The dog stood beside her, wagging his tail.
Then they both slipped into the doghouse again.
“Thanks,” said Plana, “thanks, that was wonderful.”
She hurried back among the straw. Iago followed her, and they both slept, side by side, until broad daylight.
Presently He came out to the doghouse.
“Iago!” he called. “Iago!”
But Iago simply pointed his ears. He did not get up.
Plana awoke and trembled when His scent penetrated to her.
“Be calm,” Iago said to her, “don’t be afraid . . . I’ll protect you.”
In front of the doghouse He said, “I’ll have to see what’s happened to the dog!” He raised the rags that covered the entrance. His pale face appeared in the opening.
But Iago snarled at Him, his teeth bared, so that He shrank back afraid.
“Well, well,” they heard Him mutter. Then He went away. On the threshold of His house He told someone, “Iago has a rabbit in there with him and he’s guarding it.” As if He were stopping someone from looking, He added, “Don’t, let the two of them be!”
It was the first time that Iago had ever growled at Him or showed his teeth.
Perhaps He sensed something of the reconciling mystery of need in whose profound power it lies to extinguish, for brief whiles, the enmity among creatures.
All day long Plana lay in the warm kennel. All day long the dog watched over her, lapping her constantly with his warm, affectionate tongue.
But when evening set in Plana suddenly sprang into the open and sat upright, her ears erect. She felt wonderfully fresh, and it seemed to her as if it were even warm outside. At first she believed it was an illusion. A sweet intoxication clouded her senses. Again and again she let her ears drop, then raised them quickly, her whiskers quivering with growing excitement.
Actually! A gentle breeze stirred the air, so softly and tenderly that Plana was oppressed with a feeling of anxiousness, of joy and longing.
“Come back in!” the dog called to her.
But she was already running across the snow toward the forest, running through the melting snow, swiftly, without stopping, as if in flight.
“Hops,” she thought as she ran, “my Hops!” Only that. Nothing else.
It was the last cold night of the winter.
Chapter Twenty-One
AMONG THE OTHER TREES IN the forest stood a group of birches. They had grown up together, had struggled for room for their roots, for their place in the sun and air. Now they stretched up tall, and the mottled silver of their bark glistened, discernible from far off, amidst the ashes, elms and oaks. Their branches were still bare, like all the other branches in the once leafy forest. But up from the earth, from the depths of the nourishing soil, the sap was beginning to mount and swell, was, despite the cold, reviving, the living flesh of the wood, while the birches waited with the rest of the trees to whom something similar was happening.
Only one of them felt downcast and feeble. Her branches looked strangely black, were quite dry, and several times limbs snapped off when a squirrel scampered along, or a pheasant lighted on them.
“Are you sick?” her sisters asked the birch.
“I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” she answered. But the reply cost her an effort; her voice sounded changed.
Then she grew silent. All day and all night long she stood among her whispering sisters, sorrowful and mute.
Now and again, one or another of the birches would inquire, “Well, how are you?”
“Always about the same,” she would sigh.
Once she said quite of her own accord, “I’ll probably never have leaves again,” then, in a hushed tone, “never again . . .”
The others comforted, soothed and encouraged her. “Wait till the sun comes again . . .”
“I am waiting,” she said softly. But still more softly she whispered, “The sun can’t help me anymore . . . even if I live to see it . . .”
But the warm breezes suddenly increased, blew up into a storm. The storm grew and became a hurricane. It raged across the land from the south, blew from the African desert, sped across the sunny Mediterranean and seemed bent, like a mad thing, on ending the icy misery. It came as a rebel, an insurgent, a liberator. Its onslaughts released the forest from the grip of its winter rigidity, snatched from the fields and meadows the shroud under which they had been sleeping. Its flaming jaws devoured the snow. The tread of its burning feet trampled it to nothing; its fiery hands swept away everything white and cold with their swift and angry touch. In a few hours its fury had snapped the icy fetters of the lakes and streams, the rivers and brooks, so that they broke free, with a crash like thunder, and everywhere was a roaring, crashing, leaping and brawling of waters, plunging once more into motion.
In the howling of the hurricane no one heard the feeble voice of the sick and frozen birch.
“I’ll never be able to endure it,” she groaned, “it’s beyond my strength.”
But all the trees in the forest were groaning, moaning, crackling and cracking under the terrible blasts of the hurricane-liberator. Stout branches split from many of them and were carried down like feathers. The sound trees resisted as, flexible and full of the mounting sap, they writhed and twisted, only to spring back again a moment later. The sound trees understood the revolt that was taking place against the winter’s tyranny. There were a few firm, old trees, and many young ones, eager for life, who answered the terrible blasts exultantly.
When the sick birch died, no one heard her, not even her sisters who stood close around.
“Oh! how alone I am,” she cried with her last breath. “Can I really be so utterly alone . . . !”
Then she snapped, close above the ground. “Farewell, my roots,” she breathed in falling, “farewell . . . and many thanks.”
The hurricane flung herself against an ash, tore the dead limbs from among its living branches, and hurled the silver-shimmering dead things hard against the earth. There they lay, with nothing left to show they had existed but a short, white, splintered stump that would slowly turn gray and rotten. Later the roots thrust thin, little shoots, with tender leaves, out of the stump. Their appearance touched all the trees and bushes.
Chapter Twenty-Two
THE EARTH HAD DRUNK THE flood of thawing waters. It had grown sleek and black with them. It lay like a joyous hope, with its bare fields, its bare woods standing darkly. A mysterious ferment was going on everywhere, invisible and noiseless, was going on so passionately, with such elemental force, that had anyone heard it he would have likened it to the storm with which spring had come roaring in. This ferment was taking place in the earth, in the roots and branches of the trees, in the tangled stems of the thicket, in the tilled fields. It had its echo in the hearts of all living creatures. It was reviving life itself.
A morning dawned fair and splendid, with a golden sun. The light blue sky arched overhead and seemed higher, purer than ever in the radiant and joyous color with which it blessed the world.
No one knew when it happened, and yet everyone thought he had seen it, believed, at least in secret, that he had actually seen it—but toward midday the trees and bushes were no longer black, were no longer bare. A delicate, light green shimmer outlined the gray contours of the treetops. Big and little branches no longer stretched out, as though destitute and desperate, into the air. All were now adorned by life itself.
The earth in the forest and in the fields was clad in the same delicate shimmer; it did not yet quite venture to be green, but it was an exquisite, renascent yellow.
A marvelous singing was welling up everywhere, inaudible, or audible only to the soul. The clods sang, the trees sang, the tiniest blade of grass sang as it sprouted toward the light. Then the voices of the birds chimed in, voices that had so long been mute. First the blackbirds rejoiced from the highest tips of the highest trees. Then came purling down those magic sounds that the lark flings high above the fie
lds. Then the oriole fluted his genial message of joy, incessantly, through the forest. The whispering of the titmice sounded again, the throbbing call of the finches, the mocking cry of the woodpecker and his cheery drumming.
A royal pheasant strutted haughtily through the vast festival. He limped a little but concealed it cleverly, and the splendor of his appearance was only slightly impaired.
“Well, well,” said Plana, “so you are about again?”
“Thanks,” he replied with morose majesty, “everything is quite all right.”
“Congratulations!” laughed Hops.
The royal pheasant took a few steps, stopped and asked haughtily, “Can one notice anything at all . . . ?”
“Nothing,” Hops hastened to reply.
Plana added quickly, “No, you can’t notice anything at all. We remembered you from that time, well, you know when . . . it looked serious then . . .”
“A little misfortune,” the royal pheasant said pompously, “hardly worth mentioning.” Without a farewell, he strutted off, limping.
“We ought to have told him that he limps dreadfully,” said Plana.
“Why?”
Her whiskers quivered violently. “Oh, because he’s so conceited and unfriendly.”
“Let him be what he wants to,” said Hops, “beautiful but stupid, according to my way of thinking. We don’t want to spoil the pleasure of any living thing.”
Plana let her one ear droop so that it hung far down beside her neck. The other lay on her back. “Do you suppose I could have told the conceited fool the truth? No, I love him even if he is conceited and a fool. I love everything that lives!”
Hops sat in front of her, his ears bolt upright. “Even me?” he wanted to know.
But instead of answering, Plana ran away.
Hops rushed after her. They tumbled over one another. Then they sat side by side.
“I’m so happy,” whispered Plana.
Hops rested his head in his forepaws. He had become serious. “If I knew where my mother was,” he murmured, “I’d be the happiest rabbit in the forest. I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
Plana sprang up. “Come, let’s look for her . . .”
They had not long to look. At the edge of the thicket, near their own native meadow, his mother was sitting, sunning herself.
Fosco was beside her.
“Mother!” cried Hops. “Mother!”
He nudged her flank with his nose and rubbed his whiskers against her fur, for he did not want anyone to see his tears.
“Well,” said his mother comfortingly, “well, well, well . . .”
Plana went up to the older rabbit and said quickly, “Tell us how long you were sick, Mother, and where you hid yourself. Tell us.”
“One doesn’t talk about such things,” Fosco declared, gently but firmly. A silence followed. Then he turned to Hops’ mother. “We must be going,” he said. “Come!”
He bounded off.
“Good-bye, my children,” said Hops’ mother gently, “may everything go well with you.” And she followed her companion.
“We won’t let it go badly,” laughed Plana.
“No,” Hops laughed, too. “Only . . . don’t eat any leeks!” he warned her.
Plana made an astonished face. “My dear fellow,” she said, “haven’t you anything better to say to me than that?”
Hops crept up close to her. “That before everything else,” he insisted. “I want you to keep in good health.”
Plana grew happier and happier. “There are so many good things, so many good things are sprouting every day . . . why should I eat leeks?”
“You’re so fond of nibbling,” he said gaily, was silent for a second, then added tenderly, “You’re so beautiful, Plana.”
“Catch me,” she called, and ran past him and away.
Instantly he bounded after her.
They rushed out on the meadow, one after the other, in a circle, as they had in their childhood days.
But it was no longer for the sake of the innocent sport itself, as it once had been. Their merriment had a deeper tinge now. They felt the spring, they felt the happiness of love.
Felix Salten was an author and critic in Vienna, Austria. He was the author of plays, short stories, novels, travel books, and essay collections. His most famous work is Bambi.
ALADDIN
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Also by Felix Salten
Bambi
Bambi ’s Children
Renni the Rescuer
A Forest World
The Hound of Florence
The City Jungle
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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This Aladdin paperback edition February 2015
Originally published in German in 1929 by Paul Zsolnay Verlag as Fünfzehn Hasen
Text copyright © 1929 by Paul Zsolnay Verlag
English language translation copyright © 1930 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Copyright renewed © 1958 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Cover illustration and interior spot illustration copyright © 2015 by Richard Cowdrey
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Jacket designed by Karin Paprocki
Jacket illustration copyright © 2015 by Richard Cowdrey
Cover design by Karin Paprocki
Interior design by Hilary Zarycky
The text of this book was set in Yana.
Library of Congress Control Number 2014944873
ISBN 978-1-4424-8755-0 (hc)
ISBN 978-1-4424-8754-3 (pbk)
ISBN 978-1-4424-8756-7 (eBook)
Felix Salten, Fifteen Rabbits
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