When My Heart Joins the Thousand
A.J. Steiger
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I was first introduced to the world of Watership Down as a child, through the 1978 animated film, which captures the brutality as well as the hope and beauty of the original book. I fell instantly in love with its world and characters. Decades later, I find its power undimmed.
Rabbits are survivors. Faced with a world of predators, they adapt, struggle, fight, and persevere. As individuals they are weak and short-lived, but as a species they are mighty. They represent the will to live, the deepest instinct burning within every creature of this world.
Alvie, too, is a survivor. Her emotional connection to rabbits—and to Watership Down, specifically—is the thing that first brought her to life in my mind, and a touchstone I returned to through revision after revision.
For that, I owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Richard Adams. He passed away in 2016, but his legacy will endure for generations. Far more than a fantasy, Watership Down is an anthem of life. It reminds us of our deep and intimate connection to the earth, to animals, and to each other.
PROLOGUE
For rabbits, the process of courtship and mating combined takes about thirty to forty seconds.
I am not a rabbit. If I were, my life would be simpler in many ways.
“Are you sure about this?” Stanley asks. “You can still change your mind, you know.”
I tug twice on my left braid. “If I didn’t want this, I wouldn’t have asked.” Though I didn’t expect him to say yes.
We are in a motel room with an ancient, rattling heater and a factory painting of a windmill. Stanley sits on the edge of the bed, fidgeting, his crutch leaning next to him. His hands are clasped tightly in his lap.
I take a few steps toward him. He lifts his hands, then stops. “No touching, right?”
“No touching,” I reply. That’s the agreement. I touch him. He doesn’t touch me.
His pulse beats in his throat. I count twenty beats in ten seconds. One hundred and twenty beats per minute.
This is, I suppose, very sudden. Technically we just met for the first time today. But I want to try. Just once. This should be instinctive. Any animal can do this. Surely I can, too. Even I am not that broken.
Slowly I reach out and take his hand in both of mine. He makes a sound like he’s about to sneeze—that sharp intake of breath. I study his fingers, which are long and slender. I don’t like being touched, because it hurts, but when I’m the one controlling it, it’s bearable. “You know,” I say, “all whiptail lizards are female. They reproduce themselves by cloning. Females will mount each other to stimulate egg production.”
He doesn’t say anything, just looks at me.
“With seahorses, the sex roles are reversed. The female injects her egg into the male, and he carries and bears the young.”
Stanley places his free hand on his stomach.
“Emperor penguins have only one mate per breeding season. The mated pair can locate each other by their distinct calls. The male stays in one place and bugles to the female until she finds him. They bow to each other, stand breast to breast, and sing.”
“They sing?”
“Yes.”
I wonder—what am I? A rabbit, a penguin, a hyena, a gibbon? Something else entirely? The only thing I know for sure is that I don’t identify very well with humans.
“Are you sure about this?”
It’s the second time he’s asked that question, but maybe he’s right to ask it. I wonder if I’ve gone crazy. This could easily turn into a disaster.
“Let’s proceed,” I say.
CHAPTER ONE
Three weeks earlier
During certain times of day, my apartment smells like rancid Gouda. Apparently no one else in the building has noticed. I’ve written four letters to Mrs. Schultz, my landlady, but I stopped when I learned she was putting them all in a file folder marked CRAZY, which I happened to glimpse when I went down to her office to pay my rent.
So now, when the smell gets too intense, I just go to the park and play online Go on my laptop.
It’s October 5, 5:59 p.m. The temperature in the park is roughly fifty-six degrees. Silence fills my ears. When I listen more deeply, I can hear the sounds woven into it—the dull roar of distant traffic, the shh-shh of leaves in the wind, the whoosh of my own blood through my veins—but no human voices.
I pull up the hood of my sweatshirt, which offers the dual advantage of keeping my ears warm while hiding my face, giving me a sense of privacy. All around me, the park is quiet and still, an expanse of sleepy green grass. A few maples have already started to drop their bloodred leaves. Nearby, a small pond glimmers. Anas platyrhynchos glide across the water, and the heads of the males gleam like carved emerald studded with bright onyx eyes. When they rear up, wings spread, the iridescent blue-black of their speculum feathers catches the light.
I glance at the empty bench by the pond and check the time on my cell phone. I am waiting for the boy with the cane.
Every day, at precisely six o’clock, a boy about my age—perhaps a few years older—emerges from a salmon-colored building across the street, limps to the park, and sits on the bench. Sometimes he reads. Sometimes he just watches the ducks. For the past three weeks, this has been his routine.