Chapter TWELVE - Losing Your Way in the Rain
After some considerable discussion, the Owsla party had resolved to send Kehaar back to Watership Down to explain all that had gone on, and to ask two more rabbits to be sent to join them. These would reinforce the party and assist the injured Holly home, fighting off any possible attack. However, for the moment they were more vulnerable than ever.
The four rabbits watched as the seagull soared away to the north-east. Once he had faded into the sullen grey murk of the horizon, Bigwig turned to the others.
"That's the way to travel" he said. "I wouldn't mind getting wet through for the view from up there."
"You wouldn't see much today," pointed out Bluebell. "This rain is extraordinary; it's not much better than it would be on a moonless night. You'd be better off as a bat, I should think. A fat bat to gobble a gnat."
"I don't think I could fight a gnat at the moment," said Holly. "This paw really is a confounded nuisance. At least the rest of you only have flesh wounds; I'm in quite a bad way here, I think."
"Oh, we'll look after you as much as we can, Holly," said Bigwig, as though a mother speaking to a nervous kitten newly come above ground. (As he had rather hoped, Holly was greatly annoyed at this. "Shows he still has some spirit, at least," he thought.) "Seriously, though," he went on aloud, "I think the rest of us can all run pretty well if we have to, at least for a short distance. But there's no point in beating around the bush - if it really comes to the crunch, and something does come for us that we're not up to fighting, then we may have to leave you behind."
"Yes, I know," replied Holly. "And I wouldn't ask anything else of you. One thing I do need to say, though-"
"Elil!" cried Silver suddenly. As indeed it was: the scent, although faint as yet, was unmistakeable, and becoming stronger. A stoat was attempting to use the cover provided by the wind and rain to come upon the rabbits unawares, and had Silver been only slightly less alert, they might have had no warning at all. Even as it was, it was only a matter of seconds before the animal appeared, making straight for the injured Holly.
Bigwig at once forgot his former comments and immediately ran to help his stricken comrade, growling and aiming cuffs at Holly's assailant. The stoat was taken somewhat by surprise by Bigwig's aggression, but recovered quickly and caught him across the face with a great raking blow of his front paw, his needle-sharp claws scoring along the sodden fur.
Startled, Bigwig jumped back, blinking the blood from his eyes, but Silver and Bluebell immediately took his place, staying back and using their claws to such an effect that the stoat's advances were frustrated at every turn, and at last the animal was fortunate to escape with its life into the long grass that grew around the ditches along the edge of the fields.
"Well, that wasn't so bad, as it?" said Bigwig with some satisfaction, licking at a small scratch on a front paw. "Stoats are cowards, really, like most elil. You just have to keep at them and eventually they'll give it up and run away. Nice bit of action, if anything; shows we're on our mettle still. Everyone present and correct? Jolly good; let's get a move on, shall we?"
There was an awkward silence at Bigwig's words. He looked up and realised why: Bluebell was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
Hazel had gone above ground to see some of the outskirters, something he (at Hyzenthlay's suggestion) had decided to do since Stitchwort's rebellion, despite the feelings of certain of the "old guard" (most notably, and inevitably, Bigwig) that doing so brought down their image in the eyes of the warren. "It's they who should be asking to see you," Bigwig had said irritably, although once it had become clear that Hazel was determined to go ahead with his plans, there had been no more open dissent.
Hyzenthlay, therefore, was lying alone in her burrow when she became aware of the smell of another rabbit hesitating just outside the entrance. She recognised Léaozen's scent, and waited for the other doe to come in, but when she made no move Hyzenthlay got to her feet, and was just about to hop over to the burrow entrance when Léaozen spoke.
"Er... Hyzenthlay-rah," came the doe's small, hesitant voice. "I'm sorry to disturb your rest, but I need to talk to you, er, I mean I'd like to, if it's all right-"
"Oh, do come in, won't you?" interrupted Hyzenthlay. "You're quite welcome."
Léaozen hopped slowly into the burrow. Hyzenthlay was pleased to see that she had lost the gaunt-faced, haunted look of a couple of days previously, and whilst her sadness at Blackavar's loss still showed plainly in her eyes she seemed stronger and more alert. Although she had not mentioned her concerns even to Hazel, Hyzenthlay had privately feared that Léaozen might literally pine away in her sorrow, perhaps crawling away one night to die alone as had Thrayonlosa so long ago. That, at least, seemed less likely now.
"Er- is Hazel-rah not here?" asked Léaozen. Blackavar, being something of a traditionalist in such matters, had rather shared Bigwig's private opinion that for a warren to have a doe as Chief Rabbit, even jointly with her mate, was, as he put it in his more unguarded moments, "a bit much, really." Something of this attitude had rubbed off on Léaozen, and she was clearly uneasy at the idea of speaking to Hyzenthlay alone.
Concealing her slight irritation at this, Hyzenthlay replied, "No; he's gone silf to speak to Frogbit and his friends."
"Er... but it's raining terribly hard outside," pointed out Léaozen.
"Oh, I know," answered Hyzenthlay. "But Frogbit seems to enjoy this sort of weather for some reason, and a few of the others have taken to joining him in silflaying in the rain. Knapweed said it made the grass sweeter or something like that. It is a little odd, I'll admit; but so long as it keeps them out of trouble I can't imagine Hazel will have any problems with it.
"Mind you, *I* worry about him a little, out there in the cold and damp for so long. Never mind, though: tell me what's troubling you and let's see if I can help."
She moved closer to Léaozen, the better to hear the other's quiet voice. However, what Léaozen said next shocked her.
"Oh, I wouldn't say it was troubling, not exactly. But, er, I'd, er, that is... I'd like to take Vernal as a mate."
Hyzenthlay did not know what to reply, and for long moments simply looked at Léaozen in plain astonishment. When she had recovered her composure, she asked Léaozen why she had felt it necessary to ask her permission.
"Oh, it was Vernal's idea," said Léaozen. He said that as he was an outsider, it wouldn't be right for us just to pair up without Haz- er, the Chief Rabbits' approval. And I promised him I'd ask first."
"But he's *not* an outsider," pointed out Hyzenthlay. "Not any more. He's a Watership rabbit now, and Watership rabbits take mates of their own free will. Hazel wouldn't like to think his rabbits thought of him as though he were Woundwort, you know. It does seem extremely odd - but then Vernal's done a fair few strange things since he's been with us, hasn't he? Doesn't seem to inclined to explain himself, either; I think I'd better go and talk to him about all this."
Léaozen said nothing, but followed Hyzenthlay out of the burrow and down the runs to Vernal's burrow, where the buck was picking at a thorn in his paw. On seeing the two does appear, he asked them to help, and once the thorn was removed, he forestalled Hyzenthlay's inevitable question with one of his own.
"I'm honoured you're here, Hyzenthlay-rah! I'm so glad you've come. But why didn't you just give Léaozen the answer she asked for?"
"Do be sensible, Vernal," said Hyzenthlay in a tone that brooked no dissent. "You know perfectly well that this isn't the way we do things in Watership. Anyone would think you'd been brought up in Efrafa, not Cowslip's place. In any case, I've been meaning to talk to you for a while now. There are some things I need to make plain: maybe you're happy swanning around all mysterious as though you were some half-baked veheer, but I'm not, and neither of us is going anywhere until I get some sense out of you as to what in Frith's name is going on here."
* * *
Holly was distraught, and despite his exhaustion from the fight, and the chill of the rain and wind, his only thoughts were for his faithful companion. "Let me... find Bluebell," he panted. "I owe him... that after all he's done... for me."
Bigwig refused, and spoke plainly to his injured colleague.
"Now look here, Holly," he said. "You're not to go anywhere. What could you do in that state? You'd be killed by something or other long before sunset. Besides, what good would it do us to lose two more rabbits instead of one? We'll just have to hope that Bluebell makes out all right on his own; we didn't see anything take him, after all. Meanwhile, we need to get back to Watership Down, or there'll be more elil back for us pretty soon. It's not safe to hang around here."
Holly, roused to anger at Bigwig's words, confronted him directly.
"Is that... is that all that matters to you? Getting home and hiding... underground? Does Bluebell mean nothing to you at all? If you'd known what I felt, after I'd seen... Pimpernel killed by Cowslip's embleer gang; if you'd been on the point of lying down and letting the next homba take you, kept going at all only... by Bluebell's jokes and chatter; if you'd been through all that, you wouldn't talk such rot. In any case, what use would I be to the warren like this? I can't run or fight or track properly. And who'd pay any respect to... a lame buck?"
"Ask your Chief Rabbit," said Bigwig quietly, growling under his breath.
Silver, who had kept the clearest head of them all, saw at once that a fight between the two others was something that had to be avoided at all costs. "We really shouldn't get out of this if that happened," he thought to himself, and manoeuvred himself between the other two rabbits.
"I say, you chaps," he said. "If we just hang around here doing nothing, then none of us are going to get home, are we? We need to get a move on, so that whoever Kehaar brings up with him won't be put in too much danger themselves. It's a shame about Bluebell, but there's no way we can go looking for him in weather like this. Bigwig's right, really: we'd end up with no Owsla at all, and that would put the whole warren in danger."
Holly subsided at his friend's words. When he next spoke, his voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper, yet full of the most profound anguish.
"But don't you see?" he said. "First Blackavar stopped running, and you've all seen how upset Clover was at that, being such good friends with Léaozen. And of course it's not been easy for me to try to comfort her what with all this dashing around all over the place. Then Stitchwort was killed by the great hrududu in the lane. And now Bluebell has disappeared as well, and if you're right then we shan't see him again. Bluebell and Blackavar were more than friends to me; they were heart-brothers, the only two I've ever had.
"And when all's said and done, what have we got out of all this? Nothing; nothing but pain, misery and death. We still don't have any idea why Blackavar died, and since then we've lost two more rabbits, plus got the rest of us pretty scratched up out here. You remember when you were in the ditch and you thought I was the Black Rabbit? Of course I wasn't, but the more I think about it now, the more I think he's not only been calling Blackavar, or even Stitchwort. I believe he's calling the whole of Watership Down. Why, only The Black Rabbit himself can know. But Bigwig, Silver, I tell you this: our warren's as tharn in its way as Cowslip's ever was."
After some considerable discussion, the Owsla party had resolved to send Kehaar back to Watership Down to explain all that had gone on, and to ask two more rabbits to be sent to join them. These would reinforce the party and assist the injured Holly home, fighting off any possible attack. However, for the moment they were more vulnerable than ever.
The four rabbits watched as the seagull soared away to the north-east. Once he had faded into the sullen grey murk of the horizon, Bigwig turned to the others.
"That's the way to travel" he said. "I wouldn't mind getting wet through for the view from up there."
"You wouldn't see much today," pointed out Bluebell. "This rain is extraordinary; it's not much better than it would be on a moonless night. You'd be better off as a bat, I should think. A fat bat to gobble a gnat."
"I don't think I could fight a gnat at the moment," said Holly. "This paw really is a confounded nuisance. At least the rest of you only have flesh wounds; I'm in quite a bad way here, I think."
"Oh, we'll look after you as much as we can, Holly," said Bigwig, as though a mother speaking to a nervous kitten newly come above ground. (As he had rather hoped, Holly was greatly annoyed at this. "Shows he still has some spirit, at least," he thought.) "Seriously, though," he went on aloud, "I think the rest of us can all run pretty well if we have to, at least for a short distance. But there's no point in beating around the bush - if it really comes to the crunch, and something does come for us that we're not up to fighting, then we may have to leave you behind."
"Yes, I know," replied Holly. "And I wouldn't ask anything else of you. One thing I do need to say, though-"
"Elil!" cried Silver suddenly. As indeed it was: the scent, although faint as yet, was unmistakeable, and becoming stronger. A stoat was attempting to use the cover provided by the wind and rain to come upon the rabbits unawares, and had Silver been only slightly less alert, they might have had no warning at all. Even as it was, it was only a matter of seconds before the animal appeared, making straight for the injured Holly.
Bigwig at once forgot his former comments and immediately ran to help his stricken comrade, growling and aiming cuffs at Holly's assailant. The stoat was taken somewhat by surprise by Bigwig's aggression, but recovered quickly and caught him across the face with a great raking blow of his front paw, his needle-sharp claws scoring along the sodden fur.
Startled, Bigwig jumped back, blinking the blood from his eyes, but Silver and Bluebell immediately took his place, staying back and using their claws to such an effect that the stoat's advances were frustrated at every turn, and at last the animal was fortunate to escape with its life into the long grass that grew around the ditches along the edge of the fields.
"Well, that wasn't so bad, as it?" said Bigwig with some satisfaction, licking at a small scratch on a front paw. "Stoats are cowards, really, like most elil. You just have to keep at them and eventually they'll give it up and run away. Nice bit of action, if anything; shows we're on our mettle still. Everyone present and correct? Jolly good; let's get a move on, shall we?"
There was an awkward silence at Bigwig's words. He looked up and realised why: Bluebell was nowhere to be seen.
* * *
Hazel had gone above ground to see some of the outskirters, something he (at Hyzenthlay's suggestion) had decided to do since Stitchwort's rebellion, despite the feelings of certain of the "old guard" (most notably, and inevitably, Bigwig) that doing so brought down their image in the eyes of the warren. "It's they who should be asking to see you," Bigwig had said irritably, although once it had become clear that Hazel was determined to go ahead with his plans, there had been no more open dissent.
Hyzenthlay, therefore, was lying alone in her burrow when she became aware of the smell of another rabbit hesitating just outside the entrance. She recognised Léaozen's scent, and waited for the other doe to come in, but when she made no move Hyzenthlay got to her feet, and was just about to hop over to the burrow entrance when Léaozen spoke.
"Er... Hyzenthlay-rah," came the doe's small, hesitant voice. "I'm sorry to disturb your rest, but I need to talk to you, er, I mean I'd like to, if it's all right-"
"Oh, do come in, won't you?" interrupted Hyzenthlay. "You're quite welcome."
Léaozen hopped slowly into the burrow. Hyzenthlay was pleased to see that she had lost the gaunt-faced, haunted look of a couple of days previously, and whilst her sadness at Blackavar's loss still showed plainly in her eyes she seemed stronger and more alert. Although she had not mentioned her concerns even to Hazel, Hyzenthlay had privately feared that Léaozen might literally pine away in her sorrow, perhaps crawling away one night to die alone as had Thrayonlosa so long ago. That, at least, seemed less likely now.
"Er- is Hazel-rah not here?" asked Léaozen. Blackavar, being something of a traditionalist in such matters, had rather shared Bigwig's private opinion that for a warren to have a doe as Chief Rabbit, even jointly with her mate, was, as he put it in his more unguarded moments, "a bit much, really." Something of this attitude had rubbed off on Léaozen, and she was clearly uneasy at the idea of speaking to Hyzenthlay alone.
Concealing her slight irritation at this, Hyzenthlay replied, "No; he's gone silf to speak to Frogbit and his friends."
"Er... but it's raining terribly hard outside," pointed out Léaozen.
"Oh, I know," answered Hyzenthlay. "But Frogbit seems to enjoy this sort of weather for some reason, and a few of the others have taken to joining him in silflaying in the rain. Knapweed said it made the grass sweeter or something like that. It is a little odd, I'll admit; but so long as it keeps them out of trouble I can't imagine Hazel will have any problems with it.
"Mind you, *I* worry about him a little, out there in the cold and damp for so long. Never mind, though: tell me what's troubling you and let's see if I can help."
She moved closer to Léaozen, the better to hear the other's quiet voice. However, what Léaozen said next shocked her.
"Oh, I wouldn't say it was troubling, not exactly. But, er, I'd, er, that is... I'd like to take Vernal as a mate."
Hyzenthlay did not know what to reply, and for long moments simply looked at Léaozen in plain astonishment. When she had recovered her composure, she asked Léaozen why she had felt it necessary to ask her permission.
"Oh, it was Vernal's idea," said Léaozen. He said that as he was an outsider, it wouldn't be right for us just to pair up without Haz- er, the Chief Rabbits' approval. And I promised him I'd ask first."
"But he's *not* an outsider," pointed out Hyzenthlay. "Not any more. He's a Watership rabbit now, and Watership rabbits take mates of their own free will. Hazel wouldn't like to think his rabbits thought of him as though he were Woundwort, you know. It does seem extremely odd - but then Vernal's done a fair few strange things since he's been with us, hasn't he? Doesn't seem to inclined to explain himself, either; I think I'd better go and talk to him about all this."
Léaozen said nothing, but followed Hyzenthlay out of the burrow and down the runs to Vernal's burrow, where the buck was picking at a thorn in his paw. On seeing the two does appear, he asked them to help, and once the thorn was removed, he forestalled Hyzenthlay's inevitable question with one of his own.
"I'm honoured you're here, Hyzenthlay-rah! I'm so glad you've come. But why didn't you just give Léaozen the answer she asked for?"
"Do be sensible, Vernal," said Hyzenthlay in a tone that brooked no dissent. "You know perfectly well that this isn't the way we do things in Watership. Anyone would think you'd been brought up in Efrafa, not Cowslip's place. In any case, I've been meaning to talk to you for a while now. There are some things I need to make plain: maybe you're happy swanning around all mysterious as though you were some half-baked veheer, but I'm not, and neither of us is going anywhere until I get some sense out of you as to what in Frith's name is going on here."
* * *
Holly was distraught, and despite his exhaustion from the fight, and the chill of the rain and wind, his only thoughts were for his faithful companion. "Let me... find Bluebell," he panted. "I owe him... that after all he's done... for me."
Bigwig refused, and spoke plainly to his injured colleague.
"Now look here, Holly," he said. "You're not to go anywhere. What could you do in that state? You'd be killed by something or other long before sunset. Besides, what good would it do us to lose two more rabbits instead of one? We'll just have to hope that Bluebell makes out all right on his own; we didn't see anything take him, after all. Meanwhile, we need to get back to Watership Down, or there'll be more elil back for us pretty soon. It's not safe to hang around here."
Holly, roused to anger at Bigwig's words, confronted him directly.
"Is that... is that all that matters to you? Getting home and hiding... underground? Does Bluebell mean nothing to you at all? If you'd known what I felt, after I'd seen... Pimpernel killed by Cowslip's embleer gang; if you'd been on the point of lying down and letting the next homba take you, kept going at all only... by Bluebell's jokes and chatter; if you'd been through all that, you wouldn't talk such rot. In any case, what use would I be to the warren like this? I can't run or fight or track properly. And who'd pay any respect to... a lame buck?"
"Ask your Chief Rabbit," said Bigwig quietly, growling under his breath.
Silver, who had kept the clearest head of them all, saw at once that a fight between the two others was something that had to be avoided at all costs. "We really shouldn't get out of this if that happened," he thought to himself, and manoeuvred himself between the other two rabbits.
"I say, you chaps," he said. "If we just hang around here doing nothing, then none of us are going to get home, are we? We need to get a move on, so that whoever Kehaar brings up with him won't be put in too much danger themselves. It's a shame about Bluebell, but there's no way we can go looking for him in weather like this. Bigwig's right, really: we'd end up with no Owsla at all, and that would put the whole warren in danger."
Holly subsided at his friend's words. When he next spoke, his voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper, yet full of the most profound anguish.
"But don't you see?" he said. "First Blackavar stopped running, and you've all seen how upset Clover was at that, being such good friends with Léaozen. And of course it's not been easy for me to try to comfort her what with all this dashing around all over the place. Then Stitchwort was killed by the great hrududu in the lane. And now Bluebell has disappeared as well, and if you're right then we shan't see him again. Bluebell and Blackavar were more than friends to me; they were heart-brothers, the only two I've ever had.
"And when all's said and done, what have we got out of all this? Nothing; nothing but pain, misery and death. We still don't have any idea why Blackavar died, and since then we've lost two more rabbits, plus got the rest of us pretty scratched up out here. You remember when you were in the ditch and you thought I was the Black Rabbit? Of course I wasn't, but the more I think about it now, the more I think he's not only been calling Blackavar, or even Stitchwort. I believe he's calling the whole of Watership Down. Why, only The Black Rabbit himself can know. But Bigwig, Silver, I tell you this: our warren's as tharn in its way as Cowslip's ever was."
