They could feel each other wishing for it, and it gave each of them strength. When the time felt right, Alice thumped her back foot, the way Violet used to. “May the seasons in all meadows go on and on,” she said. “On this we all agree.”
Thistle nuzzled her. “We’ve done our best,” he said.
“All right,” said Doggo, breaking the spell. “It’s time for me to say goodbye.” He’d looked preoccupied the whole time they’d been there. Alice had chalked it up to his usual grumpiness about being around rabbits and not eating them, but now she could see there was something restless within him.
Thinking he meant that he was going back to his den, or perhaps even going hunting, Thistle sat up. “All right, Doggo, but you should come by the festival tomorrow. Think how funny it would be for the humans to see you and Foxy together!”
“Humans!” the fox exclaimed. “They’re the last creatures I want to see. It’s time for me to go away, far from here and all humanfolk. Perhaps I’ll come back in springtime. Perhaps I’ll find some other place to live.” Doggo stretched his limbs. “I’d hoped to say goodbye to Foxy, but it seems she’s been locked in by the people tonight.”
He was right about that; Carl had made sure of it, after Janis’s unsettling visit. “Farewell, rabbits!” Doggo said. “I never thought we’d end up friends, but you’re still here and not in my belly, and that’s saying something. I wish you luck. I hope you succeed in keeping the Mauler away.”
Thistle’s ears drooped. “Why do you have to go?”
The fox snorted. “Foolish rabbits. Smell the air. It’s cold and crisp, with the scent of wood fires burning in the humans’ dens, the smell of fungus growing beneath the fallen leaves. Don’t you know what that means?”
Alice and Thistle didn’t know. It was their first autumn, after all.
“It’s hunting season,” the fox explained. “The humans will be looking for me and my kind. Your kind, too.”
“Hunting? With shotguns?” Alice asked, remembering Lester’s springtime teaching. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Shotguns, arrows, traps. From now until the end of winter, it’s not safe to be near humans. Any humans,” he said pointedly. “That’s my opinion, and any fox would feel the same. I won’t be coming back here again.”
Doggo stood, tensed to go. “Do you want me to bring you back to Burrow? It’ll be safer there, and safer still the farther you go from where humans live. Either way, after we part tonight I won’t see you anymore.”
“No,” said Alice, with only the slightest hesitation. “Tomorrow is an important day. We’ll sleep here, at the farm, in the hay. Like the boy does,” she added.
“The boy, pshaw! Remember what you are,” the fox said sharply. “You’re not a house pet, like Foxy. You’re wild. Like me.”
“We’ll remember,” said Alice. “We’ll remember you, too, with thanks.”
“Goodbye, Doggo,” said Thistle. “I’m proud to have had a fox as a friend.”
The fox licked his lips. “Goodbye, then,” he said, and loped into the darkness.
* * *
Saying goodbye to Doggo made the rabbits quiet for a long time. It was an autumn feeling, a feeling of things changing, seasons ending, attention turning inward.
As the two cottontails snuggled together, Thistle quietly asked, “Do you think the boy hunts?”
“I don’t think so,” said Alice, to reassure him, but of course she had no way of knowing. The boy had to eat, after all.
The hay was cozy and sleep was welcome, but they did get awoken once during the night. Thistle was the first to smell it and spread his whiskers wide, on alert. The scent was heavy and hot. It was an animal, big and warm-blooded, but without the bitter tang of a meat eater.
It was a black bear, making a slow exploration of the property. It circled behind the barn and tugged at the lids of the trash bins (Brad had wisely latched them shut, on the advice of his new farmer friends). It dug its massive paws deep in the compost heap, where it found a stash of fat worms. These it ate, one by one.
Neither Alice nor Thistle had seen a bear before, but they knew right away what it was. There was no other creature of that size in the valley. This one was full grown and well nourished, and easily weighed over two hundred pounds. Standing on its hind legs, the bear was taller than a man. Its fur was thick and black except for its deep chocolate-brown muzzle, and it moved like a silent shadow in the dark.
How strong such a creature must be! Bears can tear down tree branches with ease, to get to the fruit and nuts they offer. But despite its size and bulk, the bear moved with grace, loping on four feet and rising to two as the terrain required. When it was done snacking on worms, it clambered over the garden fence and stood upright, looking around.
The bear was quiet and serene. He didn’t seem interested in the rabbits. Still, Alice’s belly tightened with fear. It wasn’t the bear’s size that frightened her, though to get stepped on would have made a quick end to her and Thistle both—but the last thing she needed the night before the Harvest Festival was a bear rampaging through the garden! A creature of this size and strength would take minutes to wreck everything they’d accomplished all season long, and there would be no time to put things right again.
Alice’s determination not to let the bear ruin their festival preparations overruled any brief panic she might have felt. She shook herself to get the hay off, for dignity’s sake, and hopped once, twice, three times, into a pool of moonlight, where the bear could see her plainly. The eyesight of bears is nothing special, but their senses of smell and hearing are astonishingly good.
“Excuse me,” she said, her voice so small and piping it might just as well have been a bird’s. “May we speak, friend bear? What brings you here, so close to a place where people live?”
The bear towered over her in silence for a full minute. “Curious,” he finally replied. His voice started deep in the belly and slowly rumbled up and out, low, like late-summer thunder. “Just. Curious.”
“I see,” said Alice, who quickly intuited that this conversation would require patience on her part. This is true of all conversations with bears. They don’t have to work to get anyone’s attention; it just comes with being a bear. As a result, they speak few words and take their time about each one.
“Also.” The bear took a long sniff. “Honey.”
“Honey! You must be looking for the beehives, then.” Thistle appeared next to Alice, an act of astonishing bravery. “According to Carl, there’s not much honey just yet. The hives are still too new. Enough for you to smell, certainly, but not to make a meal of.”
“The beehives are that way.” Alice was desperate for the bear to leave before any damage was done, even accidentally. “At the edge of the orchard.”
“I. Know,” the bear said, and patted that great stomach with a paw the size of two cottontails put together.
It was hard to tell if the bear was trying to be funny, but Alice thought he just might be. Her belly softened. Her tail gave half a shimmy.
Thistle sniffed again, deeply. “You don’t eat much meat, do you?”
The great beast shook his head. “Plants. Nuts. Bugs. Fish.”
“Not rabbits, then?” Alice wanted to make sure.
“In a pinch,” the bear responded. “Not. Now.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Alice said. The bear seemed peaceful and well-intentioned and she thought she might as well be truthful. “Friend bear, we’re worried about the condition of this garden for reasons too complicated to explain right now. We wonder if you might find someplace else to look for your bugs and nuts and such? And be careful where you step on the way out?”
“Winter. Time to sleep,” the bear said, then placed both paws on his belly as if to explain: To be well nourished is a must when preparing for a long winter’s nap, and tonight he was just looking for food. Then he yawned. Already, the big fellow was getting sleepy.
Earlier that night, Thistle had dug up a whole b
asket full of potatoes as a surprise for Carl, who’d forgotten about them (it wasn’t hard to overlook potatoes, as they grow underground without much fuss, and these had been rather casually planted beneath a pile of rotting leaves at the garden’s edge). On impulse, Thistle fetched the biggest one and nosed it toward the bear.
“Here, take this. You’ll sleep better on a full stomach,” he said.
The bear took the potato with great tenderness. One might imagine that it was the first gift he had ever gotten from a rabbit. Possibly it would be the last. Such moments are full of grace, always.
“Thank. You,” said the bear, sounding deeply, slowly sincere.
“You’re welcome,” said Alice. Gently she added, “Now, shoo, bear! Shoo!”
“And sweet winter dreams to you,” said Thistle. “Enjoy your potato!”
“I. Will.”
The cottontails watched the great creature shamble away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
One wonderful day.
The first yellow school bus of visitors arrived right at nine o’clock in the morning, and the first person to climb down the steps was grinning from one ear to the other.
“Emmanuel!” Carl yelled, jumping up and down. His friend was taller than the last time they’d been together. Carl was taller, too, but you tend not to notice things like that about yourself in quite the same way, at least until your pants don’t fit anymore.
They ran at each other like two knights jousting and stopped just short of a hug. They bumped fists and shoved their hands in their pockets, smiling and looking shyly but happily at their feet. Emmanuel wore clean skateboarding sneakers with a logo on the side. Carl had on the mud-crusted, high-topped hiking boots he’d taken to wearing every day. Regular sneakers were no good for farm work; they just got filled up with dirt and burrs and were too slippery when the ground was wet.
“My parents wanted to come early and beat the traffic going home, so we drove upstate yesterday and stayed in a hotel. It had a pool and a hot tub and, get this: a climbing wall! For dinner, they had a buffet with so much food. Like, literally all you could eat. I filled my plate three times. I couldn’t even finish it.” Emmanuel looked around. “So, wow! Do you live in that red house? It looks like a postcard or something.”
“It’s nice,” Carl said. A climbing wall sounded fun. He was also imagining that buffet. Part of him liked the all-you-could-eat idea, and part of him was thinking of how much work it would be to grow all those limitless heaps of food that people would take too much of and then toss in the garbage.
Emmanuel gave him a bashful look. “I was going to bring you a Captain Skeeter’s Crunch Nuggets bar, but I forgot. Sorry!”
Carl laughed. “Crunch Nuggets! I haven’t thought about those in a while.”
Foxy, decked out in her bright yellow vest, trotted toward the boys, then broke into a full-on run.
“Woof!” She jumped up on Emmanuel, front paws on his thighs, grinning and panting. Dogs never forget their friends, and Foxy had known Emmanuel since she was a puppy.
“Foxy, no jumping,” Carl said automatically, but Emmanuel didn’t care.
“Foxy! Foxy, you old pupper, you. How do you like living in the country?”
“Woof,” the dog said, tail waggling hard.
“She likes it,” Carl said, nudging her down. “I like it, too.”
“It’s cute to see her running around loose. Why is she wearing a coat? Is it going to rain?”
The sky was a cloudless autumn blue. Carl shrugged. “It’s hunting season. It’s safer that way.”
Emmanuel grew wide-eyed. “Hunting season, wow. Hey, can I see your room?”
“First, let me show you the farm,” Carl said. He was just about bursting with pride.
* * *
Carl was right to be proud, for Prune Street Farm had never looked quite like it did that glorious October morning.
The garden itself was tidy as a pin, with not a single stray weedling to be found. It was the end of the season but the harvest was still abundant: There was acorn squash and butternut squash, hardy greens like kale and spinach, and root vegetables like beets (and a basket of potatoes, Carl was delighted to discover). The second plantings of lettuce and broccoli were at their peak. The Farmer’s Almanac said mid-October was past the first frost date for the region, but so far they’d been lucky and hadn’t been nipped yet. The garden was radiant in the golden light of autumn, a cornucopia of nature’s bounty.
But weeding and tidying was not all the rabbits had done; no, sir! Foxy had said branding meant letting everyone know how wonderful you were, and the farmer-rabbits had taken that instruction to heart. Lester had offered suggestions as well, based on his somewhat patchy knowledge of what humans found pleasing.
By the morning of the festival, everything had been made as wonderful as two cottontails could manage. They’d nibbled faces on the pumpkins (they were rabbit faces, as those were the kind of faces they knew best). They’d grazed surprising zigzag patterns in the grass, which now ruffled invitingly in the breeze. They’d used their cottontail nesting techniques to line the garden paths with hay. This was to keep the dirt off people’s shoes, as Lester had assured them that being clean and sweet-smelling was something people valued a great deal.
They even left piles of autumn leaves here and there for the small people to play in, a kind of game that Lester told them human young ’uns enjoyed.
Their crowning achievement was the simplest and most wonderful of all. It had been Marie’s idea, and in terms of bwanding it was going to be hard to beat. It was the bun-bun factor. Alice and Thistle were, well, rabbits. They were irresistible. The cuteness of rabbits made humans happy, as sure as the sun rose each day. Rabbits were the main thing that made this farm different from any other farm in the valley, or anywhere else for that matter, and rabbits were what they should be showing off. “Bun bun,” Marie had insisted. “Bun bun bun bun bun!”
Alice and Thistle had done so much work already without complaint, but the notion of putting themselves on public display with flocks of humans wandering about—well, that was something else altogether. It flew in the face of every cottontail instinct. They’d grown used to being in Carl’s vicinity, but would they be able to hop around calmly in a crowd and accept crudités from the hands of strangers? Their experience being around dogs and foxes and eagles and so on suggested that it was possible, once the initial discomfort wore off. They were willing to try, anyway.
But would two rabbits be enough to get the full bun-bun-bun-bun-bun effect? It was a lot to ask, but if two rabbits were good, surely more would be better. “Of course, I wouldn’t expect that even the bravest cottontails from Burrow could endure a day of human company,” Alice had said, when she strategically let slip to Marigold and Berry what she and Thistle had planned.
“Well, if you two can manage it, we certainly can,” Marigold had answered, haughty as a cat. “What do we have to do once we’re there?”
Among people, this kind of maneuver is called “reverse psychology.” Cottontails aren’t burdened with much in the way of psychology, but they’ve no shortage of pride. Marigold’s response was exactly what Alice had hoped for.
“Oh, not much,” she’d replied, ever so casual. “Just hop around and graze and don’t bolt when the people come near.”
“They might want to feed you vegetables, though. Is that all right?” Thistle had slyly added.
That did it. “Sold!” Stuart Gilroy would have cried, with a strike of the auctioneer’s hammer. Marigold and Berry were on board.
Of course, Lester had dearly wanted to come as well, and mourned once again that he was too old to travel that far. “We’ll be your eyes and ears and tell you all about it,” Thistle had said to the old fellow, trying to be kind. Alice still held hope, though, for unlikely as she knew it was, she did want the old rabbit’s wish to come true.
And where was John Glenn, anyway? The festival had already begun, with big humans wandering the s
traw-covered paths and little humans jumping in the leaves. Everywhere you looked, people were eating apples as if they’d never tasted anything so wonderful. That’s what comes of picking fruit off the tree yourself, of course. It bestows virtues that can be appreciated in no other way.
Alice looked up at the barn’s roof ridge, and at the sky, but there was no sign of the great bird, yet.
* * *
Every hour or so the yellow bus returned, to drop folks off and pick them up. It was a smart idea to have the bus making a circuit of the local farms. This way people could visit several farms in one day without creating traffic jams in the towns, and the farms wouldn’t have to worry about providing parking on their precious land.
The sheep petting proved popular, and the sheep didn’t seem to mind it, but Foxy thought the whole thing needed more pizazz. Despite her lack of experience, she decided to herd the sheep. This wasn’t difficult, as the sheep were tied up anyway. The elegant Shiba raced around the placid group like a yellow streak, first in one direction, then the other. Every now and then she’d plant her feet and yap, yap, yap to the sky. Then she’d grin and pose for pictures.
The five sheep just stood there chewing, but it made for a thrilling display. “Imagine,” the visitors remarked, as they snapped countless photos with their phones. “A tame fox that herds sheep! None of the other farms have anything like that.”
None of the other farms had bun-buns, either, as Marie so brilliantly foretold. Foxy had delivered Marigold and Berry to the farm shortly after dawn. Their nervousness subsided quickly after they’d tasted their very first carrots. They were dee-lectable! And made more so by a hint of maple syrup, as some of the early-arriving families had enjoyed a pancake breakfast at Cindy’s Diner prior to getting on the bus, and the children’s hands were sticky with flavor.
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