Tales from Watership Down (20 page)

“Well,” said Hazel, “what is your important thing? You can tell us and we’ll listen seriously, I promise you.”

“I think you already know what it is,” replied Flyairth. “The White Blindness. None of you seem to know what it’s like, or to realize your dreadful danger. None of you has ever seen a rabbit with the Blindness, or seen the Blindness
spread in a warren. It’s unbelievably horrible—by far the most horrible of all the things that threaten rabbits. Worse than all the Thousand put together. Rabbits still alive, turned into groping, rotting lumps of misery. I know you think I’m obsessed. So would you be if you’d seen what I’ve seen. How even men can be so cruel as to give rabbits the Blindness I can’t imagine. Everything we plan, everything we do, ought to take into account the Blindness and how to avoid it.”

She had spoken so forcefully and passionately that her audience was stunned into silence. At length Hazel said, “Well, what’s your advice, then? What do you think we ought to do?”

“You’re all in such terrible danger here,” said Flyairth. “A warren right beside a path that humans use. I’ve never seen a warren so much exposed to danger.”

“What’s the matter, Fiver?” asked Hazel.

“
You
ought to know,” answered Fiver. “You were there. I said almost exactly the same thing, long ago, to the Chief Rabbit of the Sandleford warren, and he wouldn’t believe me. And what happened you know.”

“So you think Flyairth’s right?”

“Yes, of course she is. The only difference between then and now is that then I
knew
something terrible was going to happen—happen soon. But now, in spite of what she’s said, I don’t feel like that. I don’t feel any dread of the future. But she’s right, all the same.”

“And what do you think we ought to do, Flyairth?”

“Leave here, all of us, and move to a safer place. A new warren in a safer place. And no men. What happened the other night in the snow, when the men came—that
can’t
be right. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it: I mean, that rabbits could even think they could live in such a place.”

“Why, you’ve only been here a few days,” broke in Bigwig angrily. “And here you are trying to tell us all what to do. Who do you think you are?”

“I’m sorry,” answered Flyairth. “You asked me to tell you what was worrying me, and you’ve just asked me what I thought you ought to do. I was only answering your questions.”

“Don’t go for her, Bigwig,” said Hazel. “I’m glad to know what she thinks. Flyairth, I’m afraid we can’t send you or anyone else to Groundsel’s warren just at present. It’s all been agreed with Campion, you see. We’ll drop it for now. I can feel it’s warmer tonight, but let’s go to sleep all together, where we are.”

He did not himself, however, fall asleep immediately but lay awake between Bigwig and Fiver, turning over in his mind what Flyairth had said.

“Hazel-rah, she’s doing everything she can to take over the leadership,” said Bigwig. “She’s at it now in the Honeycomb, telling all the young rabbits about the men in the snow the other night. She’s telling them that as long as they stay here they’re in deadly danger of the White Blindness, but that she’ll lead them to a safe place and start a new warren. Shall I go back and kill her, now, before she does any more harm?”

“No, don’t do that,” answered Hazel. “Or not yet, anyway.”

“What it come to,” said Bigwig, “is that she used to be a Chief Rabbit—huh, a
doe
as Chief Rabbit!—until they threw her out, and now she’s come here she means to be Chief Rabbit again.”

“Were any of our Sandleford rabbits listening to her?” asked Hazel.

“No, nor was Blackavar either. But a lot of the youngsters were, and some of the Efrafan does as well.”

“I’d like to talk to Fiver and Blackberry,” said Hazel. “Vilthuril and Hyzenthlay too, come to that. Let’s go and find them, come on.”

They found them, as well as Thethuthinnang, crowded together in Fiver’s burrow, dozing in the warmth of their bodies.

“Bigwig,” said Hazel, “tell them what you just told me about Flyairth.”

Bigwig did so, working himself, if anything, into a still greater rage. “She’s got to be killed,” he ended. “She’s got to be killed
soon
, before she does any more harm.”

“Well, hang on a moment or two,” said Blackberry. “Hazel-rah, can I say a few things?”

“Yes, and Fiver as well,” said Hazel.

“This fuss, as far as I can make out,” said Blackberry, “is all about the Blindness. Bigwig thinks that what Flyairth wants first and foremost is to become a Chief Rabbit again. I don’t think it is. I think that if she’d never come across the Blindness but had left her own warren all the same and come here, she’d have settled in quite peacefully, without making any trouble.”

“She was Chief Rabbit in that Thinial warren of hers before ever she came across the Blindness,” said Bigwig. “Now she wants to be Chief Rabbit again. All her talk about the Blindness is just a pretext to get support.”

“Well, anyway, she wants to persuade as many rabbits
as she can to move out of here,” said Blackberry. “And the reason, she says, is that here there’s great danger from the Blindness. Now listen. As far as I’ve ever been able to make out, men only infect rabbits with the Blindness when the rabbits have become a nuisance to them: eating their greenstuff, tearing the bark off their fruit trees, spoiling their lettuces and all that. If we’d gone in for anything like that, they’d have infected us long ago. But they haven’t, because so far we’ve been no real trouble to them, up here in this lonely place. There’s nothing to spoil.

“But there’s one other thing that would turn them against us. If there grew to be too many of us, that’d lead to trouble: if this whole place got to be full of rabbits, here, there and everywhere. If all the youngsters and all the Efrafan does were to stay here, there’d very soon be a whole crowd of rabbits, all over the Down and increasing all the time. The men wouldn’t like that.

“Flyairth wants everyone to move to a new warren in a more lonely place. But there’s no place so lonely that men won’t get to know about it if there are too many rabbits there.”

“Let her go,” said Fiver. “Let her go and take as many youngsters with her as ever she can. The more she takes, the safer we’ll be here. In fact, if she weren’t obliging us by doing it herself, we might even have had to make her.”

“But can anyone stay here who wants to?” asked Hyzenthlay.

“Yes, of course,” said Hazel. “Until we get overcrowded
again, if we ever do. But we don’t have to think about that for a long time. Fiver and Blackberry are right. Let Flyairth go.”

Later that day, Flyairth left the Down by herself, saying that she was off to find a suitably safe place for a new warren. She had not asked anyone to come with her.

She was gone for three days. When she returned, she told Hazel that she had found a much safer and more secluded place. She asked him to come with her to look at it. Hazel replied, quite amiably, that going to a new warren formed no part of his plans for the moment, but she was free to invite anyone else she wished.

However, she did not make a second reconnaissance, but the next day set off with a considerable number of the younger rabbits, whom she had convinced that they were in danger where they were. She was not, she said, coming back.

The weather continued to improve, and there were more warm days. One fine evening Hazel and a number of his friends, including Hyzenthlay, Vilthuril and Thethuthinnang, were lying peacefully in the sun.

“I wonder how Flyairth and her lot are getting on,” said Holly. “And for the matter of that, where they are.”

“Kehaar’ll be back any day now,” said Bigwig. “He’ll find out where they’ve gone and how Flyairth’s getting on as Chief Rabbit.”

“Well enough, I should imagine,” said Dandelion. “You know, I couldn’t help liking her. She was most amusing to talk to and had a lot of good ideas.”

“She saved my life,” said Hazel, “but she never boasted about it to anyone.”

“I’d imagine she’d be a very good Chief Rabbit,” said Silver, “as long as she had a male partner to—well, you know—to balance her when she needed it.”

“I like the idea of a female Chief Rabbit,” said Hazel. “Seriously, I think we ought to have one. Hyzenthlay, how would you like to take it on?”

“I wish you would,” said Blackavar. “I think all of us would be only too pleased.”

Hyzenthlay was about to decline with a joke, when, glancing round, she realized that they were all looking at her expectantly, full of support for what Hazel had proposed.

“Tell us you will,” said Fiver.

“Well, if Hazel will stay on with me, I will,” she answered. “And I promise—”

“Yes? Yes?” said three or four of them together.

“I promise to be the biggest nuisance he’s ever met in his life, and to disagree with him about everything!”

“I feel more lighthearted already,” said Hazel, touching his nose to hers.

When the news spread through the warren, there was not a dissentient voice. Everyone, even Bigwig, had confidence in Hyzenthlay, particularly those Efrafan does who had not left with Flyairth.

*

Spring was fine and dry, and summer came in, full of promise and ease. One beautiful afternoon, as Bluebell, Hawkbit and three or four others were at silflay on the Down, a stranger rabbit, looking distinctly tired, came lolloping up to them over the grass.

“I’ve been sent with a message from Efrafa,” he said. “Can you take me to your Chief Rabbit?”

“Certainly,” replied Bluebell. “Male or female? We cater for all tastes here, you know.”

As it happened, however, the Efrafan messenger, despite Bluebell’s fulsome welcome, found that he had no choice in the matter of a Chief Rabbit. Hazel was not in the warren that afternoon, having taken Silver and Blackberry with him for a cautious look round Nuthanger Farm. Since the defeat of Woundwort, Hazel had always retained, at the back of his mind, an irrational—indeed, a superstitious—idea that in some way or other the farm was of lucky import for himself and his rabbits. Of course, this did not mean that he disregarded the ever-present danger from the cats and the dog, but he felt intuitively that the whole place, treated with proper and knowledgeable respect, welcomed him, much as an experienced sailor might feel that the sea, regarded as it ought to be, was beneficial rather than hostile:
a potential for good. He liked to see what was going on at the farm, even though most of it was beyond his understanding. In summer he used to pay it periodic visits, taking with him one or two reliable rabbits and always returning with the notion that the time had been well spent and had tipped some sort of recondite balance in his favor.

That was what he was up to this afternoon. He had left Hyzenthlay in charge—not that anything was likely to happen—and gone down the hill in carefree spirits. Consequently, it was Hyzenthlay to whom Bluebell conducted the visitor.

His message was not really one of any particular moment. Efrafa was once again getting rather overcrowded with does, and Campion had picked out a number who had actually told him, of their own accord, that they would welcome a chance to broaden their horizon and see what life was like on Watership Down. As far as Campion was concerned, they could stay there or come back, as they pleased. Feeling sure that Hazel would have no objection to the idea, he had told them to set off from Efrafa whenever they liked. It then occurred to him that none of them knew the way. There was, however, in Efrafa a young buck named Rithla, who had come to Campion a few months before with a message from Hazel and had remained there, having found a doe with whom he had mated happily and fathered a litter. Campion had now seen in him a guide for the emigrating does. He had also, on second thoughts, felt that it would be only polite to let Hazel know in advance that the does were
coming. He had therefore told Rithla to guide them as far as the Belt, from where it would be easy for them to continue on their own to Watership, and then, leaving them to rest and feed, himself to press on and tell Hazel that they were on their way.

All this Rithla explained to Hyzenthlay, sitting with her in the Honeycomb, together with Thethuthinnang, Bigwig and a few more who happened to be about.

Hyzenthlay, not having been a Chief Rabbit for very long, was anxious to act conscientiously and to make a really good job of anything that came her way. Accordingly she told Rithla, on her own authority, that the does would be most welcome (more especially since a considerable number of does had gone off with Flyairth). Upon learning that he had left them all on the Belt, to come on in their own time, she said that she thought this was rather dangerous. In spite of Campion’s instructions to Rithla, she thought, first, that they might mistake their way and get lost and, second, that in the open they were in danger from elil. She would therefore go out herself to meet them and bring them in before nightfall. No, she would not need Rithla to guide her. The way was plain enough. He was tired and ought to silflay and then sleep.

Bigwig, who had overheard most of what she said, at once began to protest. How could she be sure of meeting the does? More important, there was any amount of danger from elil for a rabbit alone on the Down. Rithla had been lucky. He should never have been told to come on by himself. Hyzenthlay ought to remain where she was.

Hyzenthlay replied that if the does were already on their way, there would be no difficulty in finding them. There was only one way, and it was plain enough, a humans’ footpath. As for elil, she could run faster than they could, and anyway she did not expect to meet any by day.