by Matt Haig
And that is where the rabbits were.
Hundreds and hundreds of rabbits. Thousands. A whole army of them.
Only these were not ordinary rabbits that you could fit inside a small hutch. No, these rabbits were all as large as dogs. Big dogs. Each as tall as a pixie. Some even the size of elves. And they were all standing on their hind legs in this large underground space, a space illuminated not just by Colour Worms but by the fire of lanterns hanging all around. And these rabbits wore clothes. Army clothes. Combat gear. Tattered. Blue-and-white coats with gold buttons. Many of them – the ones near the front who might have been generals – were wearing black hats. The kind of hat Emperor Napoleon had worn. Some of them had gold medals stitched to their chest pockets.
There was a vast copper tank that looked like a giant soup pan standing amongst the rabbits.
All the rabbits had their backs to us. They were staring towards a little one in a tall black hat and a red coat. Although he was smaller than the rest, even on his hind legs, he was higher than them because he was standing on a kind of stage made of earth. His ears were very long and stuck up, though his left one flopped a little. He was walking back and forth, talking as loudly and clearly as his big front teeth allowed.
I lay down as close to the edge as I could and peeped over.
‘What are you doing?’ the Truth Pixie asked me, in a whisper so quiet it was hardly louder than a breeze.
‘I’m watching,’ I whispered back. ‘This is our story. This right here.’
The Truth Pixie rolled her eyes, but stayed there with me, pressed to the ground, as we watched and listened, our hearts beating so hard they could almost have given us away.
‘Oh no,’ came the Truth Pixie’s tiny whisper. ‘I know who that is.’
‘Who?’
‘It’s the Easter Bunny!’
The Easter Bunny
he Easter Bunny paced around the stage, looking very serious and grumpy by rabbit standards.
‘Look at us,’ the Easter Bunny was saying to the crowd. ‘Look at us here. War generals. Soldiers. Geniuses. Artists. But underground. Unseen, being rabbits. Hidden away from daylight, from the world. We have for too long been the underclass.’
‘Too long,’ muttered much of the crowd in agreement. ‘Too long.’
‘And look at what we have done. Look at what we are capable of. We are geniuses. Look at this warren. We create a vast network of tunnels wherever we go!’ He pointed to the copper vat in the centre of the room. ‘We managed to get that in here! And we beat the trolls at the Battle of the Underground Cave!’
‘Yes, we did!’ said the rabbits.
‘But more than that, we are artists. Those elves above us may be good at making things – toys, sleighs, all that basic stuff – but what we do is art. The intricacy of our tunnels. The joy of our music. The craftsmanship of rabbits like my poor long-lost mother and her incredible chocolate egg sculptures. We have the souls of poets. What we have is imagination. But we are also warriors! And we know why we have to be. We are under threat, once more. The elves and the humans are joining forces. The elves have a new hero. A fat grey-haired man in bad clothes who goes by the name of Father Christmas. And there are other humans there too now. And they clearly plan to take over all the Magic Lands. But we are not going to let all our efforts become sidelined. No way. We are rabbits! And not just any rabbits! We are the rabbits of the Land of Hills and Holes. We aren’t going to take it any more.’
‘We aren’t going to take it any more!’ agreed the rabbits.
The Easter Bunny laughed. He had the craziest laugh I had ever heard. He tilted his head back and almost howled. It was like a rabbit doing an impression of a wolf. But then, halfway through, the laugh became softer and sadder and faded quickly into nothing.
When the laugh stopped, he looked around the vast burrow. He looked up. For a heart-stopping moment I thought he could see us, peeping over the edge, but then he said, ‘I would now like to introduce someone to you. A very special guest. He is an elf, but don’t hold that against him.’
The rabbits all seemed to talk at once.
‘Stop your rabbiting!’ said the Easter Bunny. ‘And put your paws together for the only elf you can trust . . . The elf we have worked alongside in our new warren . . . Father Vodol!’
So it was true. Father Vodol was at the heart of this. The Truth Pixie and I could hardly breathe as we watched the black-bearded elf walk onto the stage.
‘Thank you, Easter Bunny,’ he said, smiling. ‘And thank you, rabbits. Thank you for letting me use the space next door. It might not be quite the newsroom my staff and I are used to, but it does the job. And speaking of doing the job . . . well, TOGETHER we are going to do the job of stopping Father Christmas. We have the same aim. I need to stop the elves being brainwashed, and you need to make sure you can live without the fear of humans taking your lives. That means making sure we STOP Christmas! And stop FATHER Christmas!’
The crowd cheered.
‘And the way we do it is by showing the whole of Elfhelm that rabbits and elves – despite our history – are natural friends. And humans are the opposite. We have to show them that we are on the side of truth. And the best way to do that is to lie.’
The Truth Pixie gasped beside me. Some of the rabbits looked confused.
Father Vodol continued: ‘Directly above us is the Bank of Chocolate. And inside the bank is . . . well, a lot of chocolate.’
So that was where the delicious smell was coming from.
‘The finest chocolate you can find anywhere. And it will all be yours. Yours! We will fill the huge tank with melted chocolate and you can make the most exquisite egg sculptures anyone has ever tasted. And there will be no chocolate coins in any children’s stockings this year. And no elves will get paid for all their hard work in the workshop. And they will get angry, and they will want someone to blame . . .’
The Easter Bunny was nodding at all of this, his drooping left ear becoming vertical with interest at what he was hearing. And then he stepped forwards again and placed his paw on the elf’s back. ‘And they will have someone to blame, won’t they, Father Vodol? Tell them. Tell them.’
‘Father Christmas,’ said Father Vodol. ‘Father Christmas will be known as a bank robber.’
The Easter Bunny bit his paw with excitement. ‘You see! It’s what I’ve been telling you all! Easter will be back. Christmas will return to what it used to be: a miserable, grey, cold winter day. And Easter, the time of rabbits rising from the ground in glorious sunlight, will once more be the time that people care most about. Sorry, Father Vodol . . . do go on.’
Father Vodol cleared his throat. ‘The Daily Truth will tell the story of the bank robbery and get it into every elf’s hands.’ The Easter Bunny’s eyes were as wide as plates with excitement as he listened and nodded. ‘And that’s not all. There is a motive. Father Christmas has been struggling for money and everyone knows it, thanks to a certain newspaper that has been flying out of rabbit holes. Yes. He wants to pay for a sleigh that the horrible human girl destroyed. So he is the most likely person in the whole of Elfhelm to rob a bank. It’s utterly perfect. And then, after that, Father Christmas will be sent to prison, and I will become Leader of Elfhelm once again, and you rabbits will be free to enter Elfhelm and live there as you see fit.’
‘He’s evil,’ whispered the Truth Pixie. ‘And the rabbits can’t see it.’
She was right. The rabbits were cheering. And the Easter Bunny was now at the front of the stage again.
‘Thank you, Father Vodol,’ said the Easter Bunny, clutching hold of a pendant hanging around his neck. ‘It is time for Christmas to be forgotten. It’s time to make Easter great again . . . Now, everyone, I have a question.’
‘Oh no,’ the Truth Pixie said. ‘Not a question. Not a question. Not a question. Cover my ears.’ She quickly put her hands over her ears. I knew why. The Truth Pixie had to answer questions truthfully, for the asker to hear. She couldn’t help
it. She was a Truth Pixie. So I clamped my hands over her ears – or rather, over her hands over her ears – hoping she wouldn’t hear the Easter Bunny’s question.
But the Easter Bunny raised his voice, and the words boomed around the vast burrow. ‘Someone, give me an honest answer. What do you think of Father Christmas?’
And I could see from the Truth Pixie’s eyes that she had heard. Her large pixie ears were, after all, super sensitive.
There was a deadly hush throughout the warren. Not a single rabbit spoke, but all their ears were vertical as they listened out for the first answer.
‘Anyone?’ asked the Easter Bunny. ‘Come on, don’t be shy. Answer the question. What do you think of Father Christmas?’
The Truth Pixie winced, and held her breath, and turned crimson, knowing she was going to answer the question. She desperately tried to cover her mouth, but her hands burst suddenly away, and she just couldn’t stop herself shouting it out at the top of her voice for the rabbits and the Easter Bunny and Father Vodol to hear.
‘I THINK HE’S WONDERFUL!’
A gasp spread through the burrow like a wind. Everyone looked all around, trying to locate the echoing voice.
‘Who said that?’ demanded the Easter Bunny, quick as a flash.
The Truth Pixie was now desperately trying to press her hand over her mouth, but the hand simply refused to do it, even when I pushed it too. It was like trying to join the wrong ends of powerful magnets together.
‘I SAID THAT!’ she yelled, despite herself. ‘ME, THE TRUTH PIXIE!’
‘Ah!’ said Father Vodol. ‘The Truth Pixie! I know who this is. Ask her anything! She’ll have to tell you!’
‘Where are you?’ shouted the Easter Bunny. ‘Who are you with? What are you doing here?’
‘Sssh!’ I told the Truth Pixie.
But of course it was no good.
‘WE’RE UP HERE! I’M WITH AMELIA, THE HUMAN GIRL! WE’RE SPYING ON YOU! AND NOW WE’RE GOING TO RUN AWAY!’
The Easter Bunny looked up and caught sight of us. ‘Look! There they are! Imposters! Rabbits, get them! Bring them to me!’
And then we started to crawl back through the tunnel. As fast as we could.
‘I’m sorry!’ the Truth Pixie squealed.
‘It’s not your fault,’ I told her.
‘I hate it when I do that!’
We took a left then a right, down a tunnel we hadn’t been down before, simply because it was large enough to run inside, and quite dark, with hardly any Colour Worms. But then we heard it. A kind of rising thunder that shook the ground we were standing on and made little clods of earth fall onto our faces. It was the charge of a full Rabbit Army.
‘Run!’ said the Truth Pixie. ‘Run! RUN!’
But it was no good. We had no idea where we were going. The rabbits knew the tunnels far better than we ever could.
‘Oh no,’ I said, seeing shadows in the darkness ahead of us. ‘We’ve got to turn back! We’ve got to go the other way!’
So we did – and immediately saw rabbit shapes coming towards us. Some running, some hopping, some scurrying on all fours. The one closest to us, we could now see properly. She was wearing a tatty green army jacket complete with medals, and had an eye-patch. She was carrying a big net attached to a long stick.
A second later we were inside it. Inside the net. Being dragged away.
‘Good work, 382!’ one of the rabbits said to our captor.
‘We need to escape!’ I said, grappling with the net as we were being hauled back towards where we had just run from.
‘There is no way,’ whispered the Truth Pixie. ‘There is no escape.’
And, of course, it was the truth.
A Lesson on How to Love Life
y the time we were back in the vast underground burrow it was already happening.
A thick stream of chocolate was rushing down, like a waterfall, from the middle of the ceiling, straight into the large copper tank.
We watched, aghast, restrained by 382, our captor, and another, both with knives at their belts. ‘You see,’ said the Easter Bunny. ‘See that? Up there? That hole where the chocolate is coming from? It goes up for about a mile. That’s how far below the bank we are. We did that. Do you know how difficult it is to build tunnels straight up? With nothing below you?’
‘No,’ said the Truth Pixie wearily. ‘I don’t know that. It must be very difficult I would imagine.’
‘Yes, very difficult. But my rabbits are the best of the best. Maybe even the best of the best of the best. I wouldn’t go so far as to say they are the best of the best of the best of the best, but they are very good indeed. And they did that.’
‘You’ll never get away with this!’ I wailed.
And then Father Vodol stepped forwards. ‘Oh yes, we will. Especially now that you have made our jobs a whole lot easier.’
I stared down at the furry paws that were holding me tight. ‘What do you mean?’
The Easter Bunny stared at my face – a face which was probably full of fear and hatred, because I was feeling a lot of those things. Fear. And hatred.
‘What have you been told about me?’ he asked, and I could tell that the question was specifically for me and he genuinely wanted to know. And even though I wasn’t the Truth Pixie, I told him the truth. After all, I had nothing to lose.
‘I know how you and your army drove out the elves from the Land of Hills and Holes. I know that you took lots of elf lives. I know that you used to live below ground, then one day wanted to live in the open. I know that you destroyed the peace.’
‘You can keep quiet, you know?’ whispered the Truth Pixie. ‘You aren’t me.’
The Easter Bunny stared at me, and looked at the rabbit holding me, the one with the eye-patch who had captured us in the net.
‘You see, 382? You see the lies they are told. You see how even the truth is pushed underground . . .’ Then the Easter Bunny came close to me, whiskers twitching and curling at their ends. It was hard to tell what he was thinking. At first I thought he was angry, but when I looked into his eyes I saw nothing but sadness. A sudden, dark sadness. ‘It was the opposite. We were always above ground, as soon as the weather became a bit less cold, around Easter time. We wanted to live peacefully with the elves. We had once lived in Elfhelm, before it was called Elfhelm. And it was the elves who drove us away. I bet no one ever told you that. We were forced to move. We were good and peaceful creatures. And that’s the real story.’
The Truth Pixie sighed. ‘I hate to say it but he seems to be telling the truth. I have an instinct for spotting a lie, as you know, and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t told one.’
‘But if you are good and peaceful creatures, why would you do this? Why would you capture us? Why would you rob a bank?’
The Easter Bunny sucked his teeth. ‘The key word is were. We were good and peaceful creatures. Past tense. But that did us no favours at all. If we had stayed good and peaceful creatures then we wouldn’t be here now. None of us would be here now. Rabbits had to change. I had to change them. We couldn’t have gone on the way we were. Not if we wanted to survive.’
‘But it’s always better to be good.’
‘Oh, I used to think that too, but I saw my own parents end up in a pot. They ended up as a stew, for trolls! Good is overrated. It’s better to be alive. It’s better to be free . . . and that freedom is under threat again. Father Christmas is going to keep bringing more and more humans into the Magic Lands. And do you know what humans do to rabbits? They eat them. Just as trolls ate my ma and pa.’
‘Well, I’ve never eaten a rabbit,’ I protested.
‘And neither have I,’ said the Truth Pixie, trying to resist the grip of the big burly floppy-eared rabbit soldier who held her. ‘Like most pixies, I’m vegan.’
The Easter Bunny was hardly listening to us. He seemed to be lost in his own memories. His eyes looked as close to crying as rabbit eyes can get. He looked, for a moment, soft and vulnerable – the way ra
bbits are supposed to look.
‘They used to be sculptors. Well, Ma was. She sculpted chocolate. She was an artist, really.’ He held up his pendant. It was a shining jewel, like a diamond. And inside it, there was something else. Small. No bigger than a thumbnail. Brown. Egg-shaped.
‘What do you think that is?’ he asked us.
‘Is it a rabbit dropping?’ asked the Truth Pixie. ‘It looks like one. A big one.’
‘You have to excuse her,’ I said. ‘She can’t help it.’
‘It’s an egg. It was the last thing my mother gave me. This small chocolate sculpture. She called it simply Egg. She said it was meant to represent how life is fragile and delicate – the egg – but should also be enjoyed – the chocolate. You see, it’s art. A chocolate egg. It’s a lesson on how to love life. Every lesson we need. And it was for me.’ He sighed a long, sad sigh. ‘And I’ve kept it ever since.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, and it was. A perfect egg made of chocolate.
‘I was good, you know,’ he said softly. ‘Everyone thought of me as good. I used to like that . . .’
Father Vodol, beside him, patted the Easter Bunny on his back. The rabbit almost flinched at his touch. ‘Yes, well, you still are good. But you can’t just let people walk all over you. You have to shine. You have to get out there, above ground, and make people fear and respect you. Unless you want every rabbit to crack like an egg underfoot.’
The Easter Bunny stood up straight. ‘You are right, Father Vodol. You are right.’
‘Now we have the girl, our plan is even more perfect. She can go and tell everyone in Elfhelm that the reason no one can get their money out of the bank this Christmas Eve is because Father Christmas – dear, jolly, kind, ho-ho-ho-ing Father Christmas – is in fact a thief.’