Digging into a Village Called 'Polish Rabbit"

The morning after our trio of magic rabbits escaped the dragon’s lair, Szerykl woke to find the Neighborhood Grandparents engrossed in their morning routine: strong coffee and laptops.

Szerykl hopped onto Michael’s, taking care not to land on the keyboard.

“Just in time to help with the Wordle,” said Michael.

Szerykl studied the screen. “GHOST,” she said.

“That’s the word!” cried Michael.

“Tomorrow’s will be CROWN,” Szerykl said.

Michael’s face scrunched up like Szerykl had bit his nose with sharp rabbit teeth.

“I’m not supposed to tell you, am I?” she said. She’d wanted to be helpful because she needed a favor, but now maybe she’d blown it.

“Magic plays by its own rules,” Michael said. “Live with a magic rabbit, and you have to get used to that.”

Szerykl pirouetted right there on his laptop but stumbled at the end, so one paw landed on the shift key.

“Let’s shift the subject,” Szerykl said. “I have something to tell you that’s magical, too. You might not believe it.”

Michael sipped his coffee. “I’m all ears,” he said, and wiggled two fingers of each hand aside his head as if he were a rabbit.

“That’s a good Dad joke!” said Szerykl. Then she began. “I want to tell you a secret nobody knows but us rabbits. You know that village where your great grandparents lived? Królik Polski?”

“We’re going there this week to look into my family history,” said Michael. “We’ve been before, and we learned a lot. For example, my great-great grandfather was a farmer. But we couldn’t find anything about one particular relative. She was my great-grandmother Maria Fedor, who was maybe Ukrainian and Greek Catholic and–”

“You know the village name means ‘Polish Rabbit.’ ”

Michael nodded, a little perturbed that he’d been interrupted. “Such a goofy name.” He shook his head.

“It’s a noble name!” Szerykl exclaimed. And then she went on to tell Michael how beneath that village lay the Great Bunny Burrow, dating back a thousand yesteryears, populated over the centuries by billions of rabbits. “That’s what explains those foothills around the village,” Szerykl said. “Those mounds were made when generations and generations of rabbits dug out the earth to make their burrows." 

“Maybe my great-great grandmother trapped and ate rabbits,” Michael said.

“Read the room!” shouted Szerykl. She covered her face with her paws. “Anyway, I need to go along with you. And so do my friends Beamish and the Rabbit Prince. If we can get to Królik Polski, we can fulfill an ancient prophecy and the Rabbit Prince will be crowned the Rabbit King!”

“Under the earth, rabbits will sing,” said Michael.

“You know the prophecy?”

“You sing it in your sleep. Over and over. It’s an ear worm. Anyway, yes, come along. You three won’t burden us, provided you don’t mind traveling zipped up in my backpack.”

Later that afternoon, Szerykl met Charley Bear at a park for a picnic lunch and explained why a bear couldn’t go along to Królik Polski. “Sadly, you’re too big for the backpack,” she said.

***

Maybe it was true what the Rabbit Prince had said, that underneath Królik Polski lay the largest, coziest, rabbit burrow in the world with its rabbit pedicurists and rabbit aromatherapy salons and rabbit smoothie shops and especially the Royal Rabbit Cathedral where he’d be crowned.

But up above where the sky rose up forever, the people village was teensy-tiny! Just a few hundred souls lived there. Królik Polski had one elementary school and no restaurant and no place for a visitor to sleep and only two stops for the vans that carried people to other towns and villages. So Sheri and Michael rented a room in a nearby town and rode bicycles to reach Królik Polski. There, in the village center with its 400-year-old church where Michael’s ancestors had been baptized and married, Michael opened his backpack and let loose the magic rabbits.

The rabbits landed in tall, fresh grass, noses twitching. The Rabbit Prince scampered in circles. Beamish poofed there and there and back again. Szerykl sniffed the air and she smelled that comforting smell of other rabbits, and she saw in her mind a picture of herself, grazing on thick, sweet grass across these hillsides. She saw herself sleeping softly in the warmth of deep and ancient earth, soft dirt, cuddled with millions of rabbits.

“This feels like home,” she whispered to herself, not even knowing, really, what she meant by that except maybe that here she felt most like her best self. It was as if she’d returned to a home she’d never known.

Beamish poofed in beside her. “For me, too,” he said. And they both fell quiet a moment.

Then the three magic rabbits gazed out over the land, all those grassy hills built by centuries of burrowing rabbits. “What’s next?” asked Beamish.

“We go under the earth,” said the Rabbit Prince. “There’s a passageway just over there. See that great tree? It was already old when Michael’s great grandparents lived here. There’s a hole in it that leads to a tunnel and that tunnel leads to the Great Bunny Burrow.”

Quickly, the three hopped over. Szerykl carried with her two of the amber beads. Beamish hid another inside his deep, thick, bristly fur. And the Rabbit Prince carried the fourth – the heart-shaped bead – deep inside his magical self, nestled alongside his own pitter-pattering heart.

The ancient tree had over the years grown limbs long and twisted, bark so thick and gnarly it appeared no axe could cut it, and a crown so high and wide you could only grasp its girth by flying overhead on the back of a stork, those birds so common and beloved in Poland.

In the tree’s trunk lay a large cleft, deep and dark. Around the cleft grew green, stringy moss, and leading to the cleft’s mouth was a trail of fine brown dust, like a welcoming path that Szerykl followed.

“Oh, that dust,” said the Rabbit Prince. “That means carpenter ants.”

Even as he spoke, the ants appeared, large and crawling sharp-mouthed little wood-chewing creatures. They swarmed the space, skittering around the magic rabbits,. “No biting!” cried Beamish! “No biting!”

Szerykl shuddered as one ant crawled up her leg and then to her ear!

“Clack, clack,” it chittered. “Old rabbit track no way to come back, clack, clack? Go home by another tack, clack, clack?”

“Please excuse me,” said Szerykl in that polite Polish way. “I’m only a visitor. I didn’t mean to disturb you. I don’t know how to reach the Great Bunny Burrow, because I’ve never been there. It’s not actually my home. Maybe you can suggest an alternate route?”

“Clack, clack, a rabbit home you lack?”

“Oh,” said Szerykl, “not at all. I’m from–”

 

But this stopped her. Hadn’t she said just a moment ago that she felt coming to Królik Polski was like returning to a home she’d never known? So: if not here, where was home? Was it back in Baltimore with E? Was it in a Kraków apartment with Michael and Sheri where she had made friends like Gummy the Spider and Charley Bear? Or was it under the earth where she could cuddle with small fuzzies like her?

As if the ant could read Szerykl’s mind, it whispered, “Clack, clack, rabbit out of whack.”

Ants, Szerykl knew, stay in one place, one colony or hill, with their family and friends: their own ones, as she’d heard them called in a song Michael liked listening to.

Szerykl hadn’t stayed with her own ones. She’d gone out into the world on adventures. Now she wondered whether any place you find yourself can become home–especially after you make friends. Maybe E had known that. That’s why E worried when Sheri and Michael left: she knew they might make new friends and become happy and never come home. And hadn’t that actually-in-truth happened? Szerykl knew how much Michael and Sheri loved living in Kraków. The walks, the bicycle rides, the parks, and the book shops. And they’d made lots of  new friends, with names like Michał and Scotia and Władek and Łukasz and Jane.

“Let’s find another gateway,” the Rabbit Prince called out. “We don’t want to saunter through their colony. It’s their home, after all.”

And he hopped away, Beamish following. Szerykl hesitated, recalling E and Baltimore and the promise she’d made. She was supposed to make Michael and Sheri return, but what if Szerykl herself didn’t want to leave Królik Polski?

How many homes could one Magic Rabbit have?

But now she’d caught up to Beamish and the Rabbit Prince–were they her own ones?–who stood over another gateway, another place rabbits called home.

 

“Down we go!” said the Rabbit Prince.