‘So,’ said Skelter, ‘a thousand years ago some of your kind escaped, and began to spread out, over the countryside.’
L’herbe rolled his eyes.
‘I can tell you of epic journeys that would make your pupils start from their sockets – journeys full of danger, of cunning, of strength of spirit. Some of them not that long ago either. Quests for new homes, when the old ones were destroyed or became too dangerous. Why, in recent history there was one such odyssey, led by a famous rabbit called Le noisetier, who was advised and accompanied by the great prophet, Le cinquième.’
‘Great prophet?’
‘We have had many prophets – when you live under the ground as we do, not only close to the earth, but in its very womb, there are influences on the mind that make certain rabbits special. Mystical influences. Le cinquième was one such rabbit. He had visions and dreams, which he related to his warren, and these became truths.’
Skelter was impressed.
‘Do you have prophets in here, in this warren?’
‘We have Le septième.’
La framboise shuffled her feet, and L’arbre looked away, which made Skelter think that something was not quite right.
‘And this Le septième, does he see visions?’
‘Well, he once saw a fairy flitting about in the moonlight. Several fairies, in fact.’
‘Fairies?’
‘Small human-like creatures with wings. A bit like bumble bees, only sort of delicate, and they do magic.’
‘And your prophet saw these, and foretold some terrible disaster that was about to engulf the warren?’
L’herbe looked down at his paws.
‘Well, no, not exactly. It turned out to be the result of eating deceiver fungus and wood blewitt toadstools, but that doesn’t mean he might not be useful one day. Just because you have one mistaken mystical experience, doesn’t necessarily mean that all his powers are false, does it?’
L’herbe seemed to be asking for Skelter’s reassurance on this point, so he gave it willingly.
‘No, of course not. I expect your prophet’s quite mystical really. He just hasn’t had a chance to prove it properly yet. No doubt the day will come.’
‘That’s what I say,’ L’arbre said, and his two rabbit companions nodded solemnly. It seemed to Skelter that they needed to believe in this prophet of theirs, in order to enhance the status of their warren, so what was the harm in allowing them their delusions? They had been kind to him, and who was he, a hare from the highlands, to pass judgement on this Le septième creature who might one day see skies running with blood and darkness sweeping over the land?
That night, when they were out feeding, L’herbe identified their prophet, by nodding in the creature’s direction. Skelter stared at the skinny little rabbit for some time, looking for something special in him, but nothing emerged. He looked like any ordinary rabbit, though a bit undernourished. No wonder Le septième had taken to eating magic mushrooms – the poor fellow looked half-starved.
Thus the days passed in relative peace, until one dawn when some of the rabbits were out feeding, the most common predator in the land appeared amongst them.
Skelter was on the periphery of the group of five rabbits, tugging away at some dandelions, when there was a commotion, a disturbance on the far side of the glade in which they were feeding. Skelter saw a shape flow over the roots of a beech, and then rise up onto its hind legs before the rabbit that was closest to it – L’arbre!
It was a stoat.
The creature seemed to sway gently in the silver shafts of twilight illuminated from the heavens. The rabbit was completely paralysed. In fact, all the rabbits had frozen, as if hypnotised by the antics of this lean willowy predator dancing slowly before them. Skelter was petrified by fear himself. He wanted to shout a warning, tell L’arbre to run, but the cry stuck in his throat. Instead his legs remained on taut springs, ready to give him flight, if he were to need it. While the rabbits might glance towards the bolt holes, his instinct was to look for open ground, and an area in which to run.
The stoat seemed to glow with sinister light. Its tiny eyes were fixed on L’arbre and its parted mouth showed small white needles in a bed of red flesh.
The whole world appeared to have stopped in time. Nothing moved in the spinney, nothing could be heard. There were no insects buzzing, no birds twittering, no beasts breathing. The whole scene seemed preserved for eternity in the amber light from the risen sun. Skelter could not even detect the beating of his own heart and was certain that the end of the world had come.
Then as if nature found this situation unacceptable, and wanted to shatter the spell, a jay landed in the middle of the deadly arena, and hopped around picking at worms on the bare patches where the rabbits had been feeding. It seemed oblivious of the electric situation, muttering to itself ‘Ja, ja, ist gut, ist gut. Viel Wurm. Schmackhaft Wurm. Guten Appetit, Vogel, guten Appetit …’ The colourful pink-and-buff bird, with its blue edged wings, went rooting in the soft moss, muttering about worms, and wishing itself good eating, without the least concern for the life-or-death predicament of L’arbre.
Not one of the rabbits or the stoat took any notice of this interruption. The tableau remained as if carved out of stone, the only movements those of the distracted jay, hopping over the ground, unaware of the drama, too interested in his tasty worms to notice that a death was about to occur.
The stoat stopped swaying, curled down onto all fours, and back arched, darted forward. It struck! The movement was alarmingly swift, like the strike of a snake, and all that registered in Skelter’s eyes was a blur. The jay took off instantly.
L’arbre fell to the ground screaming, a sound that was quickly staunched by the stoat, who clung to the rabbit’s throat. Blood spurted. There was a convulsive kicking from the victim, and then it was all over.
The scream broke the spell the stoat had passed over the forest glade, and rabbits began to bolt in all directions.
Skelter remained staring at the stoat, frozen by his fascination of the horrible scene. It was like a nightmare being performed live before his eyes, and the panic in him was paralysing his limbs. The stoat went up on its hind legs again, its keen gaze cutting through the shafts of light across the glade. Its tiny eyes glittered like polished garnets. Scarlet dripped from its mouth, from its ivory teeth, and ran down its white bib. There was bloodlust evident in its expression, in its stance. It was not necessarily satisfied with one victim. Skelter found some energy, and took off, but instead of following his instinct and heading towards a nearby field of marigolds, he ran towards the warren. He was down his hole in a flash and in his gallery a moment later. His heart was hammering in his chest. If the trees protected the rabbits from eagles, they encouraged other dangers, like allowing stoats to sneak up without being noticed.
Fear spread throughout the warren like a foul marsh gas, and rabbits lay in their burrows, waiting for the worst. It came. The stoat, obviously not content with a single kill, had followed Skelter back to the hole. Skelter could hear it at the entrance, snuffling and poking around with its nose. The stench of the creature made the hare dizzy with terror. There was the sickly smell of blood in the air too.
Then came the unmistakable sounds of tiny clawed feet descending cautiously down the tunnel from above. The stoat had decided to enter the warren. Skelter almost choked, not knowing whether to bolt, or to stay and hope the stoat passed him by or went in a different direction.
The odour of blood and stoat became stronger, and finally, the worst happened. He could see the small red eyes staring down the short tunnel to his gallery. The head moved back and forth, swaying a little, as if the stoat were getting used to the darkness. Skelter knew he could be scented if not seen, and now there was no escape except past the predator.
The stoat began to waddle slowly forward, its tiny eyes fixed on Skelter’s throat. Skelter began to drum the hard earth in fear with his hind legs. The noise reverberated down the tunnels and some of th
e rabbits took up the same action, thumping the ground with their hind legs.
‘Go away!’ shouted Skelter in a high penetrating voice.
The stoat’s answer was to bare its fangs, its top lip curling up. It blew hot air through its small nostrils and continued to advance. Skelter squealed in terror and began digging furiously, attempting the impossible – to tunnel himself out of danger.
Suddenly, just when it seemed that the stoat was going make its move, a badger appeared just off the main tunnel, obviously come to see what the noise was about. It stared around it with an annoyed expression, then on seeing the stoat, spoke in a harsh voice.
‘Æt-brēgdan hēre!’
The stoat stopped, turned slightly, and Skelter knew it had understood what sounded like a strong command to remove itself from the vicinity immediately. Skelter had learned enough Mustelidae as a near neighbour of the badgers, to recognise that the stoat was being told to get out.
The stoat began to argue, but the force of the next torrent of words from the great badger drowned his protest. The slim predator took one last look at Skelter, then reluctantly swaggered away, up through the bolt hole. You did not question a badger’s authority a second time, even if he was a cousin – not if you wanted to stay alive.
Here was a badger, come to the rescue of a hare, and Skelter almost bleated out his gratitude, but the badger took no notice of his attempts to thank him in Mustelidae and ambled away into the darkness of its sett, leaving Skelter limp with relief.
Chapter Ten
There were three days of heavy rain, during which time the warren became flooded in parts, and life became a dreary miserable burden. While he was out feeding, Skelter found himself dreading returning to the wet burrows, and the damp gallery which had softened to sloppy mud. This, coupled with the episode of the stoat, made him decide he was not designed to be a rabbit after all. For a start he was not obsessive enough to really get into their culture. He wasn’t a worrier by nature, though if he stayed in the warren much longer, he might actually become a ganglion of insecurities.
Skelter informed L’herbe of his decision, and that able rabbit expressed sorrow at his leaving.
‘We’ll miss your funny ways,’ said L’herbe, as a kind of compliment. ‘You’ve made us laugh with your peculiar antics. I always thought hares were lunatics: now I know for sure.’
‘Kind of you to say so,’ remarked Skelter drily, knowing that these southern rabbits were as rude to each other as they were to any newcomer. It was nothing to do with species prejudice. It was just that they lacked any tact. He himself could have made some acid remarks about neurotic rabbits, but he suffered under the disadvantage of having been raised to be polite to his host.
‘Where will you go? What will you do?’
‘I’m not sure, L’herbe, but I think I shall cross to that island – at least, it’s not really an island, because there’s a causeway, but you know where I mean?’
L’herbe shook his head.
‘You must be careful over there. Perhaps you should think again? I have heard tell that the island is terrorised by a giant flying creature with a tufted head. A mottled-grey fiend. A great monster, silent in flight, that sweeps in during dusk and dawn and snatches hares from their forms.’
This sounded like a golden eagle, but it could not have been, for golden eagles were not known to hunt especially at twilight – in fact they preferred good light. Nor were they dark grey, though these two details may have been rabbit invention. Skelter had noticed a tendency for the bucks and does to elaborate: their tales were rewrought each time they were told. With every new telling, there were fresh curlicues, creative centripetals added to the original. They could make ordinary blackberries sound like fruits of gods, when they were out of season.
‘What does this bird look like? Is this some part of your mythology? You haven’t been eating funny mushrooms, have you? This countryside is new to me, but I haven’t seen anything of any size in the sky. Where I come from …’
L’herbe looked hurt.
‘I know, I know, the golden eagles. Well, you’ve described them to me in detail, and I have to say that this creature, bird or flying mammal, is larger and fiercer. Don’t look at me like that. This is not fabrication. I realise we have a reputation as story tellers, but this time I’m only passing on what I’ve been told. No one has seen the creature properly and lived, though there are those who claim to have caught a silhouette against the evening or early morning sky. It hides in a church tower during the day, and only emerges under cover of darkness. Some say it’s a flying badger, with a weasel for a tail. The wings of a buzzard sprout from its shoulders when it wants to fly.’
‘It couldn’t be an owl or a bat I suppose?’
‘I told you, it has a body as long as a badger. How many owls or bats do you know, that can take a rabbit or a hare?’
Certainly there were no owls that Skelter was aware of, with a body length to match a badger. Perhaps the rabbits were right? Perhaps it was some unique monster, a fantasy invented by rabbits to keep their young in check. Whatever it was, it was no use worrying about it, like a rabbit. You had to accept the world for what it was, and do your best to live in it, without fussing overmuch.
He said his farewells to L’herbe and the rest of the warren, some of whom he had become rather fond, especially the matronly La framboise. She reminded him of some of the older female hares in his own clan, and the memory was bitter-sweet.
The rabbits expressed sorrow at his departing, but he knew that within a short time most of them would have forgotten him. He was just an itinerant stranger, passing through a community that had been established generations ago. In any case, he was a hare, and despite the physical resemblances, a hare is not a rabbit.
As a farewell gift, he was allowed to leave by the main exit, which he did with pride.
Once outside the trees of the spinney Skelter felt as if he were several pounds lighter. The claustrophobia he had experienced in the warren had been more oppressive than he had previously realised, and it was only now that he was in the open air that he knew just how much he had missed having the sky above him, and the wind on his fur. There was a youthful exuberance in him. He bubbled inside. For a while he even entertained the idea of striking north, in search of his highlands, but when he looked out over the immensity of the flatlands, he knew this was not a journey he would ever complete. Better, he thought to himself, to set his mind on a life here, than to wander the flatlands forever.
Once again he was drawn to the seashore and that intriguing island beyond the narrow, artificial isthmus. Conversely, now that his horizons no longer curved upwards at the edges, and his world was open to infinity on all sides, he yearned for a contained area with definite natural borders. Not an airless rabbit warren in a tight little wood: something wide and open, but with edges to it. He was not used to limitless space, and never would be. If he could not have mountains to encircle his enclosure, why not the sea?
Ever wary of eagles, he made his way to the roadway which formed the causeway to the island. When he reached it he saw that the ocean was not quite as rough as it had been on his earlier visit. The waves were no longer breaking over the asphalt, but contented themselves with hissing around the rocky fringes of the narrow isthmus.
After the days of rain, there was a clear sky, full of birds. While his courage was high, he ventured out onto the causeway, running down the centre of the road, hoping that no men or their vehicles would come while he was crossing. Seagulls watched him pass, from their perches on the roadside rocks, their eyes inscrutable. Once again he realised how much he disliked the creatures. They were alien to him.
When he was halfway to his destination, a heavy vehicle came thundering down the tarmac. He first felt the vibrations, and skipped into the rocks, to nestle there until the truck had passed by. It seemed the right thing to do, though he hoped he had not picked up any rabbit thoughts, rabbit habits, without realising it.
When the
vehicle had thundered by, leaving a cloud of blue smoke that filled Skelter’s lungs and caused him to splutter and sneeze, the hare continued his journey, reaching the far side without further incident.
He turned off onto a beach where masked crabs lurked amongst the rocks, watching him with stalk eyes as he passed, and green crabs scuttled rapidly sideways down the rocks. There were keyhole depressions which held razorshell molluscs and bubbles on the incoming tide marking the places where sandhoppers were hidden. Like the hedgerow, the shoreline is a marginal strip, turbulent with life. It is the meeting place of two giants, the sea and the land; for where two worlds come together the activity intensifies, as the water-margin creatures trade between wet and dry, eking out a life in this narrow region.
Down below the splash zone, where the lichens flourished, was a wetland of snakelock anemones, parchment worms, heart urchins and tellin shells. Skelter nosed around the rock pools, nibbled at some bladderwrack, which he found bitter, watched some prawns darting, and came to a quick conclusion that the water margin was not a place for a hare, despite the wonderful variety of rocks that were to be found there. They were not the rocks of his homeland, in any case, being smooth and glib. He preferred his rugged and more complicated highland outcrops. When he tried to climb one of the sloping slabs its slippery surface caused him to perform an unintentional glissade down to the stony beach, an accident that resulted in a sore rump.
Some way along the shoreline, he struck out for open farmland, and once again found himself amongst neatly-hedged fields with parallel furrows and ridges, trees dotting the countryside and drainage ditches cutting every edge.
Once more he had near horizons, of squared hawthorn, blackthorn and hazel, their crests crowned by heathers which prevented the growing wood from springing upright. Under these natural barriers grew lush grasses and herbaceous plants – rye grass and red campion – and the climbing briars and brambles, and lolling ferns like hartstongue. In amongst these were wrens and chaffinches, flitting from dog rose to dog rose, hiding amongst the garlic mustard plants. This was more to his liking than the coastal strip.
Frost Dancers: A Story of Hares Page 9