Author's note: This may not be an exact depiction of the vision of the black rabbit from the film. I am registered blind, so naturally I am only aware of the song and the events immediately following this scene. Please do not judge too harshly if it is not exactly accurate. I do not own either Watership Down or the song "Bright Eyes."
Bright Eyes.
By Tay Bartlett.
"There's a fog along the horizon. A strange glow in the sky."
A chilly breeze ripped through the trees as Fiver slowly came out of his reverie, blinking as his external eyes focused once more on the rabbits before him, the vision slowly fading to be replaced by a grim certainty. Bigwig was looking concerned, the sharp eyes suddenly dull with barely contained anxiety. Fiver could feel the tension rising like a cloud of poisonous gas, spreading silently throughout the small group until terror gripped the hearts of all rabbits present.
"And nobody seems to know where you go, and what does it mean?"
Fiver looked around, searching, for the final time, for the rabbit that had vanished like a ghost into the mist of the early evening. He was gone. The blood soaked shadow had disappeared. Fiver wasn't even convinced that it hadn't all been a mirage.
The words rang through Fiver's head until he wanted to turn round and run for the safety and security of the warren. "Hazel's been shot."
"No," Fiver said, out loud this time and with more conviction than he was feeling at this point.
The others turned to him, fear making their very spirits tremble. Each pair of eyes wore the same expression. Frozen horror. It seemed to Fiver at this moment, that everyone concerned was desperate to flee this place and head below ground in a doomed attempt to escape the horror of the past few minutes that were still fresh in their minds.
The farmers with their guns. The farm dog and farm cat, creeping about in the shadows, just a few metres away. The image of Hazel on the ground.
It was Blackberry who spoke up first, his eyes round with the fear that still gripped him after the disastrous raid on the farm that had ended Hazel's life. "The Black rabbit serves lord Frith," he told Fiver gently, "but he does no more than his appointed task."
Fiver shook his head, the strange awareness that sometimes came over him stealing over his mind once again. He looked Blackberry in the eyes, knowing different. "Hazel's not dead," he said simply.
"Oh, is it a dream?"
As if in sleep, Fiver turned and walked away from the others, pushing through the small cluster of frightened rabbits, towards the hills once more.
In front of him, stood another rabbit, black as night and as substanceless as smoke. He stood there, eyes considering the smaller living rabbit with the kind of detachment that only resides with those who do not belong in the land of the living. His eyes fixed Fiver with a stare full of meaning and Fiver knew who that rabbit was. Every rabbit did. Yet he knew no fear or trepidation at seeing this face. Fiver knew what this rabbit had come for.
The black rabbit had come to help him. He had come to lead him to Hazel.
Fiver watched as the black rabbit turned and loped off across the long grass, the setting sun shimmering off his black fur, glowing in his empty yet bottomless eyes. Fiver, once again aware of that strange certainty, set off after him, hurrying to keep pace with the larger animal.
"Bright eyes, burning like fire. Bright eyes, how can you close and fail?"
As he followed along in the wake of the black shadow, Fiver thought of Hazel, lying in a pool of his own blood on the dirty path of the farm track. Shot by the man in cold blood. One second. That was all that it had taken to bring down the one rabbit who had kept everyone safe all this time. The one rabbit who could have been depended upon for survival was the one rabbit who had fallen. It made no sense. Hazel, the one flame in the dark tunnel of their current predicament, had been extinguished in a single shot from the farmer's gun. So Holly had been right when he had said that men really did have no mercy.
"How can the light that burns so brightly, suddenly burn so pail?"
The black rabbit led Fiver on, through the woods towards the Nuthanger farm. He needent have bothered, for Fiver knew where he had to go now. He could feel the fading consciousness of his dying brother and knew his rabbit scent better than he knew his own. He knew exactly where he would find Hazel.
The night was drawing in now, the light from the sun fading as the sky turned from a dull grey to a dusky navy. Fiver kept his head lowered, one eye on the black rabbit ahead of him, his nose pointing downwards, following the tantalising scents of his fellow rabbits' tracks.
Hazel had walked here, with a firmness of purpose that made Fiver wonder why he had wished to go to the farm in the first place. Farms, Fiver knew, were home to cats, dogs, and worst of all, men. Men with guns, ready to shoot a rabbit dead if they dared to poke their heads up from the burrows. Men who paraded around the Frith made countryside, destroying it with their dangerous men things, ripping up the countryside that nature had made and ruining what little unspoiled land that the rabbits had left. Why had he done it? Why would Hazel want to go to the dangerous man place?
"Is it a kind of dream? Floating on the tide, following the river of death downstream?"
The black rabbit stopped at the side of the ditch, waiting for Fiver to catch up, saying nothing. Doing nothing. He had no need to.
Fiver stood at the side of the road, looking down into the ditch at the pathetic bundle of fur lying on its side on the muddy ground, blood oozing from a deep wound in his leg. The rabbit looked like something that the cat had been playing with, lying limp and seemingly lifeless on the ground in front of Fiver and the black rabbit.
"Oh, is it a dream?"
Fiver waited for the black rabbit to make some sort of response, not knowing what to do. As he watched, the shadow turned as if to say, "this is for you to work out now."
And he turned and bounded off into the darkening woods in search of more spirits to take for his chief rabbit, the Lord Frith himself, leaving Fiver to tend to his fallen brother.
"Hazel?" Fiver whispered, cautiously sniffing the older rabbit's face, feeling the cold skin beneath the thick fur. Fiver's fear lay not in the presence of man that he could sense a few yards away, for they would not come for him now. Fiver's fear lay in the notion that his brother may die after all. "Hazel, you must come. Your warren needs you."
No response.
Fiver nudged Hazel with his nose, feeling the life within Hazel's body struggling to cling to its precarious grip on the mortal world. Every particle of his being was screaming at Fiver to turn and run from this place. The cold smell of man was choking him and making it difficult to breathe.
Yet he stayed by Hazel's side, unwilling to move even if a man came up behind him with a gun.
Again he spoke. "Oh come on Hazel. Your warren needs you. You got us safely away from Cowslip's warren and you safely led us to Watership Down. You can't leave us here alone with no chief rabbit to guide us. We need you."
A light rain fell from the sky, landing with an almost caressing gentleness upon Fiver's fur as he settled down at the side of the road to wait for Hazel to return to him.
Beating wings above his head and Fiver looked up, seeing the large white seagull soaring down from the rain filled clouds towards him.
Kehaar landed on the grass beside Fiver, studying the limp form of Hazel in the ditch with open concern. Fiver knew that the bird had grown to like the rabbits and was grateful for his timely arrival.
"Kehaar," Fiver said nervously, "can you help me? Hazel's been shot. I don't think he's dead though."
Kehaar considered the body once more then bent to the task of removing the bullet from the man's gun from Hazel's leg. "You are right," he told the anxious Fiver, "your brother isn't dead. Not yet anyway. He needs to be taken back to your warren. Then I will tell you of what I have found."
Fiver nodded, not knowing at all what the white bird was talking about but deciding that it was of little importance right now. "Well let's go then," he agreed fervently, wanting to get his brother back to their new warren as quickly as possible. "Can we go now?"
"Of course."
The big bird lifted the as yet unconscious form of Hazel in his beak and took a gentle hold of Fiver, soaring up into the rain drenched sky once more holding Fiver in his claws and Hazel in his beak, careful not to hurt either of his friends.
Fiver felt the rushing of the wind as the big bird carried him back to Watership Down and to safety. He was aware of the still strong heart beat of his older brother, still clinging onto life. Fiver could rest now for a while, safe in the knowledge that Hazel would not die. Safe in the knowledge that their chief rabbit was in fact, safe.
"Bright eyes, burning like fire. Bright eyes, how can you close and fail? How can the light that burns so brightly, suddenly burn so pail?
Bright eyes."