The White Hare

by Fishwick, Michael;

  They lay in the sun to dry off, then they pulled on their clothes and Robbie found himself getting sleepy. Mags kept kicking him with her foot because she was getting bored, and eventually she got up and said she was off for a walk. Robbie moved his head into the shade, listening to the murmur of the river. Sleep began to paw at him, and his eyes got heavy.

  *

  He hardly knew where he was when he woke up. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep, and for a fraction of a moment he couldn’t even remember why he was there.

  He remembered Mags was walking somewhere in the woods, and he went on listening to the sound of running water, thinking about them swimming, the light under the surface, the shock of the cold clenching water and the warm sun opening them up.

  He saw Mags at the top of the bank, staring down, her face in dark shadow. He waved to her and smiled. But she didn’t respond. She was watching something in the water.

  He looked down, expecting to see her reflection, but instead he saw something white.

  A white hare, her ears like two flames.

  The cat of the wood.

  He looked up at the bank. Nothing.

  He looked back into the water. Nothing.

  The hare and the girl had gone.

  ‘Robbie.’

  He let out a shout and spun to face her.

  ‘Are you okay?’ It was Mags, coming quietly out of the woods without warning.

  She looked into his eyes. ‘What have you seen?’ she asked.

  ‘I thought I saw you.’

  ‘She’s been here, then,’ she said to herself. ‘Sorry.’ She stroked his face. ‘I shouldn’t’ve left you. Try to concentrate. You’ve had a shock. What did you see?’

  ‘I thought it was you,’ he said again. His heart was pounding. ‘Up on the bank. But she wasn’t looking at me, she was looking in the water. And her reflection wasn’t her. It was a white hare. Her. Fleet.’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  ‘Mags, am I going mad?’

  ‘No, no. It could drive you mad, though. That’s why I’ve said so little. I was trying to tell you that up on the beacon, after you ran away. But we’re too far in now. Too far in.’ She drew a deep breath. ‘Think reflections. If you see the hare in a mirror you’ll see the person she really is, or who she really was. It’s all in the stories. And it works in reverse. If the woman is reflected, you’ll see the hare. They’re in different dimensions, but they’re twinned with each other. Forever. Inseparable.’

  ‘That’s sad,’ Robbie said, not understanding.

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘She’s very near,’ said Mags.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘They’ve got walkers out everywhere, looking for her, looking for me.’

  Mr Allardyce in his shorts, thought Robbie.

  ‘They won’t find her, though, will they?’

  ‘Somehow, somewhere, they’ll meet. The lovers. They have to. They always do.’

  ‘We can’t do anything, then,’ he said.

  ‘We need to be there.’

  ‘Why?’

  Mags said nothing.

  ‘Mags?’ he asked.

  She started playing with her hair, undoing it and doing it up again.

  ‘Mags?’ he asked again.

  ‘She was my best friend.’

  ‘Are you going to try and help her, Mags?’ he asked.

  She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No. But she’ll need me.’

  ‘So can we work out where she’s going to be?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Mags, ‘she appears near to where she was first seen.’

  ‘That field,’ said Robbie.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But the Stricklands and their friends won’t know that,’ he said, and then he remembered. ‘The trouble is, actually, they do,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t,’ she said.

  ‘I did. I’d forgotten.’

  She stared at him in fury.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘On the other hand …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It kind of makes it easier, right? If it’s all going to happen anyway, it’ll just happen faster.’

  ‘They’ll be prepared, though.’ Mags was so angry her voice was tight in the back of her throat. For a while she said nothing.

  Then, finally, she let it go.

  ‘In the old days when the white hare came they’d burn the stubble,’ she went on. ‘That’s one of the hare’s names, from the poem: the stag of the stubble. They’d start on one side of the field and work to the other. When the animals in the field broke cover, the guns had them. That’s how they flushed her out. But they never knew whether she was there, and often she wasn’t, and instead, somewhere, somehow, later she’d be revenged. And now they’ll be ready for her.’

  ‘Mrs Allardyce said the hare rarely fails.’ He went on, ‘So will they burn the field?’

  ‘It depends what it’s had in it. Stubble burning’s not allowed any more, it’s been banned for years. Bad for the soil. There are so many pollution restrictions now, it’s hard to set fire to anything. But when someone’s desperate, well, in late summer fires can start very easily. They’ll try anything, those boys, at the best of times, and for them, or one of them, this is the worst. They’ve got to find her before she finds them.’

  ‘So they flush out the animals. Does that work?’

  ‘The thing is, hares aren’t afraid of fire. A bit like you.’

  ‘Mrs Allardyce said. They jump through it.’

  ‘Maybe that’s the connection,’ said Mags. ‘Is that your affinity, Robbie? Is it fire?’

  He shrugged. ‘Who knows?’

  ‘They’ll jump through the fire if they think it’s less of a threat than a line of men with guns,’ Mags went on.

  ‘You can’t kill a ghost.’

  ‘She’s not a ghost, she’s not a pretend hare, she’s flesh and blood and needs to eat and drink and she’s out there in the fields like the ordinary ones.’

  ‘So she might be in that field and she might not, and the Stricklands might have a go at her and they might not, but one way or another we know something’s going to happen. What do we do?’

  ‘We watch. And we wait. It’s only a matter of time.’

  25

  MAGS WAS entirely focused on Fleet now. She seemed to know what everyone was saying, and especially where the Stricklands were, where they were going next, everything about them. He didn’t know how she did it; it was as if she even knew what the wind was thinking. And she had been right about the walkers, the roads were crawling with them. The Allardyces were never at home. Mags said that because they didn’t know where Fleet would be, they would try everywhere but the field where she’d first appeared, until the last moment. It wouldn’t be harvested for a while yet, anyway.

  She had become almost invisible. She was so brown, and the clothes she was wearing so weathered and faded that she melted into the landscape and became part of it. She had an intense awareness of everything around her, as if she could read the future in the ink-blue silhouettes the sun cast on the leaves, or in the white tyre tracks of cloud far above. And still no one knew where she was, save Robbie. They spent their days walking the fields and woods and lanes, looking, watching, waiting.

  These were the hottest days of the year, the heat making them long for the tree-shade, and they lay panting in it like dogs.

  ‘Remember when we first saw her?’ Robbie said, one afternoon, under trees not far from the beacon, looking out over the Levels. ‘She was so big. And there was so much light.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mags. He could tell she wasn’t listening.

  ‘Mags?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What was she like?’

  ‘Fran?’ She stopped to think for a while. ‘She was so fun. On for anything. Had a wild streak, that girl.’

  ‘Like you.’

  ‘Different wild. And she could be up, but she
had this quiet side, like she’d get really thoughtful and not talk to you. Maybe that was a bad side.’

  ‘Manic,’ he replied.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Kind of up and down. Never in-between.’

  ‘Well, that’s the way she was.’

  ‘I like her.’

  ‘Yeah, you should. She’d like you.’ Mags was lying on her front, weaving grass. Then she looked at him curiously, as if he’d said something she couldn’t quite hear. ‘I’ve been stupid,’ she said.

  ‘What, about Fran?’

  ‘No, no.’ She pulled herself up on to her knees. ‘It’s what you said. Light. There was lots of light. It was a full moon.’

  ‘It was huge.’

  ‘No, it was full. The full moon. No, wait. The harvest moon. That’s it. The harvest moon. The harvest. D’you get it?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘The harvest. The time for reaping what has been sown.’

  ‘What is a harvest moon?’

  ‘It’s in September. All full moons rise around sunset, but the harvest moon rises faster, so there’s more light around earlier in the evening, and the farmers used to be able to bring in their crops by it.’

  ‘So what are you thinking?’

  ‘Not thinking, feeling. Just feeling.’

  ‘The next full moon, then?’

  ‘Could be. We’ll watch the field. It’s only a few days away.’

  ‘Which do you think she’d go for? This one or the harvest?’

  ‘I think I know which she’ll go for. I think I do. The harvest. But we’ll still watch the field.’

  *

  So they went back to where it had all begun. But now there was corn growing tall, and they couldn’t see over it or through it.

  ‘This is insane,’ said Robbie after they’d been there a couple of hours.

  The sun had gone down, and the moon was rising. It was very still. Mags and he were making their way like two little spiders around the edge of the field.

  Something cracked loudly, in among the trees.

  Robbie hugged the ground.

  Everything stayed calm. Mags raised herself cautiously.

  ‘What can you see?’ he breathed.

  ‘It’s them.’

  They lay quiet for a while.

  ‘They still there?’

  ‘I think they’ve gone.’

  ‘They’re not idiots, then.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re probably right. I don’t think it’s tonight, and neither do they. They think it’s the moon, though, too.’

  ‘Mags?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You know I’ve got school starting soon?’

  ‘And your point is?’

  ‘I won’t be around so much.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘But you’ll be on your own.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘You need someone to look after you.’

  There was a quiet explosion of laughter.

  ‘You think you’re looking after me?’

  ‘Someone’s got to.’

  ‘Believe me, I don’t need you to do that.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’

  ‘Robbie, I know this place like I made it myself. I know every stone and tree, where the cows go when it’s noon in July, which trees were felled that shouldn’t have been and what they did with them, who hates who, who loves who that shouldn’t – d’you see? This is my world. I’m as safe here as I’ll ever be anywhere.’

  *

  Term started again. Mags seemed despondent, and it wasn’t because of Robbie.

  ‘It’s gone quiet,’ she said. ‘The walkers have disappeared. As if they’ve forgotten all about it. Maybe they think she’s gone away.’

  ‘Does she ever?’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘They’ll know that. They’ll know she’s coming.’

  Mags didn’t seem impressed, and he didn’t see much of her for days. Sometimes he glimpsed her far away, on top of a hill, tiny against the sky, walking sullenly along, sometimes he caught up with her down by the river, distracted, dreamy and a bit snappy, half in this world, half in a world where he couldn’t follow.

  And so they went on waiting, while the moon fattened.

  26

  WHEN THE day came it was a beauty. Warm as toast, a bright blue sky, everything bathed in golden September light. Mags was waiting for him, and they walked down to the bus stop together.

  ‘Are you going to watch that field all day?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How will they know when to burn it?’

  ‘I don’t know. None of this makes sense, not the sense you want it to make.’

  There was tiredness in her voice, as if she was stretched and emptied at the same time. Maybe she was just exhausted, but Robbie thought there was more to it.

  ‘Still quiet?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said, which he hadn’t expected. ‘They’re out again. There’ve been sightings, just the last two days.’

  ‘So it’s happening, this time?’

  ‘I suppose it must be.’

  ‘You okay, Mags?’

  ‘I think so. Not sure.’ She looked at him with her big blue eyes in her little pale face. ‘I feel so weak, I don’t know why.’

  ‘She needs you to help her now.’

  ‘I can’t help her like this.’

  ‘I don’t mean like that. I think she’s using your strength.’

  ‘Maybe. I don’t know. Why should that be? And why me? I suppose that’s obvious.’ She looked at him as if she was searching for something, but she might just have been looking through him, thinking it all over. Then she said, ‘We’ll have to follow her.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘We’ll have to follow her. Afterwards. If there is an afterwards. If she escapes, she’ll run.’

  ‘We can’t keep pace with a running hare.’

  ‘You can. I think you can.’

  ‘Dogs, maybe. Not a hare.’

  ‘Someone has to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The tension was back in her voice. She sounded as if she was about to snap. Robbie put his arms round her and she folded into them.

  *

  When he came home from school he’d been texting Mags all day. She had seen no one, nothing. He gave his dad the slip, and when he found her, lying by the side of the field in the same place they’d been before, she was asleep. She looked so peaceful it seemed a shame to wake her, and when he did she started, as if from shock, and looked at him blankly for a moment.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Robbie. It’s you.’

  He looked out over the field. Since the last full moon the corn had been cut and it was covered in stubble. The sun was sinking steadily.

  Somewhere out there …

  ‘So – nothing?’

  ‘No. But that’s interesting.’ She pointed to a pile of hay in the far corner of the field.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘People don’t leave stuff lying around like that. Not unless it’s for something special.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Kind of. I might be wrong.’

  ‘I bet you’re not.’

  As the sun sank the sky was flooded with crimson and the edges of the white clouds above them shone.

  ‘Awesome,’ said Robbie to no one in particular.

  Night came on. A wind sprang up.

  In a gap between the trees hung the harvest moon.

  ‘Something’s stirring. Look,’ said Mags.

  A light leaped up on the other side of the field. A man was holding a flame and another was standing watching.

  ‘It’s them,’ said Mags. ‘That’s Tommy with the burning rag, I think that’s what it is, on the end of a stick. Must be soaked in petrol.’

  Tommy plunged the stick into the little hayrick and they both watched as it caught fire. The rick began to burn, and the moon climbed higher.

  ‘It’s hard to see.’

  ‘I
t’ll get better.’

  As the rick blazed the men took forkfuls of it and began laying them in the stubble, and the breeze swept the flames forward so they took hold. Soon almost half of the field was on fire, spreading slowly towards the other side. Robbie’s heart beat hard with the fierceness of it. The air was full of drifting clouds of bitter smoke. Animals started to run – rabbits, hares, those were the ones he could see, there must have been hundreds of others, mice and rats and snakes and voles. The field rippled with movement. One of the Stricklands disappeared through a gate for a moment, then drove a flatbed truck down the edge of the field to face the incoming flames. There was a searchlight in the back.

  Billy Strickland had his shotgun poised and ready at his shoulder.

  Brightness flooded the field from the top of the truck. Tommy was working it, standing behind the cab. He had a gun too. A hare hesitated in the glare and bounded back towards the fires. Without stopping it hurled itself through the smoke and flames, looking for the patches left unburned, leaping through the smouldering wreckage of the field.

  The beam swept the field.

  ‘Let’s go,’ whispered Mags. They slid on their fronts along the ditch. It was made easy for them by the noise of the fire, but it took time to crawl half a field’s length, and when they surfaced they’d come further than they thought, ten or twenty metres behind the Stricklands.

  Billy was striding up and down, his gun now low and horizontal, as if he meant to shoot from the hip. The searchlight was swaying from side to side.

  ‘She’s not coming,’ said Robbie.

  ‘She’s here,’ said Mags.

  He looked at her sharply. Her voice sounded slurred, as if she could hardly drag the words out, and she was white, dead white, under the blaze of the moon. She was struggling to keep her eyes open.

  ‘I can’t see her.’

  Mags didn’t say anything.

  Then the searchlight stopped.

  And there she was.

  Robbie didn’t know if it was a trick of the light or whatever, the way eyes can be in bright light, in camera flashes, for instance, but Fleet’s eyes were shining red. And she was sitting there bristling with fury, her ears tall and terrible.

  The brothers started shooting. The noise was deafening. For a moment Fleet stayed where she was, then started to lope backwards and forwards across the searchlight beam.