‘While you’ve been away,’ said Rushie, ‘I’ve been accused of all sorts of things.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’
From the ditch came a high-pitched echo.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.’
‘Who’s there?’ cried Racer. ‘Show yourself.’
Out of the ditch hopped Creekcrosser, bits of twig and mud stuck to his fur, as if he’d been rolling down drainage channels all morning.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ snapped Racer.
‘The meaning of what?’ yawned Creekcrosser.
‘Why are you eavesdropping?’
‘Look,’ said Creekcrosser, ‘I just happened to be in the ditch. If you two want to fight in public, that’s up to you, but don’t expect the rest of us to huddle in a corner with our ears blocked.’
Rushie said indignantly, ‘We’re not fighting.’
‘Well you should be. The jack deserts you when you need him most, because he’s worried about being censured by the elders for being a friend of yours? I’d fight the fur off him, if I were you.’
Racer said, ‘We don’t need your opinion here. It’s not worth the breath used to express it.’
‘Oh, a breath’s worth quite a lot. In fact it’s indispensable. Try doing without a couple.’
‘If you don’t leave us alone,’ growled Racer, a much larger hare than the lean and loose-limbed Creekcrosser, ‘I’ll be forced to bite you.’
‘Well, there’s an offer I find difficult to refuse,’ drawled Creekcrosser, scratching his ear with his hind leg. ‘In that case, I’ll be on my way, but should you need me highlander, I shall be at your beck and call. Watch that one. He’s easy with his friendship when things are smooth, but a little unreliable over the rough bits.’
With that, Creekcrosser left them, lolloping through the hedge and over the pasture, heading towards the creek. Rushie watched him go with a mixture of indignation and gratitude in her breast. She was grateful that he had spoken on her behalf in front of the elders, but he had no right to attribute motives to Racer’s absence. She accepted Racer’s reasons for not being at her ‘trial’ and believed that he knew nothing about what she was going through before arriving back from his fields. He was a very handsome, fast-running hare, with a chiselled body that was a credit to nature. He was well-respected amongst other hares (unlike Creekcrosser) and seahare sought his opinion on many points of traditional custom.
Creekcrosser, however, was universally regarded as being a rogue and a roughie – universally that was, except for one or two jills with doubtful reputations – and his opinion, though often proffered, was sought by no one with any authority.
‘I’m sorry about that, Racer,’ she said.
Racer was staring after the retreating tail of Creekcrosser.
‘Yes, so am I. One of these days I’m going to have to teach that jack a lesson. He’s getting far too insolent for his own good. Every time he opens his mouth another questionable phrase comes out.’
‘Well, he did stick up for me, when you weren’t here.’
Racer’s head turned and his eyes looked down on her. ‘Yes, he did, didn’t he. I wonder why?’
‘Seahare said it was because he was amusing himself.’ Racer nodded.
‘That’s it, of course. Creekcrosser does nothing for the good of the colony, or anyone else for that matter. He has only himself in mind.’
Rushie was sure he was right, but just the same, there was something about Creekcrosser that made her doubt he always had selfish motives when he brooked the elders and respectable hares like Racer. There was a kind of rough-hewn honesty behind his ill-chosen words, as if he really did feel that there were some bubbles of pride to be pricked.
Well, she couldn’t see herself calling on him to come to her aid again. Not while she had her Racer by her side. Now she had to consider her next move. What was she going to do to satisfy seahare and skyhare, regarding the flogre? Showing the colony how to dig mountain hare forms was one thing, but it did not get rid of the menace.
And what had happened to poor Skelter?
It really was a bad time for both of them.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Rushie set out after nightfall for the church on the island, concerned over the fate of her old friend. It was a restless night, with a strong wind coming in from the sea, roughing up the bushes. At one point a persistent squealing noise stopped her in her tracks, and she hunched on the ground, trying to ascertain the meaning of this sound. In the end she discovered it was only the branch of a tree, rubbing against a trunk, and with a sigh of relief she continued on her way.
In the swirling darkness she made her way out of the farmland surrounding the marshes and followed the road which led to the causeway. Occasionally cars came along the road and their light disturbed her, but she kept to the ditch in order to stay out of danger. She stumbled on a stoat once, but her greater speed left the predator standing. Stoats needed stealth to catch hares napping and this they are seldom able to achieve. She could hear it swearing to itself as she left it behind her.
The waves were breaking gently on the edge of the causeway, despite the high wind, for it was a leeward gale and was driving the waters onto the beach rather than along the channel. The swish and swirl of the ocean was comforting, rather than threatening, and she even paused halfway across to admire the light on the surface of the sea. It produced a dark green effect that looked valuable in some way.
Once over the causeway, she made for the church on the knoll. Its greyness loomed above the solid darkness of the surrounding trees with their thick evergreen foliage that kept the gravestones damp and the moss in happy perpetuity. Now that the flogre was not in residence, animals had resumed visiting the churchyard for the succulent fungi which the shady area produced in abundance.
The place was in darkness, the wind whistling around the stonework, causing the gargoyles to moan. Leaves and twigs danced among the gravestones and the sombre cedars heaved and pulled against their roots. Rushie went inside the same tomb where they had met a few days before, but there was no mountain hare to be seen inside the stone oblong. Outside again, she stared up at the tower, its walls dense with secrets. It revealed nothing, of course, and with the flogre no longer its resident it seemed lifeless and less menacing. No doubt the bats and mice were considering a return to their old home, though that would take time. It was difficult to get over a monster like the flogre in a lifetime.
Finding little to keep her there, Rushie continued her quest and crossed the fields to visit the leader of Skelter’s colony. She had not yet spoken to Followme, though she had formed an opinion of her from hearsay, and that opinion was not a good one.
Followme was munching at turnips on land adjacent to Booker’s Field, her fur rippling in the wind like a patch of still water. She looked up, startled, as Rushie approached, and then cried, ‘Skelter?’
‘No, it’s not Skelter. My name’s Rushie. I’m another blue hare, a jill. We come from the same highland clan. Are you the seahare here?’
Followme stared, then corrected her, saying, ‘Moonhare. You came all the way from the mountains?’
‘Well, originally, but not just now. Let me explain. You see, Skelter and I were captured together, but I escaped before the hare coursing took place. I’ve been living with the marsh colony on the mainland …’
‘Oh, them,’ said Followme.
‘Well, yes,’ said Rushie, bristling, ‘but anyway, I managed to contact Skelter before he went to spy on the flogre. Now I understand he’s gone.’
The moonhare sighed. ‘Gone to the Otherworld I’m afraid.’
‘Do you have proof that he’s dead?’
Moonhare shook her head. ‘No proof, but as the big red barn is my judge, we’ve searched high and low for him. He’s nowhere to be found. Either his body is lying on the floor of the belfry, next to that of the flogre …’
‘The flogre’s still alive,’ interrupted Rushie. ‘It’s moved its nest to t
he martello tower on the edge of the marshes.’
Moonhare blinked a couple of times. ‘In that case,’ she said, ‘he’s definitely dead – a meal for the monster. Out in the marshes, you say?’
‘It’s terrorising my colony every dusk and dawn.’
‘Oh well, at least it’s gone away from here, that’s one thing to be thankful for. We thought Skelter had died locked in a death battle with the flogre, but it seems he’s only chased the creature away. That’s something I suppose. I expect we can still allow him to retain the status of hero.’
Rushie could hardly believe her ears but since she was visiting another colony wisely decided to keep her thoughts to herself. ‘So, you really have no idea what happened?’
Followme said, ‘None at all. We can only assume that Skelter did his duty and was caught and eaten. Hares die every day. It’s a sad but true fact. Skelter was our friend and we grieve for him, but life must go on.’
The moonhare went back to munching turnips.
Rushie went to her side. ‘Look, supposing he did escape the flogre – is there anywhere he might go? Is there someone who might give him shelter? He may be wounded, and lying sick somewhere. We have to explore all possibilities.’
‘Do we?’ said moonhare, clearly implying that she herself did not have to do anything of the sort.
‘Well, I do,’ said Rushie.
Followme deigned to stop eating for a moment and applied her mighty political brain to the subject.
‘There are two possibilities,’ she said at last. ‘There’s a hedgehog by the name of Jittie that he was very friendly with and I’ll tell you how to reach her nest. Also, when he first escaped from the greyhounds, after the coursing, he stayed with some rabbits in a warren inside a wood. It was when he showed us how to make mountain hare forms that we thought some of their rabbity ways had rubbed off on him. I don’t know exactly where the warren is located, but it’s near the causeway on the mainland. Shouldn’t be too hard to find. Now the way you get to Jittie’s place, only be careful, because the hedgehog has a reputation for bad temper …’
Rushie listened to the directions in silence, thanked the moonhare politely, and left the field thinking that moonhares and seahares were much of a muchness. They were both extremely selfish, lacking in tact and thought a great deal of themselves. Perhaps politics did that to you? Maybe they had been decent hares before they took up leadership responsibilities? Or maybe you had to have a certain type of personality in order to want leadership? It certainly wasn’t worth a great deal of thought, however, and Rushie quickly put it out of her mind.
She followed moonhare’s instructions for reaching Jittie’s home and eventually found the empty rabbit hole, but not the hedgehog. Boughs were cracking ominously in the big tree overhead. After sniffing around inside the nest Rushie came to the conclusion that the hole hadn’t been used for some time and that the hedgehog had gone away.
‘So much for that,’ she said to herself. ‘I’d better see if I can find the rabbits.’
She went back past the church, reached the causeway and crossed it, then went in search of a wood. In the darkness she came across a hare from another colony.
‘I’m looking for a warren in a wood around here,’ she said. ‘Can you help me at all?’
The jill stopped nibbling the cabbage she was eating.
‘Rabbits? You don’t look like a rabbit. At least, not much.’
‘I’m not a rabbit, I’m a blue hare from the highland mountains.
I’m searching for a friend, called Skelter, who stayed with some rabbits around here last season …’
‘Oh, Skelter. I hear he’s dead.’
‘Well, he may be, but I want to make sure.’
‘Died killing the flogre, so they say.’
Rushie didn’t want to go into all that again and repeated her first request.
Eventually the jill said, ‘There’s a wood just two pastures north of here with a rabbit warren inside it run by a creature called L’herbe. It’s said that Skelter once stayed with them for a while, which to my mind does him no credit. You can pick up some awful habits from those manmade creatures. I wouldn’t go near a warren myself. You can’t trust creatures put together like rabbits, can you? And the lies they tell! My advice would be to stay away from them, if you don’t wish to be corrupted. I’ve never actually been inside a warren of course, because they say there’s some terrible rituals go on inside – I’ve heard it said that at some dark magic ceremonies they sacrifice their own kittens … they’re a lazy bunch of layabouts, is what my mother used to tell me, and I see no reason to doubt her … they steal, even from their own kind … not really animals of course, but some kind of lower life, a thing fashioned by men …’
Rushie left the hare muttering to herself about the idleness of rabbits, their peculiar habits, and the advisability of never going near them – because of what she had heard.
When Rushie reached the wood it seemed to be enraged, the tops of the trees lashing against each other as if they were having a battle. Inside, the wood was very black and there was a smell of foxes and badgers. The damp odour of rotting leaves and fungi added a sinister aspect to the environment and it took all Rushie’s strength of will not to turn and run for the open land. She had to keep reminding herself that she was a mountain hare, used to living amongst the rocks, and if she could just imagine that the wood was an outcrop, and the trees thin stone tors and monoliths, she might stop her heart from banging against her ribs.
She hopped and ran through briars and bracken, sniffing for the scent of rabbits. She found a run, with fresh droppings on it, and followed it to find the holes she had been looking for. Around her the wood was going wild. Just as she was about to go down a hole, a large shape ambled out of a nearby bush and made for another hole. The strong smell of badger hit her nostrils and she stopped to let the creature pass. She knew she could outrun it, so she could stay, but it meant keeping an eye on the beast until it was safe to go down the hole. She remained perfectly still under an oak, knowing that the smell of rabbits was so powerful the badger would not scent her. She could hear the creature muttering in that strange dark tongue of ancient origin which badgers, stubborn inflexible creatures that they were, still used as their only means of communication.
As Rushie watched the badger snuffling and snorting its rubbery nose, she became aware that it was going down the very hole near to where she stood. She moved away quickly and hid behind a bush, leaving the large animal free passage. It went down inside. This was obviously a badger’s sett. There would be more of the creatures around somewhere, gruffing away to themselves. What was going on here? She tried to recall her conversation with Skelter about his time with the rabbits. Had he mentioned badgers being close by, or was this a raid on the warren? She inspected the hole down which the badger had gone. It was too large for a rabbit.
A badger’s sett? Why the strong odour of rabbits then? She was in a dilemma now. What to do? There was no way she was going down that hole now, with the place probably full of badgers, who would take a hare if available and within distance of its mighty jaws.
Just as she had reached a pitch of indecision a rabbit came hopping through the trees and skipped down one of the holes leading to the sett – or perhaps it was a warren? Maybe the badger was a stranger come to kill all the rabbits below. Perhaps Rushie should warn the inhabitants?
‘What are you doing here?’ said a voice from behind her, startling her.
She turned quickly, to see a large doe rabbit eyeing her with suspicion.
‘Spying?’ said the doe.
Rushie said, ‘No, no. Not spying, I was looking for a warren run by a rabbit called L’herbe. Am I at the right place?’
‘Why were you lurking in the bushes?’
‘I wasn’t lurking. I was hiding. I just saw a very large badger go down one of those holes and if I were you, I’d warn the rest of your clan … colony … warren.’
‘Badger? We share our war
ren with badgers. They keep the foxes and stoats away. Oh, I know what you’re thinking, but they don’t touch us. They might kill rabbits from another warren, but not the one where they live.’
‘Isn’t that a bit like living with the enemy?’
‘Look,’ said the doe impatiently, ‘if they didn’t live with us, they’d live somewhere else, so what difference does it make?’
Rushie had no answer for that one.
The doe asked, ‘What did you come here for?’
‘Ah, yes, my name is Rushie, I’m a blue hare from the highlands of the north. I’m a friend of Skelter and I understand he stayed with you once.’
The doe’s expression changed from suspicion to friendliness in an instant. ‘Come on down, out of the wind. My, it’s a blustery night tonight. You have to be careful of branches falling and being carried along. You can get a nasty knock from a bough if it catches you on the head. My name’s La framboise. I knew Skelter very well. We were well-acquainted, as they say. Come on, come on, let’s get out of this wind …’
La framboise led the way down the hole, which, after a moment’s hesitation when recalling the size of the badger that had gone before, Rushie followed.
‘What does “well-acquainted” mean?’ asked Rushie as they went deeper into the middle-earth, the smell of underground soil strong, and the feeling of being squeezed, trapped in a long tube of earth, causing her breast to constrict in panic making it difficult to breathe. ‘Were you – more than friendly?’
The tail on the rump before her twitched and the voice of its owner came back, muffled. ‘I don’t know what you mean. Skelter and I talked a lot together. He spoke to me more than he did to other rabbits. Does that answer your question? I liked him because he had no side, you know what I mean? He wasn’t prejudiced about us. He had an open mind.’
‘Oh,’ replied Rushie, still fighting the terrible feeling that the tunnel was getting narrower and that her body was too big for it, and any moment would jam fast so that she would not be able to go either backwards or forwards. Would the rabbits dig her out? Maybe they would not be able to before she ran out of air, and died of asphyxiation? The earth was like the throat of some giant beast, swallowing her. She could feel it, a consistency like a tongue, rubbing against her fur. Many rabbit bodies had smoothed the walls, but to Rushie, unused to the touch of anything on her body, they felt rough. She did not know how long she would be able to fight the growing hysteria.
Frost Dancers: A Story of Hares Page 24