Page 18 of It’s A Little Bit Bunny (Fangs on Ice #4)

Seventeen

Jules

H ow had I been okay with living on my own for centuries but now pined for a human man I had met only twice?

A few times in the weeks Nikolai didn’t return to my forest I considered travelling to Veitsreuth to find him.

That is madness, Jules. How do you expect to find him in the middle of thousands of humans?

But he had told me about his job as a hockey player. I was sure people could direct me to where I would be able to find him. But I had Barnabas and the chickens to care for. I couldn’t abandon them.

I had to wait, stay put, and hope that he had meant it when he said he would come back.

I busied myself in the garden. I planted seeds and cleared out my root cellar for the new harvest. And in one week where the weather was kind to me, I visited every part of my forest. I talked to my trees. I reinforced the magic boundary that protected us from the outside world.

The boundary that made people—what had Nikolai called it?—space out. Only I had designed it to turn them away from my land, not to keep walking. For the umpteenth time I wondered what made Nikolai so different from all the others before him. Was he meant to find me? No. I had found him, hadn’t I?

“Why then does it feel as if it is the other way around, Barnabas?“

That day in the forest I had been found. I had wandered the darkness, and I hadn’t even realised it until the sun peeked through the clouds again. Until my wondrous human with the golden hair brought the light back into my life.

“I miss him.“ I stroked my hand over the thick trunk of an oak tree. I had seen her grow from a tiny acorn. I had cared for her and kept her safe so she could become this beautiful strong version of herself—so she could become what she had always been intended to be.

Being with Nikolai felt a lot like that. The version of me I was when he was around was who I was supposed to be. A gentle shiver ran through the tree under my touch. She shook her leaves and a few rained down on me as a gift from my old friend.

The person I was with Nikolai was the best version of me. It scared me how much I craved his presence, and how much I wanted to protect him. I knew I would turn the earth upside down to keep him safe.

That was the week my dreams started again. Dreams of her , beautiful and terrible at once. My mother, with her golden hair so much like Nikolai‘s, and that terrifyingly beautiful face. In the dreams—the same one I’d had when he’d stayed at my house—she tried to take him away from me.

‘Oh, what a nice plaything you found for yourself, Julius. A pretty human toy. I knew you would in the end.’

My mother came up to where I stood and caressed my cheek. Her ice cold touch made me shiver.

“There is no escaping destiny, Julius. And I appreciate seeing that you’ve come to your senses, my child. I had almost lost hope for you. You don’t know how happy it makes your mother’s heart to see you with your own human.”

She scrutinised me and pinched my cheek. I stood rooted to the spot unable to even lift a finger. I had to watch my mother glide over to where Nikolai cowered in fear. My mother evoked that reaction in humans.

“You will do nicely in my collection, human.”

“He is mine!”

His eyes met mine behind my mother’s back. He looked angry and confused, not scared anymore.

“I think the human disagrees, Julius.” My mother gave a tinkling laugh. ‘You’ll come with me, won’t you?”

I knew it was her magic that made him rise to his feet and place his hand in hers, but that didn’t stop a dangerous snarl from escaping me.

“Leave him alone! This human is mine. I claim him as mine!”

I changed. My body grew without my direction and something burst out of the top of my head. It weighed me down. My spine arched and my legs? They changed, too.

I looked down, almost toppling over when the things on top of my head dragged my head down. My trousers were gone.

By my forest, what is happening?

I didn’t have normal legs anymore, either. I had split hooves and furry legs like a stag.

Is this my mother’s magic at work?

It took me only a moment to get used to the weight on my head, and then I was no longer rooted to the spot. I could move. When I looked up at my mother and Nikolai, something I had never seen there was etched on her face. Pure terror. Bunny’s face only showed awe and wonder.

“How did you do that?” my mother whispered.

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

The laugh that burst out of me was terrifying and monstrous. Nikolai shuddered as goosebumps raced down his body.

I took a step towards them, my lips pulling into a dangerous snarl when her hand let go of him.

“Go! You have no power here! This is my forest and my human. Don’t ever return.”

The rest of the dream made me ashamed. I woke drenched in sweat and other bodily fluids. When I threw back the duvet, I found my normal legs. My head felt strangely light without the weight of the antlers. It was as if they were meant to be there and had not been a figment of my imagination.

Shame flooded me when images of Nikolai’s beautiful body writhing on top of me surfaced in my mind.

I stood up and tried not to get the evidence of my release on the carpet, as I crossed my room and into the hallway beyond to rinse in the shower.

This had been another human invention I had come across, and my house had delivered. I didn’t quite know how it worked, even after living in it for nearly three hundred years. An idea took hold in my mind, and my house grew whatever I needed.

Occasionally traces of human life made their way into my neck of the woods. A brochure on human food, a catalogue, or in some cases, even clothes and brightly coloured items that floated down the little stream that ran through my land.

I had to make sure to keep up with human inventions. My mother never had. She viewed human customs as beneath her. I wondered how she satisfied her craving for pretty humans in this day and age.

I was sure that if I had kept Nikolai, his family, friends, or employers would have raised hell to find him again. Not that they could have if I hadn’t allowed it.

Maybe that’s how she does it.

A look out on the forest told me morning was only an hour away. I decided to stay up.

I could do with a cup of coffee.

The chickens wouldn’t complain if I let them out earlier. They hated staying in their coop longer than necessary.

And maybe I would visit my friend, the old oak, again. The last time I visited, I sat in the shadow of her branches, with my back against her trunk and told her what had happened with that wondrous human man.

You shouldn’t go into detail about tonight’s dream, Jules.

I shivered as I put on fresh clothes, a linen tunic, and trousers made from stag hide.

Is that why they draw me in like that?

I had always been fascinated with stags. The one that had given me the hide for this pair of trousers had been badly hurt by something, perhaps a wolf or some more dangerous creature that dwelled in the forest, when I found him. He would’ve died a terrible, painful death. As merciful as killing him had been, it had broken me to see him sink to the ground with my arrow in his heart. That I was able to put him out of his misery had been my only consolation.

The poor thing. He had been in the prime of his years. I still remembered a silent vigil I had held for him to help his soul find peace. I wanted to think that every animal that died in my forest never left. That their souls still roamed the land where they had been so happy.

Before I went downstairs, I made a detour to my library. If Nikolai ever returned, I had to bring him here. Perhaps he would like to see my most treasured possessions: my books.

I headed straight for the history section. In this world, lore and history often blended. I took two thick volumes of local history from the shelf, then went over to the hundreds of books filled with local lore. I had collected these books over the past three centuries. These were my favourites. I had an entire section filled with books about the Hoimann whose mask I had been only too happy to wear.

Until Nikolai came into your life, at least.

But those weren’t what I was looking for. Today, I was looking for stags, and how they appeared in the lore. As much as I thought the dream had been a figment of my imagination, my dreams usually bore a shred of truth.

I thumbed through the books and picked a few I thought might hold the answers I needed.

I had always thought my father had been a human, but what if he wasn’t? What if the stag was the missing piece?

As if in a trance I took them outside and a couple of minutes later I found myself in the clearing that was overshadowed by my favourite oak.

I sat down on the stump of a pine I had to cut down after a storm and opened my book. It was strange how the forest around me stayed the same while my perception of my life changed with every page I read.

“Cernunnos! Barnabas, that’s it!” I called as I got up from my perch. I strolled across the little clearing she overshadowed, the old leather bound book in hand. “The Celtic God of the forest. His animal is a stag and also a couple of others. But Barnabas, it fits.”

I didn’t want or need to know how my mother had managed to seduce an ancient forest god, but it would explain a lot about me.

Like how I had always felt the pull of the forest, how I understood the language of the trees, and how the animals found me. My magic.

“What else can I do?” I asked no one in particular. The old oak creaked. “Yes, yes of course I will find out over time. I bet all the answers I need are already hidden in my library.”

A sassy beech tree who was growing in the oak’s shadow ruffled its leaves.

“Yes, I know I don’t need them all. I have been perfectly alright not knowing who my father is. But maybe I want some answers.”

The most pressing one was if I had the ability to shift into a stag. But if I shifted, could I shift back? What if I got stuck as a stag forever?

“What would happen to Bunny? No, I cannot try. Not before I know if he will return to me.”

The oak bowed her branches.

He will come , the wind seemed to whisper.