“I won’t go home,” he said, more forcefully than he intended. “Take me to Great Warren instead.”
Hilarion exploded into lunatic laughter, dissolving every ounce of tension in the air. “No,” he replied.
“W-what?” Cinnamon asked, looking back up at the skunk’s insufferable face. “What do you mean, no?”
“I’m not taking you to Great Warren,” he chortled, wiping a tear from his eye.
“Well why not?” he demanded, growing irritated again. “I’ve been preparing to go there for ages already. Graowf told me specifically to seek you out when I got to the wide world, that you would help me get to Great Warren.”
“I don’t care what Graowf volunteered me for, the answer is no,” said Hilarion.
Cinnamon ground his teeth again. “Fine then, I’ll go there myself,” he growled. “Just point me in the right direction.”
Hilarion’s grin spread to devilish proportions. Leaning in so close to Cinnamon’s face that their whiskers practically touched, he smoldered: “Oh no you won’t, and I’ll tell you why. You go to Great Warren and you’ll either be killed or worse, and there won’t be a thing I can do to help you then. Nobody can enter Great Warren.”
Great Warren is a fantasy story in the grand tradition of “funny animal fiction” about an order of exorcists who must work undercover in pagan lands, and an orphaned rabbit who joins the circus to find that it’s more than it appears. It has elements of gothic fiction and major influences from mythology and folklore, especially North American folklore. You can read the first book of four below; if you like it, please let me know! The first two are available for purchase in paperback and hardcover here. All four books are finished, and I will happily send you the others. As always, I make my stories available for free online; if you like what you read and would like to donate to help me continue writing, however, you can sign up for my Patreon, or just send the money via PayPal to zachary@knottyingrabbit.com. Stay tuned here and on social media for updates on this and other projects.
These poems explore the Stars and their relationship to folk on earth, as well as the major conflict which sets up the story. Read them here:
