Bookweirdest Page 6

  More children started to cry.

  Esme tried to mollify the crowd, but they pressed in closer, and her protests were drowned out by the din. Norman watched nervously as the rabbits closed in. The bigger ones pushed to the front of the crowd; some of them held pitchforks.

  A flick of Esme’s ears alerted Norman to a movement at the top of the cathedral. Behind the steeple crouched two rabbits in silver-grey hoods. They had unslung their longbows from their backs and were reaching for their arrows. Norman went from nervous to panicked very quickly. The rabbits and hares of the Great Cities were renowned archers.

  “This two-legger is special,” Esme shouted. “He has heard the old stories. He knows the legend of Cuilean of Lochwarren.” Her tiny rabbit voice went unnoticed.

  Only Norman saw her struggling to be heard. Being too quiet had never been his problem, and now it was time he spoke up. He’d talk some sense into them, he thought, pressing his hands to the ground to raise himself to his feet. He’d hardly raised himself an inch off the ground, but the crowd gasped and took a step back.

  “Esme!” the old man called nervously from the stairs. “Step away from the two-legger. Come to safety.”

  But Esme didn’t move. Norman could tell from her twitching ears that the archers were getting into position. He didn’t dare turn around. They would aim for his eyes and might be the last thing he saw. He let himself down to a seated position again.

  “Rabbits of Undergrowth,” Norman began, as calmly as he could. There was a murmur of disbelief as he spoke, but he did not yet hear the whistling of arrows. “People of Willowbraid, citizens of the Great Cities,” he continued. He tried to look a few rabbits in their eyes, like they teach you in public speaking, but they averted their stares. “My name is Norman Strong Arm,” he said, using the name the stoats gave him and trying his best to duplicate the formal language of the books he loved. “I come here to ask your help. Long ago, the people of the Great Cities took in Cuilean of the Stoats. You fought at his side in the war with the wolves. I come here as a friend of the stoats, as the protector of my lord, Malcolm, heir of Lochwarren. The stoat throne is in danger again.” A hundred little rabbit jaws dropped as he spoke. “I need your help to return to Lochwarren, to the side of my friend and king.”

  There was a long silence after he finished his speech. Esme looked up at him, her whiskers twitching and rippling in puzzlement. When still no one said anything, Norman screwed up his courage and turned his head slowly towards the cathedral. He couldn’t help squinting instinctively to protect his eyes.

  The delegation of rabbit dignitaries stood in stunned silence. Esme’s father opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out and he closed it again.

  At Norman’s side, Esme raised her voice again. “He’s been to Lochwarren, Father. It means we can go back. It means the exile is over.”

  For a long time, Esme’s father just stood there. A hundred decisions seemed to be made and unmade in that silence.

  “We’d better have the whole story,” he concluded finally.

  The Rabbits of England

  It took some time to get the rabbits of Willowbraid to return to their homes. The younger ones lingered, approaching Norman cautiously and sniffing him tentatively, daring each other to touch him, until Esme shooed them away.

  The meeting was held in the cathedral. The rabbits opened the two main doors, but it was still only wide enough for Norman to fit in his head and his forearms. He rested his chin on his hands, but the rest of his body lay on the square outside. It was a vulnerable position. The archers had been moved indoors and stationed on the catwalks and stairs. He was an easy target lying there, and he would not be able to get out quickly. The sight of Esme at his side reassured him. They were on the same level for once and he was able to look her in the eye again.

  “Your father is in charge?” Norman whispered.

  “He’s the alderman. They usually listen to him.” She gave him a quick rabbit smile, but Norman wasn’t sure that this was necessarily a good thing.

  The magistrates filed in through one side door. A line of robed monks filed in the other. When they had assembled, Norman assumed it was time to speak and cleared his voice to tell the whole story. Esme’s father stopped him with a raised hand.

  “We’ll hear more from you later. First let us rabbitfolk talk.”

  He called Esme, and she told the assembly how Norman had summoned them from the edge of the grass field. The rabbit elders grumbled and harrumphed as she told them how he had called out the names of the Great Cities. When she mentioned Raritan, they gasped and nearly shouted in outrage.

  One of the magistrates rose in protest. “Get him out of here now, Alderman Morgan. We must leave the village. It’s the rule that’s kept us alive: when the two-leggers find us, we move on. And this one has a liocorno. It does not bode well for us.”

  Esme’s father held up a hand to silence the other magistrate and turned to Norman. “Why did you come to the great house?” he asked. “Who told you we would be there?”

  “The unicorn, Raritan, told me, and I remembered that I’d seen rabbits there before …” Norman tried to recall exactly what he’d heard and seen when he woke up from his nap inside the folly. “Two monks talking about celebrating St. Peter’s Eve.”

  The delegation turned to stare at one of the brothers, who coughed nervously and tried to look away.

  “Brother Timothy? That would have been you, I presume?” Alderman Morgan asked.

  “Yes, yes,” the monk began, stuttering apologetically. “I believe I recall stumbling on a young two-legger sleeping in the old ruin.”

  “That’s right,” Norman affirmed excitedly. “The ruined cathedral. It looks just like the one at Edgeweir—the one the foxes started but never finished.”

  There was a loud grumble of protest.

  “Where did you hear about the Great Cities, and about Lochwarren and Edgeweir?” Alderman Morgan’s voice rumbled with suspicion.

  Norman paused before answering. He’d learned to be very careful about this. You couldn’t just tell someone they were a character in a book you’d read. Nobody wanted to believe they were from a book. Everyone thought theirs was the real world.

  “I’ve been to Edgeweir and Lochwarren. Cuilean himself told me the stories of the Great Cities as we warmed ourselves by the campfire. I was there when the stoats were freed from Scalded Rock and when they won the Second Battle of Tista Kirk. I saw the wolves routed and the stoat flag raised again at Lochwarren.”

  “This is an outrage!” someone called. It was the magistrate who had spoken earlier. There was a murmur of agreement behind him. “How blatant must his lies be? He speaks of ancient history. Are we to believe that this pup is a thousand years old?”

  Alderman Morgan turned to stare. He seemed to have no answer to this question. Esme furrowed her brow and twitched her nose, as if trying to puzzle it out.

  “Father, the chronicles tell us of the exile,” she began quietly, gaining confidence as she formed her understanding, “when our ancestors came here generations ago. They passed from a world where the citizens were wise and spoke in many tongues to this place, where all animals are dull and only the two-leggers have the power of speech. Isn’t it possible for a two-legger to go the other way?”

  Norman saw what she was getting at. “Yes, it is possible,” he asserted. “That’s what happened. I travelled to Undergrowth the same way you travelled here.”

  “But that was centuries ago! Our people have been exiled among your kind for centuries.”

  “I can’t explain it,” Norman said. “I don’t understand it, but this travelling between worlds is like travelling in time too. It’s weird.”

  The word seemed to resonate with the rabbits. They mumbled and argued about what it meant.

  “It is weird,” Brother Timothy interjected. “No one has ever been able to explain how we came here or why. There are those who think that our exile is a punishment or test. There are th
ose, even after all these years, who think that the old stories are legends—that there never was an Undergrowth and we have always been the only thinking, speaking animals in the forest.”

  His comments were greeted with more shouts of outrage and protest.

  The rabbit monk continued, “Of course no one here questions the chronicles, but you understand our skepticism. For a human boy to say that he has been through the same weirdness—for him to say that he has seen our homeland—it seems a little …”

  Alderman Morgan finished his thought: “A little too good to be true.”

  “I can show you,” Norman protested. “I can go there and bring something back as proof.”

  “Can you take us?” Esme asked eagerly. “Can you show us the way back?”

  The magistrates and monks waited for Norman’s answer.

  “I don’t know,” he answered finally. He wanted to tell them yes. He wanted to tell them he could get them all back to Undergrowth. But the bookweird wasn’t that predictable. He had a hard enough time bringing himself to the right place, never mind a whole village of rabbits.

  Brother Timothy nodded solemnly, as if he thought as much. An easy answer would have been too suspicious. “What do you need, boy?”

  They took Norman to the scriptorium. He lay down on the grass behind it, happy to be out of the cathedral. Although the archers on the catwalk had eventually relaxed, he’d still felt vulnerable—and it wasn’t exactly comfortable lying there with his head through the door.

  “Can we bring you some food, boy?” Brother Timothy asked now.

  The offer made Norman nostalgic for Undergrowth. “Do you have any lingonberry pie?”

  “Ha,” the monk laughed. “You aren’t in the Borders now, lad. You’ll have to make do with good old English raspberry tarts. Ambrose, you fetch him a dozen or so. Esme, why don’t you bring your vegetarian friend a dandelion salad?”

  Esme and a young monk hopped off to bring him some food, leaving Norman alone with the older monk. There would be sentries somewhere, of course, but they kept themselves well hidden. The sun was descending now and just a dim purple light fell through the cracks of the Willowbraid dome.

  “Tell me,” Timothy asked quietly, “the ruin at the great house? Is it really just like the Abbey Church at Edgeweir?”

  Norman nodded.

  “It was supposed to be ours, you know,” he said confidentially. “That’s how the story goes. The brothers accompanied the Rabbit Legion to the Highlands. Once the war was won, we were to finish building the church at Edgeweir and found a community there.”

  “But what happened? How did you end up here in England?”

  “It is the weirdness of which you spoke. Five hundred legionnaires marched from Logarno along with armourers, blacksmiths, healers, cooks and our brothers. We heard that Cuilean and his young nephew, Malcolm, were gathering their armies to meet the wolves at Tista Kirk. We followed the old highland road, but we never reached the battlefield. We emerged from the forest on the edge of a cliff next to a sea. We could not understand it. We saw warriors massing, but they were neither our stoat allies nor our wolf enemies. They were creatures we had heard of only in books: giants; hairless bears; two-footers; monsters from fairy tales and legends.”

  Brother Timothy’s story made Norman queasy. There were hundreds of years of history in the Undergrowth books, dozens of kingdoms and dynasties, and yet the rabbits had come from the very same time when Norman was there, from the very same forest he himself was lost in.

  “And the church—the copy of Edgeweir—did you build it?”

  “No, we discovered it here, many generations later.” Brother Timothy spoke quickly, as if he’d found a favourite topic. “We always felt the church was special, but we never guessed that it was a copy of the one at Edgeweir. Did you really see Edgeweir? Did you meet the last of the fox abbots?”

  “I met a fox abbot,” Norman answered cautiously. “And I slept one night on the moss inside the church.”

  Brother Timothy just shook his head in appreciation.

  Norman didn’t tell Timothy that the fox abbot of Edgeweir was no ordinary fox. He was his uncle, Kit. It made Norman think. Was it possible that Kit had brought the rabbits to England?

  “How long have you been here?” he asked cautiously.

  Esme’s soft voice interrupted. “The rabbits of England are an ancient line.” In the growing darkness, Norman had not seen her return. She placed two trays on the grass between them and continued as if reciting a history lesson. “Our forefathers arrived on these shores during the times of the Anglo-Saxon kings. We have seen Vikings and Normans, Tudors and Yorks. We have endured the clearing of the forests and the coming of the railroad—”

  It sounded like this recitation went on for a while, but Norman couldn’t help interrupting. “During Viking times?” His voice squeaked just a little as he asked.

  Esme and Timothy both nodded.

  “Near Maldon?” Norman barely dared to ask.

  “How did you know?” the monk said, surprised.

  Norman stuffed a raspberry tart into his mouth to avoid answering. He was struggling to get his head around what he had just realized. It wasn’t Kit who’d brought the rabbits here. It was Norman. After all, characters had followed him out of Undergrowth before. Three wolves had pursued him into Fortune’s Foal. The rabbits must have been pulled along into that old Anglo-Saxon poem of his father’s, The Battle of Maldon. Only The Battle of Maldon was about a real event. He had brought the rabbits into historical reality—into the real England—and they been here ever since. His mind twisted and contorted to hold on to the idea.

  Esme and Timothy watched in silent amusement as Norman devoured the food in front of him. It was fully dark now, and he had not eaten all day. Malcolm would have been proud of the way he scarfed the tarts, and even the dandelion salad was surprisingly good. Brother Ambrose brought a second round of tarts and stayed to marvel at the giant eating machine. When Norman was done eating, they continued to watch for some time, exchanging glances, as if waiting for one of the others to say something.

  It was Esme who finally broke the silence. “Father says we’ll have to move from Willowbraid now. He says it doesn’t matter if you are friendly. Humans can’t help telling, and that means disaster for us.”

  She looked to the monks as if hoping they’d take up the topic, but Timothy and Ambrose let her continue.

  “You said you wanted our help.” She paused to frame her thoughts. “You said you wanted to help the stoats. That means you know the way back. You know the way to the old countries. Father doesn’t believe you, but I do. I want you to take us with you.”

  When Norman looked into her glossy brown eyes, he didn’t know what to say. She seemed so hopeful, so expectant. He didn’t want to disappoint her, but he couldn’t count on his ability to control the bookweird. He’d brought Malcolm with him once, just that once. It didn’t work every time he tried, and he couldn’t imagine how he would transport a whole village with him. It was the sort of thing he seemed to be able to do only by accident.

  He wiped the crumbs from his lips and surveyed the three expectant rabbits. “I’m not sure, but I can try.”

  The rabbits could not control their joy, and there is something impossibly cute about smiling rabbits. Norman half expected them to break into song.

  “I’ll need some paper and some sort of pen or pencil.” He paused to think if there was anything else that would help. It was more than a year since he’d been to Lochwarren, long enough for him to wonder whether he could describe it accurately, or whether his dreams had started to dilute his memory. “And any books you have that describe the Highlands, especially the lands around Lochwarren.”

  “Is that where you think the passage is?” Brother Timothy asked.

  Norman nodded, not knowing any way to explain it better.

  “Are you going to draw us a map?” asked Esme.

  That was a harder question to answer. “Sort
of,” he replied. “It’s something the fox abbot taught me—a way of moving between this world and the world of your ancestors.”

  The rabbits hopped away to fetch the writing materials. They emerged from the scriptorium with several blank scrolls, an inkpot and a tiny quill. To Norman, who had been looking for pencils and paper for two days, it was almost as welcome as the food. He took the quill between his thumb and his forefinger. Only a tiny fraction of the feather stuck out. It was worse than the shortest mini-putt pencil.

  Esme laughed when she saw it. “We could make you another one, but you’d have to wait until tomorrow, when we can find a bigger bird.”

  Norman made a face. He didn’t like the idea of waiting.

  “Is it hard to draw?” Esme asked. “If you drew the map in the dirt, I could copy it for you.”

  “It’s not actually that kind of map. It’s more like directions.”

  “Well, we can take dictation,” she suggested. “Ambrose is the expert. He works in the scriptorium.”

  At that moment, Timothy and Ambrose returned carrying a stack of books. At a nod from Timothy, Ambrose rolled out a reed mat. The older monk separated a few volumes from the pile for Norman. “These are the ones you’ll want,” Brother Timothy said. “They’re the oldest chronicles of our arrival here.”

  They were tiny books. Norman opened one gingerly, afraid of ripping a page. The dim light made it difficult to read. Even squinting, Norman had trouble picking out the words. Timothy brought an oil lamp and held it over the boy’s shoulder, but Norman still struggled. He shook his head.

  “It’s too small. I can’t read it.”

  “I’d heard this. You humans don’t see well in the dark,” Timothy said. “Ambrose, you read it.”

  The younger monk had hardly said a word all night. Now he stood back, some steps away from them, and shook his head slowly.

  “Ambrose has heard too many campfire stories about two-leggers eating up little bunnies,” Esme teased. “Never mind, I’ll do it.”

  It didn’t take them long to find the right passage. The Undergrowth rabbits were obsessed with the details of their arrival in England. It was a huge mystery to them, and they’d been trying to puzzle it out for centuries. They went over the story again and again, trying to retrace their path and figure out where they went wrong.