The Snowmaiden, A Bride for Krampus - Jeanette Lynn Page 0,38
thinking there wasn’t, in the end I felt like I was better off not knowing.
Shnikel had left early this morning with the very familiar shovel he’d come back with one day. I knew then he’d been back to the main caves. He was either digging yet another backup of stow away compartments or excavating and exploring more of the underground tunnels he’d found. Shnikel helped me fall asleep at night murmuring old tales he was told as a fawn, of worlds connected by portals, civilizations underground. He was certain they weren’t just children’s tales anymore. From what he told me of the hidden underground caverns he’d uncovered, I believed it.
Was that what he was looking for? A way to a portal? The tales said there was a key involved. He wasn’t sure what kind of key, literal, words spoken, a spell. He’d spoken once of going back to his carriage house to try and see if he could find more information, but had stopped when I’d grown upset. He couldn't just go traipsing up in there with me in tow and I knew he wouldn't for fear of what would become of me.
I had a very real fear he was planning on leaving me soon to do just that. Stores of dried food surrounded me, fruit cake clumps and meat he’d cured and dried, candies and treats enough to rot my teeth plucked from the wilds, hidden in compartments as well as in cubbies he’d carved out of the walls. It was not lost on me, the irony that I couldn't really eat any of the healthy fruits and vegetables that grew here, most but not all off limits to me, but junk food was perfectly fine. Hinter was a little kid’s dream. I’d die of diabetes if Shnikel wasn’t bringing meat and edible plants and roots back from his adventures.
Shnikel’s love juice held absolutely no sway over how warm I was, and try as he might when I finally agreed to it, he couldn’t persuade a Krampus to come join us in our den. They were opposed to his presence but tried to approach the cell bars and do that snarling purr stuff after he’d left.
Most disturbing of the changes of late, Shnikel had caught onto this, and was trying to convince me to go to one of the less aggressive ones in offering so I didn’t starve and or freeze to death. Which was insane, because we both knew once I put myself in one of their care, they wouldn't be just handing me right back. There were female Krampus. They were heavily protected, served and were serviced by three to four males, whoever was in her main grouping. Shnikels’ obsession with them, while insightful, had me worrying why he was trying so hard to get me to agree.
Glancing at him from across the fire crackling loudly later that night, I blurted, “You want to go back. You’re trying to get rid of me.” Snuggling up better in the blankets, my gaze slipped back to the flames. “Tell me I’m wrong so I can stop feeling like the floor is about to drop out from beneath me at any moment.”
Pulling a piece of meat off the spit, he murmured, “I care for you. I’d do anything for you if it kept you safe.”
Taking the meat to sit back down, I took a bite of it, feeling ravenous, but waited until I’d finished chewing and swallowing to speak. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Setting the meat on the spit off to the side, propping it along the cave wall, pausing as he turned, cocking his head to study me, he slowly crawled his way around the fire. Coming up on me from the end of my pelt cocoon, he slowly pulled back the folds as I stuffed the rest of the piece of meat into my hand into my mouth. I chewed as I watched him grab my ankle, urging me to lie back so he could prowl up my length. The silly rumbling noises he made were all for show. The real noise that followed when I swallowed the food in my mouth and laughed, had his Elkfen happy noise erupting from his throat in loud bursts. I called it his moose call, which he hated—he was an Elkfen, part human, part Santa’s reindeer, though he refused to shift in front of me—but it also made him snort out a laugh and smile every time.