Skelter was still immensely impressed. ‘I’m glad you’re not going to die,’ he said, ‘because we can be friends now. Whatever you like to say, you saved my life. Unfortunately mountain hares are not immune to snake’s venom, and if that viper had struck just once, I would have been a goner. That’s what we call them by the way – vipers.’
‘I know that,’ sniffed Jittie. ‘Well, I’m glad you’ve come out of the sulks, because they were doing you no good whatsoever. I’m happy to tell you I’ve had a word with a jill called Speedwell, who lives about two or three fields away, and I’ve told her you’re here. She’s a bit unreliable, hares – that is, local hares – always are, but at least she’ll spread the word and they’ll know you’re around.’
It is not often in the animal world that two creatures from different species become firm friends. There are usually language difficulties, cultural problems and natural preferences and dislikes to overcome, and these are usually enough to put off any developing relationship. Most animals would shrug their shoulders and say, ‘Why bother?’
In this case however, the hare and the hedgehog had seen something deeper and more interesting in each other, than is normally evident between species. For her part, Jittie admired the fortitude and strength of spirit showed by the hare, who had been torn from his homeland, transported to a foreign land where he was pursued by dogs, then left to wander without family or friend to whom he could turn in times of stress. Yet still he had maintained his will to survive. She had a profound respect for such mettle.
On his part, Skelter had seen a smaller creature than himself take on a formidable opponent, and come through victorious. She had gone into battle on his behalf, even though she maintained she had had old scores to settle, and his gratitude was substantial. He saw in the little hedgehog a force to be reckoned with, and was glad that foxes did not have the spirit of hedgehogs within them, or the red devils would be invincible.
Thus began a firm friendship, which was to last until one of them left for the Otherworld of hares or hedgehogs.
That evening the pair of them lay in their individual homes, the hedgehog on her nest and the hare in his form, and were able to converse without raising their voices too much. Skelter told Jittie about famous hare races that had been run and Jittie talked about foxes that had been fooled, and dogs that had been duped.
‘Hedgehogs have no glorious history to tell,’ she said, ‘we’ve just been here, for a long time. We last. There are all sorts of stories about us and humans, but we have none about hedgehogs and hedgehogs. I don’t know why that should be, but it is. Now you hares, you have all sorts of tales to tell, only a fraction of which are true.’
‘Truth isn’t the object, in our stories,’ explained Skelter. ‘You have to look for other things, like symbols and images, and morals, stuff like that. The tales are there to enhance the real world, to mirror certain fundamental truths, though the stories themselves are made up.’
Jittie shrugged.
‘Let’s hear one then. I can see you’re dying to tell me something.’
‘Right, yes well, this was told to me by our storyteller, up in the highlands …’
‘Get on with it.’
‘It’s about a mountain hare on the sun,’ said Skelter, ‘and another on the moon. It’s a very strange tale: a love story with a sad ending. Way back in the misty past, when hares were gods, there was a jack and a jill who were very attracted to each other. The jack’s name was Thunderfeet and the jill was called Lightninglegs. They were from different clans, but that was not the barrier to their union, for hares often mate between clans.
‘No, what stopped them from getting together were the oaths they had made before they had met each other. Thunderfeet claimed he was the fastest hare that had ever lived, and that no other hare could beat him on the flat or over the glens, and he would only mate with the jill who could best him in a race. Unfortunately, this was the very same vow that Lightninglegs made in relation to herself: she promised the jacks who boxed for her favours that she would only mate with the male hare that could outrun her. So proud were these two hares, that they were willing to live a life of abstinence rather than mate with a hare of inferior ability.
“I want my leverets to be the fastest creatures on four feet,” proclaimed Lightninglegs.
‘Thunderfeet announced that his leverets, “… will outrun the deer, the greyhound, the fleetest horse!”
‘One fine spring day, Lightninglegs was feeding on the heather, when she saw a hare streaking through the glen, and she knew she had found a potential mate. She raced at right angles to his run, and flashed across Thunderfeet’s nose, making him skid to a halt and stare after her disappearing tail. That’s the jill for me, thought the jack.’
Jittie interrupted the monologue with an impatient, ‘But why didn’t they agree between themselves, without telling any other soul, that one of them would win, and one lose?’
‘Because both had sworn to mate only with the hare that could run faster. If Thunderfeet won, then Lightninglegs would have gone to him, but he could not have accepted her, because he had pledged his form to the hare that was faster than himself – and vice versa. Their own earlier declarations were the unsurmountable blocks to what would have been an ideal union, between the two fastest hares on the face of the earth. Their leverets would have been magnificent runners, and perhaps the fathers and mothers of a new superspecies of hare.
‘Even a draw was no good – they had both said that their potential mate had to win. They were too afraid to race each other, because whatever the outcome, there could be no happy ending to such a contest.
‘The pair of thwarted lovers spent a painful spring, watching each other from a distance, feeding from the grasses on either side of a burn, a desperate yearning in their breasts. Thunderfeet was so on fire within, he thought he would burst into flame, and Lightinglegs had a hunger inside that could never be satisfied by heather and sedge. The fact that they were each unobtainable fuelled their desire until they were both so miserable without each other they thought they would die.
‘Finally, winter came around, and they met by chance one day in the snows by a frozen loch.
‘“This is terrible,” said Thunderfeet, “I can’t go to sleep without seeing your eyes.”
‘“And I,” replied Lightninglegs, “see your shape in every cloud, in every shadow.”
‘They agreed then, that something had to be done, and they decided to visit a wise old hare called Thinker, who lived with the dotterels high up on the mountainside.
‘Together they climbed higher than most hares would ever go, to see the eremite whose form never completely thawed even in the summer, and found him counting snowflakes as they fell, to find how many it took to fill a square harelength. They told him their problem and asked him if he had any solution he could offer them.
‘“Why of course,” Thinker replied, irritated at having been interrupted in his important task. “It’s easy to see that your skills are purely physical – you haven’t enough brains between you to fill a paw-print. What you have to do is run two races, naturally – one of you wins the first, and the other, the second race. That way you will have both outrun the other, and can mate in the knowledge that you have both fulfilled your vows. Now leave me in peace, I was just up to one million and seven, and I’ve got to start again …”
‘So the two hares went away joyful, and arranged the first of their two races. It was to be up a high mountain, starting at the foot, and finishing on the peak. Both Thunderfeet and Lightninglegs were very excited and changed their minds half-a-dozen times about who was to win the first race, and who the second.
‘The race was started by a tortoise, who happened to be passing at the time. This slow reptile had no other part in the race, and subsequent retellings of this tale by creatures other than hares have become a little confused, giving the tortoise an active role in the running. It is of course absurd to imagine a tortoise racing, and winning, agains
t a hare …’
‘That’s the way I heard it,’ said Jittie, quietly.
‘Well, it’s totally untrue,’ Skelter cried, ‘because, as I say, the tortoise was simply asked to start them. That other story was put about by some rabbit I expect, envious of the running abilities of hares. It’s complete fabrication. It’s slanderous, it’s propaganda, it’s …’
‘All right, all right,’ grumbled Jittie, ‘get on with the tale.’
‘Right then, the tortoise was supposed to start the race. This it did, and the hares went racing off, up the steep incline, towards the summit of the mountain. Unfortunately, Thinker was right about these two particular hares, they did not have enough brains between them to fill a paw-print.
‘They ran faster than the wind, both of them, and were neck-and-neck all the way up. When they neared the peak of the mountain, they both began to accelerate, because, to tell the truth, they had changed their minds about who was supposed to win the first race so many times, that Thunderfeet thought it was him who was supposed to be in front, and Lightninglegs believed she was expected to reach the top first.
‘The closer they came to the peak, the more desperate each of them was to get ahead, failing to understand why the other one would not fall back. When they finally reached the summit, they were still neck-and-neck, but they were going so fast now that their shapes were a blur to the onlookers, and sadly they could not stop. They both shot off the top of the curved mountain peak, and out into space, one heading towards the sun, the other shooting towards the moon.
‘And this is where they are today. Lightninglegs sits on the surface dust of the moon, mourning her lover, who has been parted from her forever. Thunderfeet runs around the sun, bemoaning his fate, his heart still full to overflowing. Sometimes, on a clear summer evening, they catch a quick glimpse of each other in passing, as the sun goes down, and the moon rises, and their ears prick up and their feet drum forlorn messages of love to one another.’
Skelter could hear no sound from Jittie’s hole.
‘What do you think of that then?’ he asked.
Still no answer.
Skelter thought that perhaps Jittie was so overcome by the tragedy he had just related, that the hedgehog could not speak. Perhaps Jittie was choked with emotion at the thought of the two wonderful hares being forever doomed to remain on two separate worlds? It was after all a very sad story, and no doubt Skelter should have warned his new friend that the tale had an unhappy ending. He decided to go and comfort her.
He left his form and crept over to the burrow where her nest was situated.
‘It’s all right,’ Skelter said softly, ‘they may get back together some day …’
He waited for a response, and when he listened hard, he finally understood why she had not answered before.
From the depths of the rabbit hole there came the sounds of gentle snoring.
Chapter Fourteen
It was nearing dusk, and fantastical shapes began to form from ordinary objects. Winged shadows with no substantial form were gliding over the land. The spirits of the trees emerged from their hosts and wove new contours into the trunks and branches. Out of the earth came wraiths in their thousands, to chase away the last of the light.
Some twenty or so hares gathered in Booker’s Field and awaited the twilight with a spiralling fear in their breasts. They watched the light creeping away, sliding into the ditches, up into the leafy regions of the trees, down behind the hedgerows. From out of the secret cracks in the earth the darkness was seeping, soon to flood the land and sky. The hares wished the light would go with a snick and the darkness come with a snack, for it was only during the gloaming that the flogre ventured out from his foul nest to prey upon the beasts of the field.
It was Highstepper who had given the monster its name: a welding of the words flying ogre. The other hares had gradually accepted this term for the giant creature that had been terrorising them since the new year stepped onto the flatlands, and now it had spread even beyond the colony, to rabbit warren and rookery. The crested grebes, the shelducks, shovellers and smews, the scaups and scoters, the widgeons, woodcocks and phalaropes, far and wide, had adopted the nickname of the flogre for this demon that had invaded their skies.
The hares were still together as a group, the mating season being not quite over, though soon they would disperse to their traditional fields to live their solitary late-summer, autumn and early-winter lives. It would be better then, and worse. Better because they would be scattered over a larger area and the flogre would need to search them out, and worse because they wouldn’t have the colony to comfort them. A few of them, those who hated to be alone, would remain in pairs, but most of them would return to their chosen hermitage of six or seven hectares without a partner.
Dusk and dawn were dreaded by the hares. Other creatures too, were afraid, but many had hiding places. The rabbits, for the most part, remained in their warrens. The weasels and stoats found holes in the ditches. The rooks took to their rookery high in the elms, and the crow’s nest was so secret only she knew where to find it. Only the hares had no hiding place, for they are creatures of the open, their homes an exposed shallow scraping of the surface soil. They did not know how to hide from creatures of the sky, for they had never been taught. They were entirely vulnerable to the flogre and were ever at his mercy – and since he knew no mercy, no compassion, no feelings of remorse, they were doomed to extinction.
Before the monster came, there was never a need to worry about what was going on overhead. There had always been hawks and falcons of course, but they never took a fully-grown jack or jill, and the leverets could be protected by the bodies of the adults.
Now it was different. There was a giant in the land: a giant with wings. Seven hares and several leverets had been taken by the monster, who required a sacrifice every dusk and dawn, though not always from the hares. Sometimes the flogre did not come, having found his victim before reaching the hares, but they would not know this until the darkness fell deep and strong. So they would lie in their forms and tremble, waiting for the mottled shape to swing silently out of the dark-grey evening, and snatch one of them away to oblivion.
‘I don’t mind dying,’ said Longrunner, ‘in the normal way, but this is like an execution. Every evening and every morning, we have to wait for the flogre to take his sacrifice, so that the rest of us can go on living out a normal life.’
Speedwell said, ‘I know what you mean. Stoats and foxes are part of life’s normal hazards, but this monster is too greedy. We shall be wiped out before the winter comes around again. All those who can get away, have gone – like the ducks and large waders. That narrows down the flogre’s larder.’
The gloom settled around them, and they could see each others’ eyes in the murk: frightened eyes that stared out into the gloaming.
Booker’s field had a covering of shoots which rippled gently in the breeze like the surface of a lake, the green momentarily turning to silver as a flush of blades revealed their lighter sides. The humped shapes of the hares, visible above the short corn, showed dark and solid against this gentle landscape.
In the centre of Booker’s Field was the stark stump of an ancient tree, its bark gone, the wood beneath as hard as stone, bleached white and toughened by the sun and rain. It stood about the height of a tall man, and one single bone-white bough spoiled its symmetry, projecting from the broken bole like an arm petrified in the act of waving to the scarecrow three fields away. No one knew what kind of tree it had been when it was alive, if indeed it had ever been such, for crows maintained it was the ossified soul of a man struck by lightning on his way to church.
Around this alabaster figure were the randomly-scattered forms of the hares. The dead tree was the colony’s totem, meant to ward off evil, though in truth it acted more like a beacon guiding any flying predator to the right place in the right field. The farmer had given up trying to remove the stump, and the furrows from his plough rippled around its roots l
ike the flow of fast water round a river rock. On hot summer days, the hares used its trunk to cool their coats, and on cold autumn evenings it retained the heat and was used to drive away bodily chills. The stump was a sacred object, but hare reverence did not extend to holding things so holy that you couldn’t use them to warm your feet.
Highstepper said, ‘I still say we should put a leveret out, where the flogre can see it, and let him take that. The young don’t care about death like we do. They haven’t learned how horrible it is. This is what should happen when monsters threaten a community – you offer sacrifices.’
The leverets snuggled closer to their mothers on hearing these words, the horror rushing to their brains and planting future nightmares there as thick as dry-tongued thistles.
Followme, the moonhare, leader of the colony, snorted her contempt.
‘It’s easy to see you’re not a mother, you oaf. The young might not care so much about dying themselves, but we care about them. A mother would rather die herself than sacrifice her young.’
‘Well, there’s another good idea,’ muttered Highstepper under his breath.
Reacher, the sunhare and Followme’s mate, said in gruff undertones, ‘I heard that, and if you don’t keep your barbaric thoughts to yourself, one of us will come over there and box your face for you – and I don’t mean with forepaws.’
‘Well I’m scared,’ said Highstepper.
‘We’re all scared,’ replied the sunhare, ‘but we’re not going to start to sacrifice each other just so the selfish ones can stay alive. This is a trial in our history and we must see it through together. I’ve been helping Headinthemist to collect more lucky charms lately and place them around the field. They should help ward off the monster.’
Frost Dancers: A Story of Hares Page 12