Free Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams Page A

couldn’t see the sun, you understand, and when night fell there were no stars either. And then next morning a stoat found us—a big dog stoat.
    “I don’t know what they do to you—I’ve never met one since, El-ahrairah be praised—but we all three just sat there helplessly while it killed Mian; she never made a sound. We got away somehow, but Fescue was in an awful state, crying and carrying on, poor little chap. And in the end, some time after ni-Frith on the second day, we decided to go back to the home warren.
    “It was easier said than done. I believe now that we wandered in circles for a long time. But anyway, by evening we were as lost as ever and just plodding on in a kind of hopeless way, when all of a sudden I came down a slope and through a bramble bush, and there was a rabbit—a stranger—quite close by. He was at silflay, browsing over the grass, and I could see his hole—several holes, in fact—beyond him, on the other side of the little dell we were in.
    “I felt terribly relieved and glad, and I was just going over to speak to him, when all of a sudden something made me stop. And it was as I stopped and looked at him that itcame over me where it was that we must have stumbled into.
    “The wind—what wind there was–was blowing from him toward us, and as he browsed he stopped and passed hraka. I wasn’t very far away, and he gave off no smell whatever—nothing—not the faintest trace. We’d come blundering through the brambles straight in front of him, and he hadn’t even looked up or given any sign of having noticed us. And then I saw something which frightens me even now—I can never get it out of my mind. A fly—a big bluebottle—flew down right on his eye. He didn’t blink or even shake his head. He went on feeding, and the fly … it … it disappeared; it vanished. A moment later he’d hopped his own length forward, and I saw it on the grass where his head had been.
    “Fescue was beside me, and I heard him give a little, quick moan. And it was when I heard that that I realized there was no other sound in that dell where we were. It was a fine evening with a light breeze, but there wasn’t a blackbird singing, not a leaf rustling—nothing. The earth round all the rabbit holes was cold and hard—not a scratch or mark anywhere. I knew then what I was seeing, and all my senses clouded over—sight, smell … I felt a sort of surge of faintness pour up through my body. The whole world seemed to topple away and leave me alone in that dreadful place of silence, where there were no smells. We were Nowhere. I caught a glimpse of Stitchwort beside me, and he looked like a rabbit choking in a snare.
    “It was then that we saw the boy. He was crawling onhis stomach through the bushes a little to one side of us—downwind of the rabbit on the grass. He was a big boy, and all I can say is that men may have looked like that once, but from what little I’ve seen of them, they don’t anymore. There was a kind of dirty, faraway wildness about him, like the place itself. His clothes were foul and torn. He had old boots too big for him and a stupid, cruel face with bad teeth and great warts on one cheek. And he, too, made no sound and had no smell.
    “In one hand he was holding a forked stick with a sort of loop hanging from it, and as I watched he put a stone into it and pulled it back nearly to his eye. Then he let go, and the stone flew out and hit the rabbit on the right hind leg. I heard the bone break, and the rabbit leaped up and screamed. Yes, I heard that, all right—I still hear it, and dream about it too. Can you imagine what a breathless, a lungless scream might be like? It seemed to be in the air rather than to come from the rabbit kicking on the grass. It was as though the whole place had screamed.
    “The boy stood up, cackling, and now the hollow seemed to be full of rabbits we couldn’t see, all running for those cold, empty holes.
    “You could see he was enjoying