“Look!” said Johanna. The soft, grey rabbit hopped slowly toward the bit of apple. “I think his leg will be ok,” she said.
The young Leighn looked hopeful.
“Here, bunny,” he called.
“No, Lei, he’s still weak. Let him eat.”
The two watched the rabbit eat.
“When will he be well enough to play with me?” Leighn asked.
“I don’t know if he’ll ever want to play with you, even when he is healthy,” Johanna said. She felt bad for the boy; he had taken such good care of the injured rabbit.
“Why? Doesn’t he like me?”
“Rabbits don’t usually play with little boys. You’re much bigger than he is.”
“But I wouldn’t hurt him! I’ve been making him better!”
“But when he is well, he will probably want to go back to his home, don’t you think?”
“But he could stay here, we’d give him a good home,” the child was about to cry.
“If you were hurt out in the woods, and strange creatures forty feet tall who spoke in a strange language took you in and cared for you, wouldn’t you want to come home again when you were well, even if they were nice to you?”
“Yes,” he said, reluctantly.
“Then it wouldn’t be fair to keep him here if he wanted to go home, would it?”
“No.”
The rabbit had finished eating. He looked up now at the two figures that had been watching him. The smaller one, the one who had come so often, had an odd look in his eyes.
Johanna stood up to leave. “Don’t stay too long, it’s getting cold and you don’t have your coat.
As the larger one moved off into the distance, the rabbit heard the smaller one begin to speak. The sounds were broken and weak. As before, the boy spoke right to him. Water was running down his face and he looked as if he were in pain. The rabbit could still feel the pain in his front leg, and he remembered how alone he had felt when he had been lying by the edge of the stream, half buried in mud and rocks, the rain drowning out all the familiar sounds of the forest. The boy had come to the stream not long after. He remembered the look of kindness and concern on the boy’s face. Still stunned from the sudden impact of the mudslide, he had let the boy take him up. He remembered the fear, and how the fear slowly subsided as the boy tried to make him comfortable.
He hoped the boy would not be frightened now.
He hopped slowly, cautiously, trying not to startle the boy. He remembered how his heart had raced as the boy had approached him, there by the stream. The look of pain in the boy’s face, and the way his small body shook as his voice wavered and broke worried the rabbit tremendously.
The boy shifted, and the rabbit froze. He did not want the boy to become alarmed and try to run. His intentions were not to hurt the boy; he would try to move more slowly, try to reassure him.
“Tomorrow you get to go back to your family,” Leighn was saying, “isn’t that nice? I bet you miss your family.” The rabbit had been looking at him, and had begun to move closer. “Are you coming to see me? I don’t want you to go, but it would be mean to make you stay,” he paused for a moment, overcome. In the two weeks that the rabbit had been there, in the shed, he had come to truly love it. What Johanna had said had never occurred to him, that the rabbit wouldn’t stay, wouldn’t want to be his friend.
He sobbed. The tears were warm on his cheeks and he made no attempt to wipe them away. He was heartbroken. Ten times, twenty, a hundred times a day he had come quietly into the shed and talked to the rabbit. He had adjusted the soft bedding, an old shirt, and had brought food and water. Once, he had brought wine—it had been a holiday—but the rabbit didn’t seem to like it.
His time he devoted exclusively to the rabbit, feeling in his heart the fear and strangeness, the loneliness that the rabbit must have been feeling. He tried to comfort the rabbit. Sometimes he even sang to him.
He couldn’t imagine losing such a dear friend. To him, at his young age, two weeks was a long, long time. And the hours he had spent had been full and long. This was to be the biggest loss he had ever felt in his seven years, and now he wept bitterly.
The rabbit hopped forward, very slowly, pausing now and then to build up trust. This boy had been very kind, and he felt a very strong bond with him. That the boy would now be in such obvious pain distressed him.
He wondered how he could help, what he could do. He hopped forward further, determined. As he neared the boy, he paused, thinking. The boy held out his hand.
“I love you,” Leighn said, blinking hard.
The rabbit looked at the hand. This was the hand that had stroked his fur so often, now it was he who must soothe the boy. He moved within the reach of the hand, more confident now, from this sign of trust. He nudged the boy’s arm gently with his nose, sniffing, trying to understand the cause of the pain. Unable to smell a wound, he was confused. He looked up at the boy, and the boy looked back at him. The boy took some deep breaths, and tried to regain his composure.
note: I consider this story to be unfinished, but it was written in 1991 so I doubt it will ever actually BE finished.
— 12:14:12 PM
[1930]
08/30/2007 03:34 PM Reply
What they eat??