Yet for all its forlorn appearance, the ancient sentry still held the power to repel the would-be scavengers come to pillage Mr. McGregor’s garden. Even now, only one creature was in sight near the ominous farmhouse. A coal-black crow fluttered nervously to a perch atop the barn. Below her was a succulent blackcurrant bush. Its branches were bent and heaving with plump, moist fruit.

For a moment the crow considered diving for as long as it took to fill her beak with gushing blackcurrants. But her eye was once again drawn to the haunting reminder of what happened to those who dared to challenge the masters of this land. Three of her own children had been ground into bloody chow for McGregor’s hounds when they had been foolish enough to venture beyond the woods and into the garden in search of forbidden fruit.

A shudder went through the crow’s body from the tip of her sharp beak to her very pinfeathers. Her eyes lingered over the ghostly warden for one moment too long, for suddenly the breeze shifted and the monster turned. Its lollin ghead rolled toward her, and its coal-black shoebutton eyes seemed to stare into her soul as if to say, “Come to me if you dare, for I am Death.”

The crow leaped away and burst into flight, screaming her fear to the empty autumn sky.

THE DISTANT CRY of terror echoed inside Mrs. Rabbit’s head as she lurked inside the doorway to her home, where she huddled and sniffed the air for some sign of life. She shuddered and pulled her shawl close around her as she retreated farther down into the safety o the burrow. Her children had not yet returned, and she had been unable to sleep. Mrs. Rabbit had spent a fitful night in the rocking chair by the faint faire that gave off even less heat than the tiny bit of smoky light it provided. Dark shadows flickered everywhere around the room. Mrs. Rabbit’s dim eyes could barely make out the shapes of four beds that had not been slept in. She returned to the dying fire, adding the last stick on the hearth in an attempt to rekindle the flame. Whether her children came home or not, she must still have their breakfast waiting for them.

The old rabbit shuffled to a cupboard that was once a cheerful bright red but had faded to the same dull color of earth as everything else in the burrow. A sack of grain with enough for a few more meals was the only thing concealed by its creaking doors.

Mrs. Rabbit’s arthritic paws swelled in protest as she lifted her large cast iron pot onto the hook above the fire. Her back ached as she pumped a pail of water and dragged it to the hearth. Moments later she was granted reprieve when the pot was filled and she was able to shuffle back to her rocking chair to wait for the water to boil.

Her gray eyes focused on the growing light of the fire. All other things in the room were burned away by the small bright glow in front of her. Tiny ripples of orange and gold began to stroke the edges of the thin oak stick that rested on a crackling load of embers. Outside, the sky responded by growing a shade lighter as the first ripples of sunlight crept over the frosty hills.

But her children had not returned.

Mrs. Rabbit knew what this had to mean. She, like every other woodland mother, had borne and lost enough children to blunt any naive hopes about what happened to young ones who ventured out and failed to come home. Yet for all that a wish lingered in her ehart like the last embers of the fire on the hearth, needing only the faintest sound of a footstep in the tunnel to rekindle her soul.

Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter had made it longer than any of her other brood. Flopsy had even managed to marry Benjamin Bunny and have children of her own, shifting the burden of survival one generation away from Mrs. Rabbit. But so many others were lost and gone. Of her first litter, two were stillborn and Wilbur and Squidget had been carried off by hawks the first time they peeped out of the burrow’s door. Hector was never quite right in the head and got himself gobbled up by Reynard the Fox when he took the foolish notion into his head that their ravenous neighbor might enjoy a friendly delivery of warm scones and strawberry jam. The jam had sat untouched, and Reynard had greased his scones with Hector. Thelonius had been taken by plague, spending his last moments coughing slimy black sputum below the mulberry bush just outside the burrow door, where Mrs. Rabbit could only stand and watch in stony silence. She could not embrace him lest she risk infecting herself and her remaining children.

And how few remained! Nine little graves haunted the hill above the burrow, and a single stone commemorated the members of the Rabbit family for whom insufficient remains had been recovered to enable a proper burial. On that list, among the names of his children Twinkler, Diddler, Shortshanks, Crumplette, and his Uncle Bob, was the name of Mr. Rabbit. Three winters ago, in a desperate attempt to end the hungry cries of his children, he had crept into the forbidden garden at the end of the rutted dirt road that snaked through the woods.

Whether Mr. Rabbit had been foiled by his own carelessness or McGregor’s insidiously clever defenses no one could say. The last sight of him had been glimpsed by a pair of magpies, who saw him taken still breathing from a snare outside the granary. They had brought the report home to Mr. Rabbit’s widow. The magpies sang mournfully of how his head had been struck from his body with three whacks from a blunt hatchet. The blood had streamed out, leaving a dark purple trail from the chopping-block to the kitchen door of McGregor’s house. They had seen his pelt ripped from his carcass and the meat cleaved from his bones. Mrs. McGregor had bathed his flesh in gravy and baked him into a pie. While the McGregor’s stuffed Mr. Rabbit into their mouths with greasy fingers, the hounds had gnawed the marrow from his shattered bones. Mr. Rabbit’s head was placed on the top spike of a tomato cage, where his eyes and flesh mouldered away until only a bleached and grinning skull remained.

Many times Mrs. Rabbit had hardened her resolve to retrieve the only thing that remained of her husband, but she had always been dissuaded by the pleas of Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail. They had but one argument and it always worked: with their father gone, Mrs. Rabbit was all they had left. The risk was simply too great.

Peter, however, had once been foolish enough to try to retrieve the grim trophy from McGregor’s vegetable patch. But being young, he was sidetracked by the lush rows of plump vegetables and was caught. He had barely escaped with his life and lost his jacket and shoes in the process. Now the ragged remains of his coat hung on the body of the scarecrow, while just a few yards away the skull of Peter’s father grinned at the cruel joke.

The water in the pot bubbled. A droplet spat upward and landed with a hiss on the hearth below. Mrs. Rabbit’s mind drifted homeward from the dark garden it had wandered to. Stiffly, she rose and went back to the cupboard. A full scoop of barley would make enough for the five of them. A spoonful would suffice for her alone, leaving more for another day.

Mrs. Rabbit stood for some time staring at the sack of grain. Then, against her better judgment, she plunged her large scoop into the barley. She brought and overflowing amount back to the pot and poured it in. The grains rippled like raindrops down into the water, then slipped below the bubbling surface to cook. Very slowly, Mrs. Rabbit reached for the blackened ladle that hung on the mantlepiece. She stirred deliberately, swirling her brew with all the contemplation of a sorceress.

The smell of warm barley filled the burrow like the growing light of the fire. Mrs. Rabbit thought she heard the sound of footsteps on the road outside. Her left ear twitched, but she fixed her feet and stirred more resolutely lest she run out of the door and into the jaws of one of McGregor’s marauding hounds. But her nose twitched as for a moment she caught the familiar scent of Mopsy . . . no, was it Cottontail? Had they made it home after all?

Then she heard whispers. Shuffling feet. The sound of something scraping along the ground. The door flew open, and Mrs. Rabbit shrieked in terror, letting the ladle crash the the ground, spilling ripened grains of barley on the hearth. Her entire body tensed as she saw the tall figure of her son Peter striding toward her with great haste. His light brown fur gleamed against the collar of his black jacket. The sheath buckled onto his dark trousers was empty and the knife that usually hid within was brandished and bloody. A soiled bandage encircled his head, covering his left eye. Dark, sticky blood oozed from beneath the layers of linen.

“Mother,” Peter cried out urgently, “It’s Cottontail!”

I’ve been meaning for some time to address in fiction the fragmented life we all seem to live. When everything’s been given a post-modern dissection, from family relationships to religion to gender roles, we’re confronted with the fact that the world is now a blank slate to paint as we wish. That’s a thrilling but frightening prospect. Without a plan, it’s easy for life to feel meaningless. But once we seize the power of painting our own world, we can become truly happy and empowered.

Good luck to all the other WriMos out there. You can do it!

This year I’m not having that problem. I’ve got fewer than 15,000 words to go, and the word calculator on the site estimates I’ll finish in five days if I keep going at this rate.

The writing is still messy, out of order, and mostly a dump of ideas, but it is flowing out with a cohesive message. (I believe.) I keep jumping from section to section, but I think when I’m done with this initial draft I’ll have something worth editing.

If you’re interested in reading the finished draft and acting as a critic, let me know.

Comfy clothes — check. Viking hat — check. Paper — check. Pens — Check.
Laptop — check. Mug — check. It’s NaNoWriMo time.

My NaNoWriMo project is entitled “Temporary People.” It’s a concept I toyed with a while ago, but couldn’t really figure out what I wanted to do with it. Most of the stuff I wrote put the “crap” in “scrapped”, but I liked the title and wanted to save it for a time when I understood what I wanted it for. I think I’ve got something now.

I won’t be blogging the text, as I am utterly unable to do anything in a linear fashion when it comes to fiction. The text-in-progress can be found on my NaNoWriMo page. Updates will probably be haphazard and large chunks of the text may move around as the month goes on. If you’d like to be my writing buddy, come find me at the NaNoWriMo official site.