Eden is going to tell you a story today...
‘Come to me, Little One.’
‘Let me tell you. Once, there was an old beggar woman who lived in a hole in the hills. She lived in a hole in the ground and she ate mushrooms she foraged from the land. And worms that trespassed into her burrow. But one day she returned from her foraging. Down deep in her burrow, a hunter had come to steal her coat of fur.’
‘All women used to have fur until the hunters decided it wasn’t what they wanted anymore. And having her thick coat stolen from her – that changed her. Her spine straightened and she stood on her hind legs, not like the hunched creature she’d once been. She looked like a hunter. The woman she used to be was gone forever.’
‘The rabbit woman asked herself, over and over again, Why did the hunter have to find me? Could it not have been my mama, my sister, or the other wise women of the burrows? Because that was true, it could have been anyone, anyone whose coat was shiny enough to tear from flesh, anyone who caught the human hunter’s fancy. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, with the wrong person.’
‘One day, when the sun was at its highest point in the sky and the heat was beating down onto the currents of the beck, she lured her mama, her sister and the other women of the burrows out into the pastures. And then she skinned them alive, pulling out their muscles and leaving their skins to rot in the hot sun. She didn’t want to be the only one changed. She took their bones and left the rest to ferment. Crushing down the bones, she formed flour, hoping that the femur’s dust would let little rabbit hairs sprout from her back once again.’
