Frost Dancers: A Story of Hares

by Garry Kilworth

  Skelter thought about his ghost-hare appearing in his dreams, and since nothing had happened, neither good nor bad, he mentally shrugged at the fickleness of the fantastic. You couldn’t trust it, he told himself. You couldn’t trust it even to happen. What was the point in having dreams, if they didn’t tell you anything? Everyone told each other their dreams, elevating the contents to an importance they did not deserve, for nothing ever happened.

  Bucker stopped by him on his way to a meeting with the elders of the clan. The big hare looked strong and self-confident, and Skelter longed for the day when he was as self-assured and respected as Bucker. Rushie would have to take more notice of him then.

  ‘Have you seen the golden eagles this morning?’ asked Bucker.

  Skelter said no, he hadn’t.

  ‘Well keep a wary eye out for them. The air will be as clear as burn water today. It’s a cloudless sky. The raptors will be able to cruise at a much higher level, and still pinpoint their targets. Don’t just glance around the edges of the sky. Look directly up, away from the sun, and watch for that tell-tale shape drifting around up there.’

  ‘Yes, Bucker, thanks, Bucker.’

  The big hare left them to carry on feeding.

  After a few seconds, Rushie mimicked, ‘Yes, Bucker, of course, Bucker.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Skelter, looking up at his friend. ‘Are you insinuating something?’

  Rushie looked at him with innocent eyes.

  ‘Of course not, Skelter.’

  ‘Then why are you repeating … why are you using that funny voice?’

  ‘Was I using a funny voice?’

  ‘Yes, you were.’

  ‘Oh, well I’m sorry. How’s this voice, that I’m using now? Does it suit you?’

  Skelter refrained from answering. Sometimes Rushie could be the most infuriating creature on the mountainside. He didn’t understand her, that was the trouble. There were times when he was so fond of her he felt like bursting. Then she would go and do a thing like this, making out he was some sort of crawler, kowtowing to the more important hares in the clan. Bucker was his friend, didn’t she understand that? It was no good trying to explain such things to females, they didn’t have the same kind of thoughts on such subjects. He went back to tearing at the plants around him, taking his frustration out on his breakfast.

  Gradually the dawn crept down from the high peaks and crags like a grey mist, gently nosing the darkness down into the gullies, through the glens, and over the edge of the world. There the blackness stayed, in deep chasms and cracks in the earth, to rest for the day.

  Shortly after a weak sun had arisen, all eating stopped and heads went up as a wailing sound came winding through the hills from a far distant human warren. There was a moment of alarmed thoughtfulness, then back to the eating. It was only some man, blowing wind from a bag of pipes, such as they did from time to time. Humans were noise-makers, with their bangings and blastings, their boomings and blarings. They put on their coloured cloth and went crashing and crying about the countryside, causing rabbits to start from their hiding places, and ducks to fly up from the lowland flumes. No hare could fathom why, and had long since given up trying.

  The feeding continued well into the morning, though there were some pauses for play. Rushie and Skelter went cavorting through the rocks at one point, earning the displeasure of certain matronly jills who thought such behaviour unseemly. The pair were amused at the starchiness of elderly mountain hares.

  ‘There’s no fun in them,’ said Rushie. ‘They’ve forgotten what it’s like to be young.’

  While play was in progress, the morning began to cloud over, with cumulus clouds growing dark tall columns above the peaks. Heavy mists came crawling out of the heather, looking for hollows in which to brood. The rocks shone with cold sweat, as if they were emerging from a fever. Chilled alpine plants tightened their flowers into small fists.

  At noon the rain fell: a hard stinging rain that soaked the fur through to the bone. Hares crouched in their forms, miserably awaiting the passing of the day-darkness. The noise of the rain was uncompassionate. Hares talked to one another, over the din, keeping contact for reasons of comfort, their vision limited to a body length.

  When the downpour was over, the hares emerged looking bedraggled and half their normal size. There was much shaking and fluffing of the fur, each hare taking the soaking personally, as if the sky ought to be taught a lesson one day. Other creatures, the more dainty insects and one or two small mammals, had not fared well during the storm. There were drowned forms hanging on the grasses: a butterfly like a scrap of wet tissue; a spider torn from its web and swept away; a baby bird washed from a crag.

  Gradually, the world righted itself, though the rain clouds continued to threaten the earth. Perhaps it was because of them that the eagle was not seen before it struck. A dark bird coming out of a dark sky, following a rainstorm – the hares might be forgiven for their lack of vigilance. A leveret was hopping around its form, calling to its mother, near to where Skelter sat shaking his coat.

  ‘Don’t go too far from your rocks,’ warned Skelter. ‘Your mother won’t be happy with you if you do.’

  The leveret scowled at him, suggesting he mind his own business.

  ‘Well,’ shrugged Skelter, ‘I’m only telling you for your own good.’

  The leveret hopped on, ignoring him.

  A few moments later there was a rush of wind, a flurry. Skelter’s heart stopped for a second, as the panic of some strange event passed through him. A huge shadow swept over the landscape: the shadow of death. Swiftly. A living cross with a seven-foot wingspan. There was a spread of feathers, covering the sky for a moment, then a short harsh cry of triumph as claws snatched up the quarry. One brief glimpse of dark red eyes as hard as garnets – and the leveret was gone.

  When Skelter looked up, the infant was a dot in the sky, a hare no longer. No doubt already dead from shock, it was something else: a piece of meat to be torn apart by raptors in an eyrie perched atop a dizzying spire of rock. Great wings flapped slowly, carrying the golden bird into the fairytale realms of the unfathomable sky.

  Birds of prey were not born, like earthly creatures. There were man-demons up there, living in the clouds, that fashioned these terrible feather-and-claw slayers out of the shards of thunder and lightning.

  Only two or three hares had been aware of the attack: most were going about their preening or feeding oblivious of what had happened. The mother of the leveret had her back to the spot where the incident had taken place, and was feeding on some heather. Skelter was still petrified when she turned and looked for her young, began calling, at first in a puzzled way, then plaintively.

  ‘Gone,’ one of the other witnesses finally managed to tell her. ‘Taken away …’

  The mother ran in circles, distracted, failing to comprehend or believe what was being told to her. Skelter moved away from the spot, feeling both distraught and terrified at his near brush, a feather’s brush, with death. One moment the world had been quite ordinary, the next, a place of carnage. It changed as quickly as a flipped pebble changes sides. Such sudden death was part of every day, but it never failed to shake the near victims to the centre of their being.

  Rushie came to him.

  ‘What’s the matter? What’s happened?’

  ‘An eagle,’ said Skelter. He became irrationally angry, not with Rushie, nor even with himself, but at what seemed to him some unreasonable aspect of the natural world. ‘You can watch for them, day in, day out – you post sentries, keep your wits primed every moment of the daylight, and nothing happens. The eagles stay away, circle some distant peak or glen. Then you relax, just for a moment, forgetting them, and they’re there, a bolt out of nowhere …’

  Rushie sympathised, told him she was pleased it had not been him. Yes, it was sad about the leveret, but they were in the most danger, the young ones who knew no better. The mortality rate amongst the infants was very high, even in
a place where man seldom trod.

  By mid-afternoon, the incident was behind them, almost forgotten. The mother had ceased grieving, was fussing over the rest of her brood. Bereavement for hares is a short-term sorrow, and only the ghost-hares keep a tally of the living and the dead, it being important in their between-world existence to know the balance of the natural state of things. The souls of hares become flowers on the death of the body – the spirits of mountain hares appearing as purple saxifrage, and those of field hares as harebells. One set a cluster, the other solitary. It was necessary to manage such comings and goings, to ensure that there were spiritual homes for the dying and no soul was left to wander, lost and pitiful, the mountains or the flatlands of the Otherworld.

  There were no more incidents or accidents that day. Serious mists began to descend around the mountains, which offered protection for the hares, until the evening came around. Then the phantom shapes of the mountains re-emerged, and a fine evening surprised all as it came in on the back of a fresh wind.

  Once the storyteller had allowed a suitable period of time for reverence, following the tale, he rose and left. This was the signal for the hares to go to their forms, for a short rest before emerging for the night feeding.

  Early the following morning, the eagle attack of yesterday being now a distant memory in Skelter’s young mind, the jack went on an expedition down into the glen. The moon was full and there was a gentle light which softened the crags and liquified the shadows. The landscape had a golden haze on its tumbling slopes, and dips and hollows, which opened the world and made it looked inviting. It was a magical morning, ready for investigation, ready to reveal its secrets to brave young hares. Skelter felt an unusual urge to see what the world was like, outside the slope on which the Screesiders lived. He told no one he was going, in case he was dissuaded from his intentions, for it was considered stupid to wander far from the protection of the clan’s forms. He simply began to feed further and further away from Rushie and the others, until he found himself near a narrow gully which wound its way gently down the side of the mountain. There was a certain amount of fear accompanying his curiosity, which bordered on panic at times, but some inner compulsion pushed him onwards.

  He took a natural path, descending to the green lushness of the glen below. There were sheep down there, big quiet animals that stumbled around, kicking loose rocks. Such creatures never bothered hares and Skelter was not in the least afraid of them. A man wandered out of a stone hut to water a bush, but he was not dangerous either. Just a shepherd who had had a late evening drink, and could not wait until the morning to go to the toilet. He was too sleepy to notice Skelter and was soon gone, back inside his overnight shelter.

  Skelter continued down the slopes, more gentle now, towards the loch at the foot of the mountain. This wonderful disc of water sometimes blinded the hares on the mountainside when it mirrored the sun.

  Skelter next came across a stretch of woodland, a dark forbidding place of tightly planted Sitka spruce trees, set out in rows. Underfoot was nothing but pine needles. Within the trees there was a stagnant darkness that never changed. The ebb and flow of night and day did not penetrate this unnatural woodland as it did the clumps of gnarled and crooked Scots pine, and the darkness had a musty staleness to it. It was heavy, still and unsavoury, and Skelter was glad to be out on the other side. No creatures lived in that poisonous darkness: it was a dead place, without movement, without sound.

  Suddenly, a fox appeared, but with an unrecognisable creature between its jaws. Skelter froze, thanking his ghost-hare that the fox was upwind. It passed by, either unheeding or unaware of the hare. Soon it had merged with the rocks and stones, and was gone.

  Skelter continued his journey towards the loch, until he came to the roadway that skirted the stretch of water. He rested on the edge of this black strip, nibbling at grasses that tasted and smelled faintly of the oil that sometimes floated on the surface of peat-bog pools. While he was chewing a bright light suddenly appeared and came straight for him, blinding him, then swung away at the last minute taking a roar of noise with it.

  Skelter’s pattering heart soon settled down again. It had been nothing but a vehicle: the machines that men went inside. Skelter had been told about them often, and had seen them from the heights, like black beetles winding around the loch. They were much bigger down here, and their eyes much brighter, but he knew that they never left that strip of black and as long as he stayed on the grass, he was safe.

  What a monster though! he thought to himself. The cars and trucks could take on golden eagles, and eat them alive, if they were not so rigid in their movements. Of course, they were fashioned of metal, the same stuff men made their guns and wire fences and gin-traps from. Metal had a cold hard smell about it and hares were mistrustful of anything that was made of metal.

  Eventually the dawn came, like a fine mist of light through the gaps in the mountains. The golden haze drifted away, to be replaced by a harsher light. Still, Skelter saw no reason to rush back to the clan. He was learning things down here in the glen. More vehicles had swept past him, and he was becoming used to them. He had seen an owl, sitting on the overhead wires that ran alongside the road. It seemed to be doing nothing, looking at something far away, beyond the ken of lowly hares.

  A man came, walking his dog, so Skelter skipped into the rocks and hid there while the border collie sniffed along at the edge of the road, destroying his sensitive nostrils with the residue fumes of the vehicles. It failed to pick up even the strongest of animal scents, let alone the nuances that a fox would recognise immediately. Soon the pair were gone, and Skelter felt free to wander once more.

  As the morning grew, Skelter became lonely, and decided to go back to his clan. He took the same route, up the mountain path, thinking that the world outside was a tame place really, almost as safe as his mountain home.

  When he got back, Rushie asked him where he had been.

  ‘Oh, I’ve been to look at the world,’ he replied nonchalantly.

  She stared at him for a moment.

  ‘You left the clan? Are you mad?’

  He was stung by this criticism, knowing it had some foundation. It had been a very silly thing for a yearling to do, but how could you explain a strong feeling to anyone? I just felt I had to go. Rushie would sniff at that explanation without a doubt. So he just hunched his shoulders and said, ‘Not really.’

  ‘Not really,’ she repeated, in that funny tone she used when she did not understand something. ‘Not really.’

  She shook her head and began nibbling some sedge, but after a while he felt her eyes on him, and he looked up enquiringly.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  ‘I was just wondering,’ she asked, ‘what it was like? The outside world I mean.’

  ‘Oh,’ he replied. ‘Nothing to shout about.’

  Chapter Four

  One morning Skelter’s life took a dramatic turn.

  The Screesider clan were out feeding, as usual, just before the dawn. Other clans around the mountains and glens were doing just the same thing. If anyone believed that danger was in the air, they thought it was from foxes, rather than any other predator. No wildcats had been seen in a long time, and the visibility was too poor for the eagles.

  A grey light reluctantly crept into the sky. The slopes were peaceful. The peaks were hidden in low cloud.

  Suddenly, from above the scree, came the most terrifying sound the hares had ever heard. A hundred stoats, a thousand weasels could not have made such a noise. There were high-pitched whistles, screams, clashing sounds. The hares were petrified. Then came the smell of men and dogs.

  Still the hares did not run. They were frozen into immobility, their best defence. Hearts were pattering against ribcages. Eyes were round with unknown fear. Legs were on taut springs, ready for flight.

  The noise came nearer, and then out of the mists came a long line, a crescent of men, some being pulled along by dogs on leashes. There were sticks in human hands
and they were beating the heather. There were round metal lids in the fists of others, which were clashed together. Horns were being blown, no longer muted by the thick vapours of the peaks. They blared panic into hare hearts. Whistles sounded, shrill and threatening, piercing hare eardrums like thin needles.

  The figures were dark and sinister, as if they had come straight from the earth, had emerged from rock and mud. It was a hellish sight, accompanied by a hellish sound. What was going on? Who had done what to deserve this concentrated attack from mankind? What were they going to do?

  The first hare bolted. Then another, then another, split seconds apart. Finally the whole hillside erupted with starting hares as they fled from the noise, not waiting to find out the answers to these questions. The humans were after them, of this they were almost sure, and they weren’t going to wait around to be fully convinced.

  His eyes bulging, his blood screaming, Skelter ran in a wide arc down the mountainside, away from the line of beaters. His mind was a haze of panic. He did not know where he was going, nor why, he just went. Rocks, shrubs, tufts flashed by him, moving the other way. There were hares whistling now, a note of desperation, which added to the confusion. The landscape was a whirlwind of grey shapes.

  Twice Skelter lost his legs and went tumbling over, only to retrieve his feet without even breaking his stride. His fear would not allow him to think and he plunged across a burn and headed towards a cliff. At the last moment something made him swerve: it might have been a cry from another hare that went over the edge. He found himself racing along the rim of the cliff, then down into the glen as the slope fell away to the side.

  In a narrow gully, the natural funnel for the hares coming from the slopes of scree, he considered he was close to safety. The beaters were a long way up the hillside now and advancing only very slowly. The sides of the gully were deep enough to hide his racing form, as he careered along its bottom. They could not see him and the dogs did not follow. He could smell the water of the loch below and was intent on reaching it, knowing that around its edge were tall grasses in which he could hide.