mountains and the sea. He’s trying to make a flying machine to take over Redwall. You can believe me. You have to believe me!”
The mouse retained his pose a moment longer, then snapped back with a dismissive puff of breath. “That’s nonsense.”
“How can you be so sure?” Nyc seemed offended by the statement.
“I’m not the Abbey Warrior for no reason,” the mouse replied coldly. “Threat has forewarning and foreboding. This doesn’t.”
Nyc glared. “I’m warning you!”
“And how can I believe you? This is wasting my time.” And the mouse was off.