Wood Magic: A Fable

by Richard Jefferies

The rat was in the drain, and when he heard the bailiff's heavy footsteps, and the noise he made fumbling about with the trap, he laughed, and said to himself: "Fumble away, you old stupid—I know what you are doing. You are setting up a gin in the same place you have set it twenty times before. Twenty times you have set the gin up there and never caught anything, and yet you cannot see, and you cannot understand, and you never learn anything, and you are the biggest dolt and idiot that ever walked, or rather, you would be, only I thank heaven everybody else is just like you! As if I could not hear what you are doing; as if I did not look very carefully before I come out of my hole, and before I put my foot down on grass or leaves, and as if I could not smell your great clumsy fingers: really I feel insulted that you should treat me as if I was so foolish. However, upon the whole, this is rather nice and considerate of you. Ha! Ha!" and the rat laughed so loud that if the bailiff had been sharp he must have heard this unusual chuckling in the drain. But he heard nothing, but went off down the road very contented with himself, whistling a bar from "Madame Angôt" which he had learnt from Bevis.

When Bevis went to bed he just peeped out of the window to look at the moon, but the sky was now overcast, and the clouds were hurrying by, and the wind rising—which the snail had expected, or he would not have ventured out along the wall. While Bevis was peeping out he saw the owl go by over the orchard and up beside the hedge.

The very same evening the young hawk, as has been previously related, had gone to the glade in the wood, and sat there in ambush waiting for the thrush. Like Sir Bevis, the hawk was extremely impatient, and the time as he sat on the ash passed very slowly till at last he observed with much delight that the sun was declining, and that the shadow of the dead oak-tree would soon reach across towards him.

The thrush, having sat at the banquet the whole of the afternoon, and tasted every dainty that the camp of Choo Hoo afforded, surrounded all the time by crowds of pleasant companions, on the other hand, saw the shadows lengthening with regret. He knew that it was time for him to depart and convey the intelligence to King Kapchack that Choo Hoo had fully agreed to his proposal. Still loth to leave he lingered, and it was not until dusk that he quitted the camp, accompanied a little way over the frontier by some of Choo Hoo's chief counsellors, who sought in every way to do him honour. Then wishing him good-night, with many invitations to return shortly, they left him to pursue his journey.

Knowing that he ought to have returned to the king before this, the thrush put forth his best speed, and thought to himself as he flew what a long account he should have to give his wife and his children (who were now grown up) of the high and important negotiation with which he had been entrusted, and of the attentions that had been paid to him by the emperor. Happy in these anticipations, he passed rapidly over the fields and the woods, when just as he flew beneath the old dead oak in the glade down swooped the hawk and bore him to the ground. In an instant a sharp beak was driven into his head, and then, while yet his body quivered, the feathers were plucked from his breast and his heart laid bare. Hungry from his fast, for he had touched nothing that day, being so occupied with his master's business, the hawk picked the bones, and then, after the manner of his kind, wishing to clean his beak, flew up and perched on a large dead bough of the oak just overhead.

The moment he perched, a steel trap which had been set there by the keeper flew up and caught him, with such force that his limbs were broken. With a shriek the hawk flapped his wings to fly, but this only pulled his torn and bleeding legs, and overcome with the agony, he fainted, and hung head downwards from the bough, suspended by his sinews. Now this was exactly what Ki Ki had foreseen would happen. There were a hundred places along the thrush's route where an ambush might have been placed, as well as in the glade, but Ki Ki had observed that a trap was set upon the old dead oak, and ordered his servant to strike the thrush there, so that he might step into it afterwards, thus killing two birds with one stone.

He desired the death of his servant lest he should tell tales, and let out the secret mission upon which he had been employed, or lest he should boast, in the vain glory of youth, of having slain the ambassador. Cruel as he was, Ki Ki, too, thought of the torture the young hawk would endure with delight, and said to himself that it was hardly an adequate punishment for having neglected so golden an opportunity for assassinating Choo Hoo. From the fate of the thrush and the youthful hawk, it would indeed appear that it is not always safe to be employed upon secret business of state. Yet Ki Ki, with all his cruel cunning, was not wholly successful.

For the owl, as he went his evening rounds, after he had flown over the orchard where Bevis saw him, went on up the hedge by the meadow, and skirting the shore of the Long Pond, presently entered the wood and glided across the glade towards the dead oak-tree, which was one of his favourite haunts. As he came near he was horrified to hear miserable groans and moans, and incoherent talking, and directly afterwards saw the poor hawk hanging head downwards. He had recovered his consciousness only to feel again the pressure of the steel, and the sharp pain of his broken limbs, which presently sent him into a delirium.

The owl circling round the tree was so overcome by the spectacle that he too nearly fainted, and said to himself: "It is clear that my lucky star rose to-night, for without a doubt the trap was intended for me. I have perched on that very bough every evening for weeks, and I should have alighted there to-night had not the hawk been before me. I have escaped from the most terrible fate which ever befell any one, to which indeed crucifixion, with an iron nail through the brain, is mercy itself, for that is over in a minute, but this miserable creature will linger till the morning."

So saying, he felt so faint that (first looking very carefully to see that there were no more traps) he perched on a bough a little way above the hawk. The hawk, in his delirium, was talking of all that he had done and heard that day, reviling Ki Ki and Choo Hoo, imploring destruction upon his master's head, and then flapping his wings and so tearing his sinews and grinding his broken bones together, he shrieked with pain. Then again he went on talking about the treaty, and the weasel's treason, and the assassination of the ambassador. The owl, sitting close by, heard all these things, and after a time came to understand what the hawk meant; at first he could not believe that his master, the king, would conclude a treaty without first consulting him, but looking underneath him he saw the feathers of the thrush scattered on the grass, and could no longer doubt that what the hawk said was true.