The Last Rabbit

by Shelley Moore Thomas

  She was a thinker, that Isolde.

  And so it was that we set off, to a place that we’d been before, but not.

  I won’t tell you how we found the portal, or about the horrible beasts that guard it and that we had to trick.

  You would just get scared, and my job isn’t to scare you.

  But once we made it past the horrible beasts, we arrived near England. We floated on the river Thames into London.

  And sure enough, there were boats with propellers floating across the sky. No, not like the ones your da flew. Those were planes. These were different altogether. Imagine something like Captain Hook’s ship, big and proper, with sails, but also enormous round globes and propellers keeping them aloft.

  To fit in, I decided to get a propeller and flying sail for my small boat. I was terribly curious, was there magic afoot or machinery? Science or spells? Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.

  We traveled through the city as discreetly as we could until we found a shop called Shipley Goodes. It seemed like the perfect place to find what we needed.

  Isolde hid in my satchel. I didn’t latch it, so she could look out from time to time, except there wasn’t much to see. I bought a propeller and a giant envelope of white silk that I was assured would transform my little boat into a miniature airship.

  I walked giddily to the door with my purchases. The whole idea of flying my ship above the clouds was intoxicating. I had sailed every sea on Earth, but the skies were foreign to me.

  I had a ridiculous grin on my face as I opened the door.

  “Oh, a first-timer,” said the young woman brushing past me as she entered the store. “Never flown before?”

  “How could you tell?”

  “You’ve got moons for eyes, and your hand is grasping that bag so hard— Is there a rabbit in that satchel?”

  My face burned and my forehead started to sweat as I fumbled to cover Isolde. I don’t know why I felt I had to keep Isolde a secret. It’s not like they had a law against rabbits. No place had a law against rabbits. And yet, I didn’t want anyone to know about Isolde until she had changed.

  “Uh…,” I said.

  “It is a rabbit!” she said. “Are you making rabbit stew for dinner?” She reached into my satchel and pulled Isolde out by the ears.

  I reached for Isolde. “No!”

  “Ah, it’s a pet,” said the young woman.

  “No. She’s nobody’s pet,” I said before I had the sense to think about what I was saying. Why hadn’t I just kept my mouth closed and gone about my business?

  “Maybe you’re her pet, then,” she said, handing Isolde back.

  It was then that I got a good look at the young woman. She had chin-length brown hair that curled a little but not too much. And she had freckles and long lashes.

  I hadn’t really thought about girls being beautiful before then. And I didn’t fall in love with her or anything.

  (Caragh’s nose twitched. If I hadn’t been a rabbit, I wouldn’t have noticed.)

  There was just something about her.

  “Come with me. I’ll show you and your rabbit how to rig all this to your boat.”

  Without a better idea, I followed.

  Isolde and I walked several paces behind her through the crowded streets of the place that looked like London but wasn’t. She had long legs and it was hard to keep up.

  “You could change now if you wanted,” I whispered. “She’s not looking.”

  Isolde seemed to consider the situation, then shook her head.

  * * *

  The young woman’s name was Janie Trafalgar. She was fourteen, almost fifteen. Practically grown up. She lived with her grandmother in a four-story house in the middle of a square. It wasn’t a famous square, but even if it had been, you wouldn’t have heard of it because it wasn’t London, not really.

  “Lulu,” Janie said when we walked in the door. “We have company. It’s a boy with a rabbit.”

  “I don’t want rabbit for dinner,” replied an elderly voice from upstairs.

  “It’s not for dinner, Lulu, it’s his…friend.”

  Janie’s house had a big table right where you walked in. “You can put your bag there. We’ll see what kind of propeller you bought. And where’s your boat?” she asked.

  “Thames,” I said.

  “Oh. Well, we can get it in a bit.”

  Isolde was tired of being ignored. And tired of being a rabbit, too. She hopped out of my satchel and scampered into a corner, behind an old barrel, which seemed strangely out of place in this modern home. And there were clockwork bits mounted everywhere—as if everything ran on gears. None of it was shiny metal, but old brass and copper and lots of wood. All of it burnished.

  In the time it takes to sneeze, Isolde had changed into a girl, catching me completely off guard.

  She walked over to Janie and sniffed the air around her. I guess it smelled like her dream, because she let out a sigh of relief.

  Janie turned around, and I gasped.

  It was as if Isolde was Janie’s long lost younger sister. And I wondered for a minute if it were possible. Same hair, same freckles, same lashes. Except that Isolde was a couple of years younger than Janie.

  “Where’d you come from?” asked Janie.

  “I’m with him,” said Isolde, pointing to me.

  Janie shrugged. “Oh well, then. On to flying ships.”

  Neither Janie nor Isolde noticed their resemblance.

  However, Lulu, Janie’s grandmother, came down the stairway and gaped at the two girls examining my newly purchased propeller. Lulu might have looked delicate, like a small gray moth that had seen better days, but she was still solid.

  “Merciful heavens,” she said, clutching her heart.

  Both girls turned and looked at Lulu at the exact same time, wearing the exact same expression.

  It was disconcerting to say the least.

  “Where’s your rabbit? Where did it go?” asked Janie.

  “Uh—” I said.

  “What rabbit?” said Isolde.

  * * *

  The trick to getting a boat like mine to fly was in the engraved brass plate.

  After you attached the propeller (which Isolde and Janie did after we had lugged my boat to the roof of their house by means of a clockwork donkey, a large wagon, and some sort of magic pulley) and you fastened the air envelope (which Isolde and Janie did also), it was time to think about the boat’s name. This name gets engraved into a brass plate (by some device which must contain magic of sorts), and then the boat can fly. I guess the man at the shop thought I already had one—most boats got their names when they were christened for their first voyage.

  I wasn’t even alive for my boat’s first voyage, for I’m not the first Ferryman.

  It’s an old, old boat.

  “We have to give it a boy’s name,” said Isolde.

  “You mean a girl’s name, right?” I said.

  Lulu, who was dishing up a nice stew for our dinner, looked up. “You are from London.”

  It was not a question.

  “This is Nodnol, not London. Boats are named for boys here in Nodnol. And the ships are captained by women. Well, mostly, anyway,” she said. “We get visitors from London on occasion. Those who’ve somehow slipped through. A nasty lot, most of them. Oh, sorry lad, I didn’t mean to offend.”

  Yes, the place was called Nodnol. London spelled backward!

  Isolde, her mouth full of brown bread, smiled so big that crumbs fell out the sides of her mouth and onto the table.

  Everything seemed the opposite of things as we knew it.

  And it was exactly where Isolde wanted to be.

  If girls were captains of ships, she told me, they had to be warriors as well. She could almost feel the armor, heavy, but not overly much. And the sword.

  (Isolde had wanted a sword, or a weapon of sorts, since that night in the Blitz.)

  Isolde was ready to fight back.

  “So,” Isold
e said as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “What do you think we should name the ship? I think we should name it after a boy we both know.” She didn’t blink once as she spoke to me.

  The only boy we both knew was me.

  You are probably wondering now why I’ve never told you my name. There are those who believe that if they know your name, they can control you—that’s why names often aren’t spoken until the christening, when babies were protected with holy water.

  Now, I’m not sure if I believe that, but I can tell you that names do have power.

  And a smart person never gives away their power.

  Remember that, Albie. If you remember nothing else I’ve told you, remember not to give your power away freely.

  (He was so earnest in this moment, looking at me and not making eyes at Caragh. I nodded.)

  “Bob?” I said with a bit of merriment I didn’t feel.

  “You are not a Bob,” said Isolde.

  True.

  Isolde had finished her stew, and Janie gathered up her bowl.

  “Nathaniel,” Janie said. “Are you a Nathaniel?”

  I thought about it for a moment. I wasn’t a Nathaniel, but maybe I could pass for a Nate. I tried it out in my brain. Yes, I liked Nate.

  “Not Nathaniel, Nate actually. Good guess.”

  Isolde snorted. She knew I wasn’t Nate but had the grace not to say anything.

  “All right, we’ll get this engraved with Nate and then your ship will be ready.” Janie was beaming. She liked being helpful. Janie and Lulu let us stay with them that night. They didn’t ask questions about what we were doing in Nodnol without any family to visit or a plan for finding a place to stay. They were used to unusual visitors.

  Isolde and I had rooms across from each other. I could hear her pacing on the other side of her door.

  I knocked.

  “I knew it was you. I can’t sleep. I don’t remember how to sleep as a person,” she said, her silvery coat glimmering slightly in the starlight that streamed through her window.

  “Well, you’re going to have to try.”

  And it didn’t matter much that she couldn’t sleep because in a moment the street below erupted into a festival of shouting.

  In half a second, Isolde was a girl again.

  “What’s going on?” we called as we raced down the stairs.

  Janie and Lulu were already down there. Janie stood in front of a cabinet filled with weapons. She stuffed a sword in a scabbard at her waist and a small knife in her boot. She looked up at us, tossing us each a small sword.

  “I suggest you wear these, if you know what’s good for you. I hope you know how to use them.”

  My sword clattered to the floor at my feet, but Isolde caught hers swiftly and had it stuffed in her belt before I’d even bent to pick mine up.

  “I’ve been practicing, Nate,” she said with a smile.

  First of all, how in the world would a rabbit be able to practice with a sword?

  (Would the Boy never learn what remarkable creatures we were? A rabbit could learn whatever she put her mind to.)

  “What’s going on?” I asked Janie as she raced through the house, bolting all of the windows shut. Lulu was unlocking some sort of cupboard with a very tiny key.

  “Don’t douse the light yet, Janie. Let me get the pistols first!”

  Pistols!

  “Isolde, you are not to touch a pistol! Not at all,” I said. “What would the Magician say?”

  That thought kept racing through my head, round and round, dizzying me like a top. I was making a mess of things. Why had I let Isolde choose the portal? I know it wasn’t my choice to make, but the Magician would’ve found a way to talk her out of it.

  I was a failure.

  But of course, this story isn’t about me. It is about Isolde, who was choosing a pistol.

  “What in heaven’s name are you doing?” I yelled, grabbing it away.

  Gently Lulu took it from me and handed it back to Isolde. “Not like the guns in London,” she said. “This is Nodnol, remember? These pistols shoot magic—curses, if you will. Not bullets.”

  “Isolde doesn’t know any magic,” I said.

  “And your rabbit just vanished, did it?” Janie raised her eyebrow smugly.

  “It wasn’t her doing,” I said. And I couldn’t say more than that, because that was the truth. Isolde hadn’t cast the spell; therefore, it wasn’t hers to undo.

  “Shhhh. They’re coming,” Janie said when the house was completely dark and there were no sounds inside the house or outside. I had never heard such silence before, nor have I since.

  “You can take your chances and stay here,” Lulu whispered. “Or you can come with us.”

  Isolde was already climbing the staircase, which led to a hatch in the ceiling to get to the roof and our airships. “I’ve been waiting to do this for a long time.”

  “I’ll come!” I was the last up the stairs.

  “What about my boat?” I whispered fiercely. “It’s not ready to fly yet?”

  Janie waved me on as Isolde squeezed past into the night above us.

  “We don’t have an engraver for your name on the brass plate, so we’ll just have to wing it.”

  Janie grabbed the plate from me and flipped it over in her hands a few times.

  Meanwhile, there was a clambering on the roof.

  “My crew is getting my ship ready to sail. Isolde will be fine up there for a minute,” Janie said in answer to my unspoken question.

  “You’ll need to cry,” Janie said. “We don’t have an engraver, so we’ll use your tears. Can you cry on your own, or do you need me to hurt you a little?”

  “What?” I asked, but before I’d even gotten to the t on the word what, Janie had reached into the edge of my nostril and yanked out a nose hair.

  “Yeesh!” And then I actually cried a little. I would dare anyone to have a nose hair yanked out and not cry a bit. It’s impossible.

  “It’s the fastest way,” Janie said by way of apology. Then she put the brass plate near my cheeks and caught the two tears. There were only two, by the way.

  She handed me the plate and we continued up the stairs to the roof hatch. “You’ll need to trace a name on here, a magical name, and somehow I don’t think Nate’s going to cut it. Use your real name. Magic will know if you’re lying. So, don’t lie. Trace your name on the plate, and then place it on the bottom of the boat once we get outside. It doesn’t matter where. If the magic works, the plate will stick there by itself. If it sticks, then you fly. If you lie, then…” She shrugged and cracked open the hatch.

  “Lulu can’t handle it by herself. And your little friend probably doesn’t have much experience.”

  My tears were drying quickly, so I had to work fast. I traced my name, my real name, onto the brass plate, then placed it on the hull of my boat (which was still upside down, having just had the propeller attached).

  The brass gleamed, then the boat swayed and rose in the air, righted itself, and paused in front of me. A small mast and sails materialized, and a ladder rolled down the side of the ship toward me. I climbed up.

  “Release your sails, and the envelope, too!” Janie called from the bridge of her impressive airship. It was ten times the size of mine, with sails taller than a castle tower.

  Isolde leaned over the edge of Janie’s ship, a sword in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  “Get back!” I called.

  But maybe she didn’t hear me, for she leaned over the bow of Janie’s ship. I was underneath it and to the left and could see its name, Sweet Leroy.

  What kind of name was that for a ship?

  The moon was big and golden, the type of moon you see only once a season, if that often. Against it flew the shadows of many airships, out to battle with…with what?

  What were we about to battle?

  I should have thought of it earlier, of course. Just as the Germans couldn’t resist bombing London to attempt to win the wa
r, so the pirates couldn’t resist an attack on Nodnol on this night of…whenever.

  Yes, we were being set upon by pirates. I know you’re thinking about Peter Pan’s ship. It’s hard not to. But these pirate ships weren’t shiny and clean. You could see the barnacles, kelp, and sea moss clinging to the hulls, shadowed eerily in the moonlight. These ships looked haunted.

  I for one did not want to be captured by these pirates.

  Their sails were black, making them seem like skeleton ships floating across the sky. That was probably part of their plan. If they had been patient enough to wait for a darker night, they would have fared better, perhaps. But everyone knows that pirates are impatient.

  They must have seen the citizens of Nodnol take to the skies in their own airships. Heard the alarms that sounded in the city. But the skeleton ships didn’t make a sound.

  These ships made no noise whatsoever.

  It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. The ships were sailing so close to one another, you could spit from one and have it land on the other, and the only sound they made was the creak from the old wood as the sails shifted in the wind.

  Isolde’s face was pale. It was the first time I’d ever seen her show any fear. I was trembling. True, I knew how to navigate my boat in the water, but air is altogether different. Air is moodier, far less forgiving than the sea.

  So there was the Sweet Leroy, passing near a black ship with black sails. And there I was in my boat, trailing after.

  I wanted to yell at Isolde to be careful, but I wasn’t going to be the one to break the silence.

  Lulu, Janie, and Isolde stood on the deck of the Sweet Leroy. About twenty-five pirates were on the deck of the pirate ship. I wondered what its name was. Something sinister, surely.

  Not being able to resist, I reduced the air in my envelope and descended. Then I adjusted my sail so I could fly below the pirate ship.

  It was the Dreadful Wellington.