Mythic March: March Hare

This short story was based around the prompt "March Hare"

More on Mythic March here, here and here

*

“She’s absolutely mad!” Henry spat, slamming his beer down on the bar.

“Now, now, you’re new to Meadowsweet, we have a lot of characters around here”, Lem the barman said, wiping up the spilled beer with a dirty looking tea towel. Lem was just how Henry would have imagined a small town bartender to look: big, beefy and balding, with an anchor tattoo on one bulging bicep. The fact that Lem preferred words over violence and had been faithfully married to his husband for twenty-six years broke the stereotype somewhat.

“You think she’s a character?” Henry said, “She yelled at me for buying traps just today! Said I was a murderer!” This was only the last in a long line of insults that included treating his yard as if it was her own (“foraging”, she claimed) and laughing at him that time he split his trousers in town.

“Ah, everyone is really into conservation around these parts”, Lem said, “That’s why you had to order your traps from outside town. This is one of the last really biodiverse woodlands. We’ve all worked to keep it full of life and stop developments. We all have to make sacrifices, even if it means losing a few chickens to the foxes or flowers to a hare.”

Henry frowned at the correct implication that he was an outsider. He knew he had always been uptight and not very well liked, but he had nowhere else to go so they’d have to just put up with him. At least until his name was cleared and he could leave.

“They weren’t just any flowers, they were hybrids, award winning ones!” he muttered. He was still stinging from Blyton’s accusations. He had been driven out of the Whitby Garden Club, fleeing to the middle of nowhere, his reputation in tatters. Well, it would all be cleared up soon enough, and then he would be back where he belonged. Until then, though, the flowers must be protected. He’d have bought a shotgun if he hadn’t suspected he’d shoot his own foot off!

Henry was disconcerted to notice the room was spinning as he got up from the bar. Surely he wasn’t drunk? He staggered out of the village pub, sure he was imagining the dirty looks. He decided it would be good to walk home in the fresh air. All the heavy food here was definitely giving him a belly, he could do with the exercise.

Walking through the town, he couldn’t deny Meadowsweet was a beautiful place. The houses were a mishmash of eras, some more aesthetic than others, but everyone seemed to take pride in their homes. They were coming up to a spring festival, no doubt with pagan origins. While he disapproved of this kind of frivolity, it was undeniable that the decorations that covered the outside of the houses in Meadowsweet had a rustic charm. There were wreaths of dried flowers, coloured fabric bunting, and, frustratingly, little figures of the wild rabbits that were his current nemesis. Unless you counted Blyton.

The woodland path was dirt, more of a groove in the ground worn by centuries of pedestrians. The grass verge was dotted with wildflowers like fallen stars. They were undisciplined, yes, but pretty nonetheless. Maybe he could find a flower around here to be his new project. Something to show for his time in limbo.

With that thought in mind, Henry wandered off the path, not really paying attention to where he was going, examining each flower. He needed a much bigger flower than these puny little things, something that would really show off the improvements he would make. Petals curved like wings, a coloured ombre, the absolutely perfect symmetry he was known for. Perhaps one of these might be crossed with a larger specimen.

 As he came around the side of the tree, he nearly fell over them. He quickly stepped back into the shadows. It was her, the object of his earlier rant: Bridie White, the busybody trespasser. He couldn’t look away. Bridie was completely naked, her long black curls cascading down her back, her pale freckled skin pink with exertion. Beneath her was a man he did not recognise, panting heavily. Henry was unable to look away. Bridie's head was thrown back, her eyes wide open. She was utterly in control, utterly free. She was lost in the moment. Or so he thought until she turned her head and winked at him.

This would not be the last time he would see Bridie in the woods with her lovers. Each time it was a different man. Tall, short, fat, thin, she did not seem to mind. Perhaps Henry should simply have stayed out of the woods, but they were public property, dammit. He would not let that harlot chase him away!

He couldn’t quite admit to himself that he was jealous of her freedom. He would never have dared expose himself like that with any of his lovers, male, female or non-binary. Theirs had been typical couplings, safe inside the walls of a house, curtains drawn so that no voyeur might peep in. He had reacted with horror when Brian had suggested they film themselves that time. Perhaps too emphatically as he had never seen Brian again.

It wasn’t that Henry was ashamed of his stocky body that ran easily to fat. Bodies were just bodies, most of them were attractive in their own way. However, such an act of rebellion was beyond him. It didn’t suit his strict middle class upbringing. He had always been meticulous, obsessive even. Keep your business private. Blend in, those who stand out are bullied. Tall poppies are cut down. Do everything right and you will succeed quietly. Pride comes before a fall. And hadn’t that been proved true, when Blyton accused his pride and joy of being little more than a splicing, instead of years of careful cross-breeding, and had him exiled here?

Still, his mind ran to thoughts of her. When he saw her in town, he could not keep his eyes off her. Everything about her was sensuous, the way her shapeless jumper slipped to reveal a smooth, freckled shoulder, the lithe, quick way she moved, her throaty voice, her mocking eyes and that knowing smile.

*

The plants were still suffering the onslaught of the rabbits, never seen, but always leaving behind the marks of their violence on the fragile plants. So far, they had avoided the traps he set, so he was surprised when, near the end of spring, he heard a shrieking from the garden. It didn’t sound like an animal, but he had been told that the scream of a rabbit in pain was very similar to that of a human. Grabbing a torch and the knobbly walking stick that stood in the hallway of the cottage, he made his way out into the night.

The source of the sound was immediately apparent, but it was nothing like he had expected. The torchlight shone on the form of Bridie White lying naked on the ground, her leg caught in one of his traps.

Henry swore, bending down to see the damage. The trap had snapped shut around her dainty ankle. Pulling the chain out of the ground, he bundled Bridie into his arms, her whimpers of pain reminding him embarrassingly of her moans of passion as he carried her back to the cottage.

Back inside, he put her down on his bed gently. She was shivering and he pulled her blankets over her torso, leaving her legs uncovered. She flinched as he touched the trap around her ankle.

“What the hell were you doing running around naked in my garden, you mad bitch!” The words were out of his mouth before he thought about them and he regretted them instantly.

“Mad, yes, a mad march hare. Just being myself. It is natural. Your traps are what is unnatural.” Bridie’s words made no sense to him. Hopefully she was just delirious with pain and wasn’t already raging with infection. The last thing his reputation needed was catching a woman in a trap and having her die on him.

Henry slowly pulled open the trap. It left a red ring of blood around her ankle, but had not cut too deep, and the bone didn’t seem to be broken. He got the antiseptic and a flannel from the bathroom, and cleaned the wound, then bandaged it while she moaned quietly.

“We really need to get you to the hospital”, he said. Bridie shook her head. “There isn’t a doctor or hospital for miles. I’ll be fine, just let me sleep.”

Henry had a lifelong fear of confrontation, so he let it go, hoping that he wasn’t signing her death warrant. He let her sleep in his bed all night, watching from the straight backed wooden dining chair as she twitched and whimpered in her dreams.

The next morning, she seemed much better. She insisted on getting up and limping around the house. He suggested the hospital again and was rebuffed. He suggested that he drive her home, which was also met with refusal. It occurred to him that he had no idea where she lived. It seemed that he was stuck with her until she decided to take her leave.

She made them porridge for breakfast, rich with honey and berries. For lunch they had bread, spread with creamy local butter. For dinner she munched gleefully on salad leaves, occasionally giving the meat on his plate a baleful look.

That night, she joined him in his bed and it was all the he could have ever imagined and more. When he fell asleep, exhausted, he dreamed of wild hares, running through the woods.

Three months she stayed. On the final night, she managed to lure him outside into the moonlight. They made love under a tree in the woods where anyone could have seen them. It was the most perfect moment of freedom.

She left the next morning. The bed was still warm when he awakened. He was worried. He searched for her but could not find her.

Finally, he walked into town. Stopping for a drink of water at the pub, he asked Lem if he had seen Bridie.

“Ah, Bridie. It’s the first day of Autumn today. She’ll be headed back to her family now.”

“I thought she was a local”, Henry said.

“She comes and goes as she pleases, lad. I see from your eyes you’re in love with her. You aren’t the first, nor will you be the last. But she’s the March Hare, Bridie, and she does as she pleases. Never stays with one man.”

“The March Hare?”

“Aye, we call her that, our Bridie. Mad as a march hare. We mean no harm, though. She gets the seasons in her blood, see, like the ancestors. Spring and summer are for wild love, but when the autumn comes around, she’s gone again, back where she came from.”

“Where does she go?”

“Ah, nobody knows, but she’s got family somewhere. Brothers and sisters and cousins as wild as her I’ll wager. And it’s rumored a whole bunch of kids with different fathers. Takes care of them all well enough I’m sure or the welfare would have taken them away.” Lem shrugged, “best put her from your mind, she’s not the type to settle down.”

*

Forgetting Bridie was easier said than done. Those three months had been the freest, most wonderful months of Henry's obsessively regimented life. He hadn’t cared that the Whitby Garden Society never called him back. The rabbits finished off his prized flowers and he didn’t care. He had broken up all the steel traps the morning after Bridie’s accident. He made love with Bridie at all hours of day and night. He had long ago stopped caring about her promiscuity. Like she said, it was natural. Everything about her was natural. She was very like the wild hare they compared her to. Not mad, but a pure being of nature, driven only by her urges. He stopped caring what he wore, or what others thought of him. He ate what he enjoyed and didn’t worry about getting a belly. He didn’t fear that any pleasure would be his downfall. He had given up on all the rules that he once felt kept him safe. All because of Bridie. And now she was gone, probably for good.

Slowly, the sadness faded, so that he barely felt the hole where Bridie had been. Henry decided to stay in Meadowsweet for good. He bought the cottage from its ageing owner who lived with her son a town over. He opened a store in the town, part nursery part organic produce store. He no longer bred hybrids, but grew herbs, edible flowers and some of the best vegetables around. He became a proper part of the town, joining in the festivals, not minding their odd ways, becoming a little odder himself.

He never completely forgot Bridie, of course. So he almost thought it a dream when he saw her again, standing in the doorway of the nursery, that knowing smile on her face. It was spring again, and Bridie was back in Meadowsweet. He was so caught up in the sight of her, it took him a moment to notice the baby carrier strapped to her chest.

“I thought you might want to meet your son, Burdock.”

The baby looked nothing like his mother. He had his father’s dark complexion and messy hair. Henry knew that Burdock was his, the most perfect thing he had ever created.

“Bridie, I know you can’t belong to any one man, but will you stay with me a while, you and Burdock?”

She stayed with him all that spring and summer. Sometimes she took other lovers, but none lasted more than a night. He found he could accept that, as long as she always returned to him. He wasn’t surprised when, some nights, she slipped naked into the garden and turned into a hare, gamboling in the moonlight. Other hares would come to join her. Were some of them her children from previous lovers? He did not know, he did not ask. It was enough that he had her and Burdock.

When she left at the end of that summer, it nearly broke his heart, but she left behind their son, and he had Burdock to love and care for.

Over the years Burdock grew into a shy, awkward boy, as fey as his mother, but without her confidence and wildness. He shared his father’s passion for gardening. Henry and Burdock were very close, his mother almost a stranger, coming as she did to stay in springtime but always leaving again. She loved Burdock in her own way, but he could never get her to stay. If there were any more children, she did not bring them with her.

One spring when she was late to arrive, they heard that a naked woman had been hit by a truck a few towns over. They made it to the hospital in time to say goodbye. She was lucid for a few moments before she drifted away, that teasing smile on her lips.

They buried her in the woods. Not strictly legal, but it was the only kind of funeral she would have wanted. Although they told no one, the funeral was well attended. A motley group of nearly a hundred walked out of the woods to join them. They were all outwardly different: tall and short, a mix of races, at a glance, nothing linked them. Yet they all had that wildness about them, and most were dressed in the kind of baggy, home-knitted jumpers that Bridie had favoured. Some of them hugged Burdock and ruffled his hair and although he thought that they might be his half-brothers and sisters, he never asked.

Nearly blinded by tears, Henry didn’t see the face of the woman who clutched his hand, but her words would stay with him always.

“We are a fickle people, not known for staying put. She must have loved you very much to keep coming back.”

When they left, they asked Burdock to come with them but he refused. Unlike his mother, he was more human than hare. He was content to stay with his father, living a simple life growing plants for the nursery. Maybe one day he would fall in love, but it would be a human love, simple and steady. If there was a part of him that longed to run free in hare form and dance in the moonlight, he would never say. 

(c)opyright Laura Morrigan 2022