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I happen upon the nest while surveying the devastation inflicted on the farm by the storm. The nearly uprooted tree is tilted enough that the nest, miraculously spared destruction by the tangled mass of broken branches around it, has come to rest just above eye level. Sitting in it, frightened and cold, is a lone baby rabbit.
I reach in and grab it gently, the tiny creature barely fidgeting, fluffing its fur and immediately cozying up to the warmth of my cupped hands.
“Where are your brothers and sisters?” I ask as I begin walking.
“They were taken by the big bird. Biiig, scaaary biiird… Oooh…” He trembles, no doubt reliving the abduction in his mind. Cute and helpless become dismal adjectives.
“How come it didn’t take you?”
“Because I’m different. Because I’m special.” He sounds quite sure of himself. “See how tame I am? If you look into my eye, you will see in it the ineffable Seal of God.”
Worth a look. I raise him up to my face and amplify the image of his eye. The effect is that of riding a meteor as it approaches the atmosphere of an alien planet, the round of the cornea glistening in the light of space and flattening as I come closer and closer upon the brown wrinkles of the iris. The iris expands to form a mountain range surrounding a circular lake, Lake Black Pupil, resting beneath the beautiful bluish transparency of an airy surface marred only by… What? A little cloud…?
The seal is an oblong, translucent, iridescent shape floating on the cornea and surrounded by progressively fainter concentric rings. A gentle tilt reveals all the colors of the rainbow dancing within it; a subtle, exquisite, ever-morphing composition.
“I see it! It’s there!”
“I told you.” He asserts.
“So… What do I do with it?”
“Oh, nothing. You can’t do anything with the Seal of God. You can only look at it. And it’s everywhere. As a matter of fact, I used to have it on one of my buttocks.”
He pauses, becomes absorbed. Conjuring up the memory of a different body sets off a process of awakening, the little animal vessel stiffening up as he slowly begins to understand his new condition.
“How long has it been since my life?”
A breathless question.
It’s then that I recognize the voice. Of course. I’ve come across this spirit before. I have access to his records, and begin going through them in the back offices of my mind. The images in his file are of a white man in his late thirties or maybe early forties; a pleasant face with longish, straight brown hair. The last picture shows him looking quite tired in his blue hospital gown.
“Seven years.” I whisper it to him, no need to shock him any further.
He’s frozen in my hands, trying to come to terms with what he cannot understand.
“Oh, David…”
We have reached the farm house, and I set him down in the cage where I will keep him until he can take care of himself. I know that as soon as I utter the next phrase he will lose his memory and capacity for speech, but I utter it nonetheless. I have to. It’s my job.
“You are a rabbit now.”
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Dream Journal, July 9, 2010
