Frost Dancers: A Story of Hares

by Garry Kilworth

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ sighed L’herbe. ‘You believe in all that rubbish about us being invented by man. Let me tell you something, hare, before you get yourself into trouble down here. Men can only invent mechanical devices: things without real life in them. They may look alive, some of men’s innovations, like the tractor, but in fact it’s the men who make the parts move. A tractor can’t move itself.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Observation. Simple observation. Have you ever seen a tractor moving without a man in it? A tractor always stops before the man gets out.’

  ‘But it sometimes keeps on breathing,’ argued Skelter.

  ‘Yes, it does that, I’ll grant you,’ said L’herbe, ‘it keeps on breathing – but then men can stop it breathing, when they feel like it. You see, men control the things they invent. Do they control rabbits? If they did, they wouldn’t have to hunt us with dogs and ferrets, would they? They’d just turn off our breathing, pick us up and pop us in their bags. You see what I mean? You’ve got to use your eyes a bit.’

  Skelter was a little confused by the onslaught of these new ideas, but he was willing to accept that perhaps he was slightly mistaken about the rabbits. Perhaps the original rabbits were invented by men, but some had escaped and were now breeding amongst themselves, independent of man? He didn’t say this of course, because he knew it would upset L’herbe, who he was sure actually believed he was a real animal. Rabbits like L’herbe had obviously been wild for so long, they had convinced themselves they had a past history, a glorious history, that began in another land beyond the sea.

  ‘Well, you must know where you come from,’ said Skelter. ‘I won’t argue any further.’

  ‘But you’re still not convinced?’

  ‘Yes, a little.’

  L’herbe seemed mollified.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll manage to convince you completely, by the time you leave us. Meanwhile, I’ll show you to your gallery, which is right at the east end of the warren. Follow me,’ he turned, then yelled, ‘clear out of the way you lot! Haven’t you seen a mountain hare before?’

  ‘No,’ said one doe, truthfully, but she backed into a side gallery and let them pass.

  ‘Getting impertinent, some of these does,’ complained L’herbe. ‘I expect it happens amongst hares too?’

  Skelter followed him closely, realising the rabbit still wanted to chat.

  ‘Not really,’ he replied. ‘You see, the jills are bigger than the jacks, so it’s we who get impertinent, if anybody.’

  ‘Really?’ said L’herbe. ‘I hadn’t noticed. But then I don’t go out and study hares, not as such. Jills bigger than the jacks? There’s a thing. It wouldn’t work around here, of course. You wouldn’t catch the bucks following the orders of a female.’

  ‘Well, we don’t do that, exactly. Nobody orders anyone around. But I wouldn’t talk to one of our jills the way you spoke to that doe. She’d knock my head off.’

  They left that conversation there, both of them a little amazed at the difference in their two cultures. L’herbe said it just went to show that you could live next door to another creature, and not know it at all.

  They finally came to an area where there were no rabbits, just a strong musty odour which offended Skelter’s nostrils.

  ‘What’s that smell?’ he asked L’herbe.

  ‘That? Oh, you’ll have to put up with it. That’s why there’s no rabbits at this end of the warren. It’s the badgers. They live down there,’ and L’herbe indicated a tunnel off to the side, larger than the burrows Skelter had come through to reach the place.

  Skelter began to feel alarmed.

  ‘Badgers? They’re rather large creatures, aren’t they?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said L’herbe candidly. ‘Large omnivores. Black and white fellows, with fierce tempers on them. You never meet one that isn’t in a rage or choleric about something. Creatures of bad humour, that’s badgers. Now look,’ said the buck, becoming practical, ‘this isn’t the best gallery in the warren, but you won’t be disturbed here, and there’s a bolt hole nearby, so you won’t need to bother any of the other does or bucks by creeping past their burrows. You can come and go as you please. How does that sound?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ said Skelter, anxiously, ‘but the badgers …?’

  ‘Oh, you won’t need to bother them, either.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about that, so much as them bothering me,’ said Skelter, honestly.

  ‘Oh, they won’t bother you either. What makes you think they will?’

  ‘Well, if they’re predators …’

  ‘Omnivores. Different thing. Eat just about everything that grows or moves. Blackberries, worms, mice, apples, you name it.’

  ‘Yes, but don’t they eat rabbits and hares?’

  ‘Not if they live with them. At least, not those in the same warren, which they call a sett by the way. It annoys them if you say warren or burrow. If you should happen to meet one in the dark, make sure you say sett.’

  ‘I’m not planning to meet one in the dark,’ answered Skelter. ‘I’m not keen on meeting one at all, in fact. Look, how – how will they know I’m from this warren? They might think I’m an intruder. After all, my scent is different from yours, and when it comes down to it, I’m a hare.’

  L’herbe nodded.

  ‘Quite right. Hadn’t thought of that. I’d better tell them you’re here, otherwise they might come in while you’re sleeping and gobble you up before you can say gwai chun, sorry, that’s ancient rabbit for “ghost feet” – it’s what we call hares sometimes – because of your hairy pads, you know. You don’t leave definite prints in mud or snow, do you? Now, what were we talking about?’

  Skelter realised that L’herbe was getting his own back, for the ‘man invented rabbits’ argument.

  ‘You were saying that you would have to tell them I’m here, so they don’t attack me.’

  ‘Right, well let’s do it now, rather than later, shall we, or there might be a nasty accident. Now, when I yell, there’s going to be some pretty ugly language coming back. I told you they don’t like to be disturbed. It always brings out the worst in them, since they’ve got those foul tempers I told you about. Here goes nothing.’

  The rabbit bellowed down the next tunnel.

  ‘Her-inne is hara.’ Then to Skelter, he said quietly, ‘I’ve told them a hare is in here.’

  There was a rustling from the neighbouring sett, then a harsh voice cried, ‘Hwæt is? Eow fripes healdan!’

  L’herbe shrugged. ‘They’re telling me to keep quiet,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe we should,’ answered Skelter, nervously. He had been startled by the guttural power behind the voice down the tunnel.

  L’herbe shook his head and then shouted, ‘Gehyrst pu, pis folc hēr-inne is hara!’

  There was a grumbling sound, a movement, and then a big nose appeared at the end of the tunnel. Skelter was disturbed by the size of the face, and the large glittering eyes. He had never been this close to such a monster.

  The badger, sour-faced, stared at Skelter for a while. Then he opened his mouth and yawned, revealing a set of sharp teeth that sent a shudder through Skelter. After this the creature waddled back from whence he came. A final shout echoed down the tunnel.

  ‘Frip, hara.’

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Skelter, anxiously.

  ‘It seems to be all right. He said “peace, hare” but I’m not sure whether that means he doesn’t want to fight with you, or you have to keep quiet while you’re here.’

  Skelter said, ‘I rather think it’s the latter, don’t you?’

  ‘You’re probably right, anyway, I’m going to leave you to it. Just call if you get into any trouble. You only have to speak sharply to them, remind them that this is your home too, and they’ll see reason. But I shouldn’t think they’ll bother you. Do you speak any Mustelidae?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The language of badgers, stoats, weasels,
otters and a few others. They’re all of the same family, though you’d never guess it. I mean, a badger and an otter? But there you have it …’

  ‘No,’ replied Skelter bluntly.

  Skelter could not imagine himself speaking sharply to the creature he had seen at the end of the tunnel. He determined to keep quiet at all costs, and settled down for a sleep.

  The badgers, however, did not seem to heed their own advice, and were forever rasping something at one another. To Skelter it was a demonic language, and he wanted nothing to do with it. No self-respecting hare would use that tongue.

  Chapter Nine

  Skelter found that rabbits, like hares, preferred to feed mainly at night and rest up during the daylight hours. Though again, like his own kind they were not strictly nocturnal, and tended to do much as their fancy took them, generally drifting out in the early hours for their main meal. The first thing they did when they got outside, was sit in a hunched position on the grass, and worry about the weather.

  When they had finished worrying about the weather, they began to fret about the shadows.

  When they had conquered their fear of shadow and shade, of cloudy climes and starless skies, they expressed concern about being out of the warren too long. They became paranoid about what was going on below in the burrows, thinking that perhaps a fox or weasel found its way in without being seen, and was eating their babies.

  This had to be checked and double-checked, before the bucks and does were satisfied.

  When all this worrying, fretting and anxiousness was at last laid to rest, they became convinced that there was not enough time left to eat their fill, and immediately executed a nervous attack on the greenery of the woodland floor.

  Skelter turned out with the rest of them, and found feeding amongst a group of nibbling furry forms a bit like being back in his mountains, except of course there were no mountains. He still had terrible bouts of homesickness at times when he just lay miserably dreaming of his highlands, and often made resolutions to get back there again, though he knew in his heart that such a journey was impossible, for which way would he go?

  Still, the trees were better than the open fields. The only thing was, whereas in the fields Skelter had been overawed and a little frightened of the massive sky, in the wood he felt hemmed in, enclosed, and he began to suffer from a tightness of the throat and a feeling of panic occasionally, as if he were being held down by strong hands.

  This feeling was especially strong in the warren, below the ground, where the air was a little stale and no matter what position you put yourself in, there was an earth wall facing you, an earth floor beneath you, and an earth ceiling above. Such an environment tended to constrict his skull. He had dreams about getting stuck in one of the passages, and being abandoned by the rabbits.

  So, he tended to go for the widest clearings in the wood, until a rabbit called L’arbre suggested that these spaces were very vulnerable.

  ‘You have to watch out for weasels and stoats, and of course, foxes. If you stay amongst the trees, they stand less chance of catching you.’

  This did not make a great deal of sense, for amongst the trees Skelter could not see what was creeping up on him. He tended to jump at every flickering shadow, until the rabbits were viewing him with amusement. Some of the youngsters deliberately sneaked out from behind the trees. They pretended they had been eating bracket fungus. As expected Skelter jumped, on seeing them, and they apologised with, ‘Oh, sorry, hare – didn’t mean to startle you,’ though of course that had been the intention.

  Not that he, as an adult hare, need worry too much about weasels, but foxes were another matter. Foxes were as fast as hares, especially in tight places like the spinney in which Skelter found himself.

  When the shafts of daylight came through the woodland in dazzling bars, the rabbits began to drift back down to the inner darkness of the warren. Some would come out again, during the day. There were always insomniacs, who could not sleep whatever time of day it was. Like hares, rabbits were not strictly nocturnal.

  Skelter followed the rabbits down the hole. Having been made the brunt of a few jokes, he was like one of the family now, and the rabbits began to treat him in a more friendly fashion.

  L’arbre asked him, ‘What’s it like, sleeping near the badgers? Bit disconcerting, eh?’

  ‘You can say that again,’ remarked Skelter. ‘I keep thinking one of them is going to tear my throat out. What happens when the weather gets bad and the hunting is poor? Don’t they ever attack you?’

  ‘Never known it to happen yet. Badgers can always find food somewhere. I’ve seen them go out into the fields and eat turnips. They’re not fussy in that way. They’ll take a rabbit from another warren too, if they can dig it out. Weird, when you think about it. I suppose we’re lucky, really, having them here. I mean, it keeps other badgers away – and foxes. They occasionally live with foxes, but they won’t allow a stranger to come in, and badgers are pretty fierce when roused.’

  ‘They’re pretty fierce when not roused,’ said Skelter. ‘Even when they’re just talking to one another, they sound as if they’re going to rip each other apart any second. That language of theirs …’

  L’arbre nodded.

  ‘Ah, yes, the ancient tongue. Mustelidae. Bit different from our Leporidae, eh? You see, ours has changed a lot over the years. I like to think of it as a dynamic language: it’s grown out of the languages of two main animal groups, one of which is Mustelidae, with some Corvidae at its roots. The other is Felidae. Don’t ask me how our paths crossed with cats and crows, but it must have done at one time. Maybe all the animals spoke one language in seasons out of time. Anyway, we sort of take the words and make them our own, growing others out of the earlier roots.

  ‘But badgers, weasels, otters and their ilk insist on keeping their language pure. That’s what they say, anyway, though what a “pure” language is, I have no idea. I suppose most of us used to speak the way they do today, once upon a time.’

  ‘It’s a very harsh sounding tongue,’ said Skelter. ‘Rasping. You’d think they all had sore throats. It sounds threatening and aggressive too.’

  ‘Well, that’s badgers for you. Old fashioned, bad tempered and guttural. We’ve still got remnants of that language used by our foreparents you know – a tongue they spoke when they lived in the middle of a great continent, where the winters were very cold and the summers hot and humid.’

  ‘That sounds like here.’

  ‘No,’ L’arbre said, ‘not at all like here. I mean really cold – six months of ice and snow, and then the opposite. The humans were a bit different there too. Smaller, all with dark hair, and so many of them. A sea of humans.’

  ‘What happened? Did they drive you out?’

  ‘No, not really. It’s where we started, and you know how we breed. Our numbers got too large for the interior, so hordes of us made our way to the west. We kept stopping of course, but then the population would build to a point where some of us had to move on, and we would still be getting pressure from the large numbers in the interior. Finally, we reached the coast, and settled there. That’s where we got our names, from that coastal region.’

  ‘Then you swam across the water to this land.’

  L’arbre tutted in impatience.

  ‘I can see you’re still sceptical. No, we didn’t swim. It’s too far, and well you know it. We were brought here by some conquering humans who had the same problems as us with their population. They wanted new lands too. So we came to this island some thousand winters ago. That’s our history, and you can’t take it away from us, just because you were here before us. It doesn’t work like that.’

  L’herbe had joined them now, with another rabbit, a doe named La framboise, and this female of the warren viewed the hare with hostility.

  ‘Why bother with him?’ she said, ‘he’s so prejudiced he’s blind to any argument. I always said that hares were narrow-minded bigoted creatures. You’ll never convince them, no matter ho
w hard you try.’

  ‘Now wait a bit,’ protested Skelter. ‘I’ve never really spoken with rabbits before now. I’m willing to keep an open mind on the subject. It’s just that I was brought up to see things differently from you.’

  ‘You were brought up,’ said La framboise, ‘on a pack of vicious lies, designed to make hares look like superior beings to rabbits, which they’re not.’

  ‘We don’t get the watery-eye disease,’ snapped Skelter, stung by this attack.

  ‘If you mean myxomatosis,’ sneered La framboise, ‘then say so. That was a man-brought illness, made specially to kill us off because we were a threat to humans.’

  ‘You know this for certain?’

  L’herbe interrupted to cool the conversation down.

  ‘Not for certain, no Skelter, but we’re pretty sure man either brought it here, or somehow introduced it into the rabbit population. It suddenly appeared, without it ever being in existence before, and it was very bad. We went down like wheat under a harvester. Why would a new disease suddenly come up from nowhere? It’s our old trouble you see,’ he said with a sigh, ‘we will breed.’

  ‘I have heard,’ confided La framboise, in a more reasonable tone than she had been using, ‘that there’s a kind of rodent or something that breeds faster than we do. You know what the rodents are like. They’ve never managed to migrate like us, so every time their numbers build up to bursting point, and they attempt to spread, they end up falling into the sea in their thousands.’

  Skelter thought that sounded like a story, but he didn’t say so, because he seemed to be on a better footing with the doe now, and he did not want the conversation to degenerate into another row. He could hear the badgers grouching away next door, and he didn’t want to be left alone with just their voices for company.

  He said to L’herbe, ‘When you came across the sea with the humans, why did they let you go?’

  ‘They didn’t let us go. Some of us escaped, started breeding, and became wild rabbits again. We were never really tame rabbits, not like those you see in cages today …’ Skelter remembered Snowy, and nodded encouragingly,’.… if they escaped they would be feral animals, because they’ve been bred into something different from us wild rabbits. No, we were truly wild, having come straight from the fields of the continent, and brought over here.’