The Rabbit Holes

Once upon a time, in a world not quite like our own, there was a little girl named Lily who discovered something extraordinary beneath an old oak tree.

It was a rabbit hole.

That, by itself, was not unusual.

What was unusual was that the hole was glowing.

Tiny bubbles of every color floated up from the darkness—blue bubbles, golden bubbles, purple bubbles, and even bubbles that seemed to contain tiny stars.

Lily knelt beside the hole.

“Hello?” she whispered.

A tiny white rabbit poked its head out.

It wore a little blue waistcoat and carried a silver pocket watch.

The rabbit looked at Lily.

Lily looked at the rabbit.

The rabbit looked at the hole.

Then it looked at Lily again.

“Oh dear,” said the rabbit.

“You can talk!” Lily exclaimed.

“Of course I can talk,” said the rabbit. “The question is—can you follow?”

“Follow you where?”

The rabbit pointed down the glowing hole.

“To another Bubble World.”

Before Lily could ask what a Bubble World was, the rabbit jumped.

“Wait!” Lily cried.

She jumped in after him.

Down she went.

Past roots.

Past stars.

Past floating teacups.

Past enormous golden butterflies.

Then—

POP!

Lily landed inside a giant bubble.

She wasn't falling anymore.

She was floating.

Outside the bubble stretched an impossible world filled with purple mountains, upside-down forests, rivers flowing through the sky, and clouds shaped like castles.

“Welcome to Bubble World One!” called the rabbit.

Lily stared in amazement.

“This is incredible!”

“It gets stranger,” said the rabbit.

Suddenly, Lily noticed something.

There wasn't just one rabbit hole.

There were hundreds.

They covered the landscape.

Some were in the ground.

Some were in trees.

Some floated in midair.

One was even inside a cloud.

Each rabbit hole led to another Bubble World.

Lily's eyes grew wide.

“How do we know which one to take?”

The rabbit shrugged.

“We don't.”

“Then how do you choose?”

“We follow a rabbit.”

Lily smiled.

“That sounds easy.”

The rabbit's ears drooped.

“Unfortunately…”

He pointed toward the horizon.

Thousands of rabbit holes stretched across the Bubble World.

“But there aren't enough rabbits.”

Lily blinked.

“What?”

“There are far too many rabbit holes and far too few rabbits.”

And that was the beginning of the greatest adventure the Bubble Worlds had ever known.

The Rabbit-Hole Problem

Lily soon discovered that the rabbits had a very important job.

Every rabbit was a guide.

A rabbit could sense which Bubble World was waiting at the other end of a particular hole.

A golden rabbit might lead to a world made entirely of sunlight.

A black rabbit might lead to a world where shadows came alive.

A blue rabbit might lead to an underwater world floating among the clouds.

A silver rabbit might lead to a world where time ran backward.

But there were millions of rabbit holes.

And only a few hundred rabbits.

The rabbits were exhausted.

One rabbit had been assigned to seventeen different holes.

Another rabbit had accidentally fallen asleep beside a hole and woke up three hundred years later.

And one particularly unfortunate rabbit had been chased through twelve Bubble Worlds by a princess who desperately wanted to know where he was going.

“This is a disaster,” said the Rabbit Council.

Lily raised her hand.

“Why don't you just make more rabbits?”

The council became very quiet.

“We've tried,” said an elderly rabbit.

“How?”

“Rabbits.”

Lily waited.

“That is the entire plan?”

“Yes.”

Lily sighed.

The Bubble Map

Lily and her new rabbit friend—whose name was Pip—decided they needed a better way to travel.

They created the first-ever Map of the Bubble Worlds.

But the map was alive.

Whenever someone entered a rabbit hole, a new bubble appeared on the map.

Whenever someone returned, the bubble changed color.

Some bubbles sparkled.

Some growled.

Some sang.

And one bubble had apparently developed a terrible habit of sneezing.

“Where does that one go?” Lily asked.

Pip shook his head.

“Nobody knows.”

Suddenly, the ground trembled.

A huge rabbit hole opened beneath them.

Pip's ears stood straight up.

“That hole wasn't there before.”

Lily leaned over the edge.

Inside was complete darkness.

Then two enormous eyes appeared.

Lily stepped backward.

“Pip…”

“Yes?”

“I think that's not a rabbit.”

The creature blinked.

A deep voice echoed from below.

“Finally!”

Lily and Pip stared.

“What are you?” Lily asked.

The creature climbed out.

It was enormous.

It had the body of a rabbit…

the wings of a dragon…

and a crown made of bubbles.

“I,” it announced, “am the Rabbit of All Rabbit Holes.”

Pip fainted.

The Secret of the Bubble Worlds

The giant rabbit explained that the Bubble Worlds had not always been separate.

Long ago, they had been one enormous world.

But a magical event called the Great Bubble Burst had shattered reality into millions of tiny worlds.

Each rabbit hole became a doorway.

Each rabbit became a guide.

But over time, more and more Bubble Worlds appeared.

And fewer and fewer rabbits remained.

“So what happens if we run out of rabbits?” Lily asked.

The giant rabbit looked worried.

“Then nobody will know which worlds are safe to enter.”

Lily thought about all the strange worlds she had seen.

She thought about the children who might be trapped in them.

Then she smiled.

“Maybe we don't need more rabbits.”

Pip opened one eye.

“What do we need?”

“Friends.”

The Great Rabbit-Hole Expedition

Lily gathered children, fairies, goblins, talking cats, friendly dragons, cloud sailors, princesses, and even a few very confused trolls.

Together they traveled through the Bubble Worlds.

They wrote down what they discovered.

They drew maps.

They left glowing signs.

They tied ribbons around safe rabbit holes.

They placed bells beside dangerous ones.

And whenever they found a new Bubble World, they gave it a name.

There was:

The World of Floating Castles.

The World of Giant Flowers.

The World Where Everything Is Upside Down.

The World of Sleeping Dragons.

The World of Chocolate Rivers.

The World of Invisible Houses.

And, unfortunately,

The World of Extremely Angry Ducks.

Nobody knew why the ducks were angry.

It was decided not to ask.

Soon, the Bubble Worlds were connected by a great network of paths.

And something wonderful happened.

The rabbits weren't needed to guide everyone anymore.

They could finally rest.

Pip curled up beneath a mushroom and sighed happily.

“No more rabbit holes today.”

Lily laughed.

“Tomorrow?”

Pip opened one eye.

“Perhaps.”

Just then, a tiny rabbit appeared.

“Excuse me,” he said.

Lily looked at him.

“Yes?”

The rabbit pointed toward a hole glowing beneath a nearby tree.

“Would you like to see something extraordinary?”

Lily grinned.

Pip groaned.

“Oh no.”

Lily jumped toward the hole.

“Come on!”

Pip followed.

“Wait for me!”

And together they disappeared into another Bubble World.

Because somewhere beyond the next rabbit hole…

another world was waiting.

And another.

And another.

After all—

there were many rabbit holes to explore…

but never enough rabbits to follow!

The Rabbit Hole That Was Eating the Sky

Lily was halfway through a strawberry tart when every bubble in Bubble World One began to tremble.

The rivers stopped flowing. The upside-down trees shook loose their leaves. Far above the purple mountains, a bright blue bubble split open with a sound like a thousand windows breaking.

Pip dropped his pocket watch.

“Oh, crumbs.”

“What is it?” Lily asked.

“The worlds are collapsing!”

Across the sky, enormous cracks spread from bubble to bubble. Through them, Lily could see other worlds: a kingdom of floating castles, a forest of silver trees, and a sea full of flying whales.

One by one, the bubbles were being pulled toward a dark hole at the center of the sky.

And the hole was growing.

“The Great Bubble Burst is happening again!” cried Pip. “If that hole swallows the central bubble, all the worlds will tumble into the same place!”

“Can't the rabbits close it?” Lily shouted.

Pip shook his head. “Every rabbit is already guiding a world to safety. And there aren't enough of us!”

A bell rang from the Rabbit Council tower.

Then another.

Then every bell in every world began to ring.

They had only until sunset.

Lily looked at the living Bubble Map. Thousands of tiny worlds flickered across its surface. Most were connected by rabbit holes, but the dark hole was swallowing the connections faster than the rabbits could travel.

Then she noticed something peculiar.

Every time a bubble vanished, a tiny silver thread snapped between it and the central bubble.

“Pip,” she said, “what are those threads?”

“The world's roots,” he replied. “They hold the bubbles together.”

“Then why are they all pulling toward the hole?”

Pip stared at the map.

“The hole must be pulling on the roots!”

Lily leaned closer. At the center of the map was a tiny golden bubble, almost hidden beneath the darkness.

“What is that one?”

“The First Bubble,” whispered Pip. “The place where all the worlds began.”

“And if it gets swallowed?”

“There won't be any worlds left to save.”

Lily swallowed hard.

She was frightened. She was only a little girl, and the fate of millions of worlds seemed an awfully large thing to put on a little girl's shoulders.

But then she remembered something the giant Rabbit of All Rabbit Holes had told her.

Every rabbit can find a way through a hole. But only someone who knows where they're going can choose which hole to take.

Lily had an idea.

“Pip, can rabbits find their way through a hole if it's turned upside down?”

“Of course.”

“What about sideways?”

“Certainly.”

“What about a hole that leads back into itself?”

Pip's ears shot straight up.

“Oh, my whiskers.”

Lily pointed to three rabbit holes on the map. One led to a world of mirrors. One led to a world where everything moved backward. The third led to a world where gravity worked in reverse.

“We don't need to close the dark hole,” she said. “We need to make it swallow its own tail!”

The Plan

Lily raced to the Rabbit Council.

“We need three rabbits,” she announced.

The council gasped.

“Three? We can barely spare one!”

“Then we'll have to do it without them.”

Lily gathered a mirror from the Looking-Glass World, a silver bell from the Backward World, and a feather from the Upside-Down World.

She tied them together with a golden thread from the Bubble Map.

Then she climbed to the highest floating mountain, where the dark hole hung above the worlds like a terrible black moon.

“Lily!” Pip cried. “What are you doing?”

“Making a rabbit hole that leads to itself!”

She threw the mirror into the air.

The mirror spun, catching the dark hole's reflection.

She rang the silver bell.

Its sound traveled backward through time.

Then she released the feather.

Instead of falling, it rose straight into the sky.

The three kinds of magic twisted together.

A tiny rabbit hole appeared in the mirror.

The dark hole shuddered.

For one terrible moment, nothing happened.

Then the darkness bent inward.

It swallowed its own reflection.

The reflection swallowed the hole.

The hole swallowed the reflection again.

Round and round it went, smaller and smaller, until—

POP!

The dark hole vanished.

The cracks sealed.

The silver threads snapped back into place.

And every Bubble World settled safely into the sky.

The Rabbit Who Didn't Have to Run

The bells fell silent.

The rivers flowed again.

The upside-down trees grew their leaves back.

Across the worlds, creatures cheered. Dragons danced with fairies. Goblins hugged trolls. Even the Extremely Angry Ducks gave a little quack of approval.

Pip stared at Lily.

“You saved every world.”

Lily brushed tart crumbs from her dress.

“Not every world. I haven't even seen most of them.”

The Rabbit Council hurried over.

“Name your reward!” declared the oldest rabbit. “A crown? A castle? A rabbit of your very own?”

Lily thought for a moment.

“I want every Bubble World to have a map, a warning bell, and a way to ask for help. And I want the rabbits to have days off.”

The council looked horrified.

“Days off?”

“Even rabbits need holidays,” Lily said.

Pip nodded firmly. “Especially rabbits.”

And so it was agreed.

From that day on, no Bubble World would be left without a map, no dangerous rabbit hole would be left unmarked, and no rabbit would be expected to guide seventeen worlds at once.

As for Lily, she became the Keeper of the Bubble Map.

But she never wore a crown.

She preferred her blue boots, her strawberry tarts, and the thrill of discovering a rabbit hole no one had ever seen before.

Because the worlds were safe for now.

And somewhere, far beyond the edge of the map, a new bubble was beginning to glow.

Lily smiled.

“Come on, Pip.”

Pip sighed, picked up his pocket watch, and followed.

There were still too many rabbit holes.

And, as always, not nearly enough rabbits.