Watership Down, стр. 25

Fiver, as he listened, had shown a mixture of intense absorption and incredulous horror. At one and the same time he seemed to accept every word and yet to be stricken with fear. Once he drew in his breath, as though startled to recognize his own half-known thoughts: and when the poem was ended he seemed to be struggling to come to himself. He bared his teeth and licked his lips, as Blackberry had done before the dead hedgehog on the road.

A rabbit in fear of an enemy will sometimes crouch stock still, either fascinated or else trusting to its natural inconspicuousness to remain unnoticed. But then, unless the fascination is too powerful, there comes the point when keeping still is discarded and the rabbit, as though breaking a spell, turns in an instant to its other resource-flight. So it seemed to be with Fiver now. Suddenly he leaped up and began to push his way violently across the great burrow. Several rabbits were jostled and turned angrily on him, but he took no notice. Then he came to a place where he could not push between two heavy warren bucks. He became hysterical, kicking and scuffling, and Hazel, who was behind him, had difficulty in preventing a fight.

"My brother's a sort of poet, too, you know," he said to the bristling strangers. "Things affect him very strongly sometimes and he doesn't always know why."

One of the rabbits seemed to accept what Hazel had said, but the other replied, "Oh, another poet? Let's hear him, then. That'll be some return for my shoulder, anyway. He's scratched a great tuft of fur out."

Fiver was already beyond them and thrusting toward the further entrance tunnel. Hazel felt that he must follow him. But after all the trouble that he himself had taken to be friendly, he felt so cross at the way in which Fiver had antagonized their new friends that as he passed Bigwig, he said, "Come and help me to get some sense into him. The last thing we want is a fight now." He felt that Fiver really deserved a short touch of Bigwig.

They followed Fiver up the run and overtook him at the entrance. Before either of them could say a word, he turned and began to speak as though they had asked him a question.

"You felt it, then? And you want to know whether I did? Of course I did. That's the worst part of it. There isn't any trick. He speaks the truth. So as long as he speaks the truth it can't be folly-that's what you're going to say, isn't it? I'm not blaming you, Hazel. I felt myself moving toward him like one cloud drifting into another. But then at the last moment I drifted wide. Who knows why? It wasn't my own will; it was an accident. There was just some little part of me that carried me wide of him. Did I say the roof of that hall was made of bones? No! It's like a great mist of folly that covers the whole sky: and we shall never see to go by Frith's light any more. Oh, what will become of us? A thing can be true and still be desperate folly, Hazel."

"What on earth's all this?" said Hazel to Bigwig in perplexity.

"He's talking about that lop-eared nitwit of a poet down there," answered Bigwig. "I know that much. But why he seems to think we should want to have anything to do with him and his fancy talk-that's more than I can imagine. You can save your breath, Fiver. The only thing that's bothering us is the row you've started. As for Silverweed, all I can say is, I'll keep Silver and he can be just plain Weed."

Fiver gazed back at him with eyes that, like a fly's, seemed larger than his head. "You think that," he said. "You believe that. But each of you, in his own way, is thick in that mist. Where is the-"

Hazel interrupted him and as he did so Fiver started. "Fiver, I won't pretend that I didn't follow you up here to speak angrily. You've endangered our good start in this warren-"

"Endangered?" cried Fiver. "Endangered? Why, the whole place-"

"Be quiet. I was going to be angry, but you're obviously so much upset that it would be pointless. But what you are going to do now is to come underground with the two of us and sleep. Come on! And don't say any more for the moment."

One respect in which rabbits' lives are less complicated than those of humans is that they are not ashamed to use force. Having no alternative, Fiver accompanied Hazel and Bigwig to the burrow where Hazel had spent the previous night. There was no one there and they lay down and slept.

17. The Shining Wire

It was cold, it was cold and the roof was made of bones. The roof was made of the interlaced sprays of the yew tree, stiff twigs twisted in and out, over and under, hard as ice and set with dull red berries. "Come on, Hazel," said Cowslip. "We're going to carry the yew berries home in our mouths and eat them in the great burrow. Your friends must learn to do that if they want to go our way." "No! No!" cried Fiver. "Hazel, no!" But then came Bigwig, twisting in and out of the branches, his mouth full of berries. "Look," said Bigwig, "I can do it. I'm running another way. Ask me where, Hazel! Ask me where! Ask me where!" Then they were running another way, running, not to the warren but over the fields in the cold, and Bigwig dropped the berries-blood-red drops, red droppings hard as wire. "It's no good," he said. "No good biting them. They're cold."

Hazel woke. He was in the burrow. He shivered. Why was there no warmth of rabbit bodies lying close together? Where was Fiver? He sat up. Nearby, Bigwig was stirring and twitching in his sleep, searching for warmth, trying to press against another rabbit's body no longer there. The shallow hollow in the sandy floor where Fiver had lain was not quite cold: but Fiver was gone.

"Fiver!" said Hazel in the dark.

As soon as he had spoken he knew there would be no reply. He pushed Bigwig with his nose, butting urgently. "Bigwig! Fiver's gone! Bigwig!"

Bigwig was wide awake on the instant and Hazel had never felt so glad of his sturdy readiness.

"What did you say? What's wrong?"

"Fiver's gone."

"Where's he gone?"

"Silf-outside. It can only be silf. You know he wouldn't go wandering about in the warren. He hates it."

"He's a nuisance, isn't he? He's left this burrow cold, too. You think he's in danger, don't you? You want to go and look for him?"

"Yes, I must. He's upset and overwrought and it's not light yet. There may be elil, whatever Strawberry says."

Bigwig listened and sniffed for a few moments.

"It's very nearly light," he said. "There'll be light enough to find him by. Well, I'd better come with you, I suppose. Don't worry-he can't have gone far. But by the King's Lettuce! I won't half give him a piece of my mind when we catch him."

"I'll hold him down while you kick him, if only we can find him. Come on!"

They went up the run to the mouth of the hole and paused together. "Since our friends aren't here to push us," said Bigwig, "we may as well make sure the place isn't crawling with stoats and owls before we go out."

At that moment a brown owl's call sounded from the opposite wood. It was the first call, and by instinct they both crouched motionless, counting four heartbeats until the second followed.