Peter Rabbit's Arc

Chapter 9 of 13

The new land was won, but the secret still leaked. Peter learned it at the water reeds one morning. Two workers whispered about the fox's cache, and a third asked where it lay. The young buck who first found it was telling everyone. Peter's throat went dry. If Mr. Todd heard the secret had spread, the truce would break. The new ground would vanish. Then the fox would come for the rows, and the workers with them. Peter found the young buck by the pond, boasting to a knot of listeners. "Buried past the tree line," the buck said, grinning. "I could take you right to it." "Stop," Peter said. He pulled the buck aside. "Every mouth that hears you puts us all in the fox's teeth. You want to feed your family this winter? Then keep this shut." The buck's grin faded. He nodded, but his eyes still shone with the thrill of the secret. Peter knew a warning would not hold him. He had to reach Mr. Todd first, before rumor did. He found the fox at the lakeside cafe, seated alone on the porch, paws folded, tail curled beneath the bench. Mr. Todd did not look up. "The rabbit who talks," he said softly. "I hear him even here. Word travels, little farmer. It always travels to me." Peter's stomach clenched. So the fox already knew. He sat down uninvited. "He talked. I won't lie about it. But listen to me first." Mr. Todd's ears turned. "You have one breath." "Punish him and the warren scatters," Peter said. "Scattered rabbits gossip. But give him a job guarding your new hiding place, and every secret he holds becomes his own to protect. A guard doesn't betray the thing he's paid to keep." The fox studied him a long moment. His mouth curved. "You would make the leak into the lock." "He knows the ground already," Peter said. "Better him watching it than wandering loose." Mr. Todd tapped one claw on the wood. "Clever. Almost foxlike." He leaned close. "Bring him to me tonight. He swears silence to my face, and he watches the cache from now on. If one more mouth repeats it, I take a basket for every word. Off your ground. Understand?" "Understood," Peter said. That night Peter marched the young buck to the tree line. The buck stood stiff before the fox and swore to guard the cache and speak of it to no one. Mr. Todd accepted with a slow nod. The truce held. Peter walked home under a cold sky. The leak was sealed. But he had bound a careless rabbit to the fox's service, and staked his whole harvest on the buck's silence. One slip now would cost baskets he did not have. His debts had a new shape, and it had teeth.