"There could be no question of this being an idea starting in my own head. I didn't have any sort of picture in my imagination. I simply knew of the two does' existence and of what they meant to do. I couldn't see them at all in my mind's eye, but I knew their names--Flyairth and Prake--and I knew they were somewhere out there, so strong and confident about what they meant to do that they could persuade other rabbits, bucks and does, to come with them. But where? All I could know was that it was somewhere sandy, on a gentle slope.
"I must have stayed a long time in the flow of that underground river, because when I finally came out I felt exhausted. I fell sound asleep and slept until the Mark's next silflay, which was in the early afternoon. I wanted to talk to someone, to tell them about what I'd found--or about what had found me. But it was always dangerous to talk to anyone in Efrafa. Either they might be a Council spy or else--which was more likely--they might pass on what you'd told them, until everybody knew it as gossip.
"I decided to tell Hyzenthlay, who I knew had got on the wrong side of the Council for asking to be allowed to leave Efrafa. I told her during silflay that afternoon, and she said she'd come down with me and find out whether she could feel the current in the way I had.
"She came, and she felt it, though not as strongly as I had, or so it seemed to me. But anyway, now there were two of us, and of course we were wondering whether other rabbits would discover it for themselves. We felt frightened of what might happen to us if the officers got to know. We hadn't done anything wrong, but believe me, that wasn't enough to keep you out of trouble in Efrafa. We were afraid we might be killed, because the Council would want to stop anyone else discovering the river. Or else they'd say that we'd made it all up. And of course Hyzenthlay was under the Council's suspicion already. So we didn't tell anyone else.
"What came to me down the secret river that night was the knowledge that Flyairth and Prake had persuaded a whole lot of rabbits--bucks as well as does--to leave their warren and come to the sandy place where they meant to start a new one of their own. Just that I came to know and nothing more. But that night Hyzenthlay came to know it too, without asking me. So we both felt sure that it was true.
"The next afternoon both Hyzenthlay and I were among the last coming down from silflay, and we found Thethuthinnang in my usual place at the far end of the burrow. We both felt fairly sure we could trust her with our secret, but we waited so see whether she'd find it by herself. It was soon clear to us that she was aware of something strange and puzzling, but we left it at that until silflay the next day, when we told her what we'd come to know ourselves. She'd felt it too, but less clearly than I had, and she hadn't been able to understand that it was a flow of knowledge until we told her.
"After that, we all did our best to get into the secret river at least once a day or night. As a rule, the other two didn't receive the knowledge as clearly as I did, but after we'd been able to talk about it together, they always realized what had been coming on the current while they were in it.
"After some time, we all three began to feel that we knew Flyairth and Prake well. But there were two things we didn't know. We didn't know whether those two does had anything to do with sending us this knowledge; and we didn't know whether the flow was going anywhere else besides Efrafa--to any other warren, I mean, or to any other rabbits. You see, we could do nothing to reply. All we could do was to receive the knowledge coming down the secret river, and to agree together, every day, about what it had been.
"We all knew that Flyairth and Prake had established their warren--Thinial, they called it--as they wanted it, and that the bucks seemed content under the control of the does. Bucks who discovered that they didn't like it after all simply left, and no one stopped them. The small Owsla of does were well liked. They were certainly the cleverest rabbits to be found and didn't
bully others into resentment.
"Several of them, so it seemed, bore litters of their own. They chose bucks whom they liked and mated with them. Then later, when they came to bear their young, they stood down from the Owsla for as long as they needed to bring them up and train them to look after themselves. When the young rabbits didn't need them anymore, they rejoined the Owsla.
"Flyairth had two litters in this way, and as far as we could learn, her young rabbits had turned out well.
"We received nothing else for a long time, and I supposed that now that Thinial was established and flourishing, there was nothing more for us to learn and the secret river knowledge had come to a natural end. I can't say I was sorry. The whole business frightened me. I was always afraid that somehow or other, General Woundwort would get to know. And yet I kept on, every night, lying in the river. It fascinated me: I couldn't keep out of it.
"And then, one night, I found myself caught up in a kind of violent mist of confusion and turmoil out of which, for a long time, nothing came; or nothing I could understand, anyway. The others were as lost in it as I.
"At last one thing stood out clearly--that is, one piece of knowledge. And that was the White Blindness. None of us had ever seen a rabbit dying of the White Blindness, but we knew as much as is common knowledge to all rabbits: how an infected rabbit stumbles about in the open, seeing nothing, so that in the end it may stagger into water and drown. And how other rabbits often become infected, so that a whole warren may be destroyed. We knew that it takes a rabbit a long time to die of the White Blindness.
"All three of us received, that night, knowledge of the Blindness. It didn't do anything; it was simply there, like a stone or a tree. We didn't think it was coming down the secret river to infect us, but the mere knowledge of it, dominating everything else in the river and turning it into incomprehensible turbulence, was frightening enough.
"Two nights later, the knowledge grew wider. Flyairth, wandering by herself outside Thinial, had come upon a solitary rabbit, a hlessi, lurching about and dying of the Blindness. Horrified, she kept away from it, but then she saw that it was approaching Thinial of its own accord. Yet at the last moment, apparently, it crawled away in another direction.
"That was all that the river brought us that night.
"For several nights afterward, we learned of nothing but Flyairth's growing obsession with the Blindness. She knew that if in some way or other it got into Thinial, it would destroy it.
"It wasn't I," said Vilthuril, "it was Hyzenthlay who came to know from the river that Flyairth meant to go to any lengths to keep the Blindness out of Thinial. Her great fear was that an infected rabbit--some stranger--might wander into the warren. One strange thing about the Blindness, as I expect you all know, is that infected rabbits are able to mate and quite often do.
"Flyairth told her Owsla of her fear, and they agreed that everything possible must be done to keep infected rabbits out of the warren. By day, all strangers were refused entry, whether or not they could be seen or smelled to be ill. By night, the task was more difficult. A stranger could get in unseen. The bucks agreed to take it in turns to keep a night watch--four bucks each night--to guard against strangers.
"That was all we learned for many days. And then the knowledge reached us that an infected buck, a stranger, had got into Thinial by night and mated with one of the does, who had become pregnant. One of the bucks who had been on watch admitted that he had fought the stranger, who had beaten him and then entered the warren. Understandably, perhaps, he had said nothing and hoped that he'd hear no more of the matter. The pregnant doe, Milmown, had no buck of her own, and told the Owsla that the stranger had mated with her and then gone his way.
"All might yet have been well, if Milmown had not developed the Blindness. When it was plain that she had, Flyairth and Prake were implacable. Milmown, though pitied by many, was driven out of Thinial by the Owsla and told never to return.
"But she didn't go away. She remained a short distance from the warren and constantly pleaded, to anyone who would listen, to be allowed to return. And for some reason the progress of the disease in her was delayed. She scratched a hole in the sand and there she bore her litter: no more than four rabbits, blind, deaf and furless. When they had become old enough to fend for themselves, the White Blindness once more continued to run its course, and Milmown died.
"And now all that the three of us could learn from the secret river was the same knowledge, repeated day after day. We knew that the four young rabbits of Milmown's litter were living as best they could in the open, not far from Thinial, and that although they didn't appear to have the Blindness, the Chief Rabbit refused to give them help or shelter. No one could say she was wrong, but few would themselves have felt able to enforce such severity.
"I think many in Thinial must have expected the young rabbits to fall victim to the Thousand, but no elil appeared, and we learned from the secret river that they continued to survive.
"Then we began to receive fresh knowledge, something that hadn't come down the river before. At first it was confused and fragmentary, and we couldn't make anything of it all, until Thethuthinnag said that she thought it had something to do with rabbits in Thinial becoming opposed to Flyairth. Once we'd grasped that, the knowledge began to reach us more clearly. The root of it was that Milmown had been well liked in the warren and had had a good many friends, including two or three of the Owsla. These friends hadn't been able to do anything for her when she had been driven out, because she had the Blindness; she would die, and that was all there was to it. But now that she was dead and her four young, as far as anyone could see, had not got the Blindness, a number of her former friends began saying that Flyairth and Prake were going too far and that to leave Milmown's young to die outside the warren was going to unnecessary and cruel lengths. Flyairth, however, refused to consider any change. For her, the safety and survival of Thinial were all-important and justified any severity.
"However, more and more rabbits began to drift away from her. They could see with their own eyes the young rabbits who had been abandoned, but they couldn't envisage an epidemic of the White Blindness which was not there. Some began going out to meet and talk to Milmown's youngsters, telling them that they personally would like to see them brought into the warren; and to put a stop to this sort of thing was very difficult for the Owsla.
"And then the river knowledge came to me, hard-breathing in the crowded Near Hind burrow one hot summer night, that several rabbits had come together, brought Milmown's young into Thinial and given them an empty burrow of their own, in defiance of the Owsla. When Flyairth herself came to order them to leave, she was met by does from among those who had come with her to found the warren, who said that the young rabbits were not to be evicted. Flyairth, a heavy, tough doe, fought and beat two or three of them. But she could not fight them all.
"For many days the river brought us nothing more. All the knowledge we received was of the helpless anger of Flyairth, as she went among one group of her rabbits after another, doing all she could to assert her authority. We--the three of us in Efrafa--thought that she would have done better to let the matter drop. But she was so much obsessed by her fear of the Blindness that she couldn't weight up its probability or improbability. As long as there was the least chance of it reentering Thinial, she must take every possible step to prevent it. And night upon night the secret river brought us nothing but the knowledge of her ceaseless anger and determination.