He showed up at Christmas in a stocking, stuffed between an orange and some nuts. Brown and white, stitched whiskers, button eyes. The boy liked him for about twenty minutes, then the other presents came out and the rabbit went on a shelf.
The Skin Horse had been in the nursery forever. Old the way loved things get old — smooth at the joints, mane mostly gone, one ear loose.
"What's Real?" the rabbit asked.
"Real isn't how you're made. It's something that happens to you. When someone loves you a long time. Not just plays with you. Loves you."
"Does it hurt?"
"Sometimes."
"Does it happen all at once?"
"No. It takes a while. By the time it happens, most of your fur's rubbed off and your eyes are loose and you look rough. But it doesn't matter because once you're Real you can't be ugly. Not to anyone who understands."
One night the nanny grabbed the rabbit off the shelf because she couldn't find the boy's usual toy. Tucked him in the boy's arms.
That was it.
Every night after. In the crook of his arm. The boy's warmth soaking into the fabric.
The fur wore thin where the boy held tightest. Whiskers loosened. Stuffing shifted around. He didn't look like the rabbit from Christmas anymore. He looked like someone's rabbit.
Spring. The boy took him outside. Two wild rabbits came up and looked at him.
"Why don't you move?"
"I don't know how."
They stared at him and hopped away. Everything about them was alive in a way he wasn't. He sat in the grass and felt, for the first time, what he couldn't do.
Fall. The boy got sick. Bad. Scarlet fever. The rabbit was right there the whole time, pressed against his cheek.
The fever broke. The doctor said everything in the room had to be burned. Sheets, pillows, toys. All of it.
They put the rabbit in a sack with the old bedding. Out by the bonfire pile.
He lay there in the dark. Not angry. Just sad. He thought about the boy's hands. The warmth. The trust.
Something fell from his button eye. And where it hit the ground, a flower grew. Someone was standing in it.
"I take care of toys that were really loved," she said. "When they're done being needed, I make them Real."
"The boy already did that."
"He made you Real to him. I'll make you Real to everyone."
She touched his head. His legs worked. He could smell the air, hear everything. He hopped. Actually hopped.
The wild rabbits found him. They didn't look confused this time.
"You can move."
"I can move."
Years later, the boy — older now — was walking through a field and saw a brown and white rabbit watching him. Something about it felt familiar.
"That one looks like my old rabbit," he said.
The rabbit watched him. Remembered everything.
Then the boy kept walking and the rabbit hopped away and the field was quiet.
Goodnight.