CHAPTER 3: TWIG BREAKING

"Women rescue men just as much as, if not more than, men rescue women."

-Criss Jami, Killosophy

The next morning at silflay, Pipkin was wandering around the warren looking for dandelions, when he spotted a large rock hidden in the grass. He wondered where it came from, since he could not recall seeing it the previous evening at silflay. He began smelling it, until Prince Rainbow halted his inspection.

-"Do not touch this thing! Nobody is allowed to touch any objects that appear silf unless I instruct you to do so."

All the rabbits who were outside, not allowed to touch the rock, instead examined it from a distance. They noticed that several other objects had appeared during the night, including other rocks, a hollow log, and a large number of twigs.

While Hazel was nibbling a cowslip with Fiver, he asked:

-"Fiver, do you have any idea what all these things are doing here?"

Fiver sat there for a few minutes, sniffing the air and staring into the distance. Then, he started to talk:

-"It is the next challenge. You have no reason to be afraid, it is one of the easy ones."

-"The easy ones? Aren't these rocks dangerous? Someone may get crushed under them!"

-"I don't think so. Blackberry told me that stones with a flat base, if they are placed directly in the grass, cannot topple and crush anyone. Unless someone pushes them, of course. That's a possibility that has to be considered."

He paused for a few minutes, then continued:

-"The one who is expected to win shall lose. It is not wise to get a message. Not good. No. And the one with the optimistic heart shall get the flayrah."

It did not take long for Prince Rainbow to prove that Fiver's first prediction was right. The next challenge involved running through the log, jumping over the rocks and breaking as many twigs as possible without using one's teeth.

-"And I must insist that you do not push each other," explained Prince Rainbow, "or do anything else that would prevent someone else from completing the challenge, or that would slow them down. You may proceed!"

Hyzenthlay was the fastest of the three rabbits who participated, and quickly went through the log towards the rocks. Campion followed. While he was a great fighter, running was not his strength, and it took him a little longer than Hyzenthlay to complete the first part of the challenge. Pipkin, full of energy, ran through all the logs as fast as possible, even managing to squeeze past Campion due to his small size.

Hyzenthlay slowly climbed to the top of the stones, before jumping off. Once she was done, she began breaking the twigs extremely fast, using her claws. Having a lot of experience with digging, her claws were very sharp and very effective. Campion jumped over the rocks without touching them, and started breaking the twigs. He was rather annoyed at not being allowed to chew through them, but he still managed with his claws, although rather slowly.

Meanwhile, Pipkin was struggling to make it past the rocks. While the smaller ones were no problem, the largest one was a massive challenge. Hazel wanted to go and help him, but Prince Rainbow threw a fireball right in his path to prevent him from doing so.

A few minutes later, Pipkin finally made it to the top of the stone, and jumped off. However, while propelling himself off it, he ended up pushing the rock, which started rolling straight towards where Campion was standing.

Woundwort was watching the challenge from a distance. He was extremely angry at Campion, after he had taken advantage of the General's absence to take control of Efrafa, and wanted revenge. Yet, as much as he hated to admit it, he still felt sorry for the rabbit one who once was his most trusted owsla captain. He was still debating whether or not he should push Campion out of the path of the rock, at the risk of his own life, when he suddenly felt as if his hind legs were on fire. He turned around and saw Prince Rainbow, who screamed:

-"WELL? WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR? RESCUE HIM!"

The General stood petrified for a few seconds, until he was struck by a second fireball, at which point he dashed towards the path of the rock, but encountered only thin air, followed by the worst pain since his fight against the dog Hazel had unleashed on his owsla. There was no longer any rabbit in his path.

It turned out that, as soon as she had noticed the rock, Hyzenthlay thew herself into Campion's body, pushing them both out of the way and leaving Woundwort to experience the full blow. However, the two rabbits had crashed in the middle of a pile of sharp twigs. Campion felt a strong pain in his back, while Hyzenthlay was mostly unharmed, since his body had acted as a cushion of sorts.

-"Why did you save me?" said the captain of owsla.

-"I don't want anyone to die if I can prevent it from happening."

Pipkin watched the entire event with shock. While he hated the General, he felt terrible for being responsible, although indirectly, for his death. Then, he saw the rock move. Out from underneath it came a heavily scarred Woundwort, who stared directly at Prince Rainbow.

-"Well, Prince," he said mockingly, "why in Frith's name did you send me there? You shall pay for this, you know?"

Prince Rainbow, trying his best to contain his anger, only managed to reply:

-"All I know is that the Black Rabbit is still too tired to ferry any souls to the land beyond life today. Because of the wounds YOU inflicted on him. Much in the same way Clover was spared yesterday, Campion couldn't die today, so the Black Rabbit made me send you to save Campion. What nobody expected was Hyzenthlay saving him instead."

He then turned to the patch where the twigs once lied. Now, there was nothing but a pile of fragments, most of the twigs having been destroyed when Hyzenthlay and Campion had landed on top of them. The others had been crushed by the rock.

-"This challenge was a disaster! I would have evicted you, Pipkin, for causing all this trouble," (the small rabbit bent down in guilt) "but I did not specify any rule stating that the rocks couldn't be moved, so I am unfortunately unable to evict you. I will have to analyze each of these fragments to determine who broke them. Get back to the warren and don't come out until I am finished! I have a lot of work to do!"

-"And, HOW, may I ask, will you determine who broke those twigs?"

All turned to see from where this new, yet strangely familiar, voice came from. Everyone gasped when they saw the rabbit who was standing at the edge of the warren.

Avens was on sentry duty in Vleflain. The warren was part-Efrafan, part-Watership, and was the first of a long list of a measures to bring the two warrens closer after the end of the war. The former Efrafan captain had had the honour of bringing the first band of Efrafans to the warren with him a few months before. He suddenly saw a large gull appear overhead. Just before he could stamp out the alarm, he realized that it was Kehaar, who was perfectly harmless.

The bird landed next to him and began talking to him with a sense of urgency:

-"Meester Avens, ees trouble. Meester Pigvig, 'e hurt. Ees vith Meess Clover."

The captain quickly realized that something had to be done immediately, and asked:

-"Where are they? Lead me to them!"

-"In voods. Dat way."

Avens quickly assembled a patrol with the first few rabbits he could find, and started out in the direction indicated by Kehaar. After a few minutes, they finally made it to the place where the pair was last seen, only to find both rabbits lying unconscious in the grass. The patrol carried them back to the warren.

The next day, Bigwig and Clover, escorted by Kehaar, made their way back to Watership Down. The doe immediately went down the nearest hole to check on her kittens. As Prince Rainbow had said, Thethuthinnang had taken care of them, and they had not faced any worse problems than loneliness. The owsla captain approached a random rabbit at silflay (it happened to be captain Holly), and told him:

-"Holly, I want you to call a meeting in the Honeycomb right now. Everyone must attend. Yes, even those new kittens. Everyone must be there."

As soon as everyone was assembled inside the hall, Bigwig and Clover began telling them the story of everything that had happened at Prince Rainbow's terrible warren, and how all the others were still trapped there. Most of the rabbits had trouble believing what they had just learned, especially Dandelion: despite being the warren's storyteller, he had never heard of Prince Rainbow organizing such challenges.

-"Well, one thing I DO know is that I will not let them stay there!" proclaimed Bluebell, as he burst into a run.

-"WHAT? Are you crazy? You'll never make it!" replied Holly in shock. "And even if you do, I don't think Prince Rainbow will be very tolerant towards strangers. You weren't invited!"

-"I'm going, and you can't stop me!"

Bigwig dashed towards Bluebell, but was held back by Blackberry's firm paw.

-"Don't waste your time. Once he's got an idea in his head, it's hard to get it out. He's probably far away by now. I don't think he will make it very far, and he will probably come back in the morning looking like a fool. If not, we'll send Kehaar to look for him. But for now, let's see if I can think of a clever trick to get everyone out of that warren..."

-"Bluebell! What are YOU doing here?" asked Hazel in shock.

-"As soon as I learned you were in trouble, I ran here as fast as I could. It was a long trip, and I got lost several times. But I'm here now! Let's get out of here!"

-"NOT SO FAST!" barked Prince Rainbow, as he hurled a fireball into Bluebell, knocking him down. "Nobody is going anywhere until I have finished examining those twigs. Everyone, carry this troublemaker underground and leave me alone. I've put some flayrah and some stones in the great burrow to keep you busy."

The rabbits spent the rest of the day calmly inside the warren. They ate a little bit of flayrah, but they were rather worried because there was only a small amount of it, so they saved most of it for later. They played several games of bob-stones until they all drifted to sleep, only to be suddenly woken up in the middle of the night by a bright light and a loud voice.

-"Everyone into the great burrow! I will announce the results of the challenge!"

-"Ohhh," groaned Bluebell, "just when I was starting to get some sleep. What is this challenge, anyway?"

-"SHUT UP! Do not insult me, it is strictly forbidden and will be punished severely! Consider yourself lucky I actually let you sleep underground! Anyway, here are the results..."

-"And you still haven't answered my question: how do you know who broke those twigs?"

-"I examined the strands of fur left onto the twigs. At the tip of each strand of fur, there are small pieces of skin, and inside each is something that makes it possible to identify any living creature. Humans call it "acidum desoxyribonucleicum"."

-"If you weren't Prince Rainbow, you wouldn't be able to pronounce that," said Nelthilta with a smirk.

-"NEVER MIND! Anyway, as I was saying, the best twig-breaker is Hyzenthlay. It seems she broke a lot of them with her claws at the start, and a few more when landing further away with Campion, who finished in third place, since most of the twigs he crushed had already been broken before. In second place, just three twigs ahead of Campion, is Pipkin. While he did not break any twigs by himself, he caused the rock to roll on many of them and destroy them. I really should have made a rule against that, but I had no idea that would happen, and it is too late to go back. So, Captain Campion, you are evicted. You may stay until morning, but after that, you will leave. You may all go back to sleep now. And by the way, Hyzenthlay will find some extra flayrah in her burrow. Good night!"

Most of the rabbits had already fallen asleep in the central chamber before Prince Rainbow even finished explaining the results. It had been an exhausting day, and several were still shaken up after the incident with the rock.