Potlendh

by David J. Wallis

  “Then the Lord of Power turned the westernmost part of our land into a terrible desert, so that no one could war upon us—or we war upon others—ever again. Such destruction: it is indescribable. Our rich lands and fields: more than half disappeared into that desert. We could no longer feed the rest of the Island. We could not employ all of the Rabbits that had tended our fields for thousands of years. Hunny, Bunny, and Runny have stayed with me only out of friendship.”

  “Friendship—” Hunny repeated.

  “That’s—” Bunny added.

  “—true,” Runny finished.

  We will learn a lot more about Hunny, Bunny, and Runny as this story unfolds, but as the twins were telling me this tale, I could already begin to understand that there was so much more to these three Rabbits than they were telling me. In fact, the twins’ eyes would get all misty whenever they talked about them, and their sides were shaking from restrained laughter.

  When she finished her story, Cassandra grew so small so that she actually disappeared under the table. Everyone could hear her crying; however, no one spoke or tried to take notice for several long moments. Finally, Uniqua broke the silence.

  “It’s time for bed. We have to get started very early in the morning, and we have a long way to go. Bunnies, please clean the table, and I will show our guests their rooms.”

  I’ll bet that you are already guessing that the bedrooms were of gigantic size and wondering how they were going to sleep. I mean, I like nice comfortable beds, but if the bed were the size of a whole house, why I might get lost in the bed alone. But, I am going to have to let you in on a little secret. You see, not only did Dragons live in this great castle, they also had, at one time, many Rabbit servants, and these Rabbits did not like huge beds either. So, there were plenty of rooms that would be very comfortable for you and me to stay in, with beds of just the right size, even though the Rabbits might still think they were too large for their liking. And, these rooms were fairly ordinary when you compare them with the rest of the castle: just homey enough like our own bedrooms at home.

  “Uniqua,” Karen ventured a question just before tiring. “Would it be okay if I asked you a question?”

  “Depends on the question,” Uniqua answered, much like a Grownup to a child.

  “Why does Cassandra keep changing her size?”

  “Harrumph!” Uniqua snorted (or something like that, which horses and Unicorns can easily make). “I would think that children like you would know more about Dragons than you do. I mean, have you not read all the stories humans in your world like to make up?”

  “Well, some. But I never read that Dragons can change their size.”

  “Well, then. You have an education coming. And it is too late in the night for me to be giving lessons. Besides, I think that if you start opening your eyes and using that gifted brain of yours, you’ll soon figure it out. Good night. We start early; so be forewarned.”

  With that she departed for her own bedroom, and that was the last the twins saw of her for the night.

  The morning came too early for the twins. All that walking around in the forest and then the arduous climb to the castle had fairly worn them out. But Uniqua had just the thing to energize them: a small glassful from the Spring of Energy, better than ten energy bars.

  When the twins stepped outside the castle and into the open square, they just remembered their manners in time to keep from laughing at the Rabbits. And, while Rabbits do not mind being laughed at when they are trying to be funny, they do not like being laughed at when they are not trying to be funny. It just so happened that Hunny, Bunny, and Runny were wearing mountain climbing clothes. They even carried ropes around their waists and rock hammers in tiny holster belts, and each one carried a backpack full of food and water for the journey. That these three Rabbits were prepared for a long journey was just one more secret about them the twins would later appreciate.

  “Let’s get this party walking,” Uniqua announced in a voice like that of a troop commander, as she took up the job as a leader and guide. She set out down the castle steps at a fairly brisk pace with the twins right behind her, a still weeping Cassandra behind them, and the cheerful, chattering Rabbits bringing up the rear. For the Rabbits, you would think that they were off to a picnic rather than the long trek that still awaited our party.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HUNNY, BUNNY, AND RUNNY

  I forgot to mention—but up till now we have not heard the Rabbits talk, except for those three words at dinner—that these three sisters were kind of peculiar. Well, peculiar to us, maybe, being that they are Rabbits that do not act like how we expect Rabbits to act; but here on the Island you could say that anything peculiar was normal. And normal was—well, unusual. I better stop, because I think I’m confusing even myself.

  These Rabbits tended to talk at the same time: when one started a sentence, the second sister would say the second word, the third sister would speak the third word, and so on in succession. If a sentence ever ended without all three Rabbits speaking, then the remaining Rabbit or Rabbits would simply utter: “Hmm-hmm.” Since this would be very difficult to write—what with all the dashes and trying to remember which rabbit was speaking—and for you to read, I am just going to abbreviate their strange way of talking by writing “the Rabbits said” instead. If you will remember this peculiarity, then you will laugh a little of how strange it was to listen to.

  Bunny was the eldest of the sisters by five seconds, according to their mother. Then came Hunny, and a full minute later out popped Runny. We might be tempted to say that the Rabbits were triplets and shared the same birthday. But not so on the Island. Bunny would always be the oldest and have her birthday first. Hunny would have to wait another fifteen seconds before anyone could wish her a happy birthday. And then, Runny would have to wait another whole minute before being wished the same. It was the same with the birthday presents. But this was Rabbit tradition, and one thing about Rabbits: they do not like to break tradition.

  Getting back to our story, our group—or Group, as they now called themselves—had reached the flat, rich lands of what remained of beautiful Derkesthai after crossing the rocky, desolate cliffs of the castle.

  “So, where are we going now?” Carl asked.

  “We’re going to our home in Hoppity Meadows, hmm-hmm,” the sisters spoke in their peculiar style and in light, singsong-like voices. “You’ll love it. It is the garden spot of Potlendh, hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm.”

  “Pot-what?” Karen asked for the name to be repeated.

  “Potlendh the Island of the Power Lord, hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm.”

  “Oh. Does it have a meaning?” she asked the Rabbits.

  “Yes,” the Rabbits chorused together, but they did not offer any further explanation.

  “So, what’s the story here, Uniqua?” Carl asked the Unicorn. “This place looks beautiful, like one gigantic farm, but I don’t see anyone. Isn’t anyone living here any more?”

  “Beautiful?” Uniqua repeated. “How can you say that it is beautiful? Why, just look at it! The place is overgrown and untended. The plants are just running wild, growing and expanding any way they want to. There is no order, no organization, no proper management.”

  Carl looked around him and saw that the land was so full of color with all kinds of vegetables and fruit growing in such abundance. He thought the country looked very natural, and he could not imagine what Uniqua was talking about. He knew that many nations back in the real world would kill themselves for a chance to share in this bounty.

  “Before the war, this place was immaculate. Every vegetable and fruit knew its place and where specifically to grow. The Rabbit farmers trained the plants and trees, you know. They knew how to discipline the land so that everything had its own place and function. But the Rabbits are gone—at least most of them. And now the vegetables and fruits have literally overgrown the land. See how they squabble over their neighbor’s territory. Why, it is disgusting. Disgraceful! Oh, how I wish we could g
et the Rabbits to return and get things back to the way they were. But, of course, that won’t happen until we get Cassandra’s parents back again. And, who knows how long that might be. It might be never, you know.”

  “So, what happened to the Rabbits?”

  “I don’t really know,” Uniqua answered.

  “They left their homes and went away, hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm,” the bunny sisters told him. “When Papa and Momma were enslaved by the king brothers, our fellow Rabbits did not want to stay. They didn’t know what to do. They had no more Papa and Mamma to serve or protect them. They just went away, hmm-hmm, hmm-hmm.”

  “Right. I understand,” Carl said. “But where did they go?”

  The Rabbits just shrugged their collective shoulders. “They just went away, and no one knows where.”

  Again, you might call this peculiar. I mean, if your parents or my parents (or children, since I’m much older) disappeared, I do not think we would just shrug our shoulders and say “Oh, well.” We would want to know what happened to them and try to find them.

  “I’m curious,” Karen began. “You called Cassandra’s parents Papa and Momma. May I ask why?”

  “They were not our real Papa and Momma, of course. But they were like our real Papa and Momma because they took care of us. Long, long time ago when the first Rabbits first started living here, we had no order, just like Uniqua was complaining about with the fruits and vegetables. Then the first Dragons came, and they taught us how to become ordered. We made a bargain with the Dragons. We worked for them, and they, in turn provided us with wonderful homes and protected us from all the other inhabitants of the Island. It was really wild and dangerous in the old days. But now that Papa and Momma are gone, it is all wild and dangerous again, hmm-hmm.”

  “So far I haven’t seen anything that looks dangerous,” Carl said, and he was immediately greeted with a chorus of “Hush!”

  “Don’t say bad things like that!” Uniqua scolded him. “Do you really want to wish for bad luck? There are many dangers on this Island. We do not need to go wishing for more!”

  “There used to be thousands of foxes and dogs on the Island in the days before the Dragons,” the Rabbit sisters explained. “We Rabbits had to hide in our warrens and tunnels. We tried to train an army to fight them, but we never really won a battle. It wasn’t until Papa and Momma chased them out Derkesthai that our ancestors could feel safe, and that is why we love each Papa and Momma who take care of us.”

  “Took care of you,” Cassandra corrected them sorrowfully.

  “Maybe, but you are our Momma now, and we love you. Hmm-hmm,” the sisters told her.

  “I’m a terrible mother,” Cassandra muttered to herself, but only the twins heard her and kind of felt sorry for her.

  It was about noontime—at least what you might call noontime, because the children’s stomachs were beginning to complain a little—that the Group finally reached Hoppity Meadows. The twins looked at this huge mushroom growing in the center of the land partitioned especially for the Rabbits’ habitat. When I write a huge mushroom, I must ask you to think of the largest mushroom you have ever seen and then magnify it by a thousand, thousand times. Carl and Karen both dropped their jaws at the sight, even though they stood at a great distance from its base still. It sported a purple stalk while the overhanging, umbrella-shaped fleshy part was yellow with large red spots vaguely looking like portraits of running Rabbits. The stalk proved to be an escalator with moving steps progressing in a spiral up and down the center (moving only when someone stepped on it to conserve engergy), while the cap of the mushroom provided spacious rooms for special occasions, and there used to be many excuses for holding parties and celebrations. This mushroom was the center of Rabbit social life. But now it was eerily quiet, a bit forlorn, for no Rabbits lived here any more.

  “So, where did you all live?” Carl asked the Rabbits.

  “All Rabbits love to live underground. It is our nature, you know,” they answered. They pointed out several carefully camoflauged staircases that led to warrens underground. “Would you like to go down and have a look? Hmm-hmm. Hmm-hmm.”

  “No time to look,” Uniqua disagreed. “We’ll stop to catch our breaths and then keep going. Bunnies, empty your larders. Let’s eat and take a nap.”

  “Let’s go up into the mushroom,” Karen suggested.

  “And how do you expect me to negotiate the moving stairs?” Uniqua asked with a hint of hurt in her voice. “You will notice that my hooves are for traveling on the ground, thank you.”

  “And,” Cassandra chimed in, “what do you think might happen if I got bigger? I might destroy everything.”

  “Oh, that’s just an excuse you use all the time, dear girl,” the Unicorn admonished her. “We are all friends now, so you might as well admit that you are afraid of heights.” To the twins, Uniqua added, “That’s why she absolutely refuses to fly.” Back to Cassandra, she said, “Really, you need to work more on your self-esteem.”

  Now it really was picnic time, and the three Rabbits had everything laid out in no time flat, moving like a well-oiled machine. The Group sat down on a large tablecloth to a refreshing lunch, already pre-prepared by the Rabbit cooks before they left the castle, along with another draught from the Spring of Energy. Still, Uniqua wanted everyone alert and ready to journey on, so she insisted that everyone take a short nap.

  “And,” she added quickly as a footnote, “everyone should use the bathroom before we get started. I don’t want any unnecessary delays.”

  Carl and Karen looked around for any hint of a bathroom, but all they saw were the mushroom, trees, and fields filled to capacity with fruits and vegetables of every kind. Karen turned a bit red and started to laugh, but she said nothing that would embarrass her more.

  The sun had moved to the last quarter of the sky when the Unicorn called everyone to get up and get going. The Rabbits had not taken a nap but had used the time to replace the food that had been eaten by foraging through the fields and had already cut up the vegetables and packed them away. Rabbits, it seemed, do not need so much time to nap and re-energize themselves but like to keep busy most of the time.

  Our Group started walking in a northeasterly direction, keeping an eye on the cloud-enshrouded Mountain of Power ahead of them. As they walked the twins could not help but notice a gradual change in the landscape. They seemed to be leaving the cultivated fields behind them and entering untouched lands where trees grew in abundance. But, sad to say, these were not the healthy trees of the forest where the twins had trespassed through and had encountered the Unicorn. They were not only stunted in their growth but also looked like they were going to soon pass the way of all things into oblivion, long before their time.

  “We are approaching the Dearth Desert,” the triplets warned. “Every season, it seems to grow and grow, hmm-hmm.”

  “Isn’t there any way to stop it?” Karen asked.

  The triplets shrugged their shoulders. “It was made by the Lord of Power, and we don’t think he wants to stop it, hmm-hmm.”

  “Maybe we can ask him to get rid of it,” Carl thought aloud.

  “Oh, could you?” the Rabbits cheered hopefully.

  “Let’s just get to the mountain first,” Uniqua advised them, “before we go and think about asking him anything.”

  “We’re not going to get to the mountain this way,” Cassandra moaned. “We can’t cross the Dearth Desert, and we certainly cannot cross the mountains. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Patience,” Uniqua cautioned, although between you and I, I don’t think Uniqua had much patience herself. “There is a pass that very few people know about that will take us into the center of the Island. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to use that pass.”

  “Will it be dangerous?” Carl asked.

  “No more and no less than the dangers we have faced so far,” came the answer.

  The members of the Group became more silent as they walked, for the very edge of Dearth Desert was cl
ose by on their left side. Nothing grew on this great gray expanse, while the land next to it was in various stages of withering and succumbing to inevitable death. On the right and ahead of them huge towering mountains barred any further progress like castle walls and embankments, their sides so smooth and straight that climbing them seemed impossible. It looked as if the Group had indeed reached a dead end. There would be nothing to do but to turn around and go back.

  “Wait a minute!” Karen exclaimed. “I thought I saw a flash over there.” She pointed to a singular spot where several trees were surrounded by bushes nestled close to the mountain wall.

  “Good eye,” Uniqua praised her. “That’s exactly where we need to go.” And, she led them to the very spot where Karen had seen the flash of light.

  “Stop! Stop right there!” a loud and growling voice commanded. It sounded so loud that the twins thought they had just stepped on some giant’s toes and started looking up towards the sky to see where the face might be. Only low flying clouds drifting slowly beneath the constant cloudy dome was all that they saw.

  “Who are you? And what do you want?” the voice demanded.

  “Passage,” Uniqua answered in a polite tone.

  “Be gone with you,” the voice rudely told her. “If you don’t know the password, then you ain’t gonna get no passage.”

  “Show yourself, please,” Uniqua persisted, “that we might be able to talk.”

  The twins were not too keen on meeting a giant, especially when there was only one direction that offered escape—and all but Uniqua were expecting to meet an ugly mountain of a creature. But to everyone’s surprise—except Uniqua, of course—a tiny little Ogre stepped out from behind the bushes. Tiny is the key word here, because he barely stood a foot tall! He was still rather ugly to most people’s eyes, quite a bit malformed unless you prefer lumpy and hump-shaped creatures, carrying a club that had to be at least three times longer than he was tall, and the dark green color of his elephant-like hide would have put people off at first sight.