Beware the Little White Rabbit

by Various

  Alice opened the pouch and sprinkled a dusting of powder on her palm. She put her tongue to it. It tasted of soured milk left too long in the sun. But Edward would not need to taste it. Following Widow Maud’s directions, she would moisten it, work it into a plaster, and apply it to his swellings to draw out the poison.

  But first she needed an escape plan.

  With a glance at the rabbit, an idea came to her.

  “Your time is up,” the queen bellowed. “The day is wasting. Executioner, take your stance.”

  Alice slipped the pouch into her apron pocket and swiveled to face him. “Sir, you look weary. You have had a long tiresome journey, and your bones must ache from this most unpleasant work.”

  “That they do.” He sucked in a ragged breath and hefted his sword with two hands. “You are my eighth execution of the day.”

  “Eighth,” Alice said in mock horror. “So many. Why, you must be famished.”

  “I’ve not set down for a good meal since morning.” The sword trembled in his hands. “Not even a morsel of bread.”

  “Oh, you poor dear.” Alice wiped away a fake tear. “How I wish I could fix you a nice hot bowl of rabbit stew to fill your belly.”

  The executioner’s sword dipped as his eyes flitted toward the rabbit. He smacked his lips. “Mmmm,” he murmured, “rabbit stew.” A line of drool glistened on his chin like a snail’s trail. Alice heard his belly rumble loudly as a dead-cart over cobbles. The blade wavered in the air, swinging lightly to and fro. With a sudden deft shift in stance, the executioner wielded his blade away from Alice and thrust it at the rabbit’s throat.

  “Oh no no no no,” the rabbit squealed. With a giant bound he leaped over the executioner’s head and landed with a thump. Hindquarters pumping, he scampered toward a stand of trees.

  Alice picked up her skirts and hurried after him. She had never run so fast or so hard. His puffy tail bobbled as he zigzagged around rocks and bushes. Alice kept it in sight. With a single bound he flew into the air and dived into a hole hidden by tall grass.

  And was gone.

  Without so much as a backward glance, Alice held her breath and jumped in behind him.

  Above her, muted in the distance, came the queen’s screeches. “Do not touch my rabbit. Do you hear me, wretch? Keep your hands off the rabbit.”

  Alice fell slowly, but she was not alarmed. The tunnel was warm, and though she was again falling down, she sensed that this was the passage home. Rabbit drifted below, caught in a frenzy of fur scratching, cursing the fleas feasting on his skin.

  Fleas. Alice felt herself shrinking down to their wee size, and they became huge spiny beasts, piercing the rabbit’s skin and sucking his blood, regurgitating sickness into his wounds.

  Rabbits and fleas. Fleas and sickness. Rabbits and sickness.

  Fleas and plague.

  Alice woke to the slow tolling of church bells, ringing once again for the dead. At first she didn’t know where she was, only that her headache and chills were gone. She rolled over on her pallet and crushed a soft lump beneath her. The scent of lavender and rosemary filled her nose. She reached under her chest and pulled out her poppet, its seams bursting, dried herbs and flowers spilling out.

  Her rabbit poppet.

  The awful journey to Oxford flooded her memory. It seemed so real, and yet here she was back in her own bed, safe at home, the hand-sewn stuffed poppet clutched in her hand, no longer the queen’s live talking rabbit.

  Memory – or dream?

  She would know for certain in the next moment. Alice eased herself up and dug deep into her apron pocket. She ran her fingers along the side and bottom seams. She poked a finger into each corner. She turned the pocket inside out.

  Empty.

  No pouch, no powdered unicorn horn.

  She had dreamed it all: the queen, the rabbit, the executioner, the healing powdered unicorn horn.

  Alice dropped her head to her hands and sobbed. “Oh, Edward, I have failed you. What a silly wretch I am to be fooled so.”

  A clanging of pots came from below. Alice dried her eyes and climbed down from the sleeping loft.

  Widow Maud, her long white hair tied off with yarn from which dangled a dead toad, sat hunched over Edward’s pale, motionless body.

  Alice crept to his bedside. She forced herself to say the awful words. “My brother…is he…dead?”

  Maud pressed a pad of linen to Edward’s neck. “The swelling has burst. He will live.”

  Alice heard the light hiss of his breathing. When she took his fingers lightly in her own, he squeezed them weakly.

  Maud removed the pad, and the open sore oozed pus spotted through with shreds of dead flesh. Alice knew this was a happy sign, for those whose plague lumps burst often recovered. She wept silently but smiled at the same time.

  Maud put a hand to Alice’s brow. “Are you well, child? You’ve been dead asleep since mid-morn.”

  “I was indeed dead,” Alice said, “but now I find I am most certainly alive.”

  “I see our girl is up.” Da stood in the doorway holding another dead, flea-bitten rabbit by its hind legs. “God be praised, I have the morrow’s supper.”

  Alice grew dizzy. An aching panic overtook her. Her vision narrowed to a tunnel. In her mind, she flailed as she fell through the darkness.

  Rabbits and fleas. Fleas and sickness. Rabbits and sickness.

  Fleas and plague.

  At that instant Alice felt herself changing, shedding her old self like the pelt of a rabbit. She raised her voice, imperious and demanding. “Take it away, Da. Take it from this house now.”

  Da stumbled backward, stunned by his daughter’s ungratefulness and disrespect. “Take it away?” he growled. “Why do you say such?”

  In time, Alice would explain to Da how bringing flea-bitten rabbits into their cottage was the source of Edward’s plague infection, and was likely to infect them all. But for now, he must obey her command.

  Whether memory or dream, Alice knew the queen’s greatest gift was not the powdered unicorn horn. Now her harsh words made complete sense, and Alice repeated them.

  “Do not touch the rabbit, Da,” Alice ordered, as forcefully as a queen to her subject. “Never ever touch the rabbit.”

  Author Note: All of the superstitions and remedies of the Great Plague era – including the application of powdered unicorn horn – are historically accurate as far as I can determine. Although rats were believed to be the primary carriers of plague fleas, plague was also transmitted by small rodents such as rabbits, which people brought into their homes for food.

  To the SCBWI Florida Aventura Group

  for teaching me about the craft.

  “Come on, Alice, stop daydreaming. Out, girl. Let’s get us some snacks and be back on the road.”

  Alice looked at the speaker, Maizie, the most aggressive girl in their group. Maizie had long, curly strawberry blond hair and fierce freckles. She also wore a frown. She didn’t care too much for Alice.

  “Ugh, don’t blame me if you’re hungry and need to pee hours later,” Maizie said. “Loser,” came out under her breath.

  Alice frowned. Folding a corner of a page from a book she was reading, she closed it and looked out the window. The group of fifty classmates and four chaperones was headed to Orlando for a fun weekend stay. Alice wasn’t looking forward to getting there. She wasn’t interested in water rides or roller coasters. She was happy being a homebody, studying hours a night. That’s how she ended up on this field trip. Their school was rewarding students for top grades. Alice had never wanted to sign the field trip form, but her mother smiled, thinking it would be a good idea for her to go.

  “You never go out much,” her mother had said. “Something’s missing in your life. You need to go out more often.” She’d even hand delivered the field trip form to the main office to ensure that they received it on her daughter’s behalf.

  Alice cracked open the window. Sitting next to Maizie had been no easy task. The
first hour, Maizie had been asleep. Many of them had been, since they’d arrived at the school to board the bus at six that morning to get to Orlando before noon. Then the second hour, Maizie had been nasty, giving her snide looks and making remarks about Alice’s mousy hair, pale skin, and nose in a book.

  It was a cold February day, with one of those rare cold fronts that descends on Florida. People wore sweaters and jackets. A line formed outside both restrooms, people hugging themselves and even shivering. The bus driver also got off the bus to go to the restroom. They were somewhere in Central Florida. The thrum of cars driving over the speed limit caused vibrations at the service plaza in the middle of the highway.

  A yard from the bus, a driver of a shiny black Mustang parked next to a fuel pump. A middle-aged man with a paunch stepped out. He pulled his jeans up, but didn’t manage to yank them across his middle. The belt slid down and settled underneath his stomach. He wiped his nose with a finger, adjusted his sunglasses, and walked inside.

  Alice admired the car, her eyes scouring back and forth the onyx length of it. On the dashboard was a stuffed white rabbit, which didn’t match the man who exited the car. Her eyes narrowed on it, because it looked familiar. It reminded Alice of her own stuffed white rabbit from childhood. She carried it back and forth between her parents’ homes when she stayed with her mother on weekdays and her father on weekends. She took it with her to elementary school. Then in the third grade, during recess, someone stole it. A boy with a wicked smirk and mad eyes knocked her to the ground and grabbed it. She cried and complained to a teacher, but no one did anything and she never saw the rabbit again.

  Despite that, her childhood had been happy for the most part. She smiled thinking about that time, when things were simpler, unlike the lonely, boring hell of high school.

  Loud laughter erupted from the other side of the bus. Boys walked from one end of the gas station to the other, joking and cramming donuts into their mouths. Maizie faced a friend and talked with her hands, using sweeping gestures, as she stood in the bathroom line.

  Alice went back to looking down at the Mustang and the white rabbit. It wasn’t a large stuffed animal, but from her standpoint she could see it was smiling. It had a thin strip of red for a mouth. Maybe it belonged to the man’s child or grandchild.

  “Oh my God, bro, I totally don’t want to get back in that bus,” a boy named Ronald said outside the gas station.

  “Yeah, we need some more stretch time,” a girl said. “Although, I’m really cold.”

  The kids continued drinking coffee, eating pastries, and going to the bathroom. Many hung out in the warm interior of the convenient store, where there was a small sitting area. Then there was that shiny Mustang, beckoning to Alice. Maybe she would peek at it, see it up close, and then return to the bus when she saw people going back in. Maizie was right. She was a loser. Why was she sitting in the bus by herself? Why was she always alone and never doing anything interesting?

  She had packed lightly for the trip, so she pulled her book bag from an overhead compartment. Everyone had left his or her things inside, but she didn’t want to. Don’t leave anything behind, she thought, despite her intention of coming right back.

  The chilly air nipped at her face and hands. She scurried around the bus and to the Mustang. She wasn’t a car person, but she appreciated its smooth lines and shiny silver rims. The bus was between her and her classmates, so no one was looking at her. She walked around to the other side to where the pump was. No, it couldn’t be. The man had left the keys in the ignition with the car running.

  Do it, do it, do it. What was she thinking? No, she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t that type of person.

  Yes, you are!

  Alice touched the handle to the door and pulled. She gasped. Why would she touch a stranger’s possession? She always respected other people’s property. She never toilet papered anyone’s house during Halloween, never shoplifted, never did anything like that…

  The white rabbit’s smile lured her into the car. She sat inside, threw her book bag into the passenger seat, and put her hands on the steering wheel. It was still warm from the man’s touch. The leather seat molded to her body. Her hair bun loosened as she dug her head back into the leather. It was very different from driving her mother’s minivan or her father’s junk car. And it was her grandfather who taught her how to drive in his beat-up Mustang. Out of all her family members’ cars, she liked that one the best, but it wasn’t shiny and modern like this one. The paunchy man’s Mustang had a new car smell, a satellite radio, and leather seats. Being alone in it was luxurious.

  Someone coughed. It was the driver, walking to his car. Alice wanted to hide, sink down, or make a clean getaway without him seeing her. No, it was too late. He glared at her, with sunlight bouncing off his sunglasses. “Hey!” he yelled.

  Panic gripped her, and she wasn’t thinking clearly. Alice locked the door and put the car in drive.

  “Hey!” the man yelled again, reaching the door, but he was too late. Alice zipped off, driving slow at first and then faster, with the man following her to the ramp.

  “Nooooo!”

  The same way the man was yelling no, that word reverberated in her head. Nooooo. How could she do such a thing? On the highway, Alice sped up to match the speed limit. Her heart pounded, and her free hand shook. She wasn’t on some local street or neighborhood road. She was on the turnpike in a car that she stole.

  “Amazing,” a voice from the back called.

  Alice jumped in her seat, and the car swerved.

  “Watch where you’re going,” the boy yelled. The white rabbit tumbled off the dashboard and onto her book bag. She was veering onto the shoulder of the road. Alice yelped and held the steering wheel with both hands. She was back in the right lane, where she was supposed to be. This wasn’t happening. This had to be a dream! She was in a stolen car with a strange boy. Was he a thief, too?

  “You’re ruining my morning,” he said. “Or maybe you’re not.”

  “What are you doing here?” Alice managed to squeak. “Who are you?”

  Alice focused on the road so she wouldn’t get into an accident, but her eyes darted to the rearview mirror, to an unbelievable sight. This was no tattooed, unshaven older thug in the car. It was a boy her age, with floppy black hair, violet eyes with long lashes, and a chiseled jaw. No way, she thought. He was too good-looking to be a criminal. And those eyes…she had only met a few people with eyes that bright and sparkling. There was a boy from her childhood with those eyes. She had also known a girl in middle school with violet eyes – a teacher nicknamed her “Liz Taylor,” although few students knew about that actress. Alice had lost touch with all of those people since she was pretty much friendless.

  “You stole my dad’s car,” he said. “I was snoozing. That’s why he left the keys in the ignition, with the heat on. And you, holy heck, you stole it!”

  That explained everything. No one in his or her right mind would leave the keys inside. Some people did it by accident or out of laziness, but surely no one with a car as nice as this.

  “I’m so sorry,” Alice said. “I don’t know what got into me. I was in a bus, forced on a field trip I didn’t want to go on in the first place, and then I saw this beautiful Mustang and this white rabbit…”

  “All right, all right,” the boy said, waving his hand in the air. His phone rang, but he ignored it. “That’s my dad.”

  “Oh my God, I’m going to be arrested for stealing a car…and kidnapping.”

  The boy laughed, his perfect face tilting back. Alice saw a faint five o’clock shadow and his Adam’s apple bob up and down. He was so handsome.

  “I can turn around,” she said. “Really, I’ll tell people I had a momentary lapse, that I must be bipolar or something. I swear I don’t do things like this every day.”

  “I’m Lou by the way,” he said. He reached over, not to shake her hand, but to grab the white rabbit. He sat up, put on his seat belt, and plunked the rabb
it in his lap. “This is my rabbit, Freddy. I don’t play with him anymore, but I’ve had him since I was a kid.”

  “I used to have a white rabbit.”

  “My dad thinks this rabbit is lucky. He used to take me on these casino trips as a kid, and he always won if he took Freddy with him. I wouldn’t be there since I stayed in the hotel room or pool, and I don’t know if he’s good luck anymore considering my dad’s car was just stolen.”

  “I’ll turn around, I swear,” Alice promised. But how could she? The next exit was miles away. The turnpike stretched ahead with no end.

  “How about we go to where you were planning on going?” he asked. “We can convince my dad later that I know you or that I wasn’t right in the head…”

  “Or that I’m not right in the head.”

  Lou smiled. Alice did, too. She had snapped and become crazy today. The people on her bus must all be frantic and looking for her. She’d ruined their field trip. How could she do such a thing? The chaperones must have called the police already and everything. The goody-goody in her was scared, but underneath that was the thrill of breaking rules for the first time. That was something lacking in her life – she had never done anything adventurous before.

  “I have two tickets to an amusement park,” Alice said. “Do you want to go there?”

  “Sure, why not?” Lou said, stretching his arms back. “That’s better than where I was going, which was my grandparents’ home, where they argue all day and live in the middle of nowhere. We’ll go on all the cool rides.”

  Alice had Maizie’s ticket. Ms. Morris, the teacher in charge of the field trip, who was also chaperoning, found it left behind on a bus seat and asked Alice to return it to her classmate. As far as Alice was concerned, Maizie didn’t belong on the field trip. She lost everything, copied assignments, and cheated on every test – Maizie would even play nice to Alice sometimes to cheat off her. She and Lou were going to use her ticket. Alice could try to access the hotel reservation, although maybe that would be flagged if they reported her missing.