The Magic Hare (Red Storybook) Read online

  “Where’s the bayleaf?” he asked.

  “Bayleaf?”

  “Don’t you know about bay leaves? They give a wonderful flavour, especially to hare.”

  “You insist upon bay leaf?”

  “No, I don’t insist. But everyone knows that hare doesn’t taste its best without a little bayleaf.”

  She lowered the knife. “I would get some if I could,” she said, “just to please you. But I can’t.”

  “Why not? There’s a big bay tree just at the far edge of the forest.”

  The girl shivered.

  “I can’t go there. I’m too frightened.”

  The hare looked into her eyes.

  “If you’re frightened, don’t go,” he said. “I’ll be cooked without a bayleaf.”

  “But you won’t taste your best,” she said. “You deserve the very best cooking.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t want you to be frightened. Cook me and eat me now, and enjoy me as much as you can.”

  And he laid his head on the table.

  She put the knife down.

  “I’ll go and get the bayleaf,” she said.

  “You’re a brave girl. I’ll show you the way,” said the hare.

  They went into the forest together, the hare running ahead, the girl following. It was very dark under the trees. At first she was almost too terrified to walk. But the hare danced along the path in front of her, and after a little while she found herself dancing, too.

  At the far end of the forest she saw the bay tree. She saw the wide road. She saw the town in the valley, and the beautiful mountains beyond, and the sky beyond that. She saw the world she had never seen.

  She stopped by the bay tree and cried:

  “Look! How lovely it is! And I got here! And I’m not afraid!”

  “Pick a leaf and let’s go back for supper,” said the hare.

  She looked at him.

  “We’ll have carrot and onion soup,” she said.

  The hare jumped high into the air and landed in her wide-stretched arms. For a second she held him. Then he vanished. And from that time on, she was never afraid of the wood or the world. And she never ate another bite of meat.

  The Hare and the Giants

  The giant Aspect brothers, whose names were Dismal Aspect and Horrible Aspect, were the terror of the countryside. Especially Horrible.

  Dismal was twenty feet tall, but he never stood up straight. He dripped and drooped and shambled and stooped, but when he raised his face, everybody ran away, because he looked so miserable.

  Horrible was not so tall but he was immensely fat. When he sat down, it took ten minutes to walk round him. Somebody tried it once and just had time to shout out “Ten minutes!” before Horrible grabbed him and ate him.

  Horrible was so ugly that nobody ran away from him, because when they saw him they turned into stone. This made Horrible furious, because who likes to eat statues? He managed to keep his weight up by grabbing his share of the people Dismal caught by running after them with his long, long legs, but Horrible always complained that his food was too salty. This was due to the runaways crying at Dismal’s miserable face.

  One day, Dismal caught a couple of people. He and Horrible were fighting over them when they heard a voice crying: “Help, help! I’m caught in a trap!”

  The Aspect brothers stopped fighting, dropped their victims and dived towards the sound, hoping to find a nice fat person. But when they found the trap, it was a very small one with just a little hare caught in it.

  “Huh, huh, huh!” chortled Horrible. (Dismal never laughed, of course, he was too miserable for that.) “Look! A silly little hare! Shall I step on it, Dizzy? It’s not worth eating,” and he raised his mighty boot to crush hare and trap together.

  “Hey, wait a minute!” called out the hare as the shadow of the boot came down. “I may be little, but I’m worth my weight in gold to you boys!”

  Horrible stopped with his foot in the air. Dismal gave him a push and he fell over with a crash that made the top of a mountain fall off.

  “How?” asked Dismal dismally. He never expected anything good to happen.

  “Let me out and I’ll tell you,” said the hare.

  Dismal had the thinnest fingers, so after a lot of fiddling he managed to open the trap and the hare sprang out.

  “Follow me, both of you!” he cried, and set off in great leaps down the hillside. “I’ll show you a meal you can’t refuse!”

  The brothers looked at each other.

  “What can he do for us?” gloomed Dismal. “Let’s eat those people I—” He looked behind him, but of course they’d run away.

  “Come on!” shouted Horrible, who was always hungry, and he went jumping and thundering after the hare. Dismal gave a groan and followed unwillingly.

  After running for miles (Horrible just lay down and rolled in the end, it was all downhill) the hare stopped on the edge of a cliff.

  “They’re down there!” he panted.

  “What are?” asked both brothers at once.

  “All the people you could ever want,” said the hare. “You can eat until you burst, down there!”

  Both brothers came to the edge of the cliff and peered over. Down below was a lovely beach with thousands of holiday-makers enjoying themselves on the sand and in the sea. There were bright sunshades and coloured towels and sandcastles with flags on them and people in pretty bathing suits eating picnics and playing games and having a marvellous time.

  Horrible looked at Dismal. He was astounded to see that a slow grin was spreading over those dismal features.

  “Doesn’t it look fun down there!” Dismal said wistfully.

  “Never mind ‘fun’!” said Horrible. “Doesn’t it look like a good dinner! Come on, Diz, let’s get to it!”

  “How?” said Dismal, who had become dismal again.

  “Yes, how?” asked Horrible of the hare. “How do we get down?”

  “Jump, of course!” answered the hare.

  “JUMP!” exclaimed the brothers. “It’s far too far to JUMP!”

  But the hare simply said, “Nonsense! Call yourselves giants? Watch me!” And he flung himself off the cliff.

  Horrible lost no time. He was starving. He flung himself off the cliff, too. Dismal watched his big fat brother getting smaller and smaller. He saw him land squash on eighteen sandcastles. Everyone on the beach rose into the air from the impact. Only Horrible didn’t rise into the air.

  “Are you all right, Horry?” bawled Dismal.

  Horrible didn’t answer. Dismal didn’t fancy being left out of the feast, but just as he was about to step off the cliff with one long leg, he paused. (He was as stupid as all giants are, but he was a bit cleverer than his brother.)

  Where was the hare?

  It had entirely disappeared.

  Dismal peered downward, trying to make it out among all the people on the beach, who were all now running towards the huge, round hill that was Horrible, and which from their point of view had just dropped from the skies. Dismal could see no sign of any hare. He could see no sign of Horrible jumping up to eat all those people, either.

  “Hey, Horry!” roared Dismal, cupping his mouth in his hands.

  Not a wiggle out of him that Dismal could see. Just a big fat mountain of flesh. Children were beginning to climb up it. Dismal could see that one rather nimble little boy was already standing on his brother’s big, fat, red nose.

  “I’m the king of the castle!” the little boy called out.

  When he said those words, something extraordinary happened.

  Dismal burst out laughing.

  It seemed so funny to him, that little boy standing on Horrible’s horrible nose and shouting “I’m the king of the castle”.

  Dismal laughed with all the laughter he’d never used in all his miserable life. He roared with laughter so loud that the people down below looked up at the sky, thinking there was going to be a thunderstorm.

  “What’s so funny?” asked
a small voice beside Dismal.

  Dismal, still chortling, looked down. The hare was standing near his left foot.

  “It’s that little boy. He likes being up there on Horry’s nose! He’s having a whale of a time climbing on my fat horrible old brother!”

  “You were ready to eat that little boy,” the hare remarked. “And all the others too.”

  Dismal stopped laughing and thought about it.

  “Yeah, that’s true … Funny, that … Don’t fancy them now,” he muttered. “Somehow.”

  “What do you fancy? Fancy a giant pint of beer and a cheese and pickle sandwich and some pork scratchings?”

  That same slow, unaccustomed grin spread over Dismal’s features.

  “D’you know, Hare, that would just hit the spot, that would, now you mention it!”

  “Come on, then, let’s head for the pub.”

  The hare set off in great bounds across the hills, with Dismal gallumphing after him. If a giant can skip, he was skipping. By the time they reached the nearest pub, he was whistling.

  “That’s a jolly tune,” said the Hare, “What is it?”

  “‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Giant’,” said Dismal, and gave a bellow of laughter. “No one will be, from now on! What’re you having, Hare? My shout!”

  Quite soon after that, he changed his name. To Cheerful Aspect.

  The Hare and the Vampire

  When a hare decides to go on holiday, it’s usually quite a business. He has to hop to wherever he wants to go, and then just hope he’ll find a decent burrow to stay in. By the time he’s hopped all the way, say to the seaside, he’s so tired he can’t enjoy himself much. So most hares just stay at home and make the best of what they’re used to.

  The magic hare, of course, didn’t have to bother with all this. If he wanted to go somewhere, he just wished himself there, and there he was.

  The only trouble was, he had to have some definite destination in mind, and he didn’t know many places to wish himself to.

  One day he was thinking about a holiday, and not wanting to go to any of the boring old places he’d been before, when suddenly he had an idea.

  He crouched in the long grass beside a lane. After a while, a boy came past, and the hare jumped out in front of him.

  “Where would you go on holiday if you could go anywhere you liked?” he asked.

  “Transylvania,” replied the boy at once.

  “Trans-where?” asked the hare. “What sort of a place is that?”

  “I read about it in a book,” said the boy. “It’s exciting there. Lots of vampires.”

  “Really!” said the hare. “How interesting! Well, thanks.” And he hopped back into the grass.

  He had never heard of vampires and hadn’t a clue what they were, but the boy had sounded very enthusiastic. No doubt vampires were something nice like sand-dunes to slide down, or woods to go exploring in, or perhaps delicious things to eat that you couldn’t get at home.

  Without delay the hare shut his eyes and wished himself in Transylvania.

  He opened his eyes and found he was at the top of a mountain, facing a tall and gloomy mansion. It was night, and a full moon shone down on the black turrets and chimneys. Bats flitted about. It was very cold and very quiet. The hare shivered. He didn’t think much of Transylvania so far.

  “I wonder where the vampires are,” he thought.

  Just at that moment he saw a strange shape flitting round the turrets and chimneys. It looked like an enormous bat, but it wasn’t. It was a man with a big cloak. The hare saw the strange figure climb into the mansion through a skylight.

  The hare wished himself inside the mansion. He wanted to see what this funny-looking bat-like man was up to.

  Hare found him tiptoeing about in the attic on creaking floorboards. Seen up close, he was decidedly scary. He had shiny hair plastered to his head, eyes that glowed in the dark, and a big, red-lipped mouth.

  “Are you looking for something?” asked the hare politely.

  The weird man swung round with a snarl, and the hare saw his teeth for the first time. They were the scariest thing of all. They were all jagged and pointy. The hare couldn’t help jumping backwards, away from him.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here?” growled the man.

  “I’m on holiday,” said the hare, trying to sound careless.

  “On holiday? Here?” asked the man in astonishment. “Why?”

  “This is Transylvania, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well! I was told it’s a very nice place,” said the hare. “There are vampires here, you know.”

  The man stared at him with his glowing eyes, and then suddenly put his head back and let out a bark of laughter.

  “You don’t say so,” he said. “Vampires! And what does a vampire look like, little hare, eh? Would you know one if you met one?”

  “Er – well,” said the hare, feeling embarrassed. “I imagine they’re a … well, a feature of the landscape, or … possibly some sort of … erm. They’re a well-known local attraction, anyway.”

  “A local attraction, are they?” echoed the strange man with an evil chuckle. “I didn’t realise that! Well, now you’re here, we can’t disappoint you, can we? I must show you the sights!”

  With that he swooped down on the hare and picked him up by the ears.

  “Come with me, my little tourist,” he said.

  Before the hare knew what was happening, he found himself swiftly carried down a flight of stairs, along a dark corridor and into a huge room. It had a four-poster bed in it with dark curtains, and fast asleep in the bed was a beautiful young girl.

  The hare could see her by the light of six candles that burnt in a silver candlestick on the bedside table. The girl’s fair hair lay across her pillow; her hands were folded on the edge of the sheet.

  The man put the hare on the end of the bed.

  “Sh!” he whispered with his finger to his lips. “We mustn’t wake her! Not too soon, anyway,” and he gave another of his evil chuckles.

  The hare, feeling more and more uneasy, watched as the man threw his cloak back over his shoulders. He smiled at the hare, baring those awful teeth, then he bent down as if to kiss the girl.

  The hare, without knowing he was going to do it, leapt on to the girl’s feet, waking her up.

  The first thing she saw on opening her eyes, of course, was the man’s face.

  She let out a shriek.

  “EEEEEK! A vampire!”

  “I don’t believe this!” cried the hare. “You’re a vampire! You!”

  “Yes indeed,” said the man, who was now holding the struggling girl by the shoulders. “I’m what you’ve come all this way to see.”

  “What are you doing!” cried the hare, jumping up and down on the girl’s stomach in his anxiety. “You look as if you’re trying to bite her!”

  “Well done,” said the man, “you’ve got it. I’m going to bite her and drink her blood, that’s what vampires do – didn’t you know?”

  “That’s revolting!” said the hare, and at last remembered to do a bit of magic.

  All the vampire’s teeth fell out on the floor, plink, plank, plonk. He let the girl go, and she fell back on the bed in a fearful state.

  The vampire was in a state, too. He clapped his hand to his mouth and tried to say something, but all that came out was:

  “Mmm-blp-mmmbl-fffllll-mmm!”

  “You’re disgusting,” said the hare. “Biting girls’ necks, goodness gracious grips, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Well, that’s the end of your career as a neck-biter. What’s that you said?”

  At last he made out the words.

  “I’ll get falff teeff!”

  “They only make nice smooth ones,” said the hare. “As a vampire you’re finished.”

  The vampire let out a groan and slunk away with his cloak trailing on the ground.

  The hare turned to the girl. “Come on, cheer up, it’s all over!” he
said, wiping her tears with his long ears.

  “I’ve got a pain!” she sobbed.

  “Where? In your neck? Did he get you?”

  “No! You did! Jumping on me! I’ve got a sore tummy!”

  “Ah!” The hare quickly magicked it away and, jumping to the floor, did a dance to make her laugh.

  “Tell me,” he panted at the end, leaping back on the bed again. “is there anything else to do in Transylvania, except rescue girls from vampires?”

  “Not a lot,” she said with a sigh, stroking him. “It’s a boring old place if you ask me.”

  “So why did that boy say it would be exciting?” wondered the hare.

  The Hare and the Lazy Hunter

  Once there was a hunter who was so lazy, he couldn’t be bothered to go out to hunt until he was practically starving.

  When that happened, he would whistle up his dog.

  “Don’t just lie about, you lazy beast!” he would say, as the dog shambled to his side. “Get out of here and catch me some game!”

  The dog, who was just about as lazy as his master, would heave a deep sigh, and walk very slowly out of the door, pausing on the way to sit down and scratch a flea.

  His master would fly into a rage.

  “What’s the use of you?” he would shout. “Get on with it, and never mind scratching your worthless hide!”

  At this the dog would put on a turn of speed and run off into the countryside – run as fast as it could, until it was out of sight of the hunter’s cottage. Then it would lie down and doze in the sun, hoping some idiotic creature would run so close to its mouth that he could catch it without any effort.

  One day the dog was lying like that, half asleep, when a big, fat hare came jumping along the path.

  The dog opened one eye and watched it, rolling its eye up and down as the hare bounded along.

  “It doesn’t see me!” thought the dog, although he was lying right across the path. “Perhaps it thinks I’m a log and will try to jump over me! Then I can grab its legs without even getting up!”

  But when the hare had nearly reached it, it stopped, sat down, and scratched its long ear with one long back foot. Just the way the dog did when it had a flea.