Original fic: Rabbit Skull
In the garden kept between his mother's house and the high fence, he found the dead rabbit. It lay on its side in a little patch of clover, and all the green around it was red with blood. Birds had already come and taken the eyes away, as birds are want to do, and the stomach lay strewn across the grass, all slick grey and purple organs.
“Rabbit,” said the boy to it, “Why do you sleep so oddly open and red. Is there no burrow nearby for you to hide yourself within?”
“There is no burrow, boy,” the rabbit said to he, “But I need none now. I do not sleep, but am dead.”
“Oh.” The boy looked thoughtful. “In that case I'll leave you be.”
“Come and visit me tomorrow,” said the rabbit. “For I shall be here still, with company.”
In the morning of the next day the boy came again, to the place between the high fence and the house. There the rabbit lay as it said it would be, dew still fresh on is fur and innards, and it now kept the company of three crows. The boy came to them and said hello. One crow looked sideways at him with a scrap of fur and meat dangling from its beak.
“Rabbit,” said the boy, “Your company take advantage of you.”
“No,” replied the rabbit, “They are my guests and I serve them with care. Best to offer what I no longer need.”
The boy nodded thoughtfully, and sat with the group as they dined. By lunchtime, when his mother called in, the boy saw that much of the rabbit was now gone. Some guts were left, and much fur, but its stomach was hollow and its bones exposed. The boy excused himself for the day, saying godbye to the crows.
“Come again and visit me tomorrow,” the rabbit told the boy. “You will more friends yet of mine.”
“I will,” the boy promised, and he went.
It was late the next day when they boy arrived, and the sun was sinking, already hidden behind the high fence. The boy stood above the rabbit and looked down, a curious expression on his face; it seemed to him the corpse was moving.
“Rabbit,” he enquired, “Your limbs and fur heave with breath. Do you live?”
“No boy,” the rabbit laughed, “It is not breath. I am moved now by my new companions. Bend down and meet them, you will see.”
So the boy crouched on his heels beside the rabbit and looked, bending ever closer to see what moved the small body.
Teeming in the bones and fur, so many thousand creatures; ants and flies, small white worms and tiny, dark beetles. Together they crawled and chewed and writhed and clustered, so much as to make the rabbit's body move again.
“You see,” said the rabbit, “I give them what the crows do not take. There is little left of me, but they are small. It is enough.”
And the boy watched until there was nothing left but bones. Even the heady, sweet smell of decay was gone. By now, it was dark and the air grew cool, and something prowled beyond the high fence.
“I should go now,” the boy told the bones, his pupils swelling huge and inky in the darkness.
“Visit me tomorrow,” said the rabbit's bones, “One last time.”
“I will,” said the boy, and he left.
The next day was grey, and the air slightly damp. It had rained in the early hours, and all of the garden smelled fresh and wet. The boy breathed deep and walked to the space between the house and the high fence.
On the ground where the rabbit had once been were now vibrant plants. The rain had watered the ground, and the rabbit's body had fed the seeds beneath it. Now they had spouted, and their shoots had pushed aside the rabbit's bones. There was left just a single piece of the boy's friend.
Between two white flowers sat the rabbit's skull, clean and dewy, and a smooth, dull white.
“Rabbit,” said the boy, feeling sad, “You are gone now.”
“No,” said the rabbit's skull. “Now I am everywhere. My friends hold me in their bellies. I fly with my crows, and dig with my ants. I am fragrant blossoms and rich soil. I am never gone.”
“You will not have soft fur, rabbit. You will not jump or burrow. You will not eat clover or grass.”
“I have done these things already, boy. All these things, and now I might do more. I have been a rabbit. Now I am many things.”
The boy frowned. “I don't think I understand,” he said.
“You will,” the rabbit's skull told him. “So very soon.”
The skull was silent after that, and the boy picked it up and put it in his pocket. He smelled the white flowers, and picked one for his mother, and then he went inside. The skull sat nestled in the fabric of his clothes, and dreamed of flying, and of digging, and of growing in the earth.