Tales From Watership Down (Watership Down 2)

"It was splendid at the Cooler's, and I soon felt a whole lot better. As soon as I'd got all the ice out of my fur, I went outside and whatever do you think? There were that fox and that badger sitting up together, talking to each other and saying all the nastiest things they could think of about me. I just picked them up and banged their two heads together so that they rang like a cuckoo in April. Then I jumped back on my beautiful sky-blue horse and we galloped away. 'Where to, master?' asks the horse. 'Well,' I said, 'I think we ought to go and see to my yellow crocus boat in the stream, if it's not too far.' 'Not too far, master?' says my horse. 'Why, we're there!' And so we were, only we'd been going backward, you see, and so of course I hadn't noticed.

"There was my boat, safe and sound. The horse got in and then I got in, and off we went upstream and down dale. Sure enough, there was the farmer's dear little daughter waiting for us on the bank, and I took her for a ride on my sky-blue horse.

"We went to the rabbits' meeting--oh, thousands and thousands of rabbits--and when they saw us, they all said, 'Let's make him our Chief--our King--and little Lucy shall be his Queen!'

"So there we were, King and Queen of the rabbits, and Lucy was covered with flowers and I was covered with dandelion leaves! I dug a nice hole for us to sleep in together, and I told her stories until she fell asleep. My horse slept too, but then his master came looking for him, and the farmer came looking for his Lucy. He had a whole bushel of hay with him, so my horse didn't go hungry, and my dear Lucy rode him all the way home to the farm, and I promised to come and see her every time it rained. It rained honey for her and lettuce leaves for me, and we fairly lived like the King and Queen we were.

"Rabbits so clever

As blue as the sky!

Rabbits forever,

A rabbit am I!

"You take the left hand,

I'll take the right.

You be the black queen,

I'll be the white!

"And that's the end of my story," said Speedwell.

PART II

8

The Story of the Comical Field

But as the night fell, he begun [sic] to be sensible of some

creature keeping pace with him and, as he thought, peering and

looking upon him from the next Alley to that he was in.

M. R. JAMES, "Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance"

This (said Dandelion) is one of the many stories that are told about the adventures of El-ahrairah and Rabscuttle during their long return journey from the stone burrow of the Black Rabbit of Inle.

They went slowly, for both of them were exhausted and badly shocked by their terrible experience. The weather, however, was kind. Day after day was sunny and warm. El-ahrairah used to sleep in the afternoons, while Rabscuttle kept watch for any elil who might be about. But the days were peaceful: there were no alarms or sudden escapes, and gradually El-ahrairah began to recover some of his old energy and strength. The larks sang high and the blackbirds sang low, and it seemed as though Lord Frith himself was making it easy for them to rejoin the placid natural world they thought of as their own.

One bright, clear evening, toward sunset, the two of them were lolloping gently across a hilltop, keeping an eye out, as they went, for some sheltered, safe place where they might be able to spend the night. Having come over the crest, they stopped to look at the land below and to choose their best way down.

It was exactly the kind of farming country they were used to: green fields--for it was early summer--and patches of woodland where the new leaves were glinting in the sun. Somewhere far off, a man was chugging about on a hrududu. All was as accustomed as could be--except for one curious feature, of a kind which neither of them had seen before.

Not far from a lonely-looking road stood a big house--smokeless chimneys, glassless windows and broken roofs. As any rabbit could perceive, it was in ruins and deserted, for there were no men anywhere around it. They could see the overgrown, jungly garden and the paths all covered with weeds. There were a few sheds here and there, and El-ahrairah was just thinking that one of them would make a good shelter for the night, when he noticed something else distinctly unusual.

On the nearer side of the garden, divided from it by a low wall, lay a piece of ground about the size of an ordinary meadow. It could in fact have been a meadow, except that it was all broken up into green paths, bordered by thick hedges running every which way. It lay empty in the westering sunshine, and although El-ahrairah remained looking at it for some time, he saw no sign of animals or birds.

"What do you suppose that is?" he asked Rabscuttle. "It's obviously some kind of man-thing, but I've never seen a place like it before, have you?"

"I don't know any more than you do, master," replied Rabscuttle. "It's no good to us, that's certain. We'd do best to let it alone, wouldn't we?"

"No, I'd like to have a closer look at it," replied El-ahrairah. "Let's go down that way. It can't do us any harm, and I'd like to know what on earth it's for. I can't see that it's any use at all, even to men."

They went slowly down the hillside, stopped for a bite of grass, made their way along a couple of hedgerows, and soon found themselves quite near what El-ahrairah had named "the comical field." There was no gate or any sort of entry that they could see, so El-ahrairah, more and more puzzled, led the way along one side.