by IGMS
He left then, and Janey didn't wait at all. She attacked the walls with the trowel, she dug at the rabbit's run with the dish. Neither worked. The walls were too solid for her trowel to do more than scrape, and the run was too soft for the dust to even stay on the dish.
"That's the dumbest looking game I ever saw," said a voice from behind her.
Janey whirled around in a panic and only stopped herself from throwing the trowel at his head when she recognized the shape in Rabbit's window. "Tombow!"
It was Tombow indeed. Her own cat, and she was relieved to see he looked exactly the same size and shape he always had been. He had simply relocated himself from one windowsill to another. Now, he twitched his tail at her. "Trust me. I'm a cat. We think chasing wadded up balls of paper is high art. What you're doing with that shovel-thingy. That's stupid."
"I'm trying to get outside," Janey said. Given freaky Mister Rabbit, she was willing to accept that Tombow had decided to start talking today.
"You can't do that," the cat said.
"I know, I keep slipping!" she said. "I thought the shovel would, you know, give me more traction." It had seemed a sensible idea at the time. It really had. Explaining things to a cat with that expression on its face was bound to make anybody feel like a complete idiot.
"Yes, but what I mean, Janey, is that you can't do it because you're under a spell. You're not able to leave this charming little dwelling. You can't set hand or foot outside. That Rabbit who caught you is a pretty good wizard, for his kind."
"A wizard," said Janey.
"Yes."
"A rabbit wizard?"
"Yes."
"I want to go home."
"So noted," said Tombow. "I can help you, if you want."
She wasn't in the mood for riddles, and Rabbit was going to be back any minute. If she wanted? Talk about stupidity. She was more than ready, if only the trowel could have made a dent on the walls or the floor. Now Tombow said he could help her. "How?" she asked. "Can you break the spell he's cast on me?"
"No," the cat said. "He's got your comings and goings tied up in knots only a Rabbit can undo. But it happens I'm also a pretty good wizard, for one of my kind." From the sound of it, the standards he held himself up to were a bit higher than anything he expected a mere bunny to achieve. "When your husband-to-be comes back --"
"Don't call him that," said Janey.
"Well, what is one to think? He's already sent out the invitations." Tombow winked, much too self-satisfied for comfort. Janey tried to glare a burning hole right through that smirk, and was glad when her cat stopped with the jokes. "When Rabbit comes back, you make your fire."
"What happens then? I haven't got any matches," she said.
"My dear, I believe I already mentioned I'm a wizard. I'll light the fire for you. Trust me. Rabbit will panic. Just don't let him put it out. The more it burns, the more frightened he'll become. You can make him break the spell when that happens."
"Okay," she said doubtfully. "But wouldn't it just be easier if you went around the house and got Mom? I mean, you can talk now. You can tell her what's wrong."
Tombow yawned. Janey took it as a negative. "She never listens to me, either," he said. And that was that until Rabbit came back.
He came more slowly this time, but that was because he was bigger than ever. Almost too big to fit down his own hole, and giggling with pride. "Look at this," he said as he lay armloads of kindling at her feet. "Look what I can carry. Look how strong I am. Here is your wood. Here, and here." It all clattered down at her feet, and Janey hurried to pick it up again and stack it up in a way that looked the most flammable before Rabbit got angry and knocked her down again. She hadn't ever built a fire before, but then she didn't really have to get this one going either.
She picked up the saucer of muddy pumpkin-yuck and stole a glance at Tombow in the window. "For Rabbit dire," he said. "Smoke and fire!" The wood blazed up so quickly, Janey had to jump backwards to keep from being singed. She bumped right into Rabbit, but he was lunging after the cat in the window and didn't seem to notice.
The fire frightened him. Tombow had been right. Rabbit was in a panic, trying to run away. Trying, in rabbit-fashion, to get underground to safety, but there was nowhere to go. They were already both under the ground already. He circled the room, his big, heavy paws shaking the earth with each leap, and circled it again. Janey ran, too, to try and stay out of the way, but couldn't. Rabbit was too big, and too clumsy. He knocked her down and when she got up again and tried to move, she couldn't see for smoke and barked her shin against the broken sawhorse. She finally let herself stay down, at the base of the run. She reached out and caught the red towel from under the sawhorse and covered her mouth and nose with it.
The towel helped, but smoke was everywhere. It rushed towards the window. It rushed towards the rising slope of the run as if they were both chimneys, and Rabbit didn't dare try to use either as an exit. There was so much smoke, it made the fire seem even more terrible, more bright and awful than it could possibly have been. Janey didn't believe the fire was big enough to kill them, but Rabbit did.
"Make it stop!" he said. "Make it go away."
"I can't stop it," she said. "I'm baking the pie you wanted."
"I don't want the pie anymore," he said. "I want to get out of here. That fire, it will burn me up!"
"I can't help you," Janey told him. He knocked her down harder than before, and shook her, rocking her back and forth between his hard, heavy paws.
"You have to," he said. "You're my wife. You have to help me escape!"
"I can't," she said. "You've made it so I can't. It's your spell. Take it off."
Rabbit stared. His eyes were wide and round, the whites showing clearly as he looked this way and that. "The fire!" he said. "It's going to burn me up!"
He had a point. The fire was spreading. It was already well on the way to devouring the wood he'd brought, and had jumped to where the bed was lying on its side and had started in on the blankets there. At this rate, the wedding dress, and the stupid lacy veil, would be next. Janey liked the idea, but really hoped she wasn't there to see it.
"Let me go," she said. "Take off the spell."
"All right," said Rabbit. "All right." He stamped his foot, hard enough that she felt it break through the hard-packed ground so it cracked and split apart beneath her. "Janey my bride, you're free. Go outside."
So she ran. That's all, a mad, scrambling dash. She could feel whiskers and hot breath on the foot that was bare. Kicked back hard and lost her other shoe. Rabbit. Rabbit was coming, but so was Mom. Janey ran up the smoky tunnel and out into the open air. The ground was firm under her hands and feet. She did more crawling than running, but she got out. She was out, where the sun was bright and hot, and the wind blew the smoke to nothing.
And where, Janey saw, the wedding guests were gathered. Just as Rabbit had said.
They knew her at once. Probably there weren't a whole lot of girls desperately climbing out of rabbit holes in the neighborhood. They growled at her. Like Rabbit, they seemed larger than was natural. Unlike Rabbit, they didn't have much to say. There was just fur, and teeth, and wings. A screeching, screaming, skittering, clawing rush towards her. Janey screamed.
She tried to run. Something caught her t-shirt in its claws, and as she jerked away, something else snagged her jeans. Just a rip, she told herself. Kids do worse to themselves all the time falling off their bikes. Keep running, don't look back. If you can just get to Mom, you'll be okay. Never mind how she knew that, she knew. The problem was the wedding guests seemed to know it, too. She turned one way, and Badger was there. He didn't look like a minister, he looked like he could literally tear her to pieces. She turned another way, and the birds dove and clawed at her eyes, pulled her hair.
"You left me," growled Rabbit. "You tricked me."
She turned again, and Rabbit was there. In the hot, bright sunlight, standing just outside his hole, he wasn't a nightmare ready to fade awa
y. He was angry. He was betrayed. He looked scarier than ever. If he'd looked this horrible in the beginning, Janey would never have got within ten feet of him. He was huge. His fur stood out in quivering, muddy bunches. His eyes were wild and gummy and red from smoke. He wasn't even pretending to smile anymore, and his teeth. His teeth. "Now Janey," he said. He lifted his big, back foot to stamp. "The wedding. Our wedding. I'm going to marry you, Janey. And then I'm going to bite you. The guests are here. Now. Janey my bride --"
And there wasn't time. There was just the wedding, and Rabbit's guests. Only, if it was a wedding, a real wedding, Janey realized, shouldn't she have guests of her own? Where was Mom? Why wasn't there anybody on her side? And she realized it was because they couldn't come if they weren't asked. But now she knew. The guests were here. She knew who could help.
Janey invited the garden.
The roses caught Rabbit in their thorns. The tomatoes picked up stakes and threw them. The pumpkins bowled into Badger and wrapped him a tangle of prickly vines until he couldn't move without strangling himself. Beans and peas shot up like green bullets aimed at the owl and diving crows. The corn rustled and swayed, driving the squirrels away with blow after blow from silk-topped ears. And the cucumbers, unleashed at last, rose up and gleefully overpowered the mice and the shrew, bludgeoning them to death one after the other. The garden was holding the guests at bay, but it couldn't quite hold Rabbit.
"I'm going to bite your leg off," he said. He was moving now. Moving slowly, because it was more horrible. He wanted to scare her. He was scaring her. She could hear his heavy body straining against thorns and breaking branches as they tried to hold him. The garden fought, leaves and roots and everything straining to keep him back as long as they could. Just a few seconds more. A vine snapped under the weight of those paws. Rabbit lunged.
But Mom got there first.
Mom stepped forward with her cell phone still glued to her ear, and suddenly Rabbit didn't seem anything near as big as before. She stepped down hard and crushed Rabbit's head, grinding his skull beneath her heel with a sick, wet crunch while Janey shut her eyes. When Janey dared look again, Rabbit was unmistakably dead, and Mom was turning towards the house without a backwards glance, without missing one word of her conversation with the client or distributor on the other end of the line. Janey nodded to herself. It was just like Dad always said: Mom was a killer. Mom was a wizard on the phone.
Mom went up on the porch and closed the screen door behind her. On his comfortable windowsill, Tombow gave the world a sleepy wink. And Janey shared a long, long glance with the marigolds, nodding in the breeze. Then she went off through the rest of the garden to see if she could find her old, straw hat.
Rumspringa
by Jason Sanford
Artwork by Walter Simon
* * *
The English arrived at the farm shortly before supper, their ship buzzing my draft horses and baling combine and kicking a cloud of hay dust into the dry air. Even though I wasn't impressed with the ship's acrobatics, my younger brother Sol, who'd been wrapping the hay bundles with twine, stared at the English with excitement. Knowing I wouldn't get any more work out of him, I stopped the horses. The socket beneath my straw hat itched in resonance with our new visitors, which I took to be a particularly bad sign.
The ship landed by the barn and three English stepped off. One, an older woman named Ms. Watkins, had served as New Lancaster's mediator between the Amish and English for the last three centuries and always respected our customs, as demonstrated by the plain gray dress she wore. The other English, though, didn't share her regard. The man behind Ms. Watkins wore a blue militia uniform, a definite slap at our nonviolent beliefs, while the teenage girl beside him was naked except for a swirl of colors obscuring her private parts. She gazed around the farm and smiled when she spotted me.
"What do you think they want, Sam?" Sol asked as he stared at the naked girl. I shook my head, even though I had a good idea. A new comet had shone in the sky for the last few weeks, growing massively larger with each passing day. My father and I had discussed its looming impact several times. Now, as my father walked toward the English, I knew he had come to the same conclusion as me. I quickly handed the horse reins to Sol and joined him.
"Ms. Watkins," my father said, shaking her hand.
"Bishop Yoder," Ms. Watkins said. Then, turning to me, "This can't be Samuel? Last time I saw him he was just a little boy."
"Sam hasn't been a boy for almost five years," my father said without a trace of pride, just like any proper Amish man. "In fact, he will turn twenty-one next month."
"Ah, rumspringa," the naked girl said, rudely stepping between my father and Ms. Watkins. "I assume you'll be baptized on your 21st birthday?"
"I hope to be," I said, annoyed at an outsider asking such a personal question. In addition, these English surely knew exactly who I was. Their pretense of ignorance was merely another of their endless, convoluted games, although it would be rude to say that.
"Well, I hope you'll reconsider. After all, there's more to life than working a left-behind farm." The girl dimmed the colors flowing across her chest, allowing everyone a full view of her bare breasts. "It's not too late, you know. You can still seek forgiveness for any deadly sin that comes your way."
My father coughed awkwardly. Even Ms. Watkins blushed a solid, scarlet red, testimony to the proxy she'd downloaded before coming here. The militia man, of course, didn't respond and stared stone-faced at everyone.
"Rumspringa isn't a time to simply run around and sin," I said. "It's when one 'puts away the things of a child' and becomes an adult. Nothing more. Nothing less. And I'm well aware of what life has to offer." As I said that, I readjusted my straw hat, feeling the skull socket I would give anything to have removed.
My father nodded to my words, indicating I had spoken a solid truth, then waved for Ms. Watkins and the others to follow him into the house. I wanted to follow but, glancing back at Sol, I saw he'd somehow tangled the horse reins in the baling combine's gears. By the time I reached him one of the horses had kicked the baler, damaging the main driveshaft.
I groaned. It would take all night to undo the reins and repair the driveshaft. Wanting to join my father inside, I glanced over at Sol, who was backing the horses up to give the reins more slack. Luckily for me, when the English created antique machines for us with their nanoforges, they included the same repair gollums as on their own equipment. With Sol distracted by the horses, I reached my mind through my socket and accessed the baler's gollum. The driveshaft's metal flowed and reworked itself until the reins lay free in my hand and the driveshaft looked as good as new.
As Sol and I led the horses back to the barn, he glanced once at the baler. But he didn't say a word as we unharnessed the horses and washed them down for the night.
By the time we finished, the sun had set and the new comet glowed brightly across the sky. I led Sol into the house, where my mother intercepted my brother at the doorway.
"The men are on the back porch," she said as she led Sol upstairs to bed, to my brother's obvious disappointment. "There's chicken and mashed potatoes on the table, but it'll keep."
I nodded and headed for the back porch, fighting down a combination of pride at being considered a man and nervousness at why the English were here. The pride worried me the most -- right after violence, our worst sin was hochmut. Before stepping onto the porch, I took a deep breath and calmed myself until I felt humble before God and life and the world.
"Sam," Ms. Watkins said. "Glad you could join us. Please, have a seat."
Ms. Watkins sat in a wicker chair, while several elders from nearby farms sat on a bench beside my father. I walked toward my father, irritated at Ms. Watkins offering me a seat in my father's house. Beside her sat the militia man, while the teenage girl leaned on the porch railing with her body colorings flowing to the slight breeze. As I passed the English, my socket buzzed slightly and I wondered what they were discussing among them
selves. As if knowing my thoughts, the teenage girl smiled a most wicked smile and slid her tongue along the top of her red lips.
"We have been discussing a problem," my father said, stroking his beard in irritation at the girl's behavior. "The comet will impact near here next week."
"How far?" I asked.
The militia officer, whose name holo read Captain Stryder, looked over. "Just over 500 kilometers from this settlement. As I told your father, there will be some modest damage at that distance -- windows blown out, that type of thing -- but your community should survive. Still, we need to do a temporary resettlement to be safe."
"Why are we just being notified?" I asked.
Captain Stryder didn't even blink. "Until yesterday, we didn't need to. A massive outventing changed the comet's course. Otherwise it would have impacted well away from here."
I nodded. New Lancaster was an earth-size planet, but lacked sufficient quantities of water, with little standing liquid and only modest underground reservoirs. Since settlement began four centuries ago, periodic comet impacts had been used to terraform the still mostly deserted planet.
Captain Stryder looked at me with the calm, reassuring gaze generated by his militia leadership proxy. But despite Stryder's attempt to put me at ease, I didn't trust him. I also recalled his name from somewhere. But short of accessing my socket, I couldn't figure out what I'd once known about him.
"There really is no choice," Stryder said. "We'll move everyone to a safe holding location, then move you back after impact."