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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 57: Takano 102
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 18
With Davey gone, the camp settled except for the young females who were all atwitter. From there, it spread to the young men. Davey’s clear intentions to find a wife had spread like a contagion, and couples were beginning to decide seriously. Others were building up the courage to search. It looked as if the whole camp was catching marriage fever.
She stayed out of it, and went gathering. Reaching over for a few bright red berries of the Wintergreen plant, the same mealy and minty berries that had flavored their fish the other day, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. Straightening up, her hand went to her kawanaga. Thirty feet away stood a rabbit, white with brown streaks. This surprised her; the local rabbits were light brown.
Plus, there was an uncanny knowing look in this rabbit’s eyes. Lauren had mentioned vampires. Perhaps other legends like intelligent animals or animal gods were true as well. The rabbit’s right eye swiveled toward her, and extended a half inch like an inbuilt mechanical device.
What is this? she thought, being excited, fearful, and perplexed.
The rabbit took one slow hop toward her, and an arrow came from her right, and pierced through the rabbit’s chest. Pained, it leapt into the air, and Tommy could swear instead of fear she saw annoyance–like it was thinking, not this again.
It vanished.
The arrow fell straight down to the forest floor.
“Ahhh,” she shouted, and then heard a male shriek to her right, and someone charging away through the woods. Going over to the arrow, she picked it up. It had no blood on it. She then went over to the likely spot where the arrow came from, and found what she thought were two trails. The first was a slow one, as the lone hunter made his way through the thicker brush of the area, looking for game. The much more obvious trail with smashed grasses and broken off branches was when he fled in a complete panic.
Despite her curious questions, she did not find out who had fired the shot. At the next service, after Sylwi spoke, she got a question from one of the children.
“Can a rabbit be a ghost?”
“People aren’t.” She explained that after death, you went to God who told you of your consequences. But she added that people like her and Lauren were somewhat different.
“No,” the boy said firmly. “I know people can’t, but what does the Bible say about animals?”
That was a good question, and she promised to search for an answer. Later that day, she came to him, and showed him the verse that said a dog died, and returned to the dust. He frowned as he sat with his young friends and mother.
“OK, but what about a rabbit?”
“Well, we can extrapolate from the dog.”
“Extrapolate?”
“If it works for a dog, it should work for a rabbit.”
“Oh, a guess.”
“But a reasonable one.”
“So the story some of the older boys were telling of a ghost rabbit who wants to eat our eyeballs might be true.”
Resisting the urge to slap her own face, or track down those older brothers who were giving their younger siblings nightmares and beat some sense into them, she spoke.
“I was there, and I know what I think it was.” This got everyone’s attention. “I think the bunny was like me and Lauren: a verser.”
“So if you got shot with an arrow, you’d leave it behind?”
“Yes.”
“That would be cool,” the young lad said, and she could see him speculating. Young boys and utter mayhem were an eternal combination.
“No shooting the Adviser,” she warned, and the boy nodded, but she thought he still wanted to. His mother added her injunction with a weary look at Tommy. Tommy had a sudden urge to tell them that if they shot her, for curiosity’s sake, that the Bunny of Doom would come back and eat their eyeballs. Stifling this urge, she made her way back to her own campfire for the night.
As she did, she considered the effects of a verser bunny. She wondered how it had come about. Perhaps it had loved a verser, and gone with it, but then later got mad and struck out on its own. Or, well, the bunny had a bionic eye. Perhaps it had versed out as part of a scientific experiment. Or maybe some verser somewhere had experimented on it, and later it had acquired cybergear. Clearly, it was familiar enough with the process of versing out to not be fearful. She laughed as she realized that the bunny might be a more experienced verser than she was.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #505: Versers Advance. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
