The hares themselves paid little attention to this human activity, simply noting the presence of these people, and wondering why they met in the darkness. It was not usual, for humans to meet in the corner of a meadow in the dead of night. However, the hares had more to worry about than the frivolous doings of two unknown people: they were more concerned with surviving each dusk and dawn.
One night, not long after Skelter had joined the colony, someone came and hid near the five-barred gate. He was carrying a shotgun, the smell of which brought him to the hares’ attention, though they were not unduly alarmed. The reason for their unconcern was because they recognised the human as the tractor-man, who sat in their symbol for happiness, while it chugged around the fields. Tractor-men always carry shotguns, though they use them infrequently on hares, taking the odd pot shot at a pheasant or partridge, and oftener still, at rabbits.
Rabbits will frequently sit still to be shot, being most obliging in that respect. Hares are harder to hit, since they almost always run, fast. Since the tractor man was usually doing something else when they broke, and had to pick up the gun, aim and shoot, before the hare was out of range, it was often a worthless effort. The effective range of a twelve-bore shotgun is not great and a zig-zagging prey did not help him much, in his efforts to hit his quarry.
To cap it all, rabbits, partridges and pheasants made better eating than tough stringy hares, who needed hanging for a few days. They were barely worth the trouble of killing, except perhaps on an organised drive and shoot.
All in all, the hares were not too worried about tractor-men carrying shotguns, especially at night.
The tractor-man crouched down beside the hedge, peering through the beautiful five-barred gate, the hare symbol for longevity, until the couple appeared in the corner of the field. There was much urgent buzzing at first, more intense than usual, and they did not touch lips for a long time. The woman began crying, softly, quite early, but this night the two people did not part as they usually did at this point, but hugged each other really hard.
Before they were able to go their separate ways, the tractor-man stepped out from behind the hedge and opened the five-barred gate. He strode across Poggrin Meadow and confronted the two entwined people, who parted as suddenly as if triggered by steel springs. There followed much barking, mostly between the tractor-man and the woman. The other man stood stock still, the shotgun pointing at his belly, and the hares wondered what all the fuss was about.
Finally, the woman began screaming, striking the tractor-man about the head with her fist.
The hares saw the flash from the end of the barrels, and thunder hollowed out a hole in the night. The other man was thrown backwards by the force of the blast into some blackberry bushes, and lay hidden from the sight of the hares. The hares themselves dashed from their forms, tore around in circles, then back down into their forms again, hearts beating wildly.
Acrid smells began to drift over the fields. The screaming had stopped as suddenly as it began. The woman let out a strange whining, and began running across Poggrin Meadow, towards the five-barred gate, while the tractor-man fumbled with his shotgun.
She ran through the colony of hares, not noticing any of them, and tripped in one of Skelter’s newly-dug forms. Her longheeled shoe went flying and struck the white totem of the hare colony, bouncing out into Booker’s Field. The woman scrambled to her feet, and started to run again, sobbing hysterically, but by this time the tractor-man had reached the five-barred gate and he aimed his shotgun and blasted another loud explosion into the moonlit air.
The noise made several hares bolt into the blackness, while others sat pop-eyed in their forms, frozen with fear.
The woman lay sprawled at the foot of the totem tree, her skirt around her head, her white legs visible to the night. A sweet odour of human blood filled the nostrils of the remaining hares, and they crouched deep in their forms, wishing they could worm down into the earth and stay there until this human activity was all over.
They could hear the tractor-man breathing heavily, and smell his sweat, and his fear. When he had been crouching by the gate, they had sensed nothing from him but a faint aroma of anger, but now that was gone. There was stark terror in his scent, and he seemed to be quite incapable of moving for a long while. Then he began sobbing, fell down beside the woman’s corpse and clutched handfuls of her clothes, rubbing them in his face. He cradled her head for a while in his arms, but dropped it when blood smeared his cheek.
After a while he left the body to look for his gun, and finding it, he ran off into the darkness.
Once the tractor-man had gone the hares ventured out and those who had run away, came back again. They sniffed around the woman, twitching their noses at the strange scent of flowers combined with the smell of blood. A weasel came to the corpse and scattered the hares, who gave the slim little killer a wide berth. When she had gone the hares went back to their forms and settled down to talk about the incident.
‘What was that all about?’ said Speedwell.
‘I’ve never seen human beings shoot each other before,’ remarked sunhare, ‘though I’ve heard it happens. It’s not usual. Do you think he’ll come and hang the bodies on the gibbet now?’
Skelter simply listened. He had nothing to add to what was being said and he was still a little shocked by the explosions, his ears ringing. The field hares were more used to the sound of the shotguns than he was. The farm workers were always taking pot shots at rooks, crows, pigeons and the rest of the wildlife that inhabited the farmlands. It was part of the scene. In the mountains, the shooters were few and far between.
Moonhare, lying on the roof of her form, said in a satisfied voice, ‘Mating.’
‘What?’ said Reacher, probably wondering whether he was being asked to do something.
Followme lifted her head off her paws. ‘Mating. That’s what it was all about. Humans don’t box or dance for their females, they fight over them with guns. The tractor-man and the other-man both wanted to mate with the female, so there was a fight.’
Longrunner said, ‘Come on, moonhare, you’re guessing. It doesn’t make sense. I mean, if they went round killing each other in the mating season, there’d be dead people all over the place. This is the first time I’ve seen it happen.’
‘All I’m saying is, that’s what it looked like to me.’ She sounded less sure of herself now that these points had been made to her.
Bittersweetinspring said, ‘I must admit, it looked like some kind of ritual, they were all acting so … I don’t know, unnatural. But to think they do it every human mating season – why, I don’t even know when that is?’
‘In the spring, like everyone else’s of course,’ snorted Followme.
‘Not necessarily,’ sniffed Bittersweetinspring, ‘the foxes do it at other times.’
‘The foxes,’ growled the moonhare, ‘may their souls grow damp and give them arthritic joints, are not the most natural creatures in the world.’
‘Neither are humans,’ retorted Bittersweetinspring, which everyone else had to agree with, by grunting softly, leaving Followme no choice but to cease arguing.
‘Well, they weren’t poachers, that’s for sure,’ said Reacher, ‘because they didn’t have guns and they weren’t carrying traps or snares.’
‘They might have been trespassers,’ remarked Speedwell.
‘The tractor-man doesn’t shoot trespassers,’ said Reacher, ‘he only points the gun at them and takes them away.’
‘That’s true,’ said Headinthemist.
Many other hares chorused their agreement.
So, they were at a loss as to what really caused the incident, and certainly Skelter had no idea. All he knew was that he didn’t like it. When something unusual happened with humans, it almost always meant that more human activity would occur as a result.
Despite the fact that he took animal lives occasionally with his shotgun, the wildlife had a respect for the tractor-man. He was one of them, out in all c
limes, whether fine or inclement. His face was chiselled rock, his features weathered wood. In his eyes were the wind and water, the skies of the flatlands. He was solid, firm, predictable most of the time, the shooting of the two people being an exception.
The tractor-man smoked a dried herb in a stubby pipe that the animals and birds had got used to and associated only with him. It was a herbal burning aroma, similar to the smell of smouldering hickory chips used to smoke fish from the river, that was now comfortable in their nostrils.
There was no real malice in the tractor-man. If he caught you eating his crops he would shoot you, but not in any evident delight or bloodlust. He would shoot you because he thought it was the right thing to do to creatures who ate the produce of his hands. The tractor-man had planted the crops and he believed they were his once they had ripened. The wildlife understood the inevitability of this, if not the reasons behind it.
Sometimes, the tractor-man would feed the birds, while he ate his sandwiches under the shade of some oak tree, throwing crusts even to his hated enemies the seagulls and crows.
On most days, the tractor-man was where his God intended him to be, behind the wheel of his vehicle. He would sit for hours in the hare symbol for happiness, chugging up and down the fields, drawing plough or harrow, making those nice straight lines in the earth that hares so much admired. His leathery skin would darken under the summer sun, and the wrinkles and creases become more pronounced, and the hair exposed around his cap would become strawlike and acceptable. In the winter his chapped hands would be used to hammer posts into the ground, his great booted feet would kick at stones that had invaded his fields and threatened his honed ploughshares.
Later on that night, the tractor-man returned.
He brought with him a spade, and he began digging in the corner of the field, where the corn had missed being planted. It took him a long time and the hares could smell his sweat and hear him grunting, as the metal blade clinked on flints, and the scent of freshly turned soil drifted over the corn. When he had dug a huge hole, the tractor-man went into the Poggrin Meadow and took the dead man’s body by the feet, dragging it back to the hole with its head bumping over the uneven ground.
When that was done, the tractor-man walked over to the female’s corpse, and stared down at her face for a long while. He began crying, which shocked some of the hares, for they had never before this night seen a tractor-man in tears, and here was one doing it twice. Finally, he lifted her up tenderly in his arms, with her hair hanging long from her pale head, and carried her to the hole.
It seemed he was going to put her directly on top of the dead man, but he paused, then laid her down for a few minutes while he covered the other body with a layer of soil. Then he placed her inside and, wearily it seemed, shovelled earth into the hole. When it was almost done, he suddenly stopped, and stared at the woman’s feet.
Then he looked around him, his eyes peering intently in the moonlight, looking bright and feverish. First he ran into Poggrin Meadow, and began searching the grasses around the gibbet. Then he retraced his steps to Booker’s Field and looked all around the area where the totem stood. Light began to creep into the sky, and the tractor-man glanced at his wrist and hurried back to the hole, filled it up to the brim, patted it down, then threw stones and twigs on it until it looked reasonably undisturbed. It was beginning to drizzle.
There was some soil left over after the hole was full. The tractor man got rid of this by taking spadefuls and casting it wide, so that it showered into the ditches and became part of the landscape. The rain came down more heavily now and the ground was becoming muddy.
When he had done, the water was running from his hair down into his collar. His face looked drawn and grey and his eyes were now dull. The tractor-man then stared around the dawn fields, and was still lost in some kind of trance when the flogre came sweeping silently across the land. The big creature wheeled away on seeing the man and headed in another direction, swiftly but seemingly without perturbation.
Finally, the tractor-man left, trudging through the dense rain, towards the farmhouses.
The hares were glad to see him go. They had not felt comfortable with the night’s proceedings, and his continued presence amongst them had been a trial. They hoped when he came back he would do so driving the tractor, which was where they expected him to be. Not walking around in the middle of the night, shooting people, then burying them in the corner of Booker’s Field.
Once the day was on them, they ventured out of their forms and began looking for food. One of the leverets found the woman’s shoe in the long grass at the base of the totem and started to use it in play, but the adults told her to leave it alone.
The shoe remained where it was, deep in the secret grasses.
Headinthemist read the signs from the wych elms twigs: the portents, she told everyone, were good, even though a leveret had mistakenly bitten the head off a harebell in the darkness the night before. This particular individual was waiting for the two souls to begin battling for his body, as everyone said they would, and his face was a picture of misery. There was a small pain in his gut for a whole day, but whether that was because he overate on a squirrel’s cache of old acorns he had stumbled across, or because his soul was losing the fight, he was never quite sure. One thing though, he would never eat another flower in the darkness without smelling it first.
Chapter Nineteen
For two or three days after the human killings, there were men hallooing about the countryside, their voices bearing the foghorn tones of bitterns. The tractor-man was one of them, and his call sounded the most plaintive of all. Gradually, this unusual activity ceased and the hares were able to get some sleep during the day. The tractor-man returned to work as usual, driving the hare symbol for happiness.
Fleetofoot thought to help the tractor-man, and took the high-heeled shoe from the tall grasses, carried it in his mouth to the gibbet, and hooked it over the bottom strand of wire. The shoe was made of hide, after all, like the other tenants of the gibbet. It had been part of the woman, just as the strip of grey in the top right corner had been part of a water rat. It was the woman’s husk, it had her smell, it was right that it should be amongst the other emblems on the tractor-man’s homage to death. Because it hung downwards, by its heel, it gathered rainwater in the toe, from which drank a variety of small thirsty birds on their way from here to there, and back again.
There it hung in its colourful glory, between the carcass of a mole and a long streak of ginger hide which had once been a stoat. There it would weather and rot like the rest of the victims of the tractor-man’s shotgun.
Except that when the tractor-man next went to the gibbet, with a rook he had blown out of its high nest, he dropped the dead bird with a startled cry and looked around him fearfully. The shoe-trophy was snatched from the gibbet and hastily thrown on a bonfire which was burning in the next field. For weeks afterwards, the tractor-man peered at the nearby thicket, as if he believed someone were hiding there, watching him …
* * *
Summer came, but by that time the hares had dispersed to their individual territories. These areas had no strict boundaries, were not defended in any way, and heavily overlapped in places. Visits between hares were not uncommon, and very few would argue if one hare grazed on another’s land. This was the way it had always been done, and this was the way it remained.
When the hare colony began to break up, Skelter felt a flutter of panic. What would he do? No doubt moonhare would assign a piece of land to him, once he asked her to, but he had never lived completely alone before. The thought terrified him.
Finally, Skelter expressed his fears to moonhare.
‘What am I supposed to do about it?’ snapped Followme. ‘Keep the colony together just because you’re frightened of your own shadow?’
‘Can’t you suggest something?’ he asked. ‘Anything? I did help you protect yourselves against the flogre.’
The moonhare stood up on her hind leg
s and with her long ears straight up in the air she looked down her nose at Skelter from a great height.
‘Oh, so you want a lifetime’s gratitude and special favours, just for giving us a bit of information that we might have found out from anyone?’
‘No, I just – I don’t know …’
Followme was not the most understanding moonhare of all time, and had a tendency to eschew gratitude, believing it to be a sign of weakness in a great leader. Reacher was no better, being weak-willed and lazy, and he did nothing to moderate the moonhare’s judgement in such things. Whatever she did was fine by him, so long as he need not be bothered with it.
However, a yearling jill called Eyebright came forward, and said that she would be willing to share her territory with Skelter if he so wished.
‘There’s plenty of room down by the meadow, and I’m sure we wouldn’t get in each other’s way,’ she said. ‘I think Skelter would like it, because the ground has a slight slope to it, as it falls down to the river. It’s good bottomland, and though the soil’s not the podzol you find fir trees and bracken growing in, nor heavy peat that mountain hares might be used to, neither is it that thin chalky rendzina like the soil on the mainland. It’s a good rich loam.’
Skelter, who actually didn’t care what kind of earth it was, was nevertheless impressed by her knowledge. Eyebright was obviously one of those hares who took great care in selecting her living area and knew what to look for when she did so. When he asked her about it, she told him that she had once had a long conversation with a gregarious mole, whose livelihood depended on a deep knowledge of these things.
Eyebright was a reserved and shy young jill, though not at all dewy, who had two large fields the northern border of which was the river. Mustard was grown in one of the fields and the other was Whinsled Lea, a meadowland of old grass covered with a multitude of wild flowers and herbs. A ditch ran between the two fields, and a hedge of blackthorn. There were seven trees along the ditch: a broad oak, a horse chestnut visited in the early autumn by hordes of human young, four field elms and an elderberry, all spread widely apart.
Frost Dancers: A Story of Hares Page 16