Chapter Eight (part d)

She tried to explain it to Rachael. She told her all about the new-moon stones and how something wonderful was happening right there in the ravine if only they knew how to see. But Rachael didn't agree with any of it.

"Get serious," she told Jennifer. "What's so special about the ravine, I mean what do you think's going on for crying in a sink? It's got jogging paths and street lights and soccer fields just like any normal place. Look, there's even a bunch of joggers running around. I mean, what could be more normal than joggers?"

The path they had been following had now come out into the open and joined a larger, more public trail and it wasn't very wild anymore. The brush was cut back and the trees had been trimmed. There was a large sign by the small stream that ran next to the path, announcing that yet another high-rise was soon to be built in the woods nearby. There were already many apartment buildings all around the edge of the ravine. Even Jennifer had to agree that it didn't look all that promising. But she consulted the pendulum anyway to see which way they should go. Jamie watched too as she let the pendulum swing free.

"What does it mean when it goes in circles?" he asked.

"I don't know," said Jennifer. "It's very strange. The pendulum's never done that before!" She looked up to see if anything else strange was happening. There was!

"Look Jamie!" she cried.

"Holy!" he whispered. "Look at all the rabbits! There must be hundreds of them and they're coming right at us!"

"They're running with the joggers," cried Jennifer. "No, wait a minute they're not ... wait, yes they are! No! Oh, I don't know what they're doing, the rabbits and the joggers are getting all mixed up together."

"What are you talking about?" demanded Rachael and she squinted up the trail. "All I see are a bunch of joggers and some dogs and ... no they aren't dogs after all!"

"I told you so," cried Jamie. "They're rabbits!"

"They are rabbits!" exclaimed Rachael. "But what happened to the joggers? What happened to the ravine?"

"I don't know!" cried Jennifer. "Everything looks so different now!"

But no-one had time to decide what was what or to find out the how or the why. The rabbits suddenly arrived in a dizzying whizz and a blur of brown fur. BAM they slammed in head-first like an avalanche

All three children were knocked down flat, while the great horde of rabbits hopped and plopped and flopped all around; great brown blobs of them thumping and bumping this way and that with more arriving all the time. On and on they just kept right on coming, more and more, scores and scores of rabbits pressing nose to nose and toe to toe all over the road. A horse-drawn wagon suddenly came around the corner, and the driver pulled it to a stop in front of the mob of rabbits.

"You rabbits you, keep out of the way! Get off the road and go away!" he cried, then he jumped from his wagon into the sea of brown fur below. When he finally reached Jennifer he brushed the rabbits off her lap, dusted them off her shoulders and helped her to her feet.

"Confounded things, not a brain in their whole hind leg," he said. "Underfoot, underfed and quite beyond use!"

Jennifer was about to thank the driver when she suddenly realized it wasn't a man at all that was brushing the last of the rabbits from her feet. It was a porcupine, a fat bristly sort of fellow that stood up on his hind legs in a rather un-porcupine sort of way.