‘Well, I don’t care,’ said Skelter, ‘I’ll just stay here with you.’
Jittie went silent for a while.
Finally, she spoke again.
‘Ahem – listen my fine hare friend, I’m not the world’s most sociable creature. I don’t want to sound like those hares back in Booker’s Field, but I prefer my own company most of the time. You catch me in a particularly good frame of mind at the moment, but wait until autumn. I become bad-tempered and irritable. You won’t want to know me. Then, when the winter comes around, I go to sleep.’
Skelter thought about this.
‘Go to sleep? What do you mean?’
‘I mean I go to sleep – for the whole winter.’
‘You’re making fun of me aren’t you? How can you go to sleep for the winter? You’ve got to eat, haven’t you? You mean you sleep a lot …’
‘No,’ snapped Jittie, sounding annoyed with him, ‘I mean I go to sleep for the whole winter. I just find a warm nest of leaves and I don’t need to eat when I’m in hibernation – my body slows almost to a stop.’
‘Isn’t that dangerous? I mean, what if your heart doesn’t work?’
Jittie nodded.
‘Of course it’s dangerous, but that’s the way hedgehogs do it. Anyway, if you die, you die. At least if it’s during sleep you just drift away. What’s to fear about death? Either there’s something that comes after, which would be nice, or there’s nothing, in which case I won’t know about it. Nothing to worry about in either case. Better to die in your sleep than be strangled by a snare, or have your hindquarters blown off by a human with a gun, dying slowly in great pain. Or being caught and eaten by a fox. That’s what’s likely to happen to you. It’s life that’s to be feared, not death. Maybe death is wonderful?’
‘Well, I realise all that, but I’m still scared of dying.’
‘That’s just a trick of life, to keep you trapped here. Life wants to keep you in its power for as long as possible – it hates to let anyone escape its clutches. So while it’s in control, it gives you frightening thoughts about death. Life tells you that death is terrible, that you’re much better where you are, when that’s not necessarily the case. We struggle from one day to the next, avoiding something that we know absolutely nothing about. Life is a tyrant, my friend, and probably the real enemy. Death may be a field of carrots that goes on forever, into infinity, where foxes are toothless and hawks have had their claws and beaks clipped.’
‘So, you don’t want me to stay here with you?’ said Skelter. ‘You’d rather I went and looked for another hare colony?’
Jittie said, ‘Oh, I don’t mind for now, but I’m just warning you I get huffy and moody, quite often, and I shan’t be here all the while. Look, let’s face it Skelter, this is not a normal situation – a hare and a hedgehog? The other creatures will laugh at us and call us names. Not that I care about that, but you might. You’re a sensitive animal. You like to be liked. I couldn’t care less, I’ve got my fleas for company, but you …?’
So Skelter was left wondering what to do, whether to move on or stay and take the consequences. Neither alternative really appealed to him. He decided to sleep on it. Sometimes things looked a whole lot different the next day. Sometimes a new day brought in things the old one wouldn’t have sniffed at.
And this is exactly what happened.
The following morning brought about a whole new state of affairs, a complete reversal in fact. Halfway through the morning, Skelter was woken by Jittie.
‘There’s someone to see you.’
Skelter hopped outside his form, to find Reacher waiting to speak to him.
‘Yes?’ asked Skelter stiffly, ‘what is it?’
Reacher gave a long sigh, then said, ‘I’ve come to ask if you’ll return with me to Booker’s Field.’
‘Why, so you can kick me out again?’
‘No, we’re sorry for the way we treated you. That wasn’t right. We’ve decided to take you back in again.’
‘Maybe I don’t want to come now.’
Reacher looked pained.
‘Well, we would like you to come.’
Jittie had been watching this exchange with interest and finally she butted in.
‘Just a minute Reacher,’ she said. ‘You’re not telling the whole truth are you?’
‘What are you?’ snapped the sunhare. ‘A witch? You can read minds now?’
Jittie snarled. ‘Don’t take that tone with me, I’m not one of your hares. I’ll bite your nose for you and put a hex on your back legs. Now you listen to me: you’ve got some ulterior motive for asking Skelter to join you. I can see no other reason why you would be back here so soon, practically begging him to rejoin the colony. It’s as plain as that white piece of fluff you call a tail. Now, out with it, what’s going on?’
Reacher looked a bit taken aback, then shuffled around in the dust. It was obvious to Skelter that Jittie was right, that there was a reason behind all this apart from any desire to put right a poor show of hospitality.
‘Well?’ he asked Reacher, ‘what is it?’
Reacher looked trapped and then sighed.
‘Fact is,’ he said, ‘we would like you to, ahem, to come and teach us, ahem, to come and teach us how to dig one of those forms you mountain hares use. If you wouldn’t mind.’
‘What?’ cried Jittie. ‘You send him packing because he digs a hole to sleep in, then you come chasing after him to show you how to do it? Doesn’t make sense.’
‘Nothing makes sense with the flogre around,’ replied Reacher. ‘That creature has got us all spinning where we stand. Anything that will help in outsmarting that monster is welcome, whether it’s rabbity or not.’
Skelter saw a gleam appear in the spiny creature’s eyes.
‘Ah, so that’s it?’ she said.
‘What? What’s it?’ asked Skelter.
Jittie shuffled forward to come nose to nose with Reacher.
‘Tell him what happened at dawn this morning. The flogre came, didn’t it? And, what, one of you escaped it by using Skelter’s abandoned form?’
Reacher nodded, almost shamefacedly. ‘That’s about it. It was coming on dawn, the darkness beginning to slip away, when the flogre came. We didn’t hear it of course, but Headinthemist caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye, and she shrieked and jumped forward. She happened to land near your form, Skelter, and in her fright leapt into it. The flogre must have missed her by a fraction.’
‘So no one was taken?’ asked Jittie.
‘Oh, yes, that monster came back a short while later and took one of the leverets, but don’t you see, this is a major event. Never before has a hare survived an attack by the flogre. That’s cause for great celebration. What was more, Headinthemist said she only had to poke her head out of the front of the short tunnel you made, and she could see right across the field. It’s perfect – a little upside-down arch in the earth, just big enough to protect a hare’s back, but open at both ends so that we don’t panic. We are really sorry for our initial reaction, Skelter. Moonhare sent me to get you, and ask you to come back and help us each dig one mountain hare form, so that we can protect ourselves against this terrible persecution. What do you say? I won’t blame you if you refuse – we treated you badly. But we need you, Skelter, to save us from extinction.’
Jittie interrupted. ‘Well, I don’t know, Reacher, the mountain hare and I were getting on very well together. We were just discussing how nice it would be if we were to stay near each other and look after each other’s interests, weren’t we, Skelter?’
‘Were we?’ said Skelter, feeling confused. Surely Jittie had just been telling him the reverse of that? Then he saw the hedgehog glaring at him from behind Reacher’s shoulder, and he suddenly realised what Jittie was doing.
‘Oh, yes, us you mean? That’s right. I mean, we were getting on so well together – you said that, didn’t you, Jittie. I don’t know if I should just leave Jittie here now, after all our pro
mises.’
Reacher looked astounded. ‘You’d rather stay with a hedgehog than live with your own kind?’
‘What’s wrong with hedgehogs?’ snapped Jittie.
‘Well, nothing, but I mean, he’s a hare.’
Skelter said, ‘I’d rather stay with someone who wants me around than a bunch of hares that dislike my company.’
‘Look,’ said Reacher, ‘I guarantee you’ll be welcome. You have my word on that. And I will personally look to your welfare and make sure you’re treated with the utmost respect. We need you, Skelter, and I am willing to put my own reputation on the line to assure you of a permanent home. If you get asked to leave again, I’ll go with you. How’s that?’
Jittie nodded at Skelter. Their little game had worked and he now felt he had all the guarantees he was going to get. Skelter turned to Jittie and said, ‘Well, it sounds as if they really do mean to let me stay this time. Perhaps I’d better go with Reacher, after all?’
‘Perhaps you’d better.’
‘I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Jittie.’
‘I know you do,’ she replied, ‘and so you should.’
Skelter nodded.
Then turning to Reacher, he said, ‘Let’s go. Thanks for the company, Jittie. I’ll be back to see you from time to time.’
‘Look after yourself, hare.’
The two hares then went racing over the fields, through the hedges, over the ditches, until they came to Booker’s Field with its prominent totem. Some of the hares were asleep, but they were woken by Followme, the moonhare.
Fleetofoot cried, ‘Ah, you brought him back!’
‘He came back of his own accord,’ snapped Reacher sharply, ‘because he knew we needed help. I think we owe him an apology.’
Fleetofoot looked as if someone had kicked him in the face. ‘What did I say?’ he whispered to Headinthemist.
Moonhare drew herself up, after catching Reacher’s eye. ‘We’re sorry for the way we treated you,’ she said to Skelter. ‘Our hospitality is appalling. It comes of a fearful time, when we distrust everything and everyone. Please find it in yourself to forgive us.’
It was a pretty speech and Skelter realised the moonhare had had to swallow a lot of pride to get it out. ‘Don’t mention it,’ replied Skelter, ‘I understand. These are difficult times. Now, let’s set about digging a few mountain hare forms. These are not rabbit burrows, you understand, they’re directly from our own culture. If anything, rabbits probably copied us, because we were here first. As you can see from the one I’ve already done, it’s just large enough for a body length, with the tail just touching the air at the back, and the nose at the opening. Sometimes in the highlands we don’t even dig, we find two rocks close together and build a form between them. It’s simply for defence against eagles – or in your case, against the flogre …’
Thus Skelter was accepted by the colony as an intrepid and daring adventurer come from foreign lands, and his status rose amongst them as they sought his opinion on many aspects of life.
In the days that followed, Skelter came to accept his new life, and found the field hares a constant source of interest. He quickly learned that they were a superstitious lot who put great faith in lucky charms.
Harebells, thought to contain the spirits of dead hares, were never eaten because they were considered to be extremely lucky. And anyway, said Headinthemist, who would want two hare spirits in one body?
The forked twigs of wych elms were used to divine the future, according to the way they had fallen from the tree and the position in which they lay on the ground.
Honey fungus, which glows luminescent in the dark and was once used by humans to light pathways through the woods, was considered a holy plant, and treated with awe and reverence. Hares would gather round honey fungus and mutter orisons consisting mostly of asking for good fortune to come their way.
The religion (if it can be called such) of field hares is entirely selfish, in that they consider it right and proper to pray for good luck to befall them, knowing there is a natural balance in all things, and that if they have a fortunate season, their neighbour may very well have a devastating time of it.
‘Someone’s got to have good luck, so why not me?’
Then there were the four aspects of a good life which were considered to be the most important to field hares: fertility, longevity, health and happiness. There were at one time, Skelter was informed, only three, ‘But three is such an untidy number, don’t you think? So we added a fourth, to make it a nice neat square of a number.’ No one seemed to know which of the four was the last to be included.
These four aspects of a good life were represented by certain symbols. Health and happiness used to be symbolised by the sun and moon, respectively, but that was in the olden times when man had not cultivated the land and everything was unkempt and disorderly. Since then, these two symbols had been changed.
The big barn at Major Farm now represented health. It was solid, hale and hearty, and its roof had never been known to sag, like that of the farmhouse. The farmhouse chimney often emitted dirty smoke, and its weak-eyed windows peered myopically out over the ploughed fields with dull uninterest. The big barn had no windows to weaken its body. Its steel frame was taller than the house, and its shoulders were those of a giant. It did not smoke, was not bulging or dropping in any place on its fine body, and its ruddy form glowed health. In the winter it had a heart of hay, and in the summer it was hollow, but always it stood foursquare and solid on the earth.
The tractor, which purred in contentment most of the time, represented happiness. The tractor, with its companion the tractor man, was never distressed. It went about its daily business, season-in, season-out, with unflinching felicity, purring and chugging. It had the enviable task of drawing straight lines on the fields, which it did with a precision and accuracy that filled others with great bliss. The tractor was the most contented thing on the earth.
Both these objects were red in colour and boxy in shape, having the neat square lines beloved of field hares, to remind them of straight squared hedgerows, sharp-cornered fields and orderly furrows.
Fertility was still symbolised by an ear of corn, which seemed to have no replacement available amongst the manmade objects, but long life had changed from the dishevelled oak tree, to the wonderful and most revered of all manmade things, the five-barred gate. The five-barred gate was considered by the field hares to be the most beautiful artefact in the world. It was a creation of the gods, the ultimate in combining art with science. Hares felt certain that man could not have invented it on his own, because nothing else that they made even came close to its exquisite form. The impeccable, perfect image of the five-barred gate had been given to the humans by a vision sent from hare heaven, originating from the great Kicker himself. Kicker knew that hares could never make things, so he had humans do it for them. The elegant flawless design of the five-barred gate was even worshipped by the humans themselves, who came for the Service of Renewal bearing hammers and nails, paint and oil, and proceeded to revitalise the gate with drumming and other religious rituals. The five-barred gate never died, or rotted away: it was indeed an appropriate symbol for long life.
Chapter Eighteen
In the corner of Poggrin Meadow was a gibbet on which hung the bodies of animals shot by the farm workers. Moles, crows, the occasional fox, weasels and stoats: all these were wired to the gibbet fence to hang in the weather, to rot away and become hard crusty pelts no longer recognisable as the creatures they had once been. There were no hares on the gibbet of course, for the same reason that there were no rabbits, partridges or pheasants, because these were taken to the farmhouse and baked into pies.
The gibbet was an endless source of fascination to the creatures of the wild, who thought the display grotesque but at the same time were strangely attracted to it. Some of them would even go out of their way on a moonlit night to stop by and stare at the lines of corpses waving in the wind, wondering if they cou
ld recognise any of the animals or birds as individuals they knew in life.
The mammals and birds on the gibbet were past caring about anything, having become a flap of hide for the wind to blow back and forth, or a husk of feathers for the maggots to investigate. Their eyes were stolen from them soon after they were strung up, and the empty sockets stared back at curious creatures who paused to inspect the gibbet for old friends.
Although it was the gamekeeper who put the gibbet in place first of all, the tractor-man used it too on certain occasions, though he never matched the keeper’s fervour for death. The tractor-man really only used the gibbet on rare occasions, though he seemed to hate crows and rooks. In winter and autumn, he was especially busy, stringing up the executed, but in spring and summer he was too busy for killing much, which was why the incident surprised the hares so much.
The gibbet’s occupants were seasonal too. In the summer there tended to be more moles than anything else, and in the winter, stoats in their ermine coats. Once, there was a badger, which shocked everyone, because the badger was supposed to be one of the toughest and wiliest creatures of the woodland.
Whatever time of year, and whoever hung upon the wire frame, the other creatures were bewitched by this macabre display of death, and would go out of their way to stop by the gallows and stare for long periods of time.
It was by the gibbet, visible through the gateway from Booker’s Field, that the incident took place.
On moonlit nights during the spring the hares of Booker’s Field had witnessed a regular rendezvous taking place in Poggrin Meadow, under the old oak and close to the gibbet. A man and a woman met there, held each other close, buzzed like insects. The scent of the woman, like the fragrance of wildflowers, would drift over the grasses and into the cornfield where the hares were clustered. The man, tall, and with a deep voice, stroked the woman’s dark hair, and touched her lips with his own, frequently. Sometime later, the woman would cry, and the man would sigh, and then they would part, taking opposite directions across the meadow.
Frost Dancers: A Story of Hares Page 15