6. A Great Escape
The secret to happiness is freedom. And the secret to freedom is courage.
- Thucydides
For a number of days, the Man came and went to the outdoor rabbit hutch, bringing only fresh hay or vegetable rubbish- the tops of carrots, apple skins and the like- for them to eat but took none of the animals away.
Walnut, his brother Mulberry and his sisters Thresanyn and Peony remained close, wary of the other rabbits, especially Snowdrop who seemed not to like them to ask too many questions.
Fern, however, became fast companions with the doe with the white socks, as well as Yarrow and Thistle. She stopped speaking with her siblings altogether and remained at the opposite side of the hutch as her family members, completely content with the farm rabbits.
WD
Walnut sniffed nervously at the beet greens the Man had placed in the hutch. They had a strange smell but he didn't know what it was exactly. The vegetables tasted all right, but the smell was off, and not simply because they were old.
Instead of indulging in the greens, he found a patch of clover and ate that instead.
"I don't like this, Mulberry," Walnut muttered to his brother as the older kit hopped over to eat beside him, "Something isn't right about this."
Mulberry, munching away at a mouthful of grass shoots, nodded, "I know what you mean. The more I think about it, the more it troubles me."
"Mother told us Men were dangerous," Walnut whispered, "So why would this one be giving us hay and greens to eat if he didn't want something from us?"
His brother nodded, "And where do the rabbits go when the Man takes them away?"
Both bucks remained silent for a long moment as they ate, lost in their thoughts, before Walnut spoke up again, "I want to talk to Enthuthlay. She lived in a warren. I want to know if she has any ideas."
Mulberry raised his head and nodded.
The doe was eating the greens the Man had brought with Bryony and Iris, appearing just as contented as the other rabbits.
Mulberry, eldest, hopped over to Enthuthlay and sat besides her, picking a wilted celery stalk to munch quietly for a few moments before speaking.
In sotto voce, the younger rabbit asked if the doe would talk to him and his siblings.
Enthuthlay lifted her head, the end of a carrot leaf poking out of her mouth, and turned one brown eye to the kits.
She followed Mulberry to the far side of the hutch and paused for a moment, munching away on a couple of clover flowers she found there.
"What is it you wanted to talk to me about?" she asked the kits. Walnut, Thesanyn and Peony had joined Mulberry alongside the older rabbit.
"Where do the others go when the Man takes them?" Walnut blurted out, unable to keep the question inside any longer.
"I do not know," Enthuthlay told them, "But I have watched the Man take them around to the back of the barn. I do not know what happens to them there."
Walnut swallowed, "Our mother taught us Men were dangerous, that they would kill us like the fox and the hawk. Do you think that the Man who feeds us kills the rabbits he takes behind the barn?"
"It is possible," the doe admitted, "Rabbits from my warren vanished every so often and my Chief told us to stay away from the Man when he came into the field to tend the cows."
"Does that mean that the Man will eat us?" Peony asked, her eyes wide with fear.
Enthuthlay said nothing.
"We need to get away before that happens!" Walnut exclaimed.
"How do we do that?" Mulberry asked brusquely, "We can't climb or bite through the wire."
"No," Walnut admitted, "But we can dig."
"Can you help us? Don't you want to return to your warren?" Walnut asked Enthuthlay.
The doe hesitated but a moment before nodding, her nose twitching with emotion.
"Then it's settled," Walnut told the others, "We're going to escape."
WD
There was no way to keep what they were doing from the other rabbits in the hutch and when Snowdrop discovered their plan she was enraged.
Rising up onto her hind legs, Snowdrop towered over the kits, "You ungrateful little rapscallions!"
"If the Man finds out about this we'll all be in trouble!"
"That foolish Enthuthlay has put nonsense stories in your heads!"
The kits ignored her and continued on with their plan while the doe with the white socks fumed from the opposite side of the cage.
Walnut's sisters tried to convince Fern to assist them but she turned her back to her siblings. She was convinced that they would have a better life on the farm and refused to leave.
"Don't you remember how Mother abandoned us?" she asked, "She ran away when we were in danger. Why would you want to go back to her? If she's even still alive," she added cruelly.
"Leave her," Peony commented angrily, licking mud from her paws, "She can stay if she likes."
Walnut peered sadly across the cage at his sister but said nothing else. Peony was right; they could not force Fern to come with them. He was afraid, though, of what would happen to her if she stayed.
WD
It did not take long to dig out from underneath the chicken wire. It was not set deep into the earth, only a couple of inches, but the rabbits needed to be cautious about digging.
The Man came to the cage about mid-morning and dumped a bucket full of vegetable scraps in with the rabbits. Enthuthlay lay over the mouth of the tunnel to keep it hidden until the Man had left.
By the time evening silflay came Walnut had pushed his nose through the dirt on the other side of the chicken wire and kicked his legs in joy.
"We did it! Mulberry! Thresanyn! Peony! We did it!"
Wriggling backwards, his fur coated with dirt, he let Enthuthlay widen the tunnel.
Snowdrop and the other farm rabbits watched with expressions of anger or mild curiosity.
"As soon as the tunnel's wide enough for all of us we can go," Walnut assured his siblings, smiling, wiping soil from his ears with his paws.
"We must still be careful," Enthuthlay mumbled from within the tunnel, "There are barn cats to watch out for and the dog."
Walnut glanced at his brother and sisters; he hadn't thought about that.
"We'll get past them," Mulberry announced, puffing out his chest.
WD
As soon as the first stars had appeared the rabbits were ready for their escape.
Peony turned once more to Fern, in the hopes that she would join them. But the young rabbit simply moved closer to Snowdrop, her nose in the air.
"It'll be your own fault if you get torn apart by elil."
"You kits go first," Enthuthlay instructed, but stay to just the other side of the wire and I'll come right after."
She watched as one by one, the younger rabbits wriggled into the tunnel and popped out on the other side of the chicken wire, ears and backs flat to hide them in the grass.
Just as Enthuthlay was about to follow them, a voice called out, "Wait!"
Turning, she saw Iris and Yarrow step forward.
"We want to come with you," Yarrow told her, pointedly looking away from Snowdrop.
Enthuthlay stared at them for a long moment.
"All right," she agreed and scanned the remaining rabbits; no one else moved.
"You two go ahead," she told them and the buck and doe quickly moved through the tunnel to join the kits on the other side.
"You don't know what you're doing," Snowdrop hissed, "You'll regret this decision."
"Maybe I will," Enthuthlay, "but at least I am not simply sitting and getting fat on scraps, waiting for the Man to take me away."
With that, she too squeezed into the tunnel and out onto the other side. The night was moonless and the stars gave very limited light; the rabbits would be as hidden from their enemies as their enemies would be concealed from them.
"What's next?" Iris asked, her eyes wide in the gloom, her chest heaving.
Enthuthlay turned until she was pointed towards the cow pasture and beyond that, her home warren. They would have to cross a cornfield to get to the cattle, and thankfully not the farmyard itself.
"This way," she murmured, her heart hammering in her chest and all her instincts telling her to run, "And be quiet."
Slowly, ears pricked for any sound that wasn't friendly, Enthuthlay hopped away from the chicken wire cage, the others following silently behind her, praying to Frith that she was not leading them all to their deaths.
Author's Note:
Thanks to Chipster-roo for reviewing.
Sorry for the extremely long wait for this chapter. I kind of lost the motivation to write this and many of my other stories for a while. A lot has happened since I last updated this tale; I finished my latest college course, had to move back in with my parents for a few months, got a part-time job, moved into an apartment by myself and continued to be busy with work. Even with all that, I still struggled to write, and although I am still not completely over my 'writer's block' I am slowly getting better. I hope I won't take as long to update the next chapter!
