Growing up outside of the city, one of the first lessons you learn about driving is to watch out for deer, especially during rutting season.  Whether you’re driving the most remote of back roads or cruising down the highway, the cervine animals seem to take particular joy in portraying poultry; which is to say they like playing chicken with motorists.  The rub, as Shakespeare might say, is that they’re quite good at it.

Virtually everyone I know has had at least a near-miss encounter with one of them, myself included.  Working the late shift and driving home from work in the dead of night on a daily basis led me to more than a couple of far-too-close encounters with the animals, but I’d always been really good about avoiding them.  Some of my friends hadn’t been so lucky, one of them having his car totaled by a collision, but I credited myself with having made my own luck on the matter.  I had a pair of deer-whistles mounted on my old Chevy’s front bumper and kept my brights on whenever I drove those dark and lonely roads, constantly searching for any glimmer of reflection that might indicate a deer’s eyes peering out from the roadside brush.

One summer, several years back, I had thought my luck had run out.  Timing, as anyone who’s been involved in such an accident can tell you, is everything.  One moment the road is clear and the next, Bambi’s bounding out from behind the bushes.  You don’t get a whole lot of time to react but, even so, this was different.  I’d had them play peek-a-boo with me before, jump out of hiding and bolt across the road, but with those cases there’s a flash of movement and your reflex is to immediately go for the brakes.  This one didn’t run out into the road nor even walk — it simply appeared, standing in my path, in the brief moment I was distracted with adjusting my air-conditioning.

I swear that I hadn’t averted my eyes from the road for more than a second, just a glance down to make sure I was grabbing the right dial, but it seems that sometimes that’s all it takes.  I slammed my foot down on the brake pedal, letting the anti-lock system do its job as my pick-up came to a screeching halt from the fifty miles an hour I’d been driving at.  My truck lurched to a stop maybe a foot from the beast, leaving me face-to-face with one of the most impressive sights I have ever laid eyes on.  It was a massive creature, bigger than any stag I’d ever seen in person or pictured, with a pair of huge antlers that would be the envy of any hunter and a white coat so pristine that it almost seemed to glow in the light of my high-beams.  Still, as mighty as its physical form may have been, it was not nearly so stunning as the look in its eyes.

It hadn’t so much as flinched as my truck had barreled towards it, but it wasn’t that ages-old “deer in the headlights” cliché.  There was confidence in the eyes that looked back at me, as though it knew I would stop in time and saw no reason to remove itself from my path.  There was no fear in those eyes at all; I wish I could’ve said the same for my own.

My heart was pounding and I gripped the steering wheel tightly in both white-knuckled hands, my breath coming quick and heavy.  And the great white stag before me?  It just stood there, waiting while I caught my breath, watching me.  I blasted my horn at it a couple times, figuring maybe it was in shock, just as I was, and needed to be snapped out of it before it would move.  It just cocked its head to one side and gazed at me with what I can only describe as an amused expression.

It finally turned from me, casually walking forward along the road, angling slightly towards the shoulder.  It was nearly out of my path when it stopped and looked back at me, swinging its head twice in that manner which a person might use to tell someone to follow them.  A person, sure, but a deer?  Deer didn’t act like that.  Deer also didn’t roll their eyes but I swear that this one did, annoyed with my lack of response.  It swung its head again, motioning towards the side of the road and that time I gave voice to my confused, questioning thought.  “You want me to follow you?”

It nodded.  It was like being in an episode of Lassie, with the dog replaced by a deer.  “Did Timmy fall down the well?”  I had spoken the question, I think, more for the sake of my sanity than anything, just to relieve some of the stress I was feeling at the sheer impossibility of the situation.  The stag snorted, apparently entertained by my comment, though my voice surely couldn’t have been heard over the music playing on my radio even had my windows not been sealed.  It was a weak concern for the illogical considering that I was apparently talking to an animal.

I took a deep breath and pulled over to the side of the road.  If nothing else, I didn’t think it would be safe to drive if I was hallucinating; maybe I was more tired than I had thought?  The stag also wandered off of the asphalt, motioning with its head once again, this time less patiently.  I looked down at the cross dangling from my neck and said a quick prayer that either this madness was at God’s hand or that he would protect me were it not.  Whatever it was, I knew in my heart that I had to find out what was going on; simply driving away was not a viable option.

Turning off the truck, I freed myself of the seatbelt, opened the door and got out.  There was no traffic on the road, which wasn’t at all unusual; I generally had it all to myself.  Just me and the big, white cervine, all alone in the night.  It started walking into the woods which the road cut through, an easy pace to follow and follow I did.  The further away from the road we went, the more its pace quickened, until I was nearly running just to keep up.  It led me on a path that was anything but linear and at first I thought it was just trying to frustrate me more than the night’s events already had, but after a couple of minutes it occurred to me that it was leading me around obstacles, showing me the clear path to our destination, wherever that might have been.

Our arrival at that destination was an innocuous one.  It actually took me a moment to realize I was there, as there seemed nothing special about the location at all.  No magical clearing with the moonlight shining down, no ring of mushrooms, no signpost saying “you are here”.  As a matter of fact, the only reason I stopped there was that the stag had ditched me.  It had simply darted behind the trunk of a large tree and vanished as though it had never been, leaving me stumbling to a stop.  I couldn’t even hear any indication of it moving through the underbrush, my own ragged breath and the late night calls of the forest insects the only sounds reaching my ears.  It was bad enough that I was chasing what was likely a hallucination through the woods in the middle of the night, but it was starting to look like I was being played a fool – which, admittedly, likely wouldn’t have taken much effort.

I cursed, asking aloud where the animal had gotten off to, not that I was honestly expecting an answer.  Oddly enough, I got one, though it came in the form of a faint groan lifting up from the ground before me.  I stepped back, startled to find a human form lying virtually right at my feet, hidden by the darkness and curled up against the very tree which the stag had disappeared behind.

For a moment I stood frozen, my mind locked up as it tried to process the discovery, only to be spurred back into motion by a soft, pained whimper.  I crouched beside the person, reaching out to touch the shoulder and found, as I rolled her over, that it was a young woman.  She gasped with a jolt of agony as I moved her, bringing her back to consciousness for at least the moment.  She reached towards her right leg but the injury which had left her in such horrible condition was beyond her touch.  It was hard to see any kind of details but the moonlight filtering through the trees was enough to know that her knee wasn’t supposed to bend like that.

It didn’t take much medical knowledge to know that she was in bad shape and she was already knocking at death’s door, but she still managed to smile up at me.  “Hi, Mr. Bunny, what took you so long?”  Her question had surely been born of exposure-induced delirium but considering how I’d come to find her, I didn’t think I really had much room to complain.  At least she had an excuse.

“Don’t you know?”  I smiled back down at her, my response coming without thought, simply the desire to reassure her.  “Heroes always arrive at the last minute.”  She nodded tiredly, her eyes falling closed once again and for a moment I thought I’d been too late.  I thanked God when I saw her chest continue to rise and fall, but I knew that I couldn’t afford to leave her there and go get help.  I’d left my cell phone in the truck and even if I hadn’t, waiting for someone to get there from town and find me in the middle of the wilderness would’ve taken far too long.  As bad as her injury was, I had to move her; I just had to do it carefully.

I picked her up, holding one of her bare arms hooked over my shoulder and wrapping my own around her waist to support her weight.  I had a good few inches of height over her which allowed me to avoid dragging her legs as I made my way back to my truck.  I couldn’t even tell you how I found my way back, my sense of direction is typically less than impressive, but I knew without a doubt how to get back to the road; I like to think that God was guiding my steps.  I was also in less than stellar physical shape but with adrenaline pumping I managed to carry her easily and quickly.  It seemed like no time at all before I was emerging from the forest, my pick-up only a few feet away.

It was as I was getting her belted into the passenger seat that the interior lighting gave me my first real look at her.  My opinions on a lot of things got changed that night, not the least of them was that of the existence of love at first sight.  My breath actually caught in my throat at that initial look at her face.  Her face was that of a sleeping angel framed in long, black bangs.  Even as dehydrated as she obviously was and her lips badly chapped – even with bits of leaves caught in her hair and dirt smudged across a badly bruised cheek – a smile still turned their corners up.  It was as if even though she’d fallen into unconsciousness, she still knew that she was safe.

I shook myself to refocus my thoughts, reminding myself that she was clearly not my type.  She had multiple piercings in her ears as well as one in her brow and another in her nose.  She was wearing a sleeveless top that showed off a tribal tattoo on her right arm and left her midriff fully revealed, as well as low-slung jeans.  She certainly wasn’t the type of good little Christian girl that my mother would have approved of.  Besides that, I had much better things to do than stand there ogling her, like getting her to the hospital.

I called nine-one-one as soon as I was back on the road and up to speed, traveling a good ten miles over the speed limit.  In truth I wanted to go faster, to get her to safety sooner, but I knew that I couldn’t afford the risk of such speeds on the winding highway.  The hospital was expecting us and the emergency operator assured me that doctors would be standing by at the door.  I stayed on the line with him the entire way, keeping the phone on speaker and the radio off, just so he could keep the hospital appraised of my progress.  They even had a pair of police cars escort me in from the town’s limit so I wouldn’t have to lose time worrying about what little traffic was still on the road.  First time I’d ever been glad to see those flashing lights cutting through the night.

The hospital was indeed ready for us and the instant I pulled to a stop outside their emergency doors a cluster of doctors and nurses were moving towards my truck.  I unlocked the doors and undid the seatbelt holding her in while they got a gurney into place.  I started to warn them about her leg when they opened the door to extract her but was quickly assured that they had it under control.  I suppose they did at that, pulling her out as gently as possible, already trading comments about her condition and injury.

It’s kind of funny but it was only then, as they were carefully lifting her out of my truck, that I noticed that her upper left arm bore a tattoo of its own.  That in itself really didn’t come as much of a shock, though as big as it was I was a little surprised I didn’t notice it earlier, even in the dark.  What did leave me more than a little stunned, however, were the specifics of its design.  It was a pentacle, about four inches in diameter, with the silhouette of a stag overlaid in the middle.

I’m not sure which part shocked me more, that she’d bear such a “Satanic” symbol so openly or that she had the image of the very creature that had led me to her.  My mother would’ve just taken one look at her and declared that devil-worship was no surprise from such a girl, dismissing any possible meaning for the stag.  I couldn’t pass it off so lightly nor accept that my divinely-guided rescue was done for the sake of a heart of evil.  Even so, I had a lot of learning ahead of me.

I was assured by one of the nurses that she was in good hands now  and told that I should park my pick-up in the lot.  The woman also told me that they’d need to get some information from me about where I had found her and such.  That made me consider just leaving, as I really didn’t want to try and explain how I’d found her, but I felt that I couldn’t just leave.  There were too many questions yet to be answered so I’d have to make up some kind of plausible story.  It was the second-best decision I had ever made up to that point of my life; the best was to have followed the white stag in the first place.

I was at her bedside when she finally awoke the next morning, the anesthetic having ensured she slept comfortably.  Wish I could say the same but the chairs in the waiting room weren’t all that conducive to sleep.  Still, as soon as they were allowing visitors into her room, I was there; I felt a responsibility to be there for her and a need to find out more about her.  I think my heart skipped a beat or two when she finally came around, all my rehearsed greetings and good-mornings flying right out the window.  It was actually her who spoke first, a tired smile worn on her lips.  “Hello, again, Mr. Bunny.  Does this mean you saved me?”

I stammered for a moment or two then cracked up laughing.  “Yeah, I guess it does.”  We took the time to introduce ourselves but didn’t get much further than that before a nurse came in to check on her, which at least provided us with some information on her condition.  The IV had gotten her largely rehydrated and they’d done surgery on her knee so that it was at least bending the way it was supposed to, but she was still looking at another trip under the knife and a lot of rehabilitation before she’d be walking on it again.  They wouldn’t even schedule anything beyond the emergency room until they were sure she had medical insurance.  She did, which surprised me, even though it shouldn’t have.  I had just been assuming, based entirely on her appearance, that she was either unemployed or working some kind of low-end retail job.

You’ve heard the old saying about what happens when you assume, right?  Well, I was certainly living up to my end of it.  It was then that I decided that it was time I started learning some facts instead of just throwing her into some kind of idiotic stereotype.  As soon as the nurse had left, I started into my questions; it was on the borderline of interrogation but she put up with it rather cheerfully, despite her less than happy situation.

Turned out that she was a computer repair technician, fully certified, and doing quite well for herself financially.  Her accident was sure to put a bit of a damper on her income but she’d always made sure to keep herself fully covered.  Fact was, she was making more money than I was.  It made me glad that I hadn’t jumped right in and volunteered to pay for it – which I almost had before finding out she was covered.  She probably would’ve thought it was sweet of me to offer but my ego might not have survived with my foot lodged that deeply into my mouth.

We had a couple of hours there pretty much to ourselves, though she did take time to make a couple phone calls.  She had a few friends that had been quite worried about her and clearly excited to hear from her.  She had been intending to meet a couple of them the evening before, so her absence had raised a lot of concern.  Even though it was her on the phone and not me, I could still hear one woman emphatically assuring her that she’d be down to see her as quickly as possible.  There was genuine friendship there – love – and it made me wonder.  The shirt provided by the hospital covered her tattoos but I could still see it clearly enough in my memory.  Somehow devil-worship and love didn’t seem to mesh in my mind.

Once the calls had been made and she’d gotten herself comfortable, I asked what she was doing out in the woods in the first place and how she’d managed to hurt herself.  It had been a simple nature walk, not unlike those she took on a regular basis; a bit of exercise, a bit of fresh air and a bit of serenity.  Difference had been that she’d found a baby bird who’d fallen out of its nest.  Feeling bad for it, she’d picked it up and scaled the tree to return it to the nest some twenty feet up.  I could already see where her tale was going long before she finished it.  She had been successful in her mission, at least, but the climb back down – which should have been easier, by all rights – ended with a simple misstep and a fall.  She kept it vague, not really wanting to speak of the details or the pain; I couldn’t really blame her for that.  She was just glad that she fell on the way down rather than the trek upwards.

What I “knew” and what I was seeing before me wasn’t adding up, so I finally brought myself to ask about her tattoo, though I left out mention of the stag at the time.  She explained it both simply and proudly:  She was a Pagan.  I guess the expression on my face was a dead giveaway because she gave a heavy sigh of somewhat amused exasperation before clarifying what was, to her at least, completely obvious.  “No, I don’t worship Satan or sacrifice babies or whatever.  I don’t even believe in the existence of the Christian devil.”

“My mother would call you a heathen.”  I tried to keep my tone light, not wanting the comment to come off as accusatory, but her response still caught me off guard.  She smiled brilliantly, one of the most glorious sights I’d ever seen.

“And proud of it, baby!”  We both laughed at her exuberance and it occurred to me that, while my mother would have intended the word as an insult, it really was an accurate descriptor.  Like any other word, it only held whatever power you gave to it.  In ancient Roman times, when they were forced to keep their beliefs a secret, the title of Christian would likely have been used in a derogatory manner; yet in the modern era the cross was worn openly and with confidence.

She warned me that the trio of friends who were coming to visit her were also Pagan but I just shrugged it off.  If they were anything like her, I couldn’t see how they could be so bad.  Of course, she did fail to give me any kind of warning about the man who would be a part of that trio.  He was by far the most feminine of the three – a fact which boggled my mind – and nearly went into hysterics at seeing his friend in a hospital bed.  The abrupt, heartfelt embrace he gave upon learning that I’d saved her life caught me off guard, to say the least.  His blatantly homosexual nature probably should’ve been an affront to my Christian sensibilities but, while it was certainly a little awkward for me, it honestly didn’t bother me too much.  At the very least, he was very entertaining.

With her friends there to keep her company and myself in sore need of a shower and change of clothing, I decided to take my leave.  I was a little surprised when she asked me if I’d be back the next day.  I think I was even more shocked at my own answer.  “Why wait for tomorrow?  I’ll see you tonight.”  I was supposed to work that night, of course, but it was a Friday and that’s what sick days were for, after all.  I have to admit that the smile my response put on her face made my heart swell.

I kept my promise and returned later that day, towards the evening hours, cleaned up and properly fed.  I hadn’t gotten any extra sleep, though, as I had spent several hours doing a bit of research online.  It’s strange… I’ve always considered myself an educated man, a worldly man, yet there was so little I actually knew about Paganism and so many untruths and half-truths that I had taken for fact.  When I arrived back at the hospital it was with a mind full of questions that I desperately needed answered.  Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t about to convert (Jesus is my saviour and God is my Lord) but the more I understood her faith, I figured, the better I would understand her; and the better I could accept my feelings for her.

She had laughed when I asked her to explain Paganism to me, countering that it would like asking me to explain the whole width and breadth of Christianity; no simple task.  Still, she did her best to relate her own philosophical and religious beliefs.  What I initially found remarkable about them was how similar the basic principles were to my own, but when I thought about it, most religions all share a very similar morality.  Her beliefs, as with the teachings of the Bible, came down to one essential concept:  Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

I spent most of my weekend at the hospital with her, keeping her company while talking about anything and everything.  I got to meet many of her friends – Pagan and otherwise – and also her family, many of whom thanked me profusely for saving her life.  In all honesty, I did save her life and I knew it, but I was trying to avoid making a big deal out of it.  I simply claimed I did what anyone would have (or so I like to think) but what I wanted to say was that God had willed it.  I held off from saying it, even though I thought it, because I was worried that they might take offense or react badly to it; I didn’t want to start any trouble.  Of course, I wore my cross openly around my neck, then as I do now, yet no one said a word about it.  Put simply, I worried too much.

The absurdity of my concerns was shown to me when her parents finally arrived to visit her on Sunday afternoon.  They had driven in from out of town to check in on their daughter and it was immediately obvious from their greeting that they were a very loving family.  The shock, then, came when her own father assured me that he felt God had called on me and that I had answered that call admirably.

“You’re Christian?”  I probably looked like a fish, my jaw hanging open in a most idiotic fashion.

“Catholic, and so is my wife.”  He had smiled, as though it wasn’t such an uncommon situation.  He was kind enough to not let me get out any more than a confused “but” before continuing.  “My daughter has the right to choose her own path.  I like to believe that, when it comes right down to it, the Lord judges us by what’s in our hearts, not by how much of the Gospel we preach.  She’s a good girl with a big, loving heart.  Don’t let misconceptions come between you, you’d make a cute couple.”

His rather forward suggestion had left me blushing and his daughter throwing a pillow at him but I took his words to heart, both theological and personal.  Any lingering doubts had been put to rest.  Religious preferences aside, being with her felt right and I made a habit of it.  I visited her every day that I could, through the day of her surgery and the first stages of her rehabilitation, until she was finally released.  She was still on crutches when she was let out of the hospital and still had a long way to go before she’d be back at a hundred percent, but we made a surprise detour as I drove her home so we could have our first official date.

That was a long time ago.  We’ve been married for four years now and couldn’t be happier, balancing our differing beliefs without much difficulty at all.  In fact, we had two weddings on the same day.  First came a smaller gathering for a traditional Pagan hand-fasting, followed only a few hours later by a full Christian wedding; I figured that it was only fair we do both.  It was a day of perfect happiness and cheer just like a wedding day should be, with even my dad making an effort to be supportive.  He still avoids talking to her beyond the most basic pleasantries but he’s about the only one among my friends and family who hadn’t left all the negative rumouring well behind them.  Even my mother warmed up to her eventually, though not without a lot of worrying.  She even tried to convert her to Christianity once, which my then-fiancé handled remarkably well.  “Ma’am,”  She spoke entirely politely but also with blunt honesty.  “If you could change my beliefs then I never believed them in the first place.  Don’t worry, your son’s beliefs are just as secure.”

So there you go, a nice happy ending – not perfect, but certainly good enough for me.  You’re probably still wondering, though, if I ever told her the truth of how I found her.  I certainly managed to avoid it for a long time but it finally came out the night before our wedding.  She had told me a long time prior that the stag was her totem animal, hence the tattoo, but it had just been a matter of casual conversation.  It had kind of made sense in an almost disturbing way, but I’d left it at that.  The white stag was still one of those things that I couldn’t really understand.

When she finally pushed me into recounting the exact tale of how I found her, it was really my own fault.  We were taking a bit of time to relax before our big day and she had made a joke that she was about to become “Mrs. Bunny”.  The whole Mr. Bunny thing had always confused me and I asked why on Earth she had ever decided to call me that.  She countered that she’d only explain it if I told my side of the story.  Of course, she had no intention of letting me back down from it either, so the whole story finally came out.

Needless to say, she was rather stunned.  Her totem animal had shown itself to me, who didn’t even believe in such things, in a manner that was far more than her own dream encounters and meditative visions.  I really didn’t know what to say, as I still couldn’t accept that some animal spirit had appeared before me that particular night.  Her side of things wasn’t much less bizarre than my own.

While she had been laying there, just before the sun had set, a rabbit had appeared before her.  It hadn’t been a spirit, she reckoned, just a rabbit out looking for food.  She fed it a few pieces from a granola bar she’d been eating, figuring that since she’d run out of water, conserving food really wasn’t a concern.  Surprisingly, it had not only accepted the gift, but decided to keep her company for a while.  Perhaps it had sensed that she was hurt, perhaps it was just hoping for more food.  Whatever its reasoning, it plopped down beside her and sat there until well after dark.

Laying in the darkness on the verge of unconsciousness, she had heard a voice speak to her.  It had been calm and reassuring, like a father’s whisper to a sleeping child.  The voice had told her that help was coming and that she would make it through the night.  When she had managed to open her eyes, all she saw was the rabbit sitting before her.  A moment later the rabbit ran off into the woods, so she had just taken it to be a spirit.  If nothing else, it explained the rabbit’s curious behaviour.  The next thing she had been aware of was me standing over her.

I had to laugh.  The voice she described sounded, to me, exactly how I would think the voice of God Himself would sound.  If that were so, then God had spoken to the Pagan while the animal spirit had guided the Christian.  If that didn’t prove that the two religions could co-exist, I didn’t know what would.

“You always say that your God works in mysterious ways.”  She had laughed with me, wrapping her arms around my back to snuggle up against me.  I had smiled, looking down into those beautiful eyes and knowing beyond any doubt that we had been meant for each other.

“It seems yours does as well.”


Copyright TJ Brazeau, 2007.