Bunny, Winter, Cloven

'Books smell of time, don't they?' Holly mused, taking a long wistful sniff of the bookstore.

'I'm stealing that,' Ben singsonged as he made for the shelves on the left, nodding to the clerk at the till.

Holly followed him. 'I better get royalties.'

When she stopped beside him to read the spines on the shelves, he took her fingers between his.

'I've dedicated all my books to you. You want my money, too?' he gave an exaggerated gasp.

'I want everything.'

Her sneer brightened his face in a way Holly hadn't seen in a while. Her heart lept at his softening eyes. But then his smile faltered and his gaze dropped to glide back up the shelves like a fleeing bird with his sigh under its wings. That sadness would be a thing of the past soon enough.

'What's that?'

Ben followed her curious frown to something on the right end of the bookcase.

'What?' he asked.

'One is not like the others.'

Holly approached the object of her interest with Ben close behind. She pulled out a purple book, shorter and shinier than its fellows. There was no title, name, or other text on the spine nor the front or back. But there was a strange design spanning the whole cover. And when Holly tried to open the book, she found a silver lock in her way.

'It looks like a diary,' Ben remarked and reached for it.

Holly handed it over, but she continued to peruse it alongside her husband. It had blocks of silver squiggles to mimic writing all over the book's plum surface, as well as a clear path winding through the blocks, over the spine, and onto the back cover. There were little icons sitting at three points along the way before the path ended at a silver key.

'It's a treasure map,' Holly mumbled and looked at the bookcases behind the clerk, tall walls of wood and words, to find an opening situated where the diary's path seemed to start, too. 'A path through the store.'

She met the gleam in Ben's eye as they shared a thought, the same that often got them lost while exploring a city or a "haunted" house.

'Come on.' Ben pulled her towards the opening.

She skipped up beside him, just as eager for another adventure.

'What do you think we'll find?' Holly wondered.

Ben shrugged. 'The key? The owner? Who cares?'

'What's the first icon?'

They paused at the opening to look at the diary again. Just after a few twists and turns, the squiggles were interrupted by a white rabbit.

'Let's go, Alice,' Holly quipped and charged into the dim-lit hall between bookcases.

'That make you the Mad Hatter? Fitting.'

Ben winked at Holly's fake scowl and strode after her.

Time was a strange way to describe the sweet musk created by masses of books, but Holly stood by it. It awed and comforted her, as did the kaleidoscope of colours the bookcases, covers, and carpet encased her in. The yellow lights above put a warm haze over everything, enchanting her into forgetting why they were in those narrow passages in the first place.

A few wrong turns and backtracks later, they realized how important their map was to reaching their destination. Once dedicated, they soon came upon a clay carving of a white rabbit holding a little box. The ornament hung against the wall between two bookcases.

The box's hinges squeaked softly as Holly opened it and pulled out a strange silver object. It resembled a figure eight but was shaped like a butterfly's wings. None of that suggested its purpose, however. When she showed it to Ben, he looked just as puzzled.

'Okay,' was all he could say.

'Might be important later?' Holly pocketed the trinket. 'What's the next icon?'

'A snowflake.'

Ben admired the shape on the diary's spine for a few seconds before turning to the front cover to orient himself. He pointed down the righthand passage.

'This way.'

He led Holly further into the maze, his eyes and half-smile rarely straying from the book in his hands. She loved this childlike enthusiasm of his. She hoped to see a lot more of it.

'Aha,' Ben exclaimed and hopped under a large windchime hanging from the ceiling at another intersection.

Snowflakes dangled from silver chimes. These were attached to a white cloud with a yellow winter hat on. The chimes jingled as their flakes ruffled Ben's curls, the grey among the ginger matching the ornament's whites and silvers. Holly and he were in their thirties, but the stress of the past few years aged them both. But not enough to stifle their love of games.

'Don't break it,' Holly pleaded as Ben ducked out of the windchime's reach, untangling his hair as he went.

'It's fine. It's fine. We're good.'

'Wait, there's something on the other side of the hat.'

Holly squinted up at a silver bar sellotaped to the cloud's hat, but she couldn't reach it. Ben handed her the diary and carefully unstuck the object, only to frown at it in his hand. He turned it this way and that, somehow making it open and close lengthwise. When Holly got closer, she noticed that the bar formed a slot on one end when closed.

'Huh,' she said and produced the figure eight wings.

She told Ben to try and fit them together. Doubtful at first, his eyebrows shot up when he clasped the bar around the wings' middle. They fit perfectly, forming what looked like the blade and bow of a small old-fashioned key. Looking even closer, Holly pointed out the screwlike notches at the end of the blade.

'We're just missing one piece. The tip and teeth. And we can learn the diary's secret,' Ben whispered and grinned like a kid. 'Which way? Which way?'

'Hold yer horses.'

Holly giggled at her husband bobbing up and down. She looked at the map, followed the trail to the back cover, and found that they didn't have far to go.

'We're looking for an alpaca. This way,' she declared and turned left.

'I love alpacas.'

'The last one you met spat at you.'

'Exactly, it reminded me of you.'

Holly spun round to slap his forehead with the diary, but he recoiled too fast.

'Watch it, mister.'

'When we first met,' he exclaimed, his hands shielding his face, 'and I spilled beer all over your dress.'

'And my hair.'

'And you bit my head off.'

'Damn, right, I did. I stank to high hell all evening.'

'And then you married me.'

Holly tried and failed to smother her smile in the face of Ben's smugness.

'And, good grief, I married you.'

She shook her head as they gazed at each other. When Ben's eyes dipped again, his amusement dwindling, Holly distracted him by grasping his hand and yanking him down more passages. His laughter returned, a balm to her heart.

No sooner had Ben marvelled at the store's size than they reached the alpaca. It was a stuffed toy, standing proud atop a stack of books, their pyramid shape making the alpaca feel like a pharaoh.

'Ha, it even has your hair,' Ben remarked.

Holly ignored the taunt, largely because it rang true. The resemblance was in the alpaca's short brown ringlets. But they had a ginger tinge, too. The animal's buck teeth and long eyelashes made its expression simultaneously goofy and adorable. It had been love at first sight for Holly. She carefully hoisted it off the books and hugged it to her chest.

'It's so perfect.'

'And it's holding something,' Ben replied.

Holly looked down and found a small pouch tied to the alpaca's left cloven hoof. She removed, opened, and upended the pouch into Ben's palm. The key's silver teeth tumbled out to gleam up at them.

Ben wasted no time. He screwed the new piece onto the key's blade and twirled the completed object between his fingers, making sure it was solid. Then, he took the diary from Holly and trotted over to a couch conveniently placed at the end of the passageway and their hunt.

Holly's heart thrummed against her ribcage as she approached Ben, who sank into the cushions and turned the key in the diary's lock. He flung the front cover open, and Holly hugged the alpaca tighter.

'What does it say?' she asked. 'Who does it belong to?'

Ben frowned at the first page and shook his head, baffled.

'I don't know. It just has today's date and a poem.'

'Oh? Let's have it then.'

He cleared his throat and recited, 'Bunny, winter, cloven / Leave a maze behind / Bunny, winter, cloven / Put two threes out of mind / And find your dream awoken.'

'Interesting,' Holly mused. 'That's all it says? No other clues?'

'No.'

Ben's mouth moved as he silently reread the verses, his hand reaching into his jacket's breast pocket and pulling out a pen. He was always of the strong belief that a writer must never leave the house without a trusty pen. And here it was, making itself useful again.

Holly sat down beside him. The couch was soft and welcoming, but she leaned more into Ben than it. His warmth had become her greatest love in life. She looked forward to seeing it grow even more.

The tip of the pen flitted across the page where the poem sat in all capital letters. Holly was part glad and part offended that he didn't recognize the writing, but she didn't say a word as he worked on the riddle.

He'd scribbled several variations of 'Bunny, winter, cloven' down the page with different sets of letters scratched out, all in threes. Holly rested her cheek on his shoulder and waited. He was close.

For a few more seconds, the only sounds worth noticing were Holly's own heartbeat and the scratching of the pen. Then, came a pause. And a gasp. Holly felt it ripple through him, while the pen froze above the poem, and Ben's jaw hung slack.

He tore his stare from the page and fixed it on Holly, her eyes now wet and burning with emotion. She couldn't hold back any longer. She sniffled and smiled at the tears brimming his lashes, too. She was close enough to almost see her reflection.

When Ben looked back down at the diary, two tears splattered against its page. The edges of his gaping mouth inched upwards as he wrote, 'Bun inte oven,' in a new line.

'It worked. We did it,' Holly whispered into his ear and wrapped one arm around his shoulders—the other still clutched the alpaca that would join their family, too. 'The diary is for us. And our baby.'

Ben's joy erupted in a bark of a laugh that surely reached the clerk at the far side of the bookstore. Holly couldn't wait to give her conspirator the biggest hug. Their little game was a success. But the first embrace belonged to Ben, whose arms flew around Holly and heaved her off the couch and her feet.

'Bunny, winter, cloven,' he chanted over and over, his kisses the punctuation.