Suddenly there crashed the sharp clap of thunder that they all knew.
The three young rabbits sprang, terrified, into the woods.
But they saw how the elk had bounded up. All four of his feet pawed the air as if an irresistible force had lifted him and flung him on high. In his beautiful large eyes lay all his final terror, his pain and an anxious longing to escape.
Once among the thick leaves, the three little rabbits turned round again and peered, full of curiosity and horror, out on the clearing. After another desperate bound, the elk again plunged down on the turf. He had no strength left to flee further. He staggered and collapsed in a heap.
They heard the dull moan with which his life expired.
A shudder passed over all three rabbits. They were bewildered and silent.
A new terror assailed them as He appeared in the glade and hurried quickly to where the stag lay. He stooped silently over the fallen body. Something strange flashed and gleamed in His hand. Then He grasped the dead elk’s antlers, lifted its neck and plunged the knife into the insensible, bloody, gaping head, which He opened, to take out the antlers. Then He withdrew as softly as He had come.
The air seemed pure once more, all danger had passed.
But the three did not dare to go out on the clearing again. They stayed together, shocked and wondering.
Little Epi was the first to recover his senses. He crept up close to the other two, very close. His ears were quivering violently, his eyes blinked and rolled, his whiskers twitched constantly, and a spasm often passed from his brow down his little back. Obviously he wanted to say something. At last he began, softly, and, as always, shyly, “Perhaps . . . I only mean . . . perhaps He isn’t our enemy . . .”
Plana turned to him excitedly. “Do you think so?”
“Before this He only shot the deer . . . This time the elk . . . I only mean . . . we rabbits jumped in front of Him . . . You, Plana, were right beside Him . . . He didn’t do anything to harm you . . . He’s never done anything to any of us . . . I only mean . . .”
Plana turned to Hops. “What do you think?” she asked hastily. “Tell me, what do you think about it?”
Hops considered. He let both his ears droop and stared at the ground while his nose twitched and his whiskers quivered. He recalled how He had saved him from the fox. And when Plana kept pressing him and he had to reply, he muttered, “It’s quite possible.”
Plana sat bolt upright on her hind legs, joyfully, clapped her forepaws in the air and exulted. “That would be glorious!”
“But we have to be on guard anyway,” Hops added warningly.
Chapter Eight
A FEW DAYS LATER FATE overtook Epi.
August was not yet past. The three inseparables were lying one afternoon on their beds, never suspecting how soon they were to be parted.
A rustling and crackling among the bushes and branches startled them. No creature in the forest made a commotion like that.
In a flash their ears, struck by the first sound, stood up straight as arrows.
Then the sound of the two-legged footsteps they knew so well grew audible. They were light steps, the steps of more than one person. The rabbits distinguished five pair of feet in five different directions. Lingering, loitering, then again faster steps. These terrible invaders made no pretense at the stealthy approach of which the rabbits always grew so frightened. Of course they were afraid now, too, and, at the same time they felt strangely bewildered.
The snapping of tender, broken branches, the tearing of trampled boughs and leaves sounded nearer, together with the gentle rustle of the unbroken bushes, springing back into place.
A strange, rousing scent assailed the rabbits. They grew still more bewildered, for even this scent was different from that which poured from Him, was less poisonous, less acrid and exciting. It did not whip the blood to a fever as quickly. Nevertheless, the rabbits were alarmed.
They heard clear, shrill voices at whose power they fell into consternation. Their ears twitched and stood up stiffly. They understood nothing, absolutely nothing about voices, were hearing them, moreover, for the first time, and with tremulous awe, for never before had He given utterance to such tones. They knew only the crashing thunder of His annihilation, that overtook them from afar. Then calls resounded and a high, long-drawn-out screeching that never ended.
The rabbits did not know that these were human children searching for berries in the forest, and they did not know that these human children were singing for joy.
Several of the rabbits began to grow excited and to leap to and fro in the thicket—Murk and Rino, Mamp and Klipps, Ivner and the others. The crackling, rustling, tearing and snapping of the bushes, the tramping of the two-legged creatures on all sides, their maddening, manifold scent, and their lingering, overshrill, incomprehensible voices drove them frantic.
Trumer, in particular, was quite beside himself. He took long leaps, reared up on his hind legs; his nose was twitching violently and his whiskers were whirling. “If we could only get away!” he whispered senselessly over and over. “If we could only get away!”
Suddenly he flattened his ears, which till then had been raised bolt upright, and gave himself up to desperate flight. They saw the wide arc that his white tail described on the green grass. They heard his panting, “Everyone for himself!”
He must have run right among the invaders, for Hops and Plana, as well as little Epi, saw the strange figures running in the direction where Trumer flitted by. A roaring shout resounded, so loud that it made the hearts of the three inseparables skip a beat.
But no crash of thunder followed, and it grew stiller.
“Now is our chance,” Hops said. He was trembling but determined.
Plana bounded to his side. Epi joined them.
Cautiously they slipped through the spurge-laurel, ferns and wood-lettuce. The fear that had gripped Trumer when he muttered, “If we could only get away!” bewildered them all.
Suddenly two of the creatures were standing right in front of them.
Hops and Plana bounded away from one another, running as fast as ever they could. The waving line made by their gay, white cottontails flashed over the low bushes.
The two terrifying creatures uttered a terrifying shout. But they remained standing where they were and did not pursue the fleeing rabbits.
Epi had crouched very flat against the ground. He lay so close to the two powerful creatures that their scent almost made him faint. He was completely bewildered, incapable either of decision or motion. He simply hoped frantically for one thing: that he would not be seen.
But a third creature came up, almost stumbled over him and then the dreadful thing happened.
Epi felt himself seized by both ears, felt himself lifted and hung, stiff with terror, in the air.
He did not know that it was a little girl who held him. He did not understand that this little girl was rejoicing over her capture, did not understand that she exclaimed, “Look! A little rabbit!”
Epi dangled, kicking with both hind legs at once, which made his movements convulsive. When he saw the big, pale face before him and the other two horribly smooth, pale faces, he went stiff and did not stir.
The blood was humming through all his veins, his temples were throbbing, his nerves were in a wild tumult.
“I am lost,” was all that he could feel.
He waited for some pain to annihilate him.
Had the three children known what poor Epi was suffering, they might have set him free, out of pity.
Had Epi understood what they were saying, he might have been calmer.
The children exclaimed, “He’s lovely!”
“Isn’t he nice?” they cried. And the little girl declared, “I’m going to take him home.”
“What a terrible misfortune,” Epi thought.
They did not understand one another at all, the little rabbit and the little children. They were from two absolutely alien worlds, and there was no bridge fro
m one to the other.
The little girl put Epi in her red apron.
No sooner did he feel his ears released than he made an attempt to spring out. But she drew the ends of her apron over him and held them tightly together.
Epi sat in a reddish glowing twilight.
He was desperate and unstrung; never before in the course of his short life had he known such mad fear, such continuous, paralyzing terror.
Once or twice the ends of the apron were lifted again. Epi looked up but instantly ducked his head again, overcome with fear. Five pale, naked faces were bending down to stare at him. They showed their teeth and made him shudder, for he did not even suspect that those five faces wore friendly smiles.
Then five hands reached for him—horribly naked hands. He had just experienced their strength for the first time, and his heart throbbed as though it would burst. One after the other, with gentle caresses, the hands stroked his ears, his back, his nose. Very gently they touched his whiskers.
Epi nearly died of agony.
Then the reddish-glowing twilight enveloped him again.
A gentle swaying told him he was moving forward.
Against one flank he felt the warmth of the girl’s body who was holding him.
It lasted a long, long while, and the fear that Epi suffered, like a stabbing pain, lasted also. Far into himself he crept. Once or twice he made sudden, wild attempts to spring out. Always the rosy-glowing prison simply closed tighter over him.
Then he gave up. He was totally exhausted. His head ached; his pulse was pounding but he could no longer move a single limb.
Suddenly he breathed a different, unfamiliar air. A strange scent penetrated excitingly to him. He smelt dust, strange creatures, alien things.
Presently the girl stood still. Again her dreadful voice was booming. The ends of the apron were lifted. Five naked, horrible faces were again threateningly near. Epi waited, trembling in dread of the most fearful thing he expected but had never known. The five hands simply stroked his fur again amid shouts that Epi did not understand.
It was agony.
Then the apron ends closed again.
The girl was running. Epi was bounced from side to side and up and down. Nausea began to assail him.
Then, suddenly, broad daylight!
Epi felt himself pushed out of the apron. He was sitting on a bare, white wooden board. All around him were noisy, terrifying figures. He, in every size—big, little and very little! One He was like the one they saw in the forest, with dark hair over a pale face. And with only half his head, it seemed—for the man did not have a hat on.
Epi crouched flat on the board that smelt loathsomely.
His nose twitched, there was a buzzing in his temples, his whiskers quivered; all of little Epi quivered as he lay crouching so silent, his head buried between his two forepaws.
He was sitting on a table on an open verandah. The cottage belonged to the village peddler and had a narrow, uncultivated garden.
“Nice,” said the peddler and filled his pipe.
“Lovely,” said his wife.
“So darling,” cried the little girl enthusiastically.
Her small, three-year-old brother cried, “I want him,” and clutched at Epi with an energetic little fist.
He did not resist at once though excruciating pains shot through him.
But the girl tugged the clutching fist away, released Epi’s fur from its grasp and cried, “Let him alone. He belongs to me.”
Epi sat in tortured expectancy.
Again hands were run along his back. The mother stroked him. He Himself touched him. The girl showed her little brother how to fondle a rabbit.
“Like this,” she said, “like this . . . he likes that.”
At last that martyrdom was over too.
But Epi had to undergo still another. The man lighted his pipe. When the horror of it seized on Epi, he twitched and tried to sit upright. But a pair of heavy hands immediately held him down. In this position he remained motionless, struggling against the feeling of suffocation that was choking him.
After a while the girl grasped him by the ears and lifted him up abruptly. Epi was again dangling in the air. But he did not kick this time.
They carried him into a room and set him in a box that was filled with straw. The mother had prepared it. Then they placed a few lettuce leaves in front of him.
It was hard for Epi in the room, in the narrow quarters of his box. But he felt tired, too completely dejected to realize exactly how bad it was. He suffered most from the smell. Everything had the sharp, bitter, biting scent that caused him such panic.
Panic! Epi had to remain crouching in his prison, could not, did not dare to move.
Softly he crept nearer to the lettuce leaves. Even they smelt horrible, were covered everywhere with the horror of that scent. But, weak with hunger, Epi began to nibble them anyway.
“Mother,” the little girl cried with joy, “he’s eating.”
Epi shrank back and let the leaf drop.
“Oh, yes,” the mother said, “rabbits grow trusting at once.”
Chapter Nine
AN ASSEMBLAGE WAS BEING HELD on the strip of meadow near the big oak. It had begun quite accidentally, before the dew or the day came, when the squirrel got into a quarrel with the blackbird, and more and more creatures collected, jays, magpies, the oriole, roving pheasants, and rabbits that crept up to listen attentively.
It all began when the blackbird, who had just awakened, flew with her twittering cry from a big branch of the oak tree. The squirrel, his tail twitching, scampered through the branches and sat bolt upright beside the blackbird.
“You lovely creature,” he said to her, “how I adore your morning song.”
The blackbird kept silent, cocked her shrewd little head this way and that, and pretended that she did not hear.
The squirrel moved closer still. “I’m talking about you . . . why don’t you answer me?”
The blackbird twitched her tail in exasperation and prepared to quit her perch.
But the squirrel cried quickly, “Stop. After all, we’re friends.”
“Friends?” The blackbird spun round in anger. “Friends? That’s news to me.”
The squirrel sat bolt upright, balancing with his bushy plume, held both his forepaws innocently before his white breast and asked in astonishment, “You mean to say you don’t know that?”
“How should I know it?” the blackbird twittered angrily. “You plundered my nest.”
“I?” The squirrel’s face was entirely innocent.
“You ate all my little ones,” screamed the blackbird. “They were so beautiful, so helpless, and I loved them so . . .”
“Were those your little ones?” In amazement the squirrel whisked completely around and cocked his head on one side, like someone who hears an astonishing piece of news. “So those were your little ones! Well, they certainly were delightful,” he said ingenuously and appreciatively, “very delightful! And they tasted delicious!”
Finches, red-breasts, yellow-hammers, and titmice, who had been listening, now joined in. “You robbed us!” they screamed at the squirrel, the magpie and the jay. “You made our lives miserable.”
The squirrel sat bolt upright, held his forepaws pressed against his breast and seemed as much perplexed as worried.
“Did you ever hear anything like it?” he scolded. “All year long I eat acorns and pine-seeds . . . I love everybody so . . .”
“Go along with your pine-seeds!” they chirped furiously at him from all sides.
“But . . . friends,” the squirrel was quite beside himself, “only sometimes . . . it’s too much . . . !”
“One must live,” the magpie chattered unfeelingly.
“Thief!” the hedge-sparrow shrieked. “Thief!” shrieked the titmice, finches and red-breasts.
“You steal our eggs!”
Below in the thicket, where the rabbits were lying, listening, the pheasants craned their nec
ks. “Who breaks our eggs?” they cried. “Who gulps them down? Who scatters the empty shells all about in contempt?”
“I do,” shrieked the jay.
The crow cawed high overhead in the treetop, “So do I.”
“Murderers!” cried the pheasants, “murderers!”
“Insolent rabble!” screeched the jay. “What are you?”
“We?” The whole chorus of bird voices rose, frenzied. Outchirping each other, twittering, they denied the insulting charge. The blackbird, the yellow-hammer, the pheasants, all of them cried, “We’re not murderers! It’s a lie! We’re not!”
“Is that so?” The jay was raging to begin the attack. “Well, go ask the beetles, the butterflies, the worms.” He laughed loudly. “Go ask the snails, you pheasants, you hypocrites!”
The blackbird and the pheasants grew silent, dumbfounded.
Then the woodpecker drummed furiously on the tree trunk, and furiously he cried, “That’s none of your affair!”
“Do you think so?” hissed the jay. “Do you really think so? Am I to take such insults!”
The woodpecker outscreeched him. “You’re a thief! What are you talking about, you good for nothing scoundrel? Are you going to play the beetles’ defendant? Or the worms’? Are they our kind? Have they got wings and a noble intelligence like ours? Can they sing, can they rejoice like us?”
“Well, they’re alive like us!” shrieked the jay, screamed the magpie, croaked the crow.
“I suppose you spare them,” mocked the woodpecker, “you’re such sympathetic souls! I suppose beetles or worms or snails, dragonflies and butterflies aren’t welcome prey to you? And you’re casting slurs on us—creatures like you!”
“But you’re casting slurs on us,” the answer came ringing back, “creatures like you—on us!”
The woodpecker grew furious. “Because you attack your own kind, because you kill your own kin! You pack of murderers, each one worse than the other!”
From the depths of the earth the mole shoved up his rosy snout. “I’d kill my own brother,” he said, “if he happened along and I conquered him. I’d eat him up, too. What of it?”
“I don’t care to talk to you, you villainous beast,” the woodpecker answered.