Peter Rabbit's Arc

Chapter 12 of 13

The rain came hard before dawn. Peter woke to water hammering his stump roof and ran outside. Up the hill, the spring had swollen brown and loud. His clay divider strained against it. A crack ran down the middle, thin as a whisker but growing. Below the bank sat his cellar, packed with every carrot he owed. One burst of that water would flood the sand and rot the whole harvest. He threw himself at the divider and pressed mud into the crack. It washed out as fast as he packed it. The water only pushed harder. He could not hold it with his paws alone. A voice cut through the rain. "Stop patching. You're feeding the crack." Clementine Cottontail stood on the bank in her apron and cloak, both soaked flat. She had steered Peter right before, when she told him to build this divider in the first place. Now she frowned at it like a job half done. "It's going to break," Peter said. "The cellar's right below." "Then don't fight the water. Move it." She pointed uphill, above the spring. "Cut a channel. Send the flood off to the side before it ever reaches your wall." Peter looked where she pointed. The land sloped away toward a low ditch. If he opened a path, the swollen water could run there instead of pounding his divider. "There's no time to dig it," he said. "There's no time to stand here." She was already clawing at the soft ground. "Two of us. Go." Peter dug beside her. The rain made the soil loose and heavy. They cut a trench from the spring's high edge toward the ditch, throwing mud behind them. His arms burned. The crack in the divider widened. Water began to weep through it and darken the bank above his carrots. "Faster," Clementine said. They broke through the last wall of dirt. The swollen spring found the new path and rushed sideways, away from the divider and down into the ditch. The roar dropped. The pressure on the cracked clay eased. The weeping slowed, then stopped. Peter dropped to his knees by the cellar mouth. He pulled back the straw. The sand was damp but firm. The carrots lay cold and whole, every basket safe. "You saved them," he said. Clementine wrung out her cloak. "The wall's still cracked. You bought a morning, not a winter." She nodded at the ditch, now running full and fast. "And that water has to go somewhere. You just sent a flood downhill." Peter followed her gaze. The channel poured straight toward the lower slope, where the mill wheel turned below. His new trench aimed the whole swollen spring at the baker's works. He had saved his harvest. Now the flood he made was racing down to the mill.