The Legendary Rabbit of Death - volume five

The Legendary Rabbit of Death - volume five

The Legendary Rabbit of Death - volume five

The Legendary Rabbit of Death - Volume Five

Ræchel Togden

2019

Aro Books

worldwide

, PO Box 111, 5 Court Close, Cardiff, Wales, CF14 1JR

© 2019 by by Ræchel Togden

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.The Legendary Rabbit of Death

First Edition 2019

ISBN: 978-1-898185-49-9 (paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-898185-56-7 (epub)

To my dear brother Robert who gave me good suggestions for my stories, and to my dear friend Ronja.

Foreword

My name is Ræchel Renate Tresise Togden. I wrote this book called The Legendary Rabbit of Death with my dad. I illustrated the stories too. It all started off with drawing rabbits. My dad scanned them and then helped me colour them with Photoshop. I didn’t know anything about Photoshop at first – but my dad showed me how to do lots of things. I learnt more and more with each rabbit. There are lots of good things in Photoshop but it’s not something that is easy unless you have a dad or mum to help you. At first my dad was always saying If you do that you’ll kill the texture, but after a while he didn’t have to tell me that any more. I learnt what the filters did and how to make different layers. I sometimes got mixed up between layers – so it was good to have my dad there to tell me when I was on the wrong layer. My dad and mum are good artists so they always gave me good advice and helped me with my book.

When I’d painted nine rabbits, ’ö-Dzin (one of my parents’ publishers) said he would make a calendar of my rabbits, and so I painted another three. Now the rabbits are on calendars, mugs, and refrigerator magnets. Because people liked my rabbits ’ö-Dzin asked me if I would like to write stories about them. I said Yes, and my dad said he would help me with typing – because I am very slow and make lots of mistakes.

So then I made up all these stories. I told my dad what was in the stories and he made notes and typed them. My dad helped me a lot by looking up weird and funny names on the internet for me. If I wanted rabbits to have a lot of names that started with the same letter we looked them up together and I chose the ones that sounded good. Sometimes I chose the names because I liked them – and sometimes I chose them because they sounded funny. My dad always liked loony names – or names like Borraccio from Shakespeare. I didn’t want to have a rabbit called Borraccio – but I did use it for one of the hedgehogs who live in the ‘Forest of Grunting Hedgehogs’.

My dad helped me when the story got confused and when I didn’t know how to end it. He gave me ideas and then I could change them round however I liked. Each story took a long time to write because I got tired after an hour and every time we started writing we had to read out the whole story again from the beginning so I’d get ideas for how to write more of the story.

I hope you like these stories because they were good fun to write – even though it was hard work.

Ræchel Renate Tresise Togden

The Devil’s Frying Pan

This is story thirteen. Some rabbits, humans, and other creatures think the number thirteen is unlucky – but not the Rabbit of Death. He doesn’t agree with that idea at all. Sometimes he says, Nothing is lucky or unlucky. Lucky and unlucky is just being happy or sad about what happens. Other times he says, Unlucky is what happens when you’ve been lazy – and lucky is what happens when you’ve not been lazy. Mostly the Rabbit of Death says, The best luck of all, is kindness – and the worst luck is forgetting to be kind. The Rabbit of Death has a big dinner party every Friday the 13th in the calendar each year – just to show everyone that you have to make your own luck.

Anyway, on Friday the 13th of June—after the wedding—a small group of the very best friends of Barabbas and Mirabelle went with them to Cadgwith, for a honeymoon holiday. The Rabbit of Death and Penelope also went with them. That was an amazing thing – because no one had ever known the Rabbit of Death to go on holiday. He did go off from time to time to different countries – but it was always to help with the big hairy problems that sometimes happened.

Mount Vesuvius in Italy was a big hairy problem one year, and he had to go and scream ‘Ra-heeek!’ at it, so that it wouldn’t erupt and damage houses, pizzerias, and gelato parlours.

Another year, the River Seine went insane in Paris, and was about to flood and damage the paintings in the Louvre. The Rabbit of Death arrived in Paris just in time to scream ‘Ra-heeek!’, and the Seine stopped being insane.

The Rabbit of Death never went anywhere just to have fun and relax – even though he seemed to have fun all the time. He liked to help others have fun and to enjoy everything around them. You can always have fun, he said, because there are always colours to look at, sounds to hear, wonderful things to smell and taste, interesting things to feel, and exciting ideas to explore.

So that was what they were all going to do in Cadgwith on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall. Barabbas and Mirabelle, Jovius and Lupin, Melissa and Robert, Bollard, Byron, and the fox family all climbed onto the back of Winston Wallace Windermere Wuthering-depths, the whale, and set off for Cadgwith. They had to swim all round Land’s End to get there, but Winston was extremely fast.

The Rabbit of Death and Penelope flew in the helicopter – but they didn’t play Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ because they didn’t want to disturb anyone. Instead they played piano music by Eric Satie on their iPods with headphones.

Sometimes they talked together, and sometimes they silently watched the countryside change.

They whizzed over Exmoor and Bodmin Moor – and soon they started seeing the towers of the old tin mines.

They all arrived in Cadgwith at almost the same time – and each rabbit went to the cottage they had picked. Everyone in Cadgwith was amazed to see so many Welsh rabbits and were happy that they had come to visit. The wedding party were all hungry, and glad to have a marvellous dinner at the Cadgwith Cove Inn with Nigel, the Rabbit of the Sea. They all ate seafood pies and drank elderflower cordials. The Rabbit of Death drank a big glass of Armagnac, and Penelope had a sip of it.

The Rabbit of Death and Penelope stayed at Pink Cottage with Melissa and Robert. Barabbas, Mirabelle, Jovius, and Lupin all stayed at Dummer’s Loft. Bollard and Byron stayed at The Little Todden, and the fox family stayed next door at Todden Cottage.

The Todden is the name of the thin rocky cliff—the width of a house—that sticks out between the fishing cove and the swimming cove in Cadgwith. It’s a good place to sit and look at the sea. They all slept very well and woke up feeling extremely cheerful. They decided to meet at lunchtime at the Most Southerly Café at Lizard Point, after spending the morning looking around and enjoying everything there was to see.

The Rabbit of Death and Penelope wanted to look at the sea and enjoy the sea air. They walked onto The Todden and sat down on the wooden bench.

Rabbit of Death… said Penelope, … what will I call you when we are married?

Mmmm… hummed the Rabbit of Death. "I don’t know… Ulysses…