Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams Page B

you do if you were coming home one evening and came upon a wounded hlessi who begged you to help him to your warren and give him shelter for the night?”
    “I’d certainly help him,” replied Frezail, “and let him stay with us for as long as he liked.”
    “And you?” asked El-ahrairah, turning to the next rabbit.
    “The same, sir.”
    And so they all said.
    Then, before their very eyes, El-ahrairah slowly changed and little by little became the pitiful hlessi whom Hallion and Thyken had encountered a few evenings before. He fell on his side and as he did so looked up at Hallion and Thyken. “And how about you?” he said. But they answered nothing at all, only staring at him in consternation.
    “You didn’t recognize me, then?” inquired El-ahrairah. All the rest of the Owsla gazed from him to Hallion and Thyken, not understanding what he meant but guessing that there must be something disconcerting between El-ahrairah and those two.
    “You—you didn’t look like yourself,” faltered Thyken at last. “We couldn’t tell—”
    “Couldn’t tell that I was a rabbit—is that it?” said El-ahrairah. “Are you sure you know now?”
    Then, before he changed back, he made them all come up close and look at him, “to make sure,” he said, “that they’d know me another time.” Hallion and Thyken werefully expecting that he’d come down hard on them in some way or other, but all he did was to tell Henthred, in everyone’s hearing, what had happened that evening when they’d come upon him lying under the thornbush. They all knew in their hearts that they wouldn’t have done any better, and they left him without another word; all except Henthred and a gray-furred, ancient-looking rabbit, whom Henthred introduced to El-ahrairah as Themmeron, the oldest rabbit in the warren.
    “All
I
want to say, my lord,” quavered Themmeron, “is that if
I
had seen you that evening, I would have known that you were not what you seemed, although I can’t say whether I could have told that you were our Prince with a Thousand Enemies. But that you were in disguise I would certainly have known.”
    “How?” asked El-ahrairah, a little put out, for he had been feeling that no one could have looked more the part of a poor old hlessi than he had.
    “Because I would have perceived, my lord, that you didn’t look like a rabbit who had seen the Hole in the Sky. Nor do you now, for the matter of that.”
    “The Hole in the Sky?” said El-ahrairah. “And what may that be?”
    “It can’t be told,” replied Themmeron. “It can’t be told. I mean no disrespect, my lord—”
    “No, no, that doesn’t matter,” said El-ahrairah. “I just want to know what you mean by the Hole in the Sky. How can there be a hole in the sky?”
    But the old rabbit seemed as though he hardly knew he had spoken. He bobbed his head to El-ahrairah, turned and limped slowly away.
    “We generally just leave him to himself, my lord,” said Henthred. “He’s quite harmless, but I sometimes wonder whether he knows night from morning. I’m told he was a dashing gallant of the Owsla in his time.”
    “But what did he mean by the Hole in the Sky?”
    “If you don’t know, my lord, I’m sure I don’t,” replied Henthred, who, truth to tell, had felt rather nettled at having two of his Owsla shown up for a couple of blighters.
    El-ahrairah didn’t refer to the incident again. He stayed two or three more days and behaved as though nothing unusual had happened, and, when he left, wished the warren good fortune and prosperity, as he was accustomed to do.
    He puzzled a lot over what Themmeron had said, and everywhere he went asked other rabbits what they could tell him about the Hole in the Sky. But no one could tell him anything. At last he realized that he was beginning to be thought a little odd on account of this preoccupation, so he gave up inquiring. Privately, however, he wondered more and more. What could old Themmeron have meant? He