Samuel Blink and the Forbidden Forest (21 page)

After a length of time—somewhere between a second and forever—Samuel was pulled out of the sack by his ears and roughly thrown into the pen with the other rabbits.

“Please!” Samuel called after Troll-Father. “This is a mistake! It's me! Me! The human boy!”

Troll-Father wasn't listening. Samuel pressed his face into the crisscross pattern of wire as he watched Troll-Father direct his eyeless family through their crooked door. “Left. Left. Right a bit. Left. That's it. Straight through. Be minding your feet, Troll-Daughter. There you go.”

The door closed, along with Samuel's hope. Turning around, he saw about thirty other rabbits in the opposite corner of the pen.

Samuel hopped over and, as he got closer, heard a low and solemn voice.

“Oh, Thubula, we thank you for letting our brother travel safely to your green field, with its endless supply of carrots…”

The gray old rabbit that faced the other rabbits stopped talking, and looked at the new arrival to the pen. The others all turned to stare.

“Sorry,” Samuel said. “Carry on.”

The old rabbit carried on with what he was saying.

Samuel quietly left the huddled rabbits and hopped around the perimeter of the fence. Yesterday he would have been able to step over it with ease, but now it was ten times his height.

He tried to lift his front feet and slot them through the fence in order to start climbing, but it was no good. He kept on getting trapped in the wire mesh.

Then the voice of the old rabbit was right behind him, up close.

“My name is Gray-Tail. I am the Spiritual Advisor for our community. I am here to welcome you to the…What are you doing?”

“I'm escaping,” Samuel said, pulling a foot free of the wire. He didn't turn around.

“And why in the name of Thubula would you want to do that?”

“Because I'm not a rabbit. I'm a human. I'm a boy called Samuel. I went into the forest to find my sister, but now I have fur and…these ears…and…I've got to escape.”

Samuel's nose began to twitch really slowly. At first he wondered what was happening, but then he realized this must be how rabbits cry.

“There is nothing to fear,” said the old rabbit.

“What's a human, Daddy?” Samuel turned to see a bunny looking up at Gray-Tail.

“A human is a rabbit from the other side of the forest. Don't worry, bunnies. Humans are just like us, only maybe a little more confused.”

“I've got to escape,” Samuel said.

“Escape?” The word rippled through the rabbits like a pebble falling into water.

“It's dangerous. It's important to get out,” Samuel said. “You should all try and get out.”

The rabbits all laughed at the same time. It was only Gray-Tail whose whiskers didn't move at all.

“Some rabbits want to leave when they first arrive,” he said. “That is normal. But I will educate you about the Truth the way I have educated the others.”

“The Truth?”

“Yes,” said Gray-Tail. “The Truth. Because I have a feeling you might believe in the rumors.”

“Rumors?” asked Samuel.

“The rumors that often go around the forest—about our captors. Some say they are trolls who skin us and chop off our heads and cook us in casseroles.”

When Gray-Tail said the words
chop
and
cook,
more waves of laughter filled the pen.

“But that's true,” said Samuel, his words drowning in the commotion.

“The truth is we are lucky,” said Gray-Tail. “We are the Chosen.”

“The Chosen,” said the other rabbits all at once, in a tone of reverence.

Samuel couldn't believe what he was hearing. “The Chosen?”

“We were brought here by the Servants of Thubula.”

“The Servants of Thubula?”

“All the rabbits here are very lucky indeed,” explained Gray-Tail. “They have been chosen by the servants of Thubula to enter the Green Field on the other side of the cottage.”

“They're not servants of Thubula,” said Samuel. “They're trolls.”

Gray-Tail wasn't listening.

“They will bring us to the Green Field of Thubula. A beautiful paradise where rabbits roam free, with no need to hide in warrens,” said Gray-Tail. “It is a magical place where old rabbits become young again and no rabbit ever dies.”

“No,” said Samuel. “The place on the other side of the cottage is the exact opposite of that. The only thing that waits for you on the other side of that cottage is certain death. There is no Green Field of Thubula!”

A few bunnies began to cry, and the adults kept saying over and over: “Shame! Shame! Shame!”

Gray-Tail whispered in Samuel's ear. “Don't upset the bunnies. No one will forgive you if you upset the bunnies.”

The rabbits were surrounding Samuel from every angle now, moving closer.

“Shame! Shame! Shame!”

Samuel wondered, for a moment, if the angry rabbits could be more dangerous than the trolls. But Gray-Tail stopped the advancing mob by raising his ears and commanding: “Quiet.”

A short silence followed.

Then he said: “Leave him. He is a human. They are the most ignorant type of rabbit. Leave us to talk, and I will educate him of Thubula and His plan to prepare us for the Green Field.”

Samuel watched as the mob of angry rabbits moved away from him, comforting their bunnies as they did so. “No, no, he didn't mean it,” he overheard one parent saying. “There are no trolls. Don't worry.”

The old rabbit's eyes fixed on the new arrival in front of him.

“Two nights ago we lost one of our most dear friends, Flicker-Nose,” he said. “A young rabbit, in his prime. They came in the night, and took him away from us. Now what is it better to believe? That he's been killed and skinned and cooked and then digested inside a troll's stomach? Or that he's been chosen by Thubula's servants to live a happy life in a rabbit's paradise on the other side of that cottage?”

Samuel didn't know the answer, so he kept quiet. And then a dreadful thought came to him, arriving with an echo of Gray-Tail's words.

Two nights ago…cooked and digested…

The rabbit he had eaten in the casserole had been Flicker-Nose. Samuel felt sick, and wondered if it made him a cannibal.

Gray-Tail pointed his nose toward the happy crowd of rabbits and bouncing bunnies. “Look at them. Look at the peaceful and content community we have here. You aren't going to change that with your frightening stories, do you understand me?”

Samuel made one final plea. “If we don't work together, we're all going to die.”

“No rabbit lives forever,” said Gray-Tail. “Just ask my aching bones. The question is, do we live happily or miserably in the meantime?”

Gray-Tail didn't wait for an answer. He just turned and hopped his slow body back over to the other rabbits.

Samuel knew he was on his own now. He looked toward the rising sun, and the bird on the fence lost in its glare.
Why is it following me?
he wondered.
What does it want?
Samuel didn't know and right now he had bigger things to think about. He moved closer toward the wire, passing through the grid of shadows. And then, when he was as close to freedom as he could possibly get, he started to dig.

“He's mad!”

“What a weird style of digging!”

“Why would he want to escape?”

“What in the name of Thubula is he doing?”

Samuel tried to ignore the other rabbits as he dug his tunnel. They sat around him, laughing and passing comment, as if it was a kind of theater. The only rabbit who didn't laugh at Samuel was Gray-Tail, who sat in silence for the whole day.

As Samuel dug deeper, the voices became more distant. His front legs were aching but he kept going, determined to get as far as he could before nightfall. All day he dug and dug and dug, the earth above him sprinkling down onto his fur and into his eyes.

He longed to have his human arms back, or his human legs that could have so easily strode over the fence, but he made do with what he had. And what he had was determination. No matter how much soil went in his eyes, and no matter how scared he got of the dark closed space of the tunnel, his paws kept on digging.

All the time he only had one thought, and that thought was
I have to escape.

At one point, the blue-feathered bird flew in and stood there watching him.

“Go away,” said Samuel.

The bird said nothing. It just stayed with its blinkless eyes staring in the dark.

“Go away. You're blocking the light.”

The bird did as it was told, and Samuel kept on digging. He was dizzy with hunger. His eyes were stinging from the crumbling soil. His tiny heart was beating so hard he could feel blood pulse against his skull. If that wasn't enough, his skin itched from the combination of fur and sweat.

Eventually, he had to stop. The pain in his paws and legs was too much.

“Five minutes,” he told himself, although now he was a rabbit he had no idea how to keep track of time.

There was a noise behind him.

He turned his head and saw soil falling like rain.

Oh no. This can't be happening.

He tried to turn his whole body around, but the tunnel was too narrow. As he struggled to maneuver himself, he made the situation a lot worse.

A cloud of earth covered his fur and filled his lungs—the tunnel behind him was collapsing.

“Help! Help! Somebody!” But his voice was blocked by a wall of earth.

This is it,
thought Samuel.
I'm going to be buried alive. This is the end.

But it wasn't. The earth stopped falling just before it reached Samuel's hind legs. He was trapped under the ground with earth all around him like a coffin.

Coffin.

The word stuck in his brain as he started to dig, forward and upward, with new energy.

Earth could fall down on him at any moment, making him one more dead rabbit in a world of dead rabbits. He dug uphill, no longer caring which side of the fence he came out on. Panic had given him more energy, but he was finding it harder and harder to breathe.

At school, he had been able to hold his breath for whole lengths of the swimming pool and pick plastic bricks up underwater. But now he was a rabbit he couldn't hold his breath at all.

Just as he was about to run out of air completely, the earth fell down on him and everything was darkness.

I am dead,
thought Samuel.
No. I am still thinking. I must still be alive.

The earth felt light, not heavy on his head. He shook it off and blinked and found himself out in the open.

It is nighttime. I must have been digging all day.

He looked behind him and saw the other rabbits staring at him from behind the fence.

“He has betrayed Thubula!”

“He has refused paradise!”

“Shame on him!”

“Shame!”

At the end of the line of rabbits was Gray-Tail, saying nothing.

After all, what could the old rabbit say? Samuel had shown him that it was possible to escape before the—

“Aaaagh!”

Samuel was yanked high in the air by his ears. He recognized the grip instantly as that belonging to Troll-Father.

“No!” the rabbits shouted. “Pick me! Pick me! He's not worthy! He's not worthy of the Green Field!”

But Troll-Father begged to differ. “Nearly got away there, didn't you?” He held Samuel up in front of him as he walked around to the other side of the cottage. “Don't think you'll be escaping now, though, furry fellow. Not unless you be digging a tunnel out of our stomachs!”

By the time they reached the wooden bench, Samuel's ears felt like they were about to tear off. He saw the brilliant white moon reflected in the metal knife, and became fully aware of what was about to happen.

The booming voice of Troll-Father miles above him: “Troll-Mother, I've got him ready. He'll skin good, this one will.”

The door opened, and Troll-Mother walked blindly toward the bench. “Where he be hiding, then?” she asked, her hands out in front of her, the fingers opening and closing like dangerous plants.

Troll-Father placed Samuel on the table, with a heavy hand fixing him in place. Samuel's rabbit face stared up at him from the blade of the massive knife.

“Ah yes, he be there…
he be there
…” said Troll-Mother, her fingers reaching his fur. She pressed deeper, to feel the life she was about to take.
“He be there.”

Samuel could hardly believe that these were the same trolls who had been so kind two nights ago.

“It's me,” Samuel said. “It's me. I'm not a rabbit. I'm a human. A human. I know I look like a rabbit, but I'm not one. I just changed. Please…”

It was useless, of course.

They couldn't hear him. Trolls may understand humans and humans may understand trolls, but neither understand rabbits.

He tried to work out how long he had left. Troll-Mother had to put in her eye, and sharpen her knife and then…well, that was all she had to do. However long these two jobs were going to take was the precise length of the rest of Samuel's life.

Something flew over Samuel's head. A tiny dot, reflected in the cold metal in front of his face.

What was that?
he wondered.

Before he had time to think, he heard Troll-Mother's voice again.

“Give me the eye. Let me see the little beauty. Come on, pass it over, you useless lump.”

“All right,” said Troll-Father, sticking his finger into his eye socket.

Samuel heard a wet clicking sound as the eye was pulled out.

“Right, Troll-Mother, there you be. There's the—”

Troll-Father's words were replaced by the sound of fluttering wings. And just at that exact moment his hand, as well as Troll-Mother's, left Samuel's back. Samuel looked up and saw what was happening.

And so, what
was
happening?

A miracle, that's what.

Just as Troll-Father was passing the eyeball over to his wife, a bird flew right in front of his face. It was the bird that had been following Samuel. The one with blue feathers who had flown into the tunnel.

“Agh, get off! Who's there?” Troll-Father said as the feathers flapped in his face.

Then Samuel saw the eye slip out of his hand and drop onto the bench, in front of him, rolling straight toward the edge.

“I've dropped it,” Troll-Father said. “I've dropped the eye…There was a bird—”

Troll-Mother started screaming. “You stupid flenking idiot! Find it! You hairy lump! Find it!”

“All right,” said Troll-Father. “Don't be getting hipperty.” His hands landed on the table, searching for the eye. They were about to reach it when the bird flew down and picked it up in its clawed feet, before flying off high in the air.

“Well?” Troll-Mother asked. “Have you found it?”

“I'm…er…it's here somewhere.”

While Troll-Father searched for the eye, Troll-Mother searched for Samuel.

“Come here, rabbit,” she said as her hands moved like crabs across the bench. “Where are you? Come here, fur-brain…come to Troll-Mother…”

Samuel hopped as fast as he could away from the hands heading his way. After three hops he was at the edge, staring down at the ground below.

“Jump,” he told himself. “Jump. Do it.”

A finger touched his fur. Samuel closed his eyes. He remembered his dad taking him up to the high dive at the swimming pool. He hadn't dared jump. Now, though, he had no choice. He had to be brave, like a hero.

He closed his eyes and hopped out into the empty air. It seemed ages before he hit the ground.

Thud.

The landing hurt, but he could still hop. Which he did, as fast as he possibly could, away from the blind trolls, who kept feeling on the bench for their missing rabbit and eyeball.

Samuel hopped around to the other side of the cottage, and saw the bird fly toward the rabbit enclosure.

If his eyes had been stronger, he would have been able to see that same bird letting the eyeball drop directly into the hole Samuel had dug his way out of earlier that day, giving it an almost perfect view of the shining stars and the brilliant white moon above.