10. Bar
BAR
It turned out that the lodge did keep loaner skis in one of the outbuildings. Mauro, in a noticeably better and friendlier mood, took them out and helped them select appropriate skis for their respective heights, as well as providing a pair of borrowed boots in place of Bar’s impractical shoes.
“Have either of you skied before?” Mauro asked. It was clear that rescuing tourists whose inexperience got them into trouble had happened to him before.
“A couple of times when I was a teenager,” Joy said.
Bar grinned. “This is something I’m good at. I’ve even been a ski instructor.”
Skiing vacations were one of the few activities with his family that he had really enjoyed. He could have spent hours and hours on the ski trails.
“It was mostly downhill,” he added, “and this is going to be cross-country, but I’ve done some of that as well.”
“None of the trails are groomed,” Mauro pointed out. “It’ll be slow going in the loose snow.”
“That’s all right. We’ll keep an eye on our energy level and come back before we get too tired.”
The skis were older ones that didn’t require special boots, although as Mauro explained, the bindings wouldn’t release quickly like newer skis in the event of a fall, so they needed to be careful. He left them with a handful of granola bars in case they got hungry, along with a map of the lodge’s ski trails, and went back to clearing snow. Bar guided Joy for some ski practice on the clear, open edge of the parking area, until he could tell she had the hang of it.
“We’ll stay on the flatter trails, since going up hills can be tough,” Bar said. He took the lead, skiing easily and holding himself to a slow speed so she could keep up.
“You really are good at this,” Joy said, as she began to get the rhythm of it.
“Yeah, but you’re a natural.” He wondered if being a shifter helped. It seemed likely, with shifter strength and general resilience helping her out; he didn’t think he had ever taught a shifter how to ski before. But he hadn’t been around enough of his kind to say for sure whether it was a shifter thing or just a Joy thing.
“That’s nice of you to say,” Joy said a minute later, as she untangled her ski from a log that had nearly sent her tumbling. “Hopefully I won’t do too much to disprove it. When were you a ski instructor?”
“In my early twenties. The instructor at the resort where we were staying quit suddenly, so I took over for a while. They liked me enough that they asked me back a couple of times.”
It was a good memory. He could easily have been happy doing that for a living, he thought; it was the farthest thing removed from the offices and board rooms that sometimes felt like a prison.
“It’s really beautiful here,” Joy said quietly.
It was. The storm was just a distant memory now, leaving behind unbroken white snow that only showed a few tracks, here and there, where a bunny or a bird had left their mark. The sun gleaming between the snow-covered pines was warm enough that they had to pause after a while to unfasten their coats. This morning they had occasionally been surprised by snow sliding off the trees, but now it was a nearly constant occurrence as the snow melted and warmed, like mini-avalanches. The resilient pine branches sprang back up after unleashing their load, sometimes onto the unwary skiers passing below.
“Eek!” Joy stopped and tried to get snow out of her collar. Bar skied back to help. He ended up fussing with her scarf, looking into her flushed, happy face.
“So how are you enjoying skiing so far?” he asked, forcing himself to let go of her scarf before he ended up showering her face with kisses and never letting go.
“It’s fantastic.” Joy looked around at the wintery forest. “I don’t think we can even get lost. It’s like Mauro said this morning, we can just follow our tracks back. At least if more snow doesn’t fall.”
Bar looked up at the clear blue sky overhead. “Doesn’t look likely, at least not soon. I think another storm system was forecast for tonight or tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, that would be perfect. The falling snow on the holiday lights was so lovely last night. A true white Christmas.”
Bar grinned as they began skiing again. He felt so light with her, so happy, as if anything was possible. “This Christmas isn’t white enough for you?”
“It’s perfectly white, but there’s just something romantic about falling snow, you know?”
“In that case, I’ll vote for the storm system.”
They grinned at each other and skied deeper into the woods.
More animals were beginning to come out, enjoying the warmer weather. Joy, who seemed to have a good eye for spotting them, pointed out a bright flash of a cardinal darting between the trees, and then a squirrel on a branch above them.
“You said you turn into a squirrel?” Bar asked.
“A Malabar giant squirrel. Do you know what those are?”
“I’ve vaguely heard of them. I’m going to guess they’re ... giant?”
“Big, anyway. Big and colorful.” Joy looked up wistfully at the trees, where the small red squirrel had whisked out of sight. “This would be an amazing forest to shift and run around in.”
“Why not?” Bar asked. “It’s just you and me out here. No one’s going to see you.”
Joy’s cold-pinked cheeks turned pinker yet. “Well, I have to take my clothes off.”
The idea of Joy with no clothes on was enough to chase every last hint of cold out of his entire body, especially certain parts of it. “I promise not to look. Unless you’re worried about getting too chilly.”
“I’m not worried. I’ll warm up as soon as I have fur.” She hesitated. “Do you think it would be all right?”
“Sure. I’ll keep lookout.”
Bar turned his back, determined to hold on to his promise of proper gentlemanly conduct. The small rustles and zipping sounds behind him tested his resolve powerfully. He couldn’t help picturing every part of it, her soft pink-pale skin emerging one item of clothing at a time.
Then there was a soft plop in the snow and a bright flash shot past him, up a tree.
Bar looked up, just in time to catch some snow in the eye, dislodged by Joy’s rapid passage. He brushed it away as there was a soft chittering from above him, a sort of squirrel laughter.
He saw her then, framed by the white snow and dark trees. It was true that she was a beautiful animal, covered in large patches of red and dark blueish gray, with a crisp white chest. She wasn’t that huge, although she was big as squirrels went, a bit larger than a gray squirrel, with an amazing fluffy tail that looked longer than her entire body.
Seeing him looking at her, Joy darted higher in the tree. She moved in the curious weightless way of all squirrels, bouncing from branch to branch as if gravity had no effect on her.
The pleasure of watching her filled him with a wonderful lightness of being. Suddenly he thought, If she can shift, why not me?
He was used to hiding it very strictly. As a dragon, he couldn’t even pretend to be an escaped zoo animal or otherwise hide in plain sight as most shifters could. His parents had been viciously resistant to any hint of shifting outside the family’s properties. At least they’d had an enormous house with a high wall around the back garden, so he’d had room to sunbathe in his dragon form. He felt a vague wistfulness, thinking of it.
The woods felt terribly public by comparison. But they also felt right .
And his parents weren’t here to tell him no.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he shifted.
He was a relatively small dragon, as dragons went—maybe twenty feet from nose to tail, and most of that was the tail, as well as the neck. But his colors were, if he did say so himself, quite pretty. He was gold, with an iridescent neck ruff and similar mother-of-pearl colors on the underside of his wings.
His clothes went with him as a dragon, but as soon as he tried to move, he realized the skis hadn’t. Rather than demonstrating his sinuous grace to Joy, he fell very un -gracefully forward on his front paws because his back feet were still tangled up in the ski bindings. Ruefully he raised first one back foot, then the other, examining the situation. Dragons’ front paws were capable of picking things up, but he wasn’t sure he could undo ski bindings with claws.
He looked up to find Joy had scampered out of the tree onto the snow. She was a big squirrel, but looked absolutely tiny to him now. Just as Bar was wondering what on earth she was up to, she scampered up his leg just as if he was a tree. A minute later she was on his back, while Bar tried to shake off vivid images of a very differently shaped Joy also climbing him like a tree. He twisted his supple neck around backward to watch her.
She stopped in the middle of his back, between his half-spread wings, and sat up on her hind legs. Rather than curling over her back like an ordinary squirrel’s, her tail dangled down his side. Bar couldn’t help noticing that their colors complimented each other, her dark red and smoke-gray looking stylish against the shiny bronze-gold of his scales.
Bar nudged her gently with the very tip of his nose. Then, deciding that he needed to get the skis off before he forgot about them, tripped and fell headfirst into a tree, he shifted back.
He wasn’t sure if he startled her, or if Joy had been planning on shifting anyway, but he abruptly found himself knocked to the snow under an armful of very naked, very curvy Joy.
“Yikes!” Joy said, as Bar said “Ow!” because the sudden fall had twisted his ski-bound legs like a couple of pretzels.
Joy shifted back before he could tell her she didn’t have to and in fact she could stay that shape as long as she wanted. Squirrel tail flying behind her like a banner, she bounded across the snow to her pile of clothing, and as Bar sat up and began to massage his ankles, she shifted human again. He hastily averted his eyes, but not before getting a very nice eyeful of pink, naked Joy.
“Sorry,” Joy said, accompanied by more deliciously tempting rustling noises. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. You aren’t heavy. I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Joy laughed. There was a zipping sound, and he risked a look around to find her back in her coat and pants, now stomping into her boots, which she had left attached to her skis. “No worries. I wish I could do what you do. Did you really shift with your clothes just then?”
“It’s a dragon thing.”
“It’s convenient, is what it is. I wouldn’t mind being able to take my clothes with me.”
She took a few ski-steps closer to him and offered a hand. Bar accepted the hand up and tested his footing. He had felt one of his ankles tweak, but it seemed to be all right. Shifter flexibility and healing for the win.
“Sure you’re okay?” Joy asked.
“The ankle’s okay. I’m out of shape, that’s all.”
“You look like a perfectly good shape to me,” Joy said under her breath.
The vivid tactile memory of being pressed under her warm weight was still fresh in his mind. Bar put a gloved hand on her face, and she didn’t pull away.
Their lips met.
Her lips were cold, but they parted to give him a taste of the heat within. When she was finally the one to draw away, both of them were breathing hard and her color had pinked in a way even the cold didn’t account for.
“Why, Bar,” she said. “I didn’t know squirrels got you all hot and bothered.”
Bar laughed. “Having a beautiful naked woman fall on top of me was more of a factor.”
He felt absolutely buoyant, as if something inside him—maybe the elusive part of him that was his dragon—was absolutely overjoyed. It gave him the courage to bring up the thing he had really been meaning to do.
“I have a suggestion if you want to keep going,” he said. “It’d mean having to ski farther than I had in mind, and I don’t want you to get sore, since you aren’t used to it. But—I really wanted to take a look at our old family home. I haven’t been back in a lot of years, but I think I can still find it. We have a kind of a—an instinct for these things.”
“Your home?” She looked up at him with eyes that were round and rapt. “I didn’t know your family actually lived here. You never mentioned that.”
Bar found himself embarrassed. “It was our vacation home when I was a kid. Years ago, many years ago, I think some of my ancestors lived up here full-time. Maybe my great-grandpa was the last person who called these mountains home permanently.”
“I had no idea. Bar, you should tell the lodge people. I think they think you’re a big-city intruder who doesn’t love this place like they do. But you’re actually from around here.”
“It doesn’t make a difference, does it? The problem is that we both want the same piece of land, and everyone can’t have it.” He looked up at the low winter sun. “We should probably get moving if we’re going to get there and back before dark. Are you sure you’re up to this? I can’t remember exactly how far it is, and it’s easy to overdo it on your first day out.”
Joy grabbed her ski poles. “I’m game. Lead on.”
He took the lead again, breaking trail for her, which was by far the more exhausting part of the journey. In spite of his cracks about being out of shape, his muscles still knew how to move in skis, and shifter resilience was almost as good for staying in shape as a regular gym workout. His ankle twinged a bit at first, then settled down. Occasionally Bar glanced back to see Joy gliding along in his ski tracks, cheeks flushed with cold and awe, gazing at the winter wonderland around them.
It was truly an idyllic scene, utterly quiet except for the glide of their skis and an occasional soft shoof! as a branch let go of its load of snow. Bar worked uphill at a slight angle across the slope, knowing that coming back down would be easier. He was starting to enjoy the burn of his muscles, the pleasant feeling of working up a light sweat.
It turned out to be much easier than he expected to find his way back to a place he hadn’t been since he was a child. It was almost as if something in him was responding to the land, telling him exactly where to go. The feeling was not unlike the way he felt with Joy, where it was almost like something inside him was guiding him, giving him a subtle sense of rightness when he was on the right path. Each time they came to a fork in the half-hidden trails under the snow, he turned without hesitation as if following a map imprinted on his brain.
This is why I can’t give this place up, he thought. Not without a fight. It’s part of my clan, my heart and soul. Even having been gone for so long doesn’t change that.
He looked back to find Joy lagging behind, and slowed down so she could catch up. “Sorry,” Joy panted as she skied up behind him. “Is it very much further? I don’t mind going on, it’s just that I think I’d like a rest soon.”
“We can stop for a bit, but I think we’re almost there.” The awareness came to him in the same way as his knowledge of the twists and turns of the trail, rising out of a part of his mind he had no name for.
“Then let’s go on,” Joy said, smiling bravely.
“Are you sure? I don’t want you to strain something. It’s a long way back.”
“I’m sure. I can’t wait to see the place. Tell me about it; what’s it like?”
“It’s wonderful,” Bar said. Then he realized he didn’t want to get her hopes up too much, considering that all his memories were filtered through a child’s eyes. “I mean—it’s an old log house, built by my great-grandfather, I think. Sort of a small chalet. It was full of interesting little rooms and cupboards that I loved darting into and out of as a dragonet. In fact, I think the time I used to spend out here was the most time I ever remember being shifted in my life. It used to feel to me like absolute peace, like I had finally found the place where I belonged.”
Joy was huffing for breath again, but she came up close to him so that she could reach out to put a hand on his arm. “It sounds amazing. I can’t wait to see it.”
“Me too. It should be right around here somewhere. The trees are starting to look right.” More than that, he could feel the sense of correctness that had been guiding him the whole way growing stronger, pulling him forward. “Just a little farther, it should be right around this ... turn ...”
He had actually seen it from a distance, he realized with gradually dawning understanding, but he hadn’t known what it was; he had thought he was seeing a hillside, or a snow-covered brush pile. Now, as he and Joy skied into an overgrown clearing, he began to recognize landmarks.
The house was covered in snow and partly collapsed. The roof had fallen in, and some of the walls leaned drunkenly. With young trees growing all around it, changing its contours, he wouldn’t have been absolutely certain if he hadn’t recognized the windows. One of the walls had stained glass windows featuring dragons—an odd feature in a log chalet, but it was all part of the quirky, handcrafted charm of the place. Most of the stained glass was still in its leaded frames, though the wall tilted at an angle, propped up by the fallen-in roof behind it.
With the sunlight slanting through the clearing, painting blue shadows across the snow, the abandoned ruin of the house had a scenic majesty. It would have made a beautiful painting, Bar thought bleakly.
“Oh, Bar,” Joy breathed. She skied a little closer. “Are you—sure?”
“I’m sure.” Tearing his eyes away from the stained glass windows, he looked around. It was easier to recognize familiar sights now. “There’s an old orchard back there with fruit trees—gone completely wild, it looks like. And this stone well ... my grandfather built this.”
Feeling suddenly exhausted, he took off his skis and brushed off the top of the old well casing so he could sit down.
Joy, though she must have been tired, skied around a little to look at the house before she joined him and flopped wearily beside him. They shared a drink of water and a granola bar.
“I guess it makes sense that there wouldn’t be much left,” Bar said. He tried to shake off his melancholy and put on a cheerful face. “It was old even when I was a kid, and it’s been a really long time since anyone was up here. They get heavy winter snows here in the mountains. One of those must have been too much for it, and nature took its course after that.”
“I don’t think it’s too far gone to rebuild,” Joy said. “I work in real estate, so I see a lot of old houses, even if I’m not an expert at fixing them. But I can see what you mean, it was very sturdily built once upon a time. The foundation looks good, and so do the logs.” She gestured to the old fieldstone foundation, patchily visible where it had been sheltered from snow. “I bet if you got someone out here to look at it, they might be able to salvage a lot of what’s there and use the old parts to rebuild. It’s not uncommon these days for logs salvaged from otherwise damaged vintage houses to be used in new construction projects.”
Bar turned a more thoughtful look on the old house. There was something deeply appealing about fixing it up and seeing it intact and beautiful again.
“How long has it been?” Joy asked, picking crumbs out of the granola bar wrapper.
“Fifteen years, at least. We stopped coming up here after my mom—” He broke off; he hadn’t planned to talk about that. But Joy was so easy to talk to. “After my mom left.”
“I think I misunderstood you earlier, I’m sorry. I thought your mom was ... you know. Gone.”
“No, I lost Dad this spring, but Mom left a long time ago. She was only interested in Dad’s money, as it turned out, and once she got that, she skipped town.”
“I’m so sorry,” Joy said. “Didn’t she even try to stay in touch with you?”
Bar shook his head. “She and Dad divorced, she got a nice settlement, and she cleared out.”
He was embarrassed that it had come out so petty and childish. It was all a long time ago. I should be over it.
“That’s terrible. I really am sorry.” Joy looked at him with warm eyes. “Hasn’t anyone ever actually told you they were sorry about it before?”
Bar swallowed. “Well, it was—look, it’s a first-world-problem situation, you know? My mom walked out, but it wasn’t like I didn’t have nannies and a nice gated house to keep me happy.”
“Were you? Happy?”
He looked away, unable to meet her eyes. No, he hadn’t been. The happiest he had ever been in his life was right here, a very long time ago when he hadn’t yet had his eyes opened about who his mom really was—and what kind of person his dad was, to mistake gold-digging temporary companionship for love.
Life had been a pleasant dream then, before he woke up to reality.
He wondered if coming back, he was trying to recapture the dream—and whether it was even possible.
Joy’s hand slipped into his. “I think I understand why you are so determined to keep this land,” she murmured, leaning against him. “It’s not really about your family business, is it? It’s because you love this place.”
Love. Bar found himself recoiling from the idea of describing it like that. You didn’t get attached to places. Or to people.
“It’s necessary, that’s all,” he said. “It may be the one thing I have left of my parents that’s really mine, to build a future on.”
“Does it have to be either-or?” Joy asked. Her head rested on his shoulder; her grip on his hand felt warm even through their gloves. “What if you subdivide and sell the land to Hester and Mauro? They’d probably go for it.”
At the word subdivide , Bar felt his dragon rise up inside him, snarling.
“I can’t,” he said. “I just can’t. It’s mine. I can’t really explain it better than that. This is what I couldn’t find the words to tell you back at the restaurant. Maybe you have to be a dragon to understand, but this land is—it’s mine . And for the sake of my dragon, and my business, and my—my family legacy, it has to stay that way.”
Joy sighed. Her warm weight leaned against him for a moment longer. Then she looked up at the lowering sun. “It’s getting late. We should probably head back for dinner and a rest. My legs are really feeling that last few hundred yards of skiing.”
“We could soak in a hot tub,” Bar suggested. “I hear it’s great for sore muscles after skiing. There’s an absolutely huge one in my room.”
“I think that’s an even better idea than food.”