Frost Dancers: A Story of Hares

by Garry Kilworth

  The two hares decided that Snowy was a pretty hopeless case. He had been born, like his parents and grandparents before him, in captivity. It would take a major upheaval in the animal world to prise him away from his soft way of life.

  There was a small human who came into the shed every so often, took Snowy out of his cage, and cradled the rabbit in its arms. Hands would stroke the white fur lovingly, and noises like the cooing of pigeons came from the youngster’s mouth. Skelter and Rushie shuddered at the idea of being held, and when the young human came to the front of their cages, they cowered in the corners, scrabbling to get out when the youngster made sudden moves, as humans were wont to do.

  ‘He just wants to stroke you,’ said Snowy, encouragingly.

  ‘Not interested,’ snapped Skelter. ‘I’ll bite the first finger that touches my fur.’

  Snowy shook his head sadly.

  ‘You’ll never get anywhere like that. If you make friends with the boy, he’ll start to cry when they come to take you away, and then they’ll have to let you stay. The boy is very important around here, more important than the men. You get into his heart, and there’s no end to the treats you get. On the other hand, he’s in thick with the ginger tom, and if you upset him he’s likely to leave your cage open, the shed door shut, and the big cat on the inside – if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I’ll take my chances,’ muttered Skelter, but he resolved not to bite the finger that was constantly poked through the holes in the wire, just in case the story about the cat was true. Neither Rushie nor he wanted any doings with the mighty Skeets, whose dour expression and belligerent eye had already been turned in their direction.

  The tom had prowled the interior of the shed, stopping to stare at the newcomers, while Snowy chattered away in Farmyardese. The cat, though he must have been listening, did not bother to answer the rabbit once. Then the feline monster, with one piece of his ear missing and a deep scratchmark on his nose, blinked slowly and left the vicinity. There was no mistaking the malevolence of his gaze. It burned a deep impression in Skelter’s brain.

  The boy and the cat were not the only dangers. There was also one of the men, who came in nightly to stare at Rushie, who was slightly larger and meatier than Skelter. There was no mistaking the look in the man’s eyes, which was that of a predator viewing a possible meal.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ whispered Rushie to Snowy, when the man was present one evening. ‘Why’s he looking at me like that?’

  ‘He’s wondering whether to risk stealing you or not. He’s one of the farmhands, and he likes jugged hare. He’s wondering to himself whether he can get away with grabbing you now, breaking your neck, and taking you home to hang on his back door. He’s wondering whether he can do it, leave your cage door open, and hope that the farmer thinks you’ve escaped.’

  ‘Jugged hare?’ said Rushie in a small voice, not taking her eyes from the human face, with its grizzled chin and dull eyes. The man’s teeth were stained brown from inhaling smoke and the gums were retracting to reveal the roots. Rushie could think of nothing worse than being torn apart by such ugly teeth.

  ‘Jugged hare is where they kill you, hang you up until the flesh is rotten, then cook you inside a jug standing in a saucepan. Hares are too tough to eat even boiled or roasted when they’re first caught. They have to let you soften a bit first.’

  The man reached forward, as if going for the cage door catch.

  Rushie jumped, and began thumping the back of the box with her hind legs, setting up an awful din. The man bit his lip and looked towards the shed door. Then his hand dropped to his side and he hurried away.

  ‘That was a close one,’ said Skelter. ‘He was really going to do it, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Bet your life on it,’ replied Snowy, ‘and he’ll be back.’

  ‘Is that really true about jugged hare? How do you know all these things? You can’t talk to humans.’

  Snowy gave an impatient sigh.

  ‘The dog – he sees everything – an observer. He’s got eyes in his head. He watches what happens to dead hares in the house. They get hung on a nail on the back of the door until they smell high, then they’re jugged and put in boiling water.’

  ‘Disgusting,’ said Skelter, vehemently.

  ‘Depends whether you’re a man or a hare – or even a rabbit,’ said Snowy, matter-of-factly.

  Two days later Skelter woke in the middle of the night with a start, and thought he caught a movement, a shadow flitting through the strips of moonlight corning through the gaps in the shed walls. In his old home it might have been an owl passing across the face of the moon, or a fish sliding its back above the surface of the loch, but he was not in the mountains, he was confined within one of man’s prisons. Skelter was immediately on the alert, staring round the shed, finding nothing. Only the spiders whispering in the corners of their webs, and the mice muttering in the jungle of pots and boxes, were awake. Eventually he called out to Rushie, and got no reply from the jill. At this he became thoroughly frightened and shouted to Snowy, waking the rabbit from a deep sleep.

  ‘Where’s Rushie? You can see into her cage from where you are? What’s happened to her? Is she ill?’

  ‘Gone,’ Snowy said, peering across the shed.

  ‘What do you mean gone?’ cried Skelter. ‘Gone where? She can’t have just … gone.’

  ‘I didn’t see it, but I think she’s been taken. Her cage door is open, and there’s no one inside.’

  ‘We would have heard. I would have heard. She’s just escaped that’s all. She’s got out herself.’

  Snowy’s coat glistened like white dust in the glittering changes of the moon. His eyes showed red. They looked misty in the light that fell across his face in golden stripes.

  ‘The robber is a very stealthy man. He would have had her cage open and chopped her neck with his hand, before she even realised what was happening. I expect she never even woke up. Best forget her, and thank the stars that you’re a rangy-.looking hare, all string and muscle.’

  Forget her! How could he forget her? It just could not be possible that someone could sneak in like that, in the quiet of the night, and kill Rushie without anyone hearing. That was beyond understanding.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re saying,’ he told Snowy.

  Snowy shook his floppy ears.

  ‘You think you will remember forever, but you won’t. I’ve seen them come and go. I know about these feelings. You’ll be worried about your own hide, soon enough, and then the sadness will leave you as quick as a ghost departing at cock crow.’

  Skelter denied this, vehemently.

  If Skelter had been unhappy before, it was nothing compared with the misery he felt now. It was as if a big chasm had opened inside him, and his heart had dropped into it, lost forever. He was alone. Whatever dire experience lay before him, that Snowy preferred to keep to himself, it was to be faced without Rushie by his side. Somehow all dangers had seemed less threatening when she had been there with him. He could not have felt more wretched were the hare thief to come into the shed right at that moment and take him away for the pot too.

  The rest of that day he lay in melancholy silence, while Snowy chattered on about himself and things that concerned tame white rabbits. His inane monologues might have driven another hare mad, but Skelter was lost within himself, out of the reach of ordinary beings, even halfwits like Snowy. There was darkness in there, and loneliness, and deep despair. In the last few days he had lost everything and everyone he had known since he was a leveret. His beloved mountain home, his friends and relations, his prospects of mating with his jill. Nothing remained. There would be no miraculous escape, no wonderful rescue, no new beginning. It all went with Rushie.

  Skelter only saw the man who liked jugged hare once more: he came into the shed and glanced around at the cages. The man’s nose was swathed in pink-and-white pads. He stared at Skelter, gave a shudder, and left.

  ‘What was that on his nose?’ Skelter asked of
the pet rabbit.

  ‘Things for injuries,’ replied Snowy. ‘When they cut themselves they cover the wound with sticky pieces of cloth.’

  ‘Oh,’ replied Skelter, not really any wiser, ‘strange habit.’

  Day followed night, and night followed day, and nothing changed radically around the farm. Skelter thought idly that they must have forgotten why they had brought him to the farm, though it was possible that the young human had pleaded for his life, and had his request granted. Who could tell? There was no fathoming human behaviour.

  Every day too, came new pain, as Rushie was missed. There was no one to talk to now, about the heather and the lochs, the burns and breeze, the tall pines. Through the shed door Skelter could see a dirty pond where ducks squabbled and played in the murky waters. This was the replacement for his loch. A tap by the farmhouse dribbled constantly, forming a stream in the mud which ran by the chicken coop. This was his burn. Not far away was the orchard, the plum trees just beginning to show blossoms, and in the far distance, an oak and an elm stood near enough together to be regarded as combatants for air space and water. Skelter could imagine the struggle going on between their roots, grappling with each other beneath the surface of the soil. These were his pines.

  As for the mountains, there were none. Not a bump showed above the flat and level landscape, which gave hope for anything like a hill, let alone a ben. Without mountains there could be no glens. Without glens, there was no music for the soul, no spirit of landscape. Who in their right mind could grow fond of these flatlands, surrounded by marsh, with their ugly stunted alders and green scummy ponds? What was out there to get the heart singing, to get the spirit soaring? Bleak, dismal landscape that it was.

  On a fine day, when the doors were wide open, Skelter could see a machine moving up and down the fields, with a regularity and precision he had never seen before. It left furrows behind it: long and straight.

  ‘What’s that out there?’ he asked of Snowy. ‘That machine thing?’

  ‘That? Haven’t you seen one of those before? I thought you had farms up there in those highlands you keep mooning over. That’s the tractor we hear being started in the mornings. It’s for pulling things. Ploughs, harrows, that sort of thing. So that crops can be planted, harvests harvested, and fat white rabbits can be fed. That’s what that is.’

  The fact was, Skelter’s highland farms had bred sheep and only grew vegetables in small patches, outside the crofts. There was no place for these tractor things where he came from. Still, it looked a contented machine as it puffed and chugged its way over the rich chocolate-coloured earth. He liked it better than any machine he had yet seen.

  He was interested too, to see the birds following it. Seagulls they were, for the most part, and rooks and crows. The occasional pigeon. They seemed to favour this machine.

  Finally, there came the day when the farmer entered the shed and made purposefully for Skelter’s cage. He was lifted up and carried out into the fresh air. There he was placed inside a vehicle and driven from the farm, which he was never to see again. Snowy hardly looked up, as he was whisked away, intent instead on a carrot. The white rabbit had seen too many prisoners led away to their execution. He could not afford to become sentimental or even emotional about it any more. It was a fact of life, from which he personally was exempt, and he had become inured over the seasons.

  Skelter felt the return of motion sickness and buried himself beneath his straw. He was suddenly very frightened. As Snowy had predicted, the sadness fled from him, to be replaced by a cold terror. Skelter’s survival instinct was strong, and he could no longer afford to pine over the highlands and his lost friend. He had to be primed ready for escape, for he was surely going to a fate most horrible. Even Snowy had been reluctant to talk about it, and when that loquacious rabbit did not want to speak, it meant something really ugly, something too awful to think about was behind it.

  They seemed to drive for a long way. When the vehicle stopped, he was taken out and placed on the ground next to a row of other cages. He could hear dogs barking, in the background, and there was the smell of men, the sound of men, gathered in large groups. For a while Skelter stared wild-eyed at the open field before his cage. Once, he threw himself against the wire, which was a painful experience he did not repeat. Gradually he began to calm down and concentrated on the sounds nearest to him, instead of those of men and dogs.

  From the next cage to him, came a snuffling sound.

  ‘Who’s that?’ he asked. ‘Is that a hare?’

  The reply came in a strange accent, though undoubtedly that of another hare.

  ‘Ay, it is that. What’s thy name? Where’re thee from?’

  ‘I’m a mountain hare, a blue hare from the highlands. Skelter, they call me Skelter.’

  ‘I’m a jack – name’s Trickster. I’m a brown field hare – from the dales. This is a forsaken countryside, what do you say?’

  ‘It is indeed. I hate it. Tell me, why are we here? Are they going to shoot us, or what?’

  The brown hare from the dales gave a low snort.

  ‘Shoot us? Thou should be so lucky. We’re here for a hare coursing. They open our cages, one by one, and let us run – only when we’ve gone eighty or so lengths they let the dogs go. Greyhounds. Thee has to outrun them, Skelter, or they tear thee to pieces.’

  Skelter’s heart pounded in his chest. The terror was already in his throat, threatening to choke him. Dogs! What fiendish game was this they had devised? Where did humans find these terrible ideas?

  ‘Is it possible,’ he asked, ‘to outrun the dogs?’

  ‘Aye, it’s possible. Done it myself, once before, but thee has to be quick. How’s thy zig-zag?’

  ‘Zig-zag? What zig-zag?’

  ‘When thee runs.’

  Skelter said, ‘I don’t – we don’t do that, in the highlands.’

  There was a sharp intake of breath from his neighbour.

  ‘In that case, thou’d better learn fast, for those hounds can run a straight line fleeter than a deer. It’s the twisting and turning that confuses them. Good luck.’

  ‘And to you,’ whispered Skelter.

  And another nightmare began.

  Chapter Six

  Since the cages were all lined up, facing the field, it was possible for Skelter to watch the proceedings.

  The field itself was a meadow with rough turf, the grass too short to hide a hare. Fences had been set up on either side to form a wide channel down the field which led to a hedge at the far end. There were humans in boots and hats, some carrying canes, standing in small groups and yapping at each other. Skelter could not see the hounds at this point, for they were held behind the line of hares.

  A little later the dogs were paraded up and down, and Skelter was able to get his first view of a greyhound. They had narrow heads, and necks belonging to drakes. Their flanks were lean and smooth, like that of a bream, and their legs looked long and fast. At the base of their spines were tails that would not have looked out of place on rats. Their mean tight eyes held no compassion. Skelter could see in the arrogant, aristocratic air of the greyhounds, a cruel streak that had no doubt been bred into them by their human masters. It was in their gait, in their demeanour, in their expressions. Skelter could smell the aggressiveness of the dogs from where he lay, crouched at the bottom of his cage. It was a stink that pervaded the whole atmosphere of the scene.

  The entire circus was presided over by a man on horseback, who kept barking orders at other men. Mounted men always seemed to act in a superior manner to those on foot. This fact puzzled even the horses themselves, who could not account for it.

  Some of the hares were drumming in fear with their hind legs on the backs of their cages. Others had been frightened into rigidity and were crouched in a corner of their cages. A kind of shuddering was passing back and forth, along the cages, which were touching all along the line.

  A few hares were calling out in strained voices:

  ‘Anyone don
e this before? Please, has anybody done this before? I want to know what to do. Answer me!’

  ‘My legs! My legs won’t move. How can I run if my legs won’t move?’

  ‘Is my jill here? She was caught along with me. Solo, are you here? Where are you, Solo? Solo?’

  ‘Leave me alone. Just leave me alone.’

  ‘I want to go back to my field. Why am I here? What have I done?’

  The tension amongst them was incredible. They were about to make a short run for their lives, and any unfit or unwell ones among them would go down under the savage jaws of those sleek hounds. Skelter was not drumming, but he was trembling violently and wished the whole thing were over. He was glad now that Rushie was not here to smell his fear. Perhaps she had been the most fortunate of the pair of them, having gone swiftly with one blow, rather than having to anticipate being torn apart by sharp teeth.

  Skelter was fifth in the line, and he watched with horror as the first hare was taken in its cage and placed a few feet in front of the others. Apart from this he knew that something was about to happen, because the dogs began to get excited, calling to each other in their own language. Their leashes were removed and they were held by their collars, at which point they strained against their masters’ arms, wanting to be the first to streak off the line. Despite it all, Skelter could not help but admire their smooth lean fit bodies. They seemed fashioned to swim through the air, rather than run along the ground.

  The hare was released.

  It was a jill and she came out of the cage like a bullet, punching holes in the wind, and immediately started zig-zagging across the open meadow.

  A strange silence ruled the morning at first. Not a whisper was heard from the dogs, not a grunt from the men. The hares were quiet too. All eyes were on the jill, as she darted, tacking back and forth, towards the far side of the field. Overhead, in the stillness, a flock of birds wheeled lazily, seemingly oblivious of the drama going on below them.