The Magic Rabbit's New Clothes

Freed from amber, the 40-million-year-old spider laughed and danced a bizarre, twisted jig. Eight legs looked like they belonged to eight different drunken spiders. One tried this direction and the other that, and the six others got all tangled and confused.

“Free! Free!” the spider called, stumbling into Szerykl’s bunny friend, Beamish.

But, Szerykl wondered, what about me? Remember: Szerykl had magically-accidentally taken the spider’s place in amber! Surrounded by that lovely hard orange-ish sap, she couldn’t open her mouth to speak or even wiggle an ear. Being a rabbit, Szerykl liked tight, warm, underground spaces. This was different, though. Szerykl felt petrified–literally. Forty million years? She didn’t even want to spend 40 million seconds!

“Help!” thought Szerykl.

Szerykl, petrified

“Free!” cried the spider. “Somebody gimme a milkshake!” Then he stumble-bumbled and stagger-waggered right out of the Amber Museum and off to his creamy dream.

Trapped inside the amber, Szerykl worked to send thought-messages to Beamish. “Say the magic words, Beamish!” she thought, concentrating, focusing. “Say. The. Magic. Words!”

“Hello?” Beamish said. He glanced over his shoulder, then looked under his keister. “Who’s that speaking?”

“SAY. THE. MAGIC. WORDS!”

Beamish’s head whirled toward the amber. “Oh!” he said. “Szerykl! Okay. Here goes. Jubjub! Snicker-snack! Bandersnatch!”

Nothing happened. Beamish wiggled his tail. His nose scrunched.

“I ONLY KNOW THOSE MAGIC WORDS!!!” he shouted at Szerykl through the amber. Szerykl could see that Beamish trembled all over, the way rabbits do when they know a cat stalks them. “Oh, fret, fret,” he said, his words pitter-patter quick. “Can’t imagine it. Terr’ble, terr’ble. What’s it like to be trapped in amber?”

Poof! Those were the magic words–the same Szerykl had said to free the spider. Suddenly Szerykl lay flat on her back outside the amber, gulping big bunny breaths of air. She looked around. Where had Beamish gone?

Oh, no!

But then Szerykl remembered that Beamish’s magic power was to appear and disappear. He needed practice, sure, but everyone needs to practice things, whether your magic power is speaking every language or ballet dancing or going poof (!) in a fog. So Szerykl waited for Beamish to poof himself out of the amber.

First, a little bit of fog appeared next to Szerykl, so faint it might have been a breath on a cold day. Then a shred of fog seemed to fluffle in the amber, clouding Beamish’s place. And then! Szerykl saw a big puff of fog inside the amber, and when it cleared Beamish was gone.

She looked around. “Beamish!” she called out. “Where did you go?”

“Beamish!!!!!”

She waited and waited. The museum’s lights turned out and the security guard locked the doors, and she waited in the dark for a glimpse of Beamish's golden ears. In the morning the lights flashed back on and the amber glowed and the museum’s storekeeper sipped coffee, and still Szerykl waited. Where had Beamish gone? Maybe he was back in Kraków or in Philadelphia?

“It must be easy,” she thought, “to lose your way when you can poof like Beamish. How do you know where you are when you go everywhere and anywhere?”

Szerykl didn’t have Beamish’s magic. She couldn’t go everywhere and anywhere. So she decided to go home to Sheri and Michael.

“Where have you been?” said Sheri. “We’ve been worried about you!”

“You noticed I was gone?”

“Of course we did,” said Michael. “We sometimes go places without you, but we never forget about you.”

“Will you take me on your next trip, though?” asked Szerykl.

“You bet,” said Sheri. “We’re Wrocław bound.”

“VRROH-tswav?”

“That’s good pronunciation,” said Michael. “It’s a city full of dwarfs.”

Dwarfs! Szerykl recalled the Rabbit Prince’s prophecy, that she was to collect a bead of amber from dwarfs. She trembled in a happy way.

“And you’ll even be able to travel in style,” said Sheri. “A package arrived from E in Baltimore. New clothes!”

Soon, Szerykl had shed that stinky old smock she’d been wearing for...

 

(“Don’t tell them,” says Szerykl, “it’s embarrassing”)

... for five months. And she tried on everything she found in the box from E. Dresses, pants, shirts. Finally, she decided on lime pants and a matching plaid shirt.

“Good clothes for hippety-hopping,” she said.

But her excitement about the city of dwarfs was tempered. Because she’d hoped to find Beamish poofed back here to the apartment in Kraków. She looked in Michael’s clothing drawers, in Sheri’s book bag, in the cubby holes above the bed: no Beamish. She asked Gummy, “Have you seen Beamish?”

 

Gummy shook his spider head.

 

Where had Beamish gone? And what if he came looking for Szerykl in Kraków while she was off Wrocław? Oh, why was it so hard to keep track of everyone? Why did everyone have to always go everywhere?

“C’mon, Szerykl!” Sheri called. “We need to pack you into our backpack. Our train leaves soon.”

Szerykl hopped into a small pocket in the backpack, next to a set of keys. She felt excited, but also a little sad. She really wished she’d been able to tell Beamish goodbye.

 

Ready for everywhere