The magician's rabbits

When the magician retired, he gave his two rabbits to Claire. The two of them looked exactly alike. Claire tried to bug him about how he did his trick, but the Magician didn't want to tell her.

"Telling you would destroy the mystery," he said. He left town and she didn't hear from him again, supposedly retiring in Belize.

Claire kept the rabbits in her room. She let them out during the day where they hopped around eagerly. She fed them well and bought them a larger cage.

The first night after she kept them, she found both of them outside the cage. She checked the cage and saw that it was still locked. She wondered how they got out. She put them in again and left for school, making sure there was enough food and water.

When she came back home they were outside again. She asked her mom if she had let them out, but she said she hadn't had time to clean the room and Claire shouldn't be keeping rabbits. Who knows what diseases they would have?

Claire let the rabbits run around for a bit before putting them back into the cage. She wondered about the tricks the magician had done. How they had been in a box and then disappeared. Was it just a trick? Did they know more? She stared into their black button eyes and asked them. But they just wrinkled their noses in reply.

She pretended to sleep that night but was keeping an eye out on the cage. But at three am her eyes closed just for a moment and the rabbits were outside again. She jumped out of bed. There was something strange happening here. Could they actually be teleporting and going through strange universes like the Magician claimed?

She imagined them leaping in free space, creating portals that they hopped through. Maybe if they wanted to, they could hop to Alexandria's library, or lost cities, or even worlds beyond Earth.

Eventually Claire let them be, and the rabbits would just sneak out of the cage. She never even bothered locking the door. Surprisingly, this seemed to dissuade them from escaping, and they did not escape the next night, or the next. They were essentially normal rabbits now, though they would occasionally find their way to the top of her table whenever she had leftover lettuce or raisins.