Custom Arid Kanis
Mole
Once upon a time, in a land that was barren and arid, there lived a little black-tailed Jackrabbit. The little Jackrabbit lived with his mother and father, and his three older brothers and sister, who on account of all being quite a bit older rarely had time to play with him. ‘Hop along, Jimmy,’ his next youngest brother would say, ‘see if our sister will play with you.’
His sister would say, ‘don’t get under my feet, Jimmy. Hop along and play with our elder brother.’
His second oldest brother would say, ‘Hop along and bother our eldest brother.’
His eldest brother would say, ‘not today, hop along Jimmy.’
Now, the little Jackrabbit (whose name was actually Jeremiah) didn’t mind, for he knew his brothers and sister were busy and still loved them very much. So he would simply hop along here and there, helping where he could and happy as a little hare could be.
Now it so happened that although the land was barren and arid, there were still dangers that prowled the wilds, and for the hares no danger was as fearsome as the hungry gangs of coyotes that prowled the land. Normally they left the towns alone, but one day a particularly large and fierce pack caught wind of the little settlement, and they thought the small frontier town that the little Jackrabbit and his family lived in to be a fine target.
The coyotes were quick, and quiet, and none spotted them until it was too late. The little Jackrabbit sat bolt upright in bed when the resounding toll of the bells signalled alarm, and not a moment later his mother rushed through the door and bade him hide beneath the floorboards. There was room enough only for one, and she hushed his questions as she pressed sweet-swelling cloves and hay about him to mask his scent. Then she closed the floorboard over him, and even as he heard the tap-tapping of her feet leave the room he heard a mighty crash and the sound of breaking glass.
The little Jackrabbit sat quivering in the darkness, with his ears flattened right against his head. He kept his paws pressed to his mouth as he trembled and quaked, and just as he’d promised, he made not a sound.
He watched as the coyotes gobbled up his second oldest brother and sister, and as his next youngest brother was torn apart by the pups.
He watched as his mother was dragged screaming from the house.
And when all was silent and dark, the little Jackrabbit crept from his hiding place and cried, and cried, and cried. He cried so hard that before long he had run out of tears, and when this had happened he made himself a vow:
His heart would be stone, but his heart would be true; he would not eat or drink or sleep until he had killed the Coyotes that had ravaged his home.
The little Jackrabbit kept his promise, and he grew tall and cunning and lean. He hardened his heart and spared no thought for himself, and spent the years training and tracking and hunting. There had been a dozen in the coyote pack that descended upon his little town, though one died of her own wounds shortly after, and another two were sickly and driven away. One had already passed by the time he came across them, the other was wan and weak and made barely a whimper of protest when the little Jackrabbit raised his father’s still bloodied flintlock.
This was his first kill, and it was far from his last.
Across the barren land he pursued them, luring them and trapping them until only four remained. Two fled to the east, to the cooler wooded lands of the Witch-Kings. The last two, the alpha and his mate, turned and turned in a fury as they sought the death that snapped at their heels, raging even as they quaked in their pursuit.
The alpha’s mate he took by luck and chance alone, for he caught her as she drank from a watering hole. The alpha knew he was coming, and howled his grief and anger for all the realm to hear. Still none of this caused the Jackrabbit’s heart to skip a beat, for it was made of stone and filled with the same pain twice over. They met when the desert was dark and cold, their noses filled with the scent of the other’s blood.
The alpha jumped at him, and his first bullet missed its mark, scoring no more than a graze across his haunch. The Jackrabbit leapt away, losing only a few hairs from the top of his tail to the strong, sharp teeth. For an hour they battled, until, exhausted and bloody and with a broken arm trapped in the coyote’s jaw, the Jackrabbit slammed the butt of the flintlock into the qlpha’s temple, and as it reeled in surprise, the Jackrabbit emptied the last bullet from his chamber between its eyes.
When it was over he was tired, exhausted to his bones, but he could not rest for he had made his promise, and instead he turned to the east. Beyond the barren desert full of bones and blood and memories, and towards the trickling rivers and softly whispering trees of the east.
It had taken him much longer to track them down than he had hoped. Hopalong Jimmy was one of the best trackers this side of Coyote Country, but that was in his own territory, where he knew every creature’s cry and hint of their passing. Here there were animals he was not familiar with; strange smells, unfamiliar pawprints, droppings and tufts of fur that might have belonged to a half dozen animals. He had heard of most of them of course, and had a rough idea what they might look like, but he’d never met them to properly know their mark.
Several frustrating false-starts had finally culminated in this; a section of Eldhorn Wood which he’d heard tell was popular with travellers, and which a weasel had accepted twice as much money as he’d wanted to pay to tell him there had been sightings of unfamiliar animals from the west which could be the coyotes he sought.
That information had been accurate at least, he had been relieved to learn, just when he was starting to bitterly think on every slanderous thing he’d ever heard said about a weasel.
These two were the youngest of the pack, the then-cubs that had raided his home. But as he had grown older and stronger so too had they, and now they were in their prime. They also possessed in full the cunning of their kind, and had already found themselves allies to replace their decimated pack. Their new comrades were sleek and orange and black, and he recognised their scent immediately as foxes. He had already come across a few in his travels, and had taken his unfavourable measure of them in full.
He had waited for the coyotes to grow complacent, and had followed them when they broke from the group with only one fox for company. One he had managed to eliminate when it sidled off to relieve itself. The shot had rung out loudly, scaring a flock of birds to flight. By the time he returned and stepped out into the clearing the last coyote awaited him warily, its companion salivating at its side.
‘A rabbit!’ Chortled the fox, eagerly looking him up and down. ‘Doesn’t look like one of her’s, reckon that makes it fair game.’
The fox--a fat, fluffy animal quite unlike the lean coyote at its side--bared its teeth, its tongue flicking out briefly to lick at them in anticipation. Its companion, obviously the smarter of the two, looked him up and down, wariness tempering hunger as his eyes roved every inch of Jimmy’s wiry form.
‘Hare,’ the Coyote corrected, and now he did bare his teeth, ‘stringier eatin’.’
‘Bigger than a bunny though, might give us more than a mouthful.’ The fox’s tongue lolled out the side of its mouth. Jimmy watched it with disgust while still keeping most of his attention fixed on the coyote at its side. ‘You’re a long way from home, little hare. You should have stayed in your desert.’
The coyote lunged then, wasting no time with words. The fox hung back, apparently assuming his help wasn’t needed and yelping with shock as the coyote’s limp form hit the grass beside him.
Jimmy loaded the next bullet with ruthless efficiency while the fox was stunned, and had already cocked and raised it by the time its glazed eyes met his.
Another shot resounded out into the woodland, and then, at last, all was silent.
Jimmy took a deep, shaky breath, the weight of his promise lifting so suddenly that he thought his legs might give way with the loss of his momentum.
‘What’s going on here?’
Jimmy whirled.
Another fox! This one with a slightly different form, but clearly a fox even without the orange coat and carved mask that hid his cruel eyes and teeth. With barely a pause, Jimmy cocked his gun a third time and fired.
Jimmy knew he had hit him. He saw the Fox’s shoulder jerk with the impact, saw him stumble backwards with the force of it--but apart from this initial reaction and a hole in his jacket, the Fox gave no sign of having been hurt at all. He looked almost puzzled, poking at the singed fabric as though unsure how it had got there. No red soaked the garish orange of his coat.
Jimmy shot again, and this time he aimed for the head.
This time, the bullet did not find its mark. The Fox held up a hand, and Jimmy saw the bullet slow, then stop altogether. The Fox tilted his head, examining the floating object with curiosity, and then with a snap of his fingers it fell to the ground.
‘Fascinating,’ the Fox said, ‘you are a long way from home, aren’t you? We don’t have those sorts of things around here. Dreadfully noisy though, aren’t they?’
‘Magic,’ Jimmy spat, ignoring the question. ‘Well, that don’t impress me none. Don’t got that where I come from, and don’t reckon your little magic tricks will work on me neither.’
The Fox rolled his eyes. ‘Maybe you’re right, and maybe you’re wrong--I’ve no intention of finding out,’ then before Jimmy could retort the Fox continued, ‘Foxworthy at your service, Fox-Captain of the Legion.’
‘That supposed to mean something to me?’
‘Only if you use those long ears of yours for something useful.’
‘Might be I’ve heard a thing or two about it.’ Jimmy answered dismissively, before waving the gun barrel at the crumpled forms of the fox and coyote. ‘Guessing those were two of yours I just shot dead then.’
He hadn’t paid it much mind before, but both the dead animals wore coats of the same vivid orange as the supposed Captain. The uniform of the Fox-Legion.
‘Yes, well. I wasn’t especially attached to them.’ The affable tone, the amiable nonchalant callousness of it, made Jimmy’s skin crawl. As though sensing this, the Fox-Captain spared them a lingering glance. ‘We reap what we sow, don’t we?’
‘Allow me to make up for their appalling first impression of our little section of the kingdom and welcome you to our lands. And speaking of welcomes, you’re an awfully good shot,’ here he fingered the hole in his coat once again, ‘the Legion would greet you with open arms.’
‘You’re a Fox.’
‘I am, well spotted.’
Jimmy would have rolled his eyes had he felt comfortable moving them from the fox for even a second, ‘why would a fox want a hare in his army?’
‘Oh, I don’t. I want you in Heather’s army; she leads our bunny brigade,’ a pause to let the words sink in and sit just long enough to start to rile him, then, ‘that is, she’s Captain of Hare-Legion.’
Once again, Jimmy found himself caught off-guard. Rabbits, hares, and foxes, fighting alongside each other? Yet all he said was, ‘and why would I have any interest in fighting your war?’
‘The camaraderie of others consumed by their personal vendettas? The knowledge that you’d be saving innocent animals from terrible fates? The chance to be a violent force for vengeance? Money?’ The Fox-Captain shrugged. ‘We all have our reasons. I’m just here to make you an offer you can’t refuse. Why specifically you might accept is down to you.’
‘And if I say no?’
‘Then you’ll be a lone little bunny in a big, bad forest, and it shan’t make an ounce of difference to my day either way.’ Jimmy bristled as much at being called a bunny as the patronising tone, but before he could snap a reply the Fox continued, ‘and perhaps that’d suit you just fine. Because you can take care of yourself. I’m sure the Witch-Kings and Shaman-Queens hold no fear for someone from a land of dead magic. But here it’s a very different story, and the rabbits and their ilk fear threats far greater than mere tooth and claw. Here they fear not only the fox and the wolf and the bear that might snatch their children from their beds. Here they fear the witch that will skin and boil their children alive for nothing more than a spell, and the monarchs that will torture and murder them for their amusement simply because they can.’
There were injustices everywhere, Jimmy knew that. He knew too, that the Fox had picked his angle well and that his hooks were already firmly in. He had nothing in common with the rabbits and hares of the forest, yet as the Fox spoke, he could picture all too easily the sobbing mothers at their children’s beds, the fathers consumed by hopelessness and despair. The terrified kits and leverets quaking in the night.
‘Look around you,’ the Fox pressed, ‘and tell me that you don’t care about our war.’
And so he looked. He looked at the still smoking barrel of his father’s flintlock, and stroked the engraving on the side of it. He looked at the bloodied remains of the coyote and fox and the chunks of matted fur beside them. He remembered a little Jackrabbit crying in the darkness, weak and scared and utterly alone.
The Fox tilted his head, and his smile was wide and sly. ‘Now, will you hop-along, Jimmy, or will you hop alongside me?’
The Fox sounded entirely too self-satisfied, but Jimmy’s attention was drawn away from him almost immediately.
A small paw lay flat against his chest. A small, smirking rabbit appeared to be attached to the other end of it. Jimmy was not especially tall for a hare, but even on him the rabbit barely came up to his chest. The other animals dwarfed her. Where his ears were pricked straight up, hers lay flat against her head; where his physique was long and lean, suited to running and jumping great lengths, hers was... well, your typical ‘soft cottontail’, as his father would say.
‘I’m impressed.’ She drew back for him, glancing briefly at the Fox-Captain. Jimmy couldn’t understand what passed between them, but the Fox bowed and whirled away, giving them a jaunty wave over his shoulder as he left. The doe looked back at him. ‘What’s your name, kid?’
‘Jeremiah, ma’am. But back home they took to calling me Hopalong Jimmy.’ It had started as a joke, gentle ribbing from his older brothers and sister. Then one day it suddenly became all he had left of them. He felt inexplicably self-conscious, as though by saying that she could read his history all across his face, and cleared his throat. ‘Just Jimmy is fine.’
‘Well, Just Jimmy. How would those here calling you Hare-Lieutenant sit with you?’
‘I don’t mean to be rude, but you don’t know the first thing about me, ma’am. What makes you think I’d make a good lieutenant? You don’t even know if I’d be a good soldier.’
‘I bet you’d be a terrible soldier.’ She drawled, eyebrow arched in amusement. ‘You seem like the type that’s better at following his heart than his orders. Foxworthy thinks you’d make a good lieutenant, that’s good enough for me.’
She must have noticed his nose twitch in distaste, for she laughed.
‘I think you’ll fit in just fine. Welcome to the Legion, Jimmy.’ She extended her paw, and after a moment’s hesitation he took it. In a voice as firm as her handshake, she added, ‘first order: it’s 'Hare-Captain', not 'ma’am'.’
Somehow it was not undermined at all by the quick, friendly wink she followed it with.
Once upon a time, in a city far below the ground, there lived a little black-tailed Jackrabbit along with a great many animals. The little Jackrabbit was unlike many of the other animals, for he had no fear of the terrible witch-kings and he carried a dreadsome weapon at his hip. He had no awe and even less patience for the cunning trickster Fox that his fellows feared and revered, but his heart was true and his bullets were for those whose hearts were made of stone.
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