Once God had created the hermaphrodite Kicker, the great hare was left to get on with populating the earth with its own kind, in competition with the other original giants, like A-O the first fox, and Sen-Sen, the first wolf. In the beginning there was the shaping of the world to carry out, which each original giant did to their own specifications. This often resulted in several reshapings. For example, Oomaroo the first otter wanted the world to be mostly rivers, and used sharp incisors to cut thousands of canals through every piece of landmass. Then Riff, the first deer, who liked huge plains to roam, followed behind and filled most of them in again, leaving just enough to provide waterholes for those deer he-she would create to cover the land.
Kicker made the flatlands for the brown hares, and the mountains for the blue hares. However, when it came to the actual creation, Kicker was as inexperienced as any other artistic beginner, and his-her initial impulse was to go for the gaudy, the showy, the flamboyant. Kicker wanted something to match the parrot for colours, the lion fish for style, the anaconda for sleekness.
The first of these experiments was the crystal hares of the snow country to the north, which Kicker made from the finest desert sand fired in the furnace of the sun. These creatures were as clear and fragile as thin freshwater ice and roamed the cold zones of the earth for a short time. But their feet were too slippery and they kept falling off cliffs and shattering on the rocks below. Soon they were so few in number they could not find each other to propagate and quickly died out.
Then came the painted wooden hares of the forested lowlands, but these creatures with live sap in their veins instead of blood, were lazy and spent most of their time in their forms. Consequently in the rainy season they took root and grew into other things, such as trees and bushes.
Next came the stone hares of the mountains, who lasted a great deal longer than the crystal or wooden hares, though eventually they too disappeared under the onslaught of the inclement weather, worn down by wind and rain, cracked by the hot sun, they eroded to become the mere pebbles and rocks that now lie helpless on the hillsides.
Kicker’s most wonderful achievement of these times of experimentation, before he-she perfected the art and produced the brown, the blue, the Irish, the jackrabbit, the snowshoe and all the other species of blood, flesh and bone hare that roam the earth today, was the beautiful jewelled hares. Kicker was determined that this creation would neither take root nor wear away with the weather, nor shatter when they fell over. So he made them of the hardest materials he could find.
These marvellous hares, though a worthy artistic accomplishment, were caused to depart the earth, they were not doomed like the others to extinction. During the daylight hours these dazzling creatures were fashioned of lapis lazuli, with aquamarine eyes, but at night their bodies changed to dark sapphire, and their eyes turned to diamonds. They fed on precious and semi-precious minerals like opals, garnets, moonstones and bluejohn. They were placid timid creatures, despite the hardness of their bodies, and bothered no other being, since they were not competition for grasslands or bushes and trees, nor did they attack and kill other animals and birds for food. They wanted no water to sustain them and their feeding grounds were the mines they created in the barren hillsides and mountains avoided by other life forms.
However, these exquisite hares were still around when men entered the world and were immediately coveted by the bipeds because of their innate beauty. Men began to trap them and use them in their trading with one another, sometimes prising out the eyes to put into settings on their finger rings and pendants. Naturally the jewelled hares went into a panic whenever they saw a man, and great migrations began as herds moved from one part of the earth to another, swarming in husks over continents, sometimes falling into the ocean where their weight caused them to sink immediately to its depths.
Finally, in desperation, they fled to the skies, the last sanctuary from man, where they still crowd to this day. They are so thick in numbers that only occasionally does the old sky – a bright scarlet-coloured heaven – show through their blueness during the twilight hours, when the sun is on the move and its heat causes the hares to shuffle aside and clear a path for the fiery disc. At night, when they change to dark sapphire, only their glittering diamond eyes are visible from below.
Men tried to get their giant Groff to stand on the highest mountains of the earth and pluck the hares from the sky, but even though Groff is the tallest giant the world has ever known he could not reach high enough to grasp the bounty of the sky. The tips of his fingers could barely brush the smooth rump of the lowest jewelled hare, and these treasures remained out of his clutches until man stopped believing in him and he faded away to mist.
The flesh-and-blood hares that inhabit the earth today often witness men staring up at the Kicker’s jewelled hares, no doubt still coveting the opulent rewards of Kicker’s fertile creativeness and hoping one will lose its grip and drop down to earth.
Occasionally, amongst the more elderly of the midnight hares, an eye works loose and its owner cannot prevent the precious stone from falling down the face of the sky to land somewhere in the deserts and barren places of the world. This gives rise to expeditions of men who go out into the wilderness to look for these gems, often to die of thirst and hunger, disease and injury, in their plaintive search for wealth. In this way the jewelled hares obtain their slow revenge on man, through the latter’s foolish regard for shiny stones and metals.
Every once in a while, Kicker visits his-her hares in the sky, coming in the guise of a great storm, the dark pelage crackling with electric fire, and the great teeth grinding in fury. In the occasional flashes of anger at the way hares have been treated by men, and it has to be said, foxes and wolves and other carnivores, Kicker often slams down a hind leg on a storm cloud, creating a thunderous sound in the heavens.
On summer days though, when the air is clear through to the lapis lazuli, embedded with aquamarines that melt into the bluer colour of the jewelled hares’ diurnal coats, most creatures of the world are thankful that these precious mammals retreated to the heavens. For who would want to laze under a blood-drenched sky, reddening the bushes and grasses with its scarlet hues, menacing the hills with its crimson backdrop? Red is not a colour which inspires calmness. It is a dangerous tint, causing restlessness and unease. Whereas skies of cornflower blue are quiescent and full of tranquillity.
So say the hares of hill and lowland, anyway.
PART SIX
Frost Dancers
Chapter Thirty Nine
Eyebright went away for some time, then returned and asked Skelter to accompany her to Booker’s Field, where the whole colony was gathered under the totem tree. When Skelter arrived at the traditional meeting place, he found the hares waiting for him. Eyebright joined them and for a while they simply stared at Skelter, one or two of them obviously nervous. The young ones were at the back, peering over the shoulders of the adults, as if Skelter were some kind of monster.
Finally, moonhare walked forward.
‘Eyebright tells us you are alive and that the reason for your white pelage is that all mountain hares turn white in the winter.’
Skelter nodded. ‘This is true. In the same way that stoats change into ermine. This is not an uncommon winter change.’
‘Yet,’ said Followme, ‘you don’t think to change your name, the way stoats do?’
‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ replied Skelter, becoming a little annoyed with all the fuss. ‘I don’t have any control over what colour my coat is. It changes on its own. So far as I know, we’re hares in the summer and hares in the winter, whatever the colour of our fur.’
Moonhare stared back at the still quiet husk of hares behind her, and finally she turned and said, ‘Welcome home, Skelter.’
With that the hares began creeping forward, all murmuring, ‘welcome home’, but still cautious. Skelter thought them a silly bunch but had to remind himself that they were not worldly, like him, and had never been beyond the
island. In fact many of them had not been outside the fields owned by the colony. They came forward and sniffed him, and stared in wonder at his white pelage.
Moonhare was giving a speech at the same time.
‘May the tractor bestow happiness on you, Skelter, for your efforts so far in helping us defend ourselves against the flogre. May the five-barred gate grant long life to you and may that life, by the power of the big red barn, be a healthy one.’
‘And may the many-eared corn grant you fertility,’ murmured someone in his ear, and when Skelter turned to see who it was he found himself looking into the eyes of Eyebright.
‘Thank you very much,’ he murmured back, a little confused, then loudly, ‘Thank you, moonhare, for your welcome. Thank you all.’
Once they had got over the white coat they seemed genuinely pleased to see him and asked about his adventures concerning his quest for the flogre. He repeated what he had told Eyebright, and the hares looked suitably horrified when he told them about the bell tower, though his description of the monster he had seen was news to them no longer, since the flogre was now landing on the ground, and had been observed from close quarters by many of the hares.
‘There is no way to defeat such a creature,’ he told them, ‘so we must learn to counter it. We have to invent new ways of thwarting its rapacious ways. We’re not dim. We’re hares, clever as they come. Let’s do something about this new development instead of moaning about it. We don’t have to live with it.’
Reacher, the sunhare, said, ‘Or die with it.’
‘Tell me about the trouble you’ve been having,’ said Skelter, ‘so I can form a better picture of the problem.’
Followme, the moonhare, said, ‘I don’t want to influence this meeting, but I have something to say.’
She walked away from the group and sat on a half-exposed root of the dead totem tree, which was her seat when she was holding counsel. She stared out over the hares until they took the hint and gathered around her, awaiting her words. It always amazed Skelter what power she seemed to have over them, though she did very little for them, so far as he could see.
Moonhare spoke.
‘As you are all – except Skelter – aware, we are experiencing greater losses this winter than we have ever known before. The flogre has a new trick,’ she stared at Skelter as she said these words, ‘of landing near the forms and pecking at a hare’s rump to force it to leave its tunnel. Then the unfortunate hare is snatched up and taken away to be eaten. If things go on as they have been doing we shall soon be in danger of extinction. I should like to hear what Skelter has to say about this.’
Skelter cleared his head before he spoke.
‘Fact is,’ he replied, ‘the forms we make in the mountains are to protect us against golden eagles. We either use a space between two or three rocks, of which there are none suitable on the flatlands, or dig the short tunnel I have shown you. Golden eagles do not land on the ground and force the hare from its form.
‘Now, perhaps the answer to this new trick it has is to dig deeper forms, but I’m sure you’ve already thought of that. Can I just say that though the season is barely two months old, spring will be with us one day, and the flogre will then have to be more careful. The dark days of winter won’t be with us forever, and the flogre needs the half-light as camouflage. It knows that if men see it and report it there will be a hue and cry, and they’ll hunt it down.
‘We must hope for this to happen. At the moment the flogre has to fly a long way from the martello tower to reach our colony, and as spring and the possibility of lighter days approach it may decide that such flights are too dangerous. It will then have to hunt in the vicinity of its nest. This is a strong possibility.
‘Of course, it’s not the answer, because we have next winter to worry about, when the flogre will no doubt be back again on regular forays. As for protection until then, all I can suggest is that during dull days, especially dusk and dawn, you seek out hiding places, under walls and tree roots. I know this is not our way, but these are unusual times, difficult times, and we have to protect ourselves as best as we can.
‘I have heard that you’re considering sacrificing the weak leverets to this monster. Can I say that apart from being barbaric and unharelike, this would not achieve anything. The flogre is a monster – we can only guess at the amount of meat it needs to sustain it – but I think we can say quite positively that the runts of our litters will not satisfy its voracious hunger.
‘Now, I think this is the longest talk I’ve ever had to give in my life, and I’ll shut up.’
Moonhare was obviously not happy with Skelter’s answer and had no doubt been expecting a more positive reply recommending action against the monster, but she accepted his ideas. At least he had offered hope with the coming of the spring, and hope was important. The meeting broke up and hares went their various ways, to seek new hiding places.
Skelter and Eyebright returned to Whinsled Lea and searched the area for a protective place out of the open. In the corner of the field was an old marble horse trough, no longer used but probably too heavy to bother removing. One end of the supporting structure had collapsed, so that the trough was at an angle, like a ramp. The two hares dug themselves shallow forms under the collapsed end, until they had a marble roof. The stone supports were still there, though they had slipped to either side and jutted like wings from the corners of the trough. These provided protection on either side of the forms.
In this way the two hares had solid stonework fortifications on three sides of them, and above, and the entrances were in a very tight space below the sloping bottom of the trough. There was no way a rook could squeeze in the space to get at them, let alone the flogre. So long as they were not caught out in the open they would be safe. A fox or badger could dig them out of course, but then if they smelled a four-footed predator coming, they could dash out into the open, where their legs could save them, as they always had done.
The winter moved on through snow and ice, wind and rain, with occasional clear sharp days. The flatlands were even flatter in the cold seasons. The weight of the snow and the driving rain flattened the grasses and winter crops. The marshland reeds bowed under the press from above. There was no foliage to block the view. It was a time the hares enjoyed, for there is nothing better to a field hare than being able to see across the world, from one side to the other.
On the stark trees and hedges the ivy had remained in blossom a little longer than usual, and drone bees, driven from their hives by the workers, still clustered on the pale yellowish-green blossoms to eat the intoxicating nectar. Winter moths too drifted dusty and dim between bunches of flowers, weaving drunkenly, watching other insects fall buzzing to the ground in their inebriated state.
Closer to the ground, beneath an overhang of bracket fungi on an elm near the trough, a troop of snails had sealed themselves into their shells with their own slime, not to emerge until warmer weather.
Men had been busy while Skelter was in prison. In the field over the river stood a haystack, covered by a tarpaulin sheet. In the early part of the winter, while the jack was behind the wire, the farm workers had threshed the ricks of corn, and got rid of the shucks and chaff and built themselves a straw copy of their houses.
In the season when the grasses are beaten down the backwater meers are dominated by the brown bolts of the bulrushes through which the white-nosed coots swim. The marshlands are populated by many forms of birdlife, some of them immigrants like the Brent geese, just for the winter. The redpolls, siskins, fieldfares and redwings escape a harsher whirlwind ice in the north by making the same journey as the geese.
Shortly after Skelter arrived home the marsh hares sent a messenger to Moonhare to ask if they could join with her colony. Their numbers had been depleted so much by the flogre that they were on the edge of extinction. Seahare and skyhare had both been taken and only seven hares remained including Racer and Creekcrosser.
Moonhare granted the request. Skelter be
lieved this was because moonhare felt it would increase her prestige to have another colony under her control, but he had to admit she was under that haughty exterior basically a kind hare. So seven unfamiliar hares were allowed into the vicinity.
The new hares were put into the fields of the hares which had been taken by the flogre, and fitted comfortably. There is basically no difference between a hare that lives on the edge of the marshes and a hare that lives in the field, apart from some slight nuances of culture. They are the same species, right up to the black tips on their ears, a distinguishing feature shared by Skelter and his blue mountain hares, but not by the common rabbits that made such a mess of the crops. Few creatures will live with rabbits for neighbours because of this habit of leaving their feeding grounds in such a terrible state, and the black tips helped hares to separate themselves from the slatterns of the animal world. These markings were mentioned in almost every hare song and verse and story since the seasons began their gentle rhythms.
The season grew harder and ghostly delicate skeletons, the haulms of cow-parsnip and red campion, framed the ditches. Laurel leaves, crushed by the car wheels on the lane to the church, let out a pungent almond odour which Skelter found quite pleasant. The winds from the east became sharper and colder, savaging everything in their path. The flogre came and went, less successful now because of Skelter’s advice to find protection. Many of the hares discovered holes at the foot of drystone walls and used these for shelter, though they felt uncomfortable and less secure from other predators.
There were occasional meetings at night under the white totem in Booker’s Field, but nothing new came of these. Most of the hares were resigned to sit out the winter, hoping that Skelter was right and that when the spring came the flogre would not be able to venture far from his martello tower and would seek out new hunting ground to the east.
Skelter’s relationship with Eyebright grew stronger, though he often thought of Rushie in a sentimental way, which left him sighing and unhappy. At first Eyebright used to ask him what was the matter, but when he declined to answer she left him alone, thinking perhaps that he was yearning for his highlands, a place she would never know nor understand, a place of dreams as far as she was concerned.
Frost Dancers: A Story of Hares Page 30