The White snow rabbit

I wrote this loosely based on a Russian fairy tale I once heard by Clarissa Pinkola Estes.
(from Women who Run with the Wolves)

Long, long ago there lived a girl at the edge of a forest.
She lived with her stepmother and two stepsisters.

She had lost her true mother and father as a child and they had taken her in, but they were very poor as well and they took her in only so she would do all the chores for them. One of her chores was to take care of the fire as it was very cold where they lived and they did not have ways to restart the fire again if it should go out.

One day, after withering a very ferocious and long Blizzard, they were low on firewood and she knew she had to get some more. It was cold and she only had an old shirt and a tattered old apron to wear. She recalled another even older more tattered shirt she had put aside and as there is warmth in layers, she put this on as well.

As she started out walking, she was having a hard time finding wood in all the fresh snow, and had to venture a little farther into the forest than usual. She stepped on something in the snow she thought was a log but was actually a rabbit, and as she pulled her foot hurriedly away to avoid hurting it, she slipped and fell. As she tried to get back up, she realized she had sprained her ankle.

After a long time, and much pain, she was able to gather at least enough firewood for a couple of days, but it took so long that by the time she got back to the house, the fire had gone out. Now even though there was still a little wood left by the stove, the stepmom and her daughters had fallen asleep and neglected the fire.

They blamed her of course, and the stepmother told her that way deep in the woods, there lived a witch and that that certain witch had fire, and she needed to go and find a way to get that fire from that certain witch.

So, the girl set off on her journey, not knowing which way to go or which direction to take. She went off towards where she had last gathered firewood but had no idea of which way in which to turn from there. She put her shivering hands into the apron pocket, and felt a small rag doll inside that had been given to her so very long ago by her true mother.

She squeezed the doll tightly and looked around and saw only the tracks of the rabbit she had accidentally stepped upon, and she decided to follow the tracks of the white snow rabbit.

As she followed these tracks, she came across an obviously well traveled path leading to her left. She gazed longingly at the path for quite some time before heading off again to follow the path of the white snow rabbit. Why, she would have likely followed that well worn path had she not squeezed so tightly to the little cloth doll once again while pondering in her heart what to next do.

Following those tracks appeared to have been in vain though as they just all of a sudden ended at the top of a snowy plateau!

She looked around to try to find a rabbit hole he may have gone down into but no such thing seemed to be! Then she noticed a small little plant that seemed to have some berries on it at the edge of the plateau. Half starved, she reached for one of the berries, and lo! She went skidding down the hillside! Now you may have thought she’d be in panic and quite beside herself by now, but she just started laughing and said “How delicious this berry!” Such a strange girl was she!

Now as she thought this, she squeezed again the little doll and in her ecstatic glee (she later said) this little poem popped into her head!

“What fear have I now as this succulent berry sustains me?
Why, I grasped at a thorny bush and my fingers were pricked !
I tried to hold on that bush to protect me,
Yet, down this slope I haplessly slid...
What incredible flavor this sweet berry imbues!”

She fell and she fell, and she wondered at the
vividness she noticed in the open sky’s blue hues.



Having wound up in some sort of valley, she walked along wondering where the White Snow Rabbit had gone.

End of chapter one.

(The doll in the story is her soul, and the berry's taste is the taste of Freedom)
The Rabbit is her true path which she will follow out of pure intuition

 

As she was walking along, she noticed a pair of Ravens flying high overhead. One of them dropped something. She saw it hit in the snow and since she had no idea of which way to go, she started walking up the hill to see what had been dropped. She found a small stone of some kind .. "A Kyanite crystal!" she thought! "How cool is this?" and she put the little crystal into her pocket.

She kept climbing to the top of the hill. What do you know! A newer and higher plateau!

She was up rather breath-takingly high by now and looked again off to the left and could see where that well worn path may have led!!!

"Omigod" she thought. "It is nothing but a quicksand trap!
My-oh-my, how many must have perished there by simply following one another and the same old ideas and ways! So startling to one's mind" she reminisced. It seemed most favourable now to her mind that she had chosen a path less traveled and worn.

 

It was nearing the twilight hour when she noticed some light in the distance. She walked towards the light until she could finally see an outline of it. She was very tired and weary and faint with hunger by now. She wasn't sure if she could trust what her eyes seeing or if it was some sort of an hallucination. It looked to be a house with fire sometimes flashing out of the windows, and it wasn't built on a foundation but supported on some sort of green flexible legs. It sort of moved and rocked around. She giggled to herself "O, now I am seeing a Dancing House!" ...

She reached the house and with her small right hand tapped very lightly and gingerly on the heavy log door. The door flew violently open but there was no one there. There was a hallway and there were bright lights and flames but nothing seemed to be burning. Everything was either extremely bright or completely black with no in-betweens. She move along the hallway until it led her out the back door into the backyard.

A witch in black flew out the door after her and was screaming at her. It looked like the wicked witch of the West (Or was that the East?) from the Wizard of OZ. She was half expecting to see flying monkeys next. The witch asked her why she had come and what she was looking for. The girl explained her whole story and the witch was laughing the whole time. Then the witch brought her left hand out from behind her back and in it was a human skull filled with fire. "This is what you are searching for, my dear, I I cannot just give it to you, you must earn it!' The girl agreed and said she would do whatever she could to earn it. The witch pointed to a sandbox in the yard. It seemed sort of glittery. She said she had accidentally dropped a bag of gold dust in the sand and it had gotten all mixed up, and that she would give the fire to the girl if she could separate all the gold from the sand by morning light.

The girl began at once but it was almost dark already and she was half delirious already as well. The darkness of night enveloped her and sleep overwhelmed her and she dreamed of many beautiful things ending in a dream of a Golden Buddha sitting quietly meditating with a wondrous half-smile on his Golden face.

At the first Rays of dawn when the Sun was just arising, the witch came flying and screaming out of the house. The girl was startled awake and rubbing her eyes in disbelief. The witch saw the same thing she saw and started stammering "HHHow ddid you ddo that?"
she asked in astonishment as they both saw the pile of gold dust separated perfectly in every grain from the sand. The girl looked in wonder and just said "Well, I don't know! I was just dreaming of beautiful things!" "Awwe" said the witch "Yes, then that explains it! If you are still dreaming of beautiful things after all of this, then you certainly have earned the Eternal Fire!"

She invited the girl in for a morning meal which consisted of some sort of porridge and what seemed like wine. It was very delicious and helped return her vitality and strength to her. She asked the ingredients but the witch said the were not of this Earth and were walled "Ambrosia" which she said is the food and Nectar of the Gods and Goddesses. The meal finished, she handed the skull filled with fire to the girl and bid her on her way. She said "Take this back home with you. The fire is eternal and always with you and it also possesses Supreme intelligence. It will know just what to do."

When the girl got back home and entered the door, the fire leaped into the fireplace but it also leaped on the step-mom and sisters and burned them to ashes.

Now listen carefully. The step mom and sisters in the story were not really people. They were Anger, Greed, and Delusion which are all enemies of the mind and also the Eternal Fire.

 

Holy cow. That is eerie. I don't consciously recall ever hearing of her or of a log house with chicken legs before, but that is so like I envisioned while writing this!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baba_Yaga

In writing something like this, I think there becomes a connection with the Universal unconscious. I think that often happens in dreams as well. The human mind is just so simply marvelous and there are always so many things for us to learn and discover about ourselves.