The Children of Hare Hill

by Scott McKenzie

  "Two down, eleven to go," said Charlotte as she got the map and cups out of her bag. They each shook their glowing white cups and rolled their magical dice on the path ahead of them.

  "Six for me," said Ben.

  "A six for me, too," said Charlotte. "That makes twelve."

  They looked at the map and saw that the hare at the west entrance to the walled garden had appeared, with a hand-drawn musical note next to it.

  Chapter 10

  The next hare was just round the corner, on the other side of the walled garden. They found it with the now-familiar ring of their father’s ashes sitting at its feet.

  "What do we have to do now?" Ben asked. They both looked at the map again and saw the musical note next to the picture of the hare, but they could see no other hint at their new challenge. They speculated about what they had to do to break the twelfth hare out of its spell and agreed that it must be something musical. In the last few weeks at school, Charlotte had begun to learn how to play the recorder, but she hadn't brought her recorder with her and a quick check in her backpack confirmed that it hadn't been magically transported with them. Ben didn't play a musical instrument, unless they counted the maracas and tambourines in the toy box under his bed, and Charlotte teased him about being almost as bad a singer as their father had been. That thought struck a chord in her mind.

  "Do you remember the songs Daddy used to sing to us?" she asked. Ben looked sad as he shook his head.

  "I can remember him singing to us all the time," Charlotte said. "Mummy always said he was a terrible singer, but he said that didn't matter. What mattered was having fun and enjoying the song he was singing. When you were really little, you wouldn't go to sleep unless Daddy sat in your bedroom and sang to you. From my bedroom, I could hear him singing too, and sometimes, when I can't get to sleep, I sing his songs to myself and it helps me go off to sleep."

  Ben's eyes sparkled. "What did he sing to me?"

  "You would cry and cry whenever he stopped singing so he sang really long songs and he would make up extra verses for songs like 'The Wheels on the Bus.' I remember one time he sang 'Ten Green Bottles' but started at one hundred—"

  Charlotte looked up and gasped, cutting her story short. She paused for a moment to register what she was seeing, and it only took a moment—they were becoming accustomed to strange things happening around them tonight.

  "What's wrong?" Ben asked.

  "Look," Charlotte said, pointing to the top of the wall that surrounded the garden. Ben followed her gaze and saw glass bottles sitting in a line on top of the wall. Then he followed the line and saw more and more. They walked down the path, turned the corner and found even more. They walked all the way round the walled garden and saw empty glass bottles on every available space. Their lap around the outside of the walled garden brought them back to the twelfth hare.

  "Where did they come from?" Charlotte said.

  Ben smiled and said, "It’s the song, isn't it?"

  "What do you mean?" Charlotte said.

  "The bottles are all green, aren't they?" Ben said. "One hundred green bottles!"

  "So what do we do—sing the song?"

  Ben shrugged in a motion that said, I guess so.

  "Okay," Charlotte said, "let's sing it. Ready? One, two, three..."

  They started off quietly but their voices filled the silence of the park. They felt very silly, standing by a wooden hare singing the song their father had sung to them, but they wanted to know what would happen at the key moment.

  "One hundred green bottles standing on the wall,

  One hundred green bottles standing on the wall,

  And if one green bottle should accidentally fall..."

  They looked up at the first bottle to the left of the gate. For a second, the park was plunged back into still silence. Ben and Charlotte froze, anticipating whatever might happen next, and just when they thought nothing would happen, the bottle wobbled and fell from the wall towards them. They both jumped backwards and winced, expecting the loud smash and a scattering of shards of glass, but as the bottle hit the ground, it exploded into a million flecks of gold that glittered and danced in the air, then fizzed away into nothingness.

  "Wow!" they both gasped, then looked each other in the eye and sang the final line. "There'll be ninety-nine green bottles standing on the wall."

  Charlotte smiled at her little brother. "Come on, Ben. Ninety-nine bottles to go!"

  They both giggled, took deep breaths, and began to sing.

  "Ninety-nine green bottles standing on the wall,

  Ninety-nine green bottles standing on the wall,

  And if one green bottle should accidentally fall..."

  The next bottle wobbled and fell, exploding in another magical burst of golden sparks.

  "...There'll be ninety-eight green bottles standing on the wall."

  They side-stepped all the way round the walled garden, singing verse after verse with every step they took, and even though it was the most inane and repetitive song imaginable, they never tired of it. The explosion of each falling bottle was as magical and awe-inspiring as the last. One by one, the bottles fell until Ben and Charlotte had circled the garden and they found themselves at the last bottle, back where they had begun at the twelfth hare.

  "One green bottle standing on the wall.

  One green bottle standing on the wall.

  And if one green bottle should accidentally fall..."

  Just like the other ninety-nine had done so before, the final bottle wobbled, fell, and exploded as it hit the ground. They saw the glowing sparks disappear for a final time and watched the wooden hare as they sang the last line of the song.

  "There'll be no green bottles standing on the wall."

  With that, the circle of ashes at the wooden hare's feet began to spin and rise from the ground. The hare emitted its golden glow and with a blinding flash, transformed from its inert wooden form into a real hare. For the third time, the hare rubbed its eyes, looked around for a moment, then ran away into the shadows.

  "That was fun!" said Ben. "What's next?"

  "Let's find out," Charlotte said. She got the plastic cups out of her backpack and they rolled the enormous glowing dice.

  "Six!" said Ben.

  "Five!" said Charlotte.

  "That makes eleven!" they both said, and checked the map. Sure enough, the hare had appeared at the bottom of the path that led up the hill to the thirteenth hare. Next to the hand-drawn picture were the digits "1, 2, 3."

  "I bet it's a number puzzle!" Charlotte said, and they ran down the short path that led them to the eleventh hare.

  Chapter 11

  Charlotte was right, or at least she suspected she was right, as they arrived at the eleventh hare. They found it standing at the intersection of two paths, as if it was standing guard over the path that led up the hill to Pistol Pond. In the clearing at the intersection, a puzzle had been scratched into the dirt.

  ?

  ??

  ??

  ????

  ??????

  ??????

  13112221

  1113213211

  31131211131221

  "So all we need to do is solve the puzzle, right?" Ben said. Charlotte nodded and he said, "You're great at number puzzles. This should be easy!"

  Ben was right about one thing: she was great at number puzzles, but now she was looking at some really big numbers. She went through her thought process aloud.

  "Okay," she said, taking a deep breath. "This is a number sequence and we have to work out the first five numbers in the sequence. The biggest hint they've given us is the number of question marks on each line, so we're looking for one digit for the first number, two digits for the second and third, four for the fourth, and six for the fifth and sixth. And then they somehow work in a progression that leads to the seventh number, which is thirteen million, one hundred and twelve thousand, two hundred and twenty-one, and the next numbers are even bigger."

  Ther
e was silence for a minute as they both thought about the puzzle marked on the ground in front of them. Charlotte felt like she was out of her depth. She was only eight years old, and while she always aced maths tests at school and loved to help their mother with number puzzles in the newspaper, she was just not used to dealing with numbers of this size. She had to concentrate long and hard to work out that the eighth number in the sequence was just over one billion, and the ninth was something like thirty-one trillion. These weren't just big numbers—they were huge numbers—the type of numbers they probably used all day long a few miles away at Jodrell Bank, the home of the enormous space telescope. But she wasn't calculating how many light years they were from the next galaxy, she was trying to solve a simple number puzzle to break the spell on a wooden hare. She smiled as she realised how absurd their situation was.

  Ben saw her smile and said, "What's so funny?"

  She looked to the heavens and shouted, "Aaargh! This is crazy! What are we doing here?"

  Ben laughed and shouted at the sky too. "Somebody help us! We're trapped and we've got a really hard maths problem to do!"

  They both doubled over with laughter. Tears of hilarity flowed and every time their eyes met, their incredulity was reflected in each other's faces, which made them laugh even more. When their laughter finally subsided, they dried their eyes and looked at the puzzle again with renewed confidence.

  "It's all ones, twos, and threes," Ben said.

  "Of course," Charlotte said, kicking herself for not noticing it first. "Let's start at the top," she said. "One digit—let's assume that it's a one, a two, or a three. Shall we start with one?"

  "Yeah, let's try it," said Ben.

  "What do I do?" Charlotte said. "Write a one over the top of the question mark?"

  "I guess so," said Ben.

  Charlotte found a twig and scratched a number one into the dirt, cutting through the question mark at the top of the puzzle. As soon as the twig left the dirt the question mark seemed to disappear, merging back into the path, and the number one began to shine with an unearthly green glow.

  "That must mean we got it right!" Ben said.

  They high-fived and Charlotte turned back to the puzzle. "Now we just have to work out why that's the right number to start with and where we go from here."

  The elation they felt at getting the first number right was short-lived. It was a good guess, but it had given them no valuable information that might help them get from one to thirteen million or so in five more steps. Charlotte paced back and forth, holding her head in her hands, racking her brains for an inspiration of logic. She knew Ben wouldn't be much help on this puzzle. If she was struggling, then her little brother, who was only just in his first year of school, wouldn't be in a position to contribute much. It wasn't his fault; he was just a little boy. Despite this, he wasn't getting tired or grouchy—he was standing next to Charlotte, reciting the numbers to himself, or maybe reciting them to her.

  "One, one, one, three, two, one, three, two, one, one."

  His words rattled around in Charlotte’s brain, crossing over, under, and merging with the thoughts of number puzzles she had done with her mother and father.

  "Three, one, one, three, one, two, one, one, one, three, one, two, two, one."

  Something sparked in Charlotte's mind, but she wasn't sure what it was. It was like she had the answer on the tip of her tongue, but it had gone in a flash. Ben had stopped reading the numbers aloud.

  "Don't stop, Ben," she said.

  "What?" he said.

  "You were reading the numbers out just then. I think it was helping me to work it out, but I'm not sure how. Keep going."

  "Okay," said Ben, and he went back to the first line of numbers. Charlotte stared at the markings as he read them. "One, three, one, one, two, two, two, one."

  "Keep going!" she said, and he did.

  "One, one, one, three, two, one, three, two, one, one."

  The spark in her mind returned like a bolt of lightning. Like all the best puzzles, the solution to this one was hiding in plain sight. Now that the penny had dropped, it seemed so simple, but with no one around to give her any hints—other than the serendipitous inspiration from her little brother—she was proud of herself for working it out. Now she just had to fill in the missing numbers.

  "I've got it!" she said as she grabbed the stick, ready to mark the next numbers in the dirt.

  "What is it? How did you work it out?" Ben asked.

  "It was what you were saying," she said.

  "But I was only reading out the numbers."

  "I know, but you were reading them out one at a time. I was thinking of each row as a single number, but they're not—each row is a sequence."

  "So what's the next number after one?” Ben asked, pointing at the two question marks on the second row.

  "It's easy," she said. "What's on the row above it?"

  "A one."

  "Right," Charlotte nodded. "A one. One one." With that, she wrote a number one over each of the question marks on the second row. Within a second, they were glowing green.

  "So how do we work out the next row?" Ben asked.

  "Well, what do you see on the row above it?" Charlotte asked, pointing at the glowing pair of ones.

  "Two ones?"

  “So what do we write on the next row?"

  "A two and a one?"

  Charlotte handed the twig to Ben. "Let's see if you're right."

  In the third row he wrote a number two over the first question mark and a number one over the second. They both glowed green, and Ben clapped his hands together. They applied their logic to the remaining three rows of question marks until they had completed the puzzle.

  1

  11

  21

  1211

  111221

  312211

  13112221

  1113213211

  31131211131221

  When the final number started to glow, so did the wooden hare. In a dazzling mix of green and golden light, Charlotte and Ben watched as their father's ashes whirled round the shining wooden statue as it turned into a real hare, another creature broken from its spell. This time the hare looked at them for a moment, then ran into the darkness.

  "Do you think the witch will come and turn them back into statues?" Ben asked.

  "I don't know," Charlotte said. "Maybe that's why we're here—to break the spell on all of them before the witch comes back."

  "We'd better find out where to go next," said Ben. They took their plastic cups in their hands and rolled the glowing white dice, which bumped along the path and came to a stop in a flower bed, but the ghostly white apparitions failed to disturb the flowers. Ben rolled a four and Charlotte rolled a one, then they checked the map to see if it told them what would be waiting for them at the fifth hare.

  Chapter 12

  The map told them more about the fifth hare than it had for any other hare so far. They both knew where number five was—on the other side of the pond, which was criss-crossed by paths and bridges. This made for a pleasant walk when the sun was shining, but now, in the middle of the night, the reflection of the moon surrounded by thick green pondweed presented them with a haunting scene that gave them chills.

  It was possible to reach the fifth hare by more than one route, but the map was telling them they had to go a specific way. Hand-drawn footprints led along the path, over two bridges, and through the trees to the waiting hare. They crossed the first bridge, hearing the creak of the old wooden boards beneath their feet, and thought of all the times their father had told them that trolls lived under the bridges of Hare Hill, just like in the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff. As they stepped off the first bridge and onto the small island in the middle of the pond, they saw three long logs piled up in the grass, but thought nothing of them as they made their way along the short path to where the second bridge could be found. Or, as they now discovered, where the second bridge used to be.

  They stood on the edg
e of the island and stared in shock at the wreckage of the bridge. Splintered wooden planks jutted out of the water and floated along its surface. Suddenly, they heard an almighty rumble and crash behind them. They saw ripples in the water around the remnants of the second bridge, then they ran back along the island's path, dreading what they might find at the first bridge. The bridge they had crossed just moments ago had collapsed into the water, smashed to pieces by an unseen force.

  "The other bridge!" Charlotte shouted, remembering there was one more bridge off the island. They ran back up the path and took a right turn, just in time to see the wooden beams being torn apart and crashing into the water.

  "We're stuck here, aren't we?" Ben said.

  Charlotte said nothing. She was trying to think what options they had.

  "Don't worry, Ben," she said. "Remember, everything we've had to do tonight has been a puzzle. There's no way that three bridges could all fall down at the same time by themselves. This must be a puzzle we have to solve, too."

  "But who is setting these puzzles? The witch?"

  "Stop talking about the witch!" Charlotte said. "There is no witch. That's just a silly thing Daddy used to say, and he's dead!" She immediately regretted her words as soon as they left her lips. Ben's bottom lip started to quiver and she failed to console him before he broke into floods of tears just seconds later.

  "I'm sorry," she said over his sobbing as she put her arms round him and squeezed him tight. "I didn't mean it. All I meant was that witches aren't real. Whatever's happening here is happening for a reason, and if a witch wanted to take us away and lock us in her gingerbread house, she would have done it already. Why make us do all these puzzles first?"

  Charlotte found a tissue in her backpack and handed it to him. They both sat down in the grass as Ben dried his eyes, then they looked at the map again. To their surprise, the drawings of the bridges had disappeared, but the footprints were still there, crossing the open water of the pond from the island to the wooden hare waiting for them in the trees.