Lilith Blackwood's Arc

Chapter 14 of 21

By the third morning, the milk crate stood empty again. Lilith counted her stores and found them thin. The white rabbit had cleared the snow trail every dawn, but it fed itself from her reserves. Each day it took a little more. Soon the sick animals upstairs would go hungry, and she would have nothing left to give them. Rosalind came down the stairs with her satchel already open. Ink stained her white sleeves. She dropped a hand-drawn chart on the table and tapped it with one finger. "I watched your snow-clearer all night," she said. "It does not eat because it is greedy. It eats because it works. All that hopping burns through it fast." She had been at Pawswell House only a short while, but she treated its strangest animals as plain problems to solve. She did not flinch at the rabbit's pale blue eyes. She measured them. Lilith knelt by the rabbit. It fussed at her boot, nose twitching, quick and restless. "I cannot make it stop working," she said. "The town will find the trail." "Then feed it apart from the others," Rosalind said. "Give it its own store. Fill it with cheap greens, not the milk your patients need." The answer was simple, and Lilith felt foolish for not seeing it. She fetched a spade. Behind the house, where no road passed, she dug into the frozen bank. The rabbit watched, then dug beside her, throwing dirt with its small paws. Together they hollowed out a burrow into the hillside. By midday they had a hutch dug deep and dry. Lilith lined it with straw. She set out crisp lettuce, carrots pulled from her own cellar, a bowl of water, and one small jar of milk. These cost little. The sick animals lost nothing. A short path led down from the surface to the rabbit's private door. The rabbit hopped inside and sniffed each dish. It settled among the carrots and ate. It did not race back to the kitchen crate. Lilith waited, still and patient, letting it choose. When it finished, it curled in the straw and closed its eyes. At dawn the next day, the delivery came. The rabbit worked behind the carriers, smoothing every track to blank white. Then it returned to its burrow and ate its own greens. The kitchen crate stood full. Rosalind carried it up the stairs to the waiting animals, and every mouth was fed. Lilith stood at her door and looked over the smooth snow. The trail was hidden. Her reserves held. She had solved the hunger and kept the secret both. But Rosalind lingered at the window, watching the field. "Those creatures made this rabbit from frost," she said. "If the town's inspectors ever ask where it came from, I will not know how to lie for you." Lilith had no answer. The woman who kept her house running was the one who could not keep its greatest secret.