"Yes, of course she is. The only difference between then and now is that then I knew something terrible was going to happen--happen soon. But now, in spite of what she's said, I don't feel like that. I don't feel any dread of the future. But she's right, all the same."
"And what do you think we ought to do, Flyairth?"
"Leave here, all of us, and move to a safer place. A new warren in a safer place. And no men. What happened the other night in the snow, when the men came--that can't be right. I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it: I mean, that rabbits could even think they could live in such a place."
"Why, you've only been here a few days," broke in Bigwig angrily. "And here you are trying to tell us all what to do. Who do you think you are?"
"I'm sorry," answered Flyairth. "You asked me to tell you what was worrying me, and you've just asked me what I thought you ought to do. I was only answering your questions."
"Don't go for her, Bigwig," said Hazel. "I'm glad to know what she thinks. Flyairth, I'm afraid we can't send you or anyone else to Groundsel's warren just at present. It's all been agreed with Campion, you see. We'll drop it for now. I can feel it's warmer tonight, but let's go to sleep all together, where we are."
He did not himself, however, fall asleep immediately but lay awake between Bigwig and Fiver, turning over in his mind what Flyairth had said.
15
Flyairth's Departure
Abiit, excessit, evasit, erupit.
(She departed, she withdrew, she strode off, she broke forth.)
CICERO, In Catilinam
"Hazel-rah, she's doing everything she can to take over the leadership," said Bigwig. "She's at it now in the Honeycomb, telling all the young rabbits about the men in the snow the other night. She's telling them that as long as they stay here they're in deadly danger of the White Blindness, but that she'll lead them to a safe place and start a new warren. Shall I go back and kill her, now, before she does any more harm?"
"No, don't do that," answered Hazel. "Or not yet, anyway."
"What it come to," said Bigwig, "is that she used to be a Chief Rabbit--huh, a doe as Chief Rabbit!--until they threw her out, and now she's come here she means to be Chief Rabbit again."
"Were any of our Sandleford rabbits listening to her?" asked Hazel.
"No, nor was Blackavar either. But a lot of the youngsters were, and some of the Efrafan does as well."
"I'd like to talk to Fiver and Blackberry," said Hazel. "Vilthuril and Hyzenthlay too, come to that. Let's go and find them, come on."
They found them, as well as Thethuthinnang, crowded together in Fiver's burrow, dozing in the warmth of their bodies.
"Bigwig," said Hazel, "tell them what you just told me about Flyairth."
Bigwig did so, working himself, if anything, into a still greater rage. "She's got to be killed," he ended. "She's got to be killed soon, before she does any more harm."
"Well, hang on a moment or two," said Blackberry. "Hazel-rah, can I say a few things?"
"Yes, and Fiver as well," said Hazel.
"This fuss, as far as I can make out," said Blackberry, "is all about the Blindness. Bigwig thinks that what Flyairth wants first and foremost is to become a Chief Rabbit again. I don't think it is. I think that if she'd never come across the Blindness but had left her own warren all the same and come here, she'd have settled in quite peacefully, without making any trouble."
"She was Chief Rabbit in that Thinial warren of hers before ever she came across the Blindness," said Bigwig. "Now she wants to be Chief Rabbit again. All her talk about the Blindness is just a pretext to get support."
"Well, anyway, she wants to persuade as many rabbits as she can to move out of here," said Blackberry. "And the reason, she says, is that here there's great danger from the Blindness. Now listen. As far as I've ever been able to make out, men only infect rabbits with the Blindness when the rabbits have become a nuisance to them: eating their greenstuff, tearing the bark off their fruit trees, spoiling their lettuces and all that. If we'd gone in for anything like that, they'd have infected us long ago. But they haven't, because so far we've been no real trouble to them, up here in this lonely place. There's nothing to spoil.
"But there's one other thing that would turn them against us. If there grew to be too many of us, that'd lead to trouble: if this whole place got to be full of rabbits, here, there and everywhere. If all the youngsters and all the Efrafan does were to stay here, there'd very soon be a whole crowd of rabbits, all over the Down and increasing all the time. The men wouldn't like that.
"Flyairth wants everyone to move to a new warren in a more lonely place. But there's no place so lonely that men won't get to know about it if there are too many rabbits there."
"Let her go," said Fiver. "Let her go and take as many youngsters with her as ever she can. The more she takes, the safer we'll be here. In fact, if she weren't obliging us by doing it herself, we might even have had to make her."
"But can anyone stay here who wants to?" asked Hyzenthlay.