The black-furred little beast could be described in a single sentence: it was even more heartless than the immortal who lived on its mountain.
People said you could judge a person’s whole life by the time they turned three. With a creature like this, three days would do. Before its eyes had even opened, it knew to push its brothers and sisters away to steal the milk. Other newborn rabbits might stake out a place and feed as hard as they could. This one had to shove the entire litter aside, spread its plump little body across all eight teats, and only then pick whichever one pleased it and nurse at its leisure.
Eventually its mother grew sick of this behavior. She would kick it away, let the other young ones eat their fill, and only afterward allow it anywhere near her.
After a month of going hungry through the nursing period, the domineering black-furred kit had actually ended up smaller and thinner than its less aggressive siblings.
Another month passed. By then its coat was thick and black except for a single white patch on its rump. It followed its mother out of the burrow with its backside proudly raised, into a wide world where everything seemed available for eating.
The black-furred little beast ate its way into a half-grown black-furred beast in no time. Its battles with field mice, hedgehogs, weasels, and other small animals over food made it increasingly fierce and formidable. It could kick, bite, and rake with its forepaws. It also stayed as ruthless and domineering as ever. Even in its sleep it kicked its brothers out of the way. When it did not feel like finding food, it stole its sisters’ meals instead, then kicked dirt all over them for good measure.
Its ancestors had been domestic burrowing rabbits that escaped from homes beyond the mountains and became wild. For generations they had kept the mild, docile character of their breed. Not until this particular litter had the family produced such a swaggering little tyrant. Its mother disliked it, and its siblings both feared and hated it. When winter came in the year of its birth, with the kit only a few months old, its mother took the rest of the litter downhill to somewhere warmer, leaving it behind, whether intentionally or not.
Thus the half-grown black-furred beast became a solitary half-grown black-furred beast. This did not trouble its lively spirits in the least. Heartless by nature, it only thought that with its mother gone there was no one left to stop it grabbing food. It could swagger about as it pleased or lie sprawled wherever it liked. What a comfortable life!
It claimed the whole burrow for itself, slipped down the mountain several times at dusk, and carried back a nest’s worth of rice straw to keep warm. It also fought a pitched battle with a family of field mice in a patch of farmland, kicked the old mouse’s jaw askew, and stole a raw sweet potato.
After sleeping lazily in its burrow all day, it finished the sweet potato at dusk and poked its head outside. Everything had turned dazzling white.
Its thick black fur and the fat beneath kept the cold away. Fascinated by this unfamiliar snow, it bounded out and rolled all over the white ground, then hopped over to the tiny shrine by its burrow. Finding nothing to eat there, it decided to chew on the red cloth covering the immortal’s head.
The immortal promptly picked it up. This was familiar treatment: ever since the little beast had once chewed up his bamboo toy cart, it had often been lifted and carried about. It made no attempt to struggle, merely turned to gnaw the immortal’s green robe with equal indifference.
“Silly rabbit, New Year’s almost here. Do you know that?” The immortal held it in his arms, stroked its fur, and spoke gently to it. The rabbit understood the mountain spirit’s words, but had no idea what New Year meant. It turned its head away and ignored him, shifting its attention to chewing his long hair instead.
“Oh, you little beast…” The immortal sighed and lifted it away again, quite at his wit’s end.
It had known this immortal since it was small. He was forever finding himself at a loss when it chewed on everything, and sometimes held out a little round object in his palm to coax it. But to the rabbit, the thing smelled cloyingly sweet and lacked the fresh scent of grasses or leaves. It always turned up its nose at it. Only in bitter weather would it pretend to accept the gift and curl up inside the god’s robe to shelter from wind and snow, pushing the round sweet back and forth with its paws and nose as though it were a pebble to play with.
Sometimes the immortal appeared, sometimes he did not. It made little difference to the rabbit: when he appeared, it could amuse itself by gnawing on him; when he did not, it played on its own. Come the next spring’s mating season, it roamed the mountains after female rabbits whenever the urge struck, then bounded away without a care afterward. It lived as freely as could be, and not one doe ever came looking to hold it responsible.
“You heartless little beast,” the immortal scolded.
The rabbit merely belched. The sky had cleared, and it reckoned it would soon be hungry again. With a push of its hind legs, it sprang out of the immortal’s arms to forage.
And so four years went by. Living a carefree bachelor’s life in the burrow behind the mountain shrine, it grew into a great black-furred brute. All its eating and leaping had made it solid and well fed, far larger than an ordinary rabbit, so that from a distance it resembled a little black dog sitting on its haunches. It remained as fierce a fighter as ever: it had once launched itself through the air and kicked a village dog in the nose. After that, the cowardly dog would turn aside whenever it caught the rabbit’s scent, and Black Fur could go into the village and steal as many sweet potatoes as it pleased.
The little shrine before its burrow had changed greatly, too. First came repairs to the shrine and a new row of bamboo fencing, ideal for sharpening its teeth. Then more and more worshippers began to come, and the altar, long empty, finally had food on it.
It stayed in its burrow while visitors crowded the shrine by day, coming out at night to collect apples from the altar. The immortal never minded. There was just one kind of offering it could not touch: food given by a big, dark-skinned man. Whenever the rabbit leaped onto the altar for that food, the offerings would fly across the space and land in the arms of the mountain god, who had suddenly appeared.
Later that big fellow even set up a stall in front of the shrine, covered in bamboo objects perfect for sharpening teeth. Black Fur had coveted them for a long time but never had its chance. Whenever the man curled up asleep on the big rock, the rabbit would slip into his bamboo basket, only for the immortal to materialize from nowhere and toss it back into its burrow before it could take a bite.
It did not mind. Shut inside its burrow, it slept soundly. By the next morning it would be bouncing about as usual, and at night it would make another determined attempt on the bamboo basket.
Early spring came again. The weather turned warm; the snow below the mountain had melted long ago, leaving only a little on the peaks. With its belly full and nothing to do, the rabbit instinctively decided that with the whole mountainside coming into flower, mating season must have arrived. Off it bounced to look for does, the one white puff on its rump bobbing as it went.
Whole litters of female rabbits fled at the mere rumor and refused to come out of their burrows. The bullying ways of that damned Black Fur halfway up the mountain had already spread through every rabbit on the mountain—going into heat at random, pinning them down and doing it, with something large and endurance to match, keeping at it a full day and night until the girls were half-dead yet still refusing to let go. And the most wicked part of all: this fellow had probably committed too many sins and been stripped by Heaven of any ability to sire offspring. Even after being thrust half to death by it, none of them could get pregnant no matter what.
Black Fur had no idea how fiercely the other rabbits despised it. As thoughtless as ever, it chased the females across the mountain, always leaving promptly afterward. One morning it pursued a beautiful white doe for half a mountainside, but just as it was catching up, she darted into the snowy woods near the summit and vanished against the white. Frustrated, Black Fur pricked up its ears to work out which way she had gone, only to hear a scream.
Pushing off with its hind legs, Black Fur shot into the snowy woods, eager for any chance to fight a grand battle. No, to rescue a damsel in distress! There it saw a full-grown mottled wildcat, sturdy and muscular, with two handsome tufts of fur rising from its ears. The creature stood menacingly with the pretty white rabbit held in its jaws.
Even from several meters away, Black Fur’s keen nose caught the thick metallic smell of blood. The white doe’s fur was soaked in it; her head drooped, and she lay utterly still. She was plainly dead.
After four years of surviving by its wits in the mountains, Black Fur knew that this was a predator as dangerous as a wolf, one that lived on rabbits. Ordinarily not even the fiercest rabbit could defeat a wildcat. Since the white doe was already dead, Black Fur made a decisive choice: it turned and fled.
Wind rushed past its long ears. Before its eyes could focus, the great wildcat was already upon it, the white rabbit still hanging from its jaws. With a muffled roar, it lashed out with one enormous paw.
Black Fur was sent flying into the nearest tree and fell with a splat into the snow. It lay there completely motionless, like a corpse.
Pleased with the power of its own blow, the wildcat dropped the dead white rabbit and came forward to examine its prey. Just as it lowered its head, Black Fur sprang up and delivered a ferocious flying kick to its nose. The wildcat howled, clutched at its face, and tumbled several paces away.
Black Fur, which had only been playing dead, leaped to its feet and fled for its life once more.
But the difference in their strength was too great. Before it had covered a few dozen meters, another smack of the wildcat’s paw sent it flying. This time its head struck a tree, and it truly lost consciousness.
When Black Fur came to, one of its hind legs was in excruciating pain.
It struggled and shuddered. All around it was the heavy scent of danger, mingled with the smell of blood from its own hind leg. Had the bone been bitten clean through, or had a great piece of flesh been torn away? It could not tell.
It swayed to its feet and quickly grasped the situation. The big wildcat, which appeared to be female, had carried it unconscious to this rocky den and injured one of its hind legs so her young could practice hunting it.
The wildcat’s offspring were four half-grown cubs, scarcely smaller than Black Fur itself. Round-headed and thick-pawed, they crouched beside their mother’s feet, gazing up at the rabbit with utterly innocent eyes.
Innocent eyes contemplating their next meal.
Black Fur pushed off on its agonizing hind leg and, exactly as the mother wildcat wished, bolted.
There was no helping it. To remain in the den was to die.
With wind whistling behind it and the cubs panting and growling at its heels, Black Fur ran a skillfully twisting course: now turning abruptly, now darting down a narrow track, now plunging through thickets of thorns.
Its wounded leg throbbed, scattering blood whenever it struck the ground. An ordinary rabbit would long since have given up, but Black Fur was as ruthless toward itself as toward anyone else. If its leg broke, it could always bite the useless thing off later. Better to lose a leg than its life. It ran so hard that, after nearly half a mountainside, three of the young wildcats had fallen behind.
Only one cub kept coming. It seemed the smallest of the litter, with flattened fur and a skinny frame, yet it was the most agile and persistent. Growling low in its throat, it followed relentlessly. Young as it was, it already had its mother’s murderous air.
In its headlong flight, Black Fur lost its bearings. Only when the snowy white ground ahead suddenly ended did it realize it had run straight to the edge of a cliff.
It stopped and turned to face the little wildcat. Its injured leg shook with pain, but its bullying swagger had not weakened. Every hair on its body bristled, and it hissed a warning.
The little wildcat growled and placed its paws with care, searching for the best angle of attack. The rabbit’s blood excited it; its beautiful golden eyes shone with a predator’s fierce intent.
Then, pushing off with its legs, it sprang straight at Black Fur.
Black Fur leaped aside. As the wildcat turned back, the rabbit raked its face with a savage swipe. Three bloody lines appeared from one eye down to its nose, and the cub cried out and staggered backward.
Limping away, Black Fur tilted its head and fixed the other creature with a taunting look, hissing all the while as it retreated inch by inch.
The pain had blurred the wildcat’s vision. Through the snowy whiteness it made out that hateful black shape and, without another thought, launched itself forward again.
Black Fur twisted aside, and the cub missed a second time. Unable to stop its own charge, it found nothing beneath its paws and went tumbling over the edge of the cliff.
Having deliberately drawn the cub to the cliff edge, Black Fur lay there twitching its long ears. Hearing nothing, it was so smug that it nearly hopped about in celebration. The moment it pushed off, though, its injured leg reminded it of the pain. Worse, it had left blood along the whole route: the other wildcats would catch up eventually. Better to save its life first.
It bent down to lick the bloodied heel of its hind leg and was preparing to limp away when a dangerous scent abruptly filled the air. Before it could spring, something cold touched the back of its neck!
The little wildcat had scrambled up from the cliff and pounced without warning, sinking its teeth into the rabbit’s scruff.
Both the cub’s front paws were bloody, and several claws had snapped as it desperately clawed at the rock face. Trying to hold Black Fur down with those paws as well as its jaws was now difficult. And because it had seized the wrong part of the neck, while the rabbit’s constant eating and food stealing had left it so well padded, its bite had missed the vital spot.
Black Fur darted and rolled this way and that on its injured leg, desperate to throw the wildcat off its back. But the cub clung on with grim determination: if it couldn’t kill the rabbit with its bite, it would drag it to death without letting go.
Blood spread across the snow as the two creatures grappled and rolled. The black bundle of fur and the mottled one took turns on top until they were nearly one enormous ball of black and spotted fur. Then the ball rolled straight off the cliff.
In the dizzying fall, their bodies struck hard earth and rock with searing pain. The little wildcat fainted first, its sharp teeth finally releasing their grip, though its bloodied claws remained hooked into Black Fur’s back. Amid the chaos, Black Fur twisted around and bit the cub’s leg in return, becoming the first rabbit in the mountains bold enough to bite a wildcat. Still tangled together, they went tumbling down the slope.
The well-fed, sturdy black rabbit was the first to wake.
Half its body lay on the little wildcat, with its teeth still clenched around the cub’s leg. When it let go, its front teeth ached so badly they nearly came loose. Shaking free of the broken claws caught in its back, it laboriously crawled one small step forward.
Then it ran out of strength and lay motionless on the ground.
The cub lay limp beside the rabbit’s leg. The tug on its wounded paws had woken it, and it whimpered softly. Its eyes were still smeared with blood. Following the scent, it reached out a pink little tongue to lick blood from Black Fur’s leg, too weak even to bite off a mouthful of meat.
Rabbit and wildcat lay dazed on the ground throughout the day. Luckily, the early-spring sun was mild, there was no snow in the valley, and the weather was neither too hot nor too cold. Few animals lived nearby, and no vultures came to carry them off. By nightfall they were still alive.
With great effort, Black Fur raised its head and ate the scattered blades of grass just sprouting nearby. It pulled up roots for the moisture in them. After a full day of scraping together strength, it shook its blood-matted coat and slowly, unsteadily stood.
The cub had already licked the blood from its leg; the wound was scabbed over and no longer bleeding. As Black Fur got up to go, the dazed little wildcat whimpered, unwilling to lose the meat it had been licking so long yet lacked the strength to bite.
Despite its own pain, Black Fur gave the cub a kick that sent the weakened creature tumbling, too exhausted even to raise its head.
Black Fur left it behind and hopped away with a limp. It had gone only a few steps before its whole body weakened. Bright moonlight filled its eyes; a wave of dizziness came over it, and it sank to the ground as though enchanted.
The moonlight grew steadily brighter, seemingly possessed of spiritual energy and a sense of direction, until it gathered around the spot where the rabbit had fallen. As the night deepened, the moon grew rounder. At the height of the full moon, the groggy rabbit suddenly felt a movement beneath its body.
It writhed and struggled, still too weak to leap aside, when something pushed up against its belly and shoved it over. It fell to one side with a splat.
The earth where it had been lying began to crack and crumble. A pale-purple, mushroom-like growth emerged, spreading outward like a flower coming into bloom. It grew until it was half Black Fur’s size, then stopped and stood quietly in the pure white moonlight.
The plant looked exquisite and ethereal, surrounded by a faint immortal aura that seemed to forbid anyone from touching or defiling it. Most creatures with a trace of spiritual awareness would have fled or bowed before it. Black Fur merely stared, leaned in to rub it with its little red nose, then opened its gap-toothed mouth and took a great bite.
For rabbit’s sake! One look told you it had to taste good!
The texture was nothing like it had imagined. Soft and fleshy, it was less appetizing than an ordinary mushroom, with only a faint sweetness. But it was ravenous. It kept chewing greedily until its long ears twitched and its nose caught a detestable scent: the little wildcat was stumbling toward it again.
Black Fur, possessive of its food as always, shoved the wildcat away with its rump. The cub, however, had no interest in plants. It staggered back and tried to lick the rabbit’s injured hind leg. Finding no blood there, it whimpered in disappointment and earned another kick.
Black Fur’s kick was weak. The little wildcat rolled over and came right back.
The rabbit kicked it away a second time.
Not until Black Fur had devoured the mushroom’s entire cap, leaving only a bare stalk, did the cub give up trying to approach. It could only growl with resentment and grind its teeth, longing to bite the rabbit’s rump but lacking the strength.
With its belly round and its energy restored, Black Fur looked back at the nearly lifeless cub. While it still had the strength, it bounded over and kicked it twice more. The little wildcat curled beside the mushroom stalk and coughed up blood. Then the rabbit hobbled away with its head held high.
The cub rolled in pain, broken claws digging into the ground as its whole body trembled. It was only a few months old, a slow-witted and solitary little thing that had never played with its siblings or sought affection from its mother. Its mother was not fond of it; its siblings pushed it aside and stole some of its food, leaving it painfully thin. Still, life had not been unbearable. Who could have guessed its first hunt on its own would end with it being tormented by the very creature it had tried to eat?
The cub gave several faint whimpers. Starving, it forced itself upright and leaned against the mushroom stalk. It sniffed with its little nose. The stalk seemed faintly to smell of meat, so it feebly bit into it, chewed and swallowed, but remained hungry. With its bleeding little paws it dug into the earth, unearthed an oddly shaped clump of roots, and gulped those down as well.
It lay on the ground for a while and seemed to recover a little strength almost at once. Somehow it was able to stand again, and it tottered off in the direction Black Fur had gone.
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