Fellowship & Fairydust

It was just before dawn. A cold wind swept the bare branches of the trees and the first snowdrops held their leaves close to their stalks in an attempt to keep warm.

David stood looking out of his bedroom window. In the grey light he saw a white hare race across the field. He saw it run outside his farm, where he bred hunting dogs, every day. Though he tried to forget the old legend that told of women who changed into hares to haunt the men who’d left them, he couldn’t resist looking out at dawn and dusk to see the creature.

He’d met the girl, Lucia, almost 9 years ago, when he was spending time in the city on business, and to escape from his marriage. He’s first seen her in the bar of his hotel. They’d both been hungry, and since the hotel only served Easter eggs and nuts at that time of night, he’d taken her out to eat. Lucia had lived in a tiny apartment in the centre of town, and worked from home as a translator. A calm girl, with a husky voice. David had found her amusing, and her company had soothed him.

He’d come close to falling in love with her then. He’d never admitted that though, not even to himself. He had been married, after all, and had felt it his duty to make that marriage work. When it had become time for him to leave the city and go back home, Lucia had asked him not to forget her. She hadn’t said anything more, and he’d left her after promising he wouldn’t.

He had kept his promise, had never forgotten her. But he didn’t contact her again after his brief stay in the city, not even after he’d divorced his wife. By the time their marriage had finally broken up, he’d felt defeated and old, convinced that he wasn’t capable of being happy.
He had his moods, and he knew they made life with him difficult for other people. At times, he felt wonderful and then it seemed to him as if his dogs spoke to him, and he could hear the wind sing forgotten old songs. There was an ancient burial mound at some distance from the farm, and the songs always seemed to come from that direction.

Other times, he felt as if he was covered by a glass dome, a mere spectator looking outside, observing a world he could no longer understand. Then, in anger, he longed to break the glass, wanted to make something, anything, happen that would have the strength to reach him.
And so, he’d settled for living alone, breeding the dogs he was so fond of.

He watched the hare disappear into the forest and, shaking off his memories, went back to bed. He dreamt that he woke up, in his own bedroom, to see Lucia sitting on the edge of the bed.

‘This is the only way I can come to you and explain what happened to me,’ she said. ‘I fell in love with you the first time I saw you and, though I never told you, I couldn’t stop loving you. Every year, on the anniversary of the day we’d met, I wrote you a letter, saying that I still thought about you, that I kept wishing you’d contact me, and that I hoped you were well. It had become a ritual, something to hold on to. But of course you’d never told me where you lived, and all I could do was keep my letters, and wait. Last year, after I’d finished writing my eighth note to you, I felt so desperate. I threw it away and went to bed, crying. When I woke up, I was sitting outside this farm, no longer a woman. I’d changed into a white hare. Then I saw your face appear at the window and understood where I was. But of course there was no way for me to tell you who I was. I knew you watched me, and I waited for an opportunity to make my identity known to you, hoping something would happen that would change me back into my human form. Now, exactly one year after my transformation, I find I’m able to talk to you like this, at least. Please, hunt me today, and catch me. If you don’t, I know I’ll never see another spring.’

When David woke up, pale sunlight filled the room and there was no trace of Lucia.

After having finished dressing, he went downstairs. In the library, where he spent most of his time when he was at home, he sat down near the fire. Mary, his housekeeper, brought him breakfast. Silently, he fed most of his meal to Jasper and Scott, the two dogs he kept as pets.
As always, they joined him when he went to the stables to work with his hunting dogs.

He thought about his dream of Lucia all morning. After lunch, he decided to take Jasper and Scott for a walk, hoping that perhaps he’d see the white hare.

Underneath the trees, snowdrops covered the ground, but their flowers were still tightly closed. The buds on the branches of the trees looked as if they’d never open, and the crows cawing overhead only increased the sense that winter would never end.

His dogs ran playfully out ahead of him. After they’d walked for about an hour, he saw them suddenly freeze. He caught sight of the white hare just before it ran away, the dogs following after it. David started to run, feeling as if he’d changed into a dog himself. He heard the soft whispers of the forest that normally escaped him, he could scent the hare and the desire to catch it filled his mind. After a few minutes, or perhaps it had been hours, he saw the hare disappear into a cave, the dogs chasing after it. David bent his head and entered the mouth of the cave. He followed a seemingly endless tunnel, soon leaving the light from outside far behind, so that he had to go by touch. The damp walls of the cave were cold enough to numb his fingers, but he could still hear the dogs panting ahead of him and kept walking.

Suddenly, he saw a golden light in the distance and soon he reached a hall that was bathed in light, though he couldn’t discover where the light came from. In a corner sat the hare, with the dogs crouching motionless in front of it. Before David could make a move, Jasper pounced on the hare, grabbed it by the neck and shook it. David yelled an order at the dog, but it was too late. The hare lay at his feet with a broken neck.

Kneeling down, David stroked its soft white fur and closed his eyes, praying that his dream had been no more than that.

He opened his eyes when he heard the dogs barking the way they did when he came home after a long absence. Looking down, he saw Lucia lying on the ground. She sat up with some difficulty as Jasper pressed his front paws against her shoulders and started licking her face. David gently pushed the dog away and looked at Lucia. He took her in his arms and told her how glad he was to see her, unhurt. ‘So it was true, my dream, the sense you were haunting me in the shape of a white hare,’ he said, and asked her if she thought she could walk. Lucia said she could, and he helped her up. She was cold and he felt her tremble.

Walking slowly, they made their way out of the cave and into the last daylight. As they walked, the dogs kept jumping cheerfully at their legs. The snowdrops that had been closed earlier were now in full bloom. The sun was still shining and had more strength than before, the birds sang their first song of spring, and green leaves had appeared on the trees. Winter had ended abruptly.

Suddenly, David’s senses seemed to sharpen again and he heard the wind sing, ‘The running hound, the hare, hand in glove. Call it love, to chase, to flee with so much care.’

When they arrived at the farm, Mary concluded that they looked tired and cold, and ordered them to take a hot bath. After that, they sat near the fire in the library, where Mary brought them tea, brandy, and a light meal, telling them to go straight up to bed as soon as they’d eaten. Mary had always been the only person who could tell David what to do, and now Lucia obeyed her as well, mainly because she was exhausted after her ordeal, anyway.

The next morning, when they were having breakfast, Lucia hesitantly asked David if he wanted her to leave, now that he’d saved her from spending the rest of her life as a hare. ‘I want you to stay,’ he said. On hearing that, Lucia got up from her chair, sat down on the floor at his feet and told him she loved him.

She stayed with him at the farm, where they were both happier than they’d ever been before, and very content.

Perhaps the dogs could still sense the hare she had once been, because they followed her around wherever she went. And, truth be told, so did David, for he loved Lucia very much and this time he even told her that.

Lucia seldom took his moods personally, responding to them no more than the slowly revolving earth did to sudden, superficial changes in the weather. Her own rare outbursts could be violent enough to make David calm down though, and with time he became more stable.
Lucia told him that she, too, could hear the songs that travelled on the wind, and often took him with her to the burial mound to listen to them. She wrote down the words they sang, teaching David how to hear the voices at will, and he started playing the piano again to capture the mysterious music.

And once a year, in spring, Lucia and David got up before dawn to look outside and see the beautiful hare that ran across the fields on that day, turning the grey early morning light into silver.