IN THE EARLY AFTERNOON, she came over a rise and saw the black woods stretching before her—a foreboding place. Between her and the forest lay an obstacle: the Mystic River. A narrow blue ribbon ran from right to left, appearing to press right up against the forest’s edge.
Needing a bit more courage, she stopped humming Over the River and Through the Woods and began to sing it instead, hoping the melody might lend her strength as she guided the sleigh downward toward the river’s edge.
She reined Autumn in short of the water, eyeing the rickety wooden bridge.
“I wonder if it’s safe,” she said aloud.
“Of course it’s not safe,” replied a voice.
She sat bolt upright. “Hello?” she called, glancing around. But no one was there.
“I said, hello!” she repeated, louder this time.
“Hello,” said the voice again, this time from off to her right.
She turned. Still nothing.
Then she noticed movement. A white rabbit leapt once and froze. In the snow, it nearly vanished again.
“Are you a talking rabbit?” she asked.
“I should think not,” the creature replied, rising on its hind legs and sniffing the air with a twitching nose. “I’m a hare, and I find the accusation that I’m a rabbit rather offensive, I must say.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Rosie. “I’m afraid I don’t know the difference.”
“I suppose we all look alike to you,” the hare said with a sigh.
Rosie frowned. “Well… what is the difference between a hare and a rabbit?”
The hare gave her a long look, then slowly relaxed. “Hares are larger, faster, and considerably more refined. We live above ground, not in burrows. And our ears”—he turned slightly to show them off—“are far superior.”
“They are quite nice,” Rosie said.
“Thank you,” said the hare, clearly mollified.
“What do you mean by refined?”
“Have you ever seen a rabbit reading Shakespeare?”
“No, I haven’t,” she admitted—though she had never seen a hare doing that either. She decided not to mention it.
“Exactly,” the hare said.
“Actually,” she said, “I didn’t know hares talked.”
“Mostly, we don’t,” he said. “But we do read Shakespeare, make no mistake about that. If you’re ever missing your battered copy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, be sure to check for hares in the vicinity.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Rosie said. “So why do you talk, if most hares don’t?”
“Part of the enchantment, of course.”
“Enchantment?”
“Some say there’s a witch that lives beyond the woods,” the hare said. “She’s the one who made some of us talk.”
“She used magic to give you a voice?”
“No,” he said, suddenly chewing on a stalk of dry grass, and then continuing to speak with his mouth full—which Rosie found quite unrefined, despite his earlier insistence otherwise. “No, no. We could always talk. It’s just that she cursed the land. It gave us something worth talking about.”
Rosie blinked. “So… all hares can talk?”
“In theory,” he said. “Although, as I said, we mostly don’t.”
“I see,” she said.
He sniffed the air again. “I’d suggest you not linger by this bridge.”
“Why not?”
“Because I saw a wolf here earlier,” he said. “Gnawing at the bridge supports, no less. Not chewing idly, mind you—gnawing—with purpose.”
Rosie sat back, alarmed. “To break the bridge?”
“So it would seem,” the hare said. “Very industrious, that one. Had a bit of twine and everything. Looked like he was tying something off.”
“A wolf with twine?”
“Don’t ask me,” the hare said, twitching his nose. “I don’t see much use for twine unless you’re making a trap—which is why hares don’t use twine, and we avoid it when we see it. If there’s twine, there’s a trap.”
Rosie stared at the bridge again. The slats looked weathered. Frayed at the edges. Not quite trustworthy.
“Would it still hold?” she asked.
“Maybe,” the hare said, already bounding a few feet away. “It holds me just fine. But if it doesn’t hold you, do try to fall upstream. The downstream current feeds right into Gradimoth Bog, and I hear it’s dreadfully damp this time of year.”
And with that, the hare disappeared into the snow.
Rosie took another bite of cinnamon roll and thought.
She climbed down from the sleigh, leaving Autumn to browse on the tufts of grass peeking out from the snow.
Wolf prints circled the bridge, and fresh teeth marks gouged the supports where something had gnawed at them. It might still hold her. Or maybe not. She could leave her horse and sleigh behind—but that felt like a mistake.
She returned to the sleigh, dug into her backpack, and pulled out a fifty-foot length of silk rope. She tied one end to Autumn’s harness, the other around her wrist, and walked cautiously back to the bridge. She stepped onto it and felt it sway—just slightly—but it stayed firm.
She took two more steps. Still steady.
Then she jumped.
The bridge collapsed.
She plunged into the frigid river.
The cold stole her breath. For a moment, everything stilled—then instinct kicked in, and she began to sing, forcing the words through chattering teeth.
The itsy bitsy spider climbed up the water spout, Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain, Then the itsy bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.
The enchantment stirred at once, wrapping her in calm and resolve. No matter how often the spider was washed away, it climbed again. That was the spell’s power: tenacity.
Rosie grabbed the rope and hauled herself hand over hand from the current, the silk line her spider’s thread. Her arms burned. Her dress clung to her. But the words gave her strength.
She crawled up onto the bank, coughing and soaked, and looked behind her.
The entire bridge was gone—splintered, collapsed, and drifting down the Mystic River.
She sighed, went back to the sleigh, and sat down to eat more cinnamon roll.
“Well,” she said at last, “there’s only one thing to do about this.”
She walked back to the river, looked around, and found a large stone. She was already wet, so it didn’t matter if her feet got wet again. She stepped into the shallows and rolled the stone.
Red be nimble, Red be quick, Red jump over the candlestick.
Rosie stepped up onto the stone and began to roll it with her feet—walking her legs backward, which rolled the stone forward. Her footing was sure and her movements steady.
Soon, she had the stone up against the river’s edge. She stepped off onto dry land.
London Bridge is falling down, Falling down, Falling down…
She had no silver or gold, no needles or pins, no wood or clay. So she skipped ahead to the only verse she did have.
Build it up with stones so strong, Stones so strong, stones so strong. Build it up with stones so strong, My fair lady.
As she sang, stones rolled—seemingly of their own accord—rising from the riverbed and stacking themselves, one atop another. The melody shaped their motion. Her voice was the mortar.
Within minutes, a new bridge arched across the river, solid and glistening with wet stone.
Rosie went back to the sleigh, giving Autumn a sugar cube and nuzzling his face as he chewed it. She ticked the reins, her dapple grey moved forward, and the sleigh went over the bridge noisily before landing in the soft snow on the other side.
She was wet and cold and it was nearing dinnertime. Darkness would arrive in just a couple of hours. She shivered and considered her options, finally opting to stay the night between the river and forest, humming Over the River as she prepared her campsite.
When she had the area prepared, she took a handful of posies from her backpack and sprinkled them in a circle as she sang.
Ring around the Rosie A handful of posies Fire and Ashes, We all lay down.
The song created a warm magical fire, turning the camp into a comfortable and safe space. It was early still, but she was tired and cold. It felt slightly embarrassing to strip in the open, but she removed her wet clothing and hung it to dry near the fire.
Rosie pulled a small box from her backpack, set it next to the basket of food, and opened the box lid. It began playing Over the River, keeping the tune for her.
Then she climbed inside a sleeping bag Father had given to her and promptly went to sleep.
As she slept, two creatures crept closer to her.
One was a talking hare who sniffed the air every few hops. The animal waited for several minutes before daring to get close to the warmth of the fire, but eventually, it crept to the foot of the sleeping bag and nestled in for the night with a handful of dry grass to chew on while dreaming.
At the edge of the forest, lurking in the shadows beneath the dark boughs, yellow eyes watched. A grin, that was just a little too wide, turned into something that was almost disturbingly like a smile.
Stephen B. Anthony is the author of Transmigrant, an epic science fiction thriller, available on both Amazon and Audible. The first seven chapters are available on this website for free.
And it gets better. Love the hare.
I want to know what happens! I love the use of nursery rhymes as her spells.