Tales from Watership Down (9 page)

“I don’t know what they do to you—I’ve never met one since, El-ahrairah be praised—but we all three just sat there helplessly while it killed Mian; she never made a sound. We got away somehow, but Fescue was in an awful state, crying and carrying on, poor little chap. And in the end, some time after ni-Frith on the second day, we decided to go back to the home warren.

“It was easier said than done. I believe now that we wandered in circles for a long time. But anyway, by evening we were as lost as ever and just plodding on in a kind of hopeless way, when all of a sudden I came down a slope and through a bramble bush, and there was a rabbit—a stranger—quite close by. He was at silflay, browsing over the grass, and I could see his hole—several holes, in fact—beyond him, on the other side of the little dell we were in.

“I felt terribly relieved and glad, and I was just going over to speak to him, when all of a sudden something made me stop. And it was as I stopped and looked at him that it
came over me where it was that we must have stumbled into.

“The wind—what wind there was–was blowing from him toward us, and as he browsed he stopped and passed hraka. I wasn’t very far away, and he gave off no smell whatever—nothing—not the faintest trace. We’d come blundering through the brambles straight in front of him, and he hadn’t even looked up or given any sign of having noticed us. And then I saw something which frightens me even now—I can never get it out of my mind. A fly—a big bluebottle—flew down right on his eye. He didn’t blink or even shake his head. He went on feeding, and the fly … it … it disappeared; it vanished. A moment later he’d hopped his own length forward, and I saw it on the grass where his head had been.

“Fescue was beside me, and I heard him give a little, quick moan. And it was when I heard that that I realized there was no other sound in that dell where we were. It was a fine evening with a light breeze, but there wasn’t a blackbird singing, not a leaf rustling—nothing. The earth round all the rabbit holes was cold and hard—not a scratch or mark anywhere. I knew then what I was seeing, and all my senses clouded over—sight, smell … I felt a sort of surge of faintness pour up through my body. The whole world seemed to topple away and leave me alone in that dreadful place of silence, where there were no smells. We were Nowhere. I caught a glimpse of Stitchwort beside me, and he looked like a rabbit choking in a snare.

“It was then that we saw the boy. He was crawling on
his stomach through the bushes a little to one side of us—downwind of the rabbit on the grass. He was a big boy, and all I can say is that men may have looked like that once, but from what little I’ve seen of them, they don’t anymore. There was a kind of dirty, faraway wildness about him, like the place itself. His clothes were foul and torn. He had old boots too big for him and a stupid, cruel face with bad teeth and great warts on one cheek. And he, too, made no sound and had no smell.

“In one hand he was holding a forked stick with a sort of loop hanging from it, and as I watched he put a stone into it and pulled it back nearly to his eye. Then he let go, and the stone flew out and hit the rabbit on the right hind leg. I heard the bone break, and the rabbit leaped up and screamed. Yes, I heard that, all right—I still hear it, and dream about it too. Can you imagine what a breathless, a lungless scream might be like? It seemed to be in the air rather than to come from the rabbit kicking on the grass. It was as though the whole place had screamed.

“The boy stood up, cackling, and now the hollow seemed to be full of rabbits we couldn’t see, all running for those cold, empty holes.

“You could see he was enjoying what he’d done—not just that he’d shot himself a rabbit but that it was hurt and screaming. He went over to it, but he didn’t kill it. He stood looking down at it and watching it kick. The grass was bloody, but his boots left no mark, either on the grass or on the mud.

“What was going to happen next I don’t know. Thank
Frith I’ll never know. I believe my heart would have stopped—I should have died. But suddenly, like a noise coming from a long way outside when you’re underground, I heard men’s voices approaching and smelled a white stick burning. And I was glad—yes, I was
glad
as a goldfinch on the tall grass—to hear those voices and smell that white stick. A moment later they came pushing through the flowering blackthorn, scattering the white petals all over the ground. There were two of them, big, flesh-smelling men, and they saw the boy—yes, they saw him and called out to him.

“How can I explain to you the difference between those men and the rest of that place? It was only when they came shoving in, rasping on the thorns, that I understood that the rabbit and the boy and—everything there—they were like acorns falling from an oak tree. I saw a hrududu once roll down a slope by itself. Its man had left it on a slope, and I suppose he’d done something wrong—it just went slowly rolling down into the brook below, and there it stopped.

“That’s what they were like. They were doing what they had to do—they had no choice—they’d done it all before—they’d done it again and again—there was no light in their eyes—they weren’t creatures that could see or feel—”

Coltsfoot stopped, choking. In dead silence Fiver left his place and lay down beside him, between the tree roots, speaking in a very low voice which no one else could hear.
After a long pause, Coltsfoot sat up, shook his ears and went on.

“Those … those … sights … those things … the rabbit and the boy—they melted, even as the men spoke. They vanished, like frost on the grass when you breathe on it. And the men—they noticed nothing strange. I believe now that they saw the boy and spoke to him as part of a kind of dream, and that as he and his poor victim vanished, they remembered nothing of it. Well, be that as it may, they’d evidently come there because they’d heard the rabbit squeal, and you could see why at once.

“One of them was carrying the body of a rabbit dead of the White Blindness. I saw its poor eyes and I could see, too, that the body was still warm. I don’t know whether you know how men go about this dirty work, but what they do is to put the still-warm body of a dead rabbit down a hole in a warren before the fleas have left the ears. Then, as the body turns cold, the fleas go to other rabbits, who catch the White Blindness from them. There’s nothing you can do but run away—and that only if you realize in time what the danger is.

“The men stood looking round them and pointing at the deserted holes. Neither of them was the farmer—we all knew what he looked like. He must have asked them to come and bring the body of the rabbit and then been too lazy to go out with them; just told them where to go, and they weren’t too sure about the exact place. You could see that from the way they looked about.
“After a little, one of them trod out his white stick and started burning another, and then they went over to a hole and pushed the body right down it with a long pole. After that, they went away.

“We went away too—I can’t remember how. Fescue was as good as mad: when we got back to Nutley Copse he just lay tharn in the first burrow he found and wouldn’t come out next day or the day after. I don’t know what happened to him in the end—I never saw him after that. Stitchwort and I managed to get hold of a burrow of our own later that summer, and we shared it for a long time. We never spoke of what we’d seen, even when we were alone together. Stitchwort was killed later, when the Efrafans attacked the warren.

“I know you all think I’m unfriendly. Perhaps you’ve been thinking I don’t like anyone here—that I’m against you. It isn’t that—now you know it isn’t. Oh, what haunts me always is that I keep thinking … does that wretched rabbit have to go through it all again and again and again, forever? The stone—the pain … and might we too—”

The big, burly Coltsfoot lay sobbing like a kitten. Pipkin, too, was crying, and Hazel could feel Blackberry trembling against his side in the dark of the Honeycomb. Then Fiver spoke, with a quiet assurance that cut through the horror in the burrow like the calling of a plover across bare fields at night.

“No, Coltsfoot. That’s not the way of it. It’s true enough that there are many terrible and dangerous things
in that land beyond, where you went with your friends that night; but in the end, however far away it may seem, Frith keeps his promise to El-ahrairah. I know this, and you can believe it. Those weren’t real creatures that you saw. Only, in places where bad things have happened, sometimes a kind of strange force lingers on, like lonely pools of water after a storm; and now and then some of us fall into those pools. What you saw wasn’t real—you said so yourself. It was an echo you heard, not a voice. And remember, it saved your warren that evening. Where else might that body have been put otherwise—and who can understand all that Frith knows and brings to pass?”

He was silent and, although Coltsfoot made no answer, himself said no more. Evidently he felt that Coltsfoot must take it from there on his own, without repetition or argument to convince him. After a little, the others dispersed to their sleeping burrows, leaving Coltsfoot and Fiver alone.

Coltsfoot did take it. For several days afterward, he was to be seen at silflay with Fiver, quietly browsing over the grass, talking and listening to his new friend.

As the bitter winter passed, his spirits gradually lightened, and by the following spring he had become quite a talkative and cheerful rabbit, not infrequently to be found telling stories to kittens under the bank.

“Fiver,” said Bluebell one evening in early April, when the scent of the first violets was drifting under the new beech leaves, “do you think you could order a nice, gentle,
unfrightening sort of ghost for me? Only I’ve been thinking—they seem almost to do quite a bit of good in the long run.”

“The
very
long run,” answered Fiver, “for those who can run without stopping.”

“Oh, you’re always asking me for a story,” said Dandelion, one evening in the Honeycomb when everyone had crowded in out of the April rain. “Why don’t you ask someone else to tell a story? What about Speedwell there? He tells almost as many jokes as Bluebell, but I’ve never heard him tell a story yet. I’m sure all those jokes ought to add up to a story, that’s if they’re laid end to end properly. How about it, Speedwell?”

“Yes, yes,” they all chorused. “Speedwell, tell us a story!”

“Well, all right,” said Speedwell, as soon as he could make himself heard. “I
will
tell you a story, about an adventure I had last summer. But while I’m telling it, I don’t want any rabbits interrupting or asking questions. The first rabbit who interrupts goes out into the rain. Is that agreed?”

They all agreed, chiefly out of curiosity to learn what
Speedwell was going to tell them, and when everyone had settled down comfortably, he began.

“It was one day toward the end of last summer, when the weather was terribly hot and dry, that I decided to go and get my fur cooled. I’ve always thought it’s a great pity that rabbits can’t take their fur off in hot weather, but at least it’s a relief to go to the Cooler’s.”

Hawkbit was spluttering on the edge of a question. Speedwell stopped, and Hawkbit hurriedly swallowed what he had been going to say. Speedwell resumed.

“Well, so I set off down the hill to the field where the Iron Tree grows. But when I got there, I found that someone had planted butterflies—blue ones—all over it, and I couldn’t get it to do what I wanted. So I just lined up all the biggest butterflies I could see and told them to fly with me across to the farm.

“When we reached the farm, before we even came down, what should I see but a fox sitting up in the farmyard, eating the lettuces? I told the butterflies to attack it, but they were afraid to, so I just jumped down and went to find a bucket to put the fox in. I found the bucket, all right, hung up to dry on the clothesline, but some starlings had been using it for a nest, and I had to take it with all the nestlings in it, squeaking for food. I told them there was a nice, fresh fox all ready for them, but when they jumped out, they frightened the fox so much that it ran away, with all the nestlings chasing after it. I let them go and kept the bucket for myself.

“Well, I was playing with the bucket, rolling it backward and forward across the yard, when suddenly a badger looked out of it and asked what I thought I was doing, waking him up. I told him he couldn’t have been there long, because I’d only just seen it empty myself, but he only said, ‘Ho, we’ll see about that!’ and got out and began chasing me. Well, there was only one thing for it. I took off my head and sent it rolling away, down to the road, and the badger after it, gor-boom! gor-boom! Then I sat down where I was, and the farmer’s little girl came out and brought me a big plateful of carrots.”

At this point Bluebell said, “But—” Speedwell waited, but Bluebell turned it into a cough, and Speedwell went on.

“When I’d finished the carrots, I could hear a lot of scrabbling and stamping not far off, so I went to see what it was all about. And in the ditch I found a whole crowd of hedgehogs, all arguing which of them was the most prickly. I told them I was, and at that they all came for me, fairly bellowing with rage like a lot of sheep. I ran away as fast as I could, but all the same they’d have caught me if I hadn’t suddenly come upon my head sitting in a puddle. I put it on again quick and looked really fiercely at those hedgehogs, so that they all rolled over one another trying to get away. I let them go and sat down for a rest.

“But would you believe it? Inside two and a half breaths of fresh air, down flies Kehaar and three of his mates, all asking where were they and what had happened to Bigwig. I told them Bigwig was busy climbing a tree to get
out of the heat, but at that they all came up and sat down round me, asking was I sure I was telling the truth. That made me really cross, and I said to them they could be sure I’d never told the truth in my life. I wanted to get away from them, so I lifted myself up by my ears and climbed into a lettuce tree just behind me. I hid behind the lettuces and waited until the seagulls had all flown away. Then I ate every single lettuce I could find and three that I couldn’t, just to make sure.