Chapter Four
Shizuma gunned the engine of the big four by four one final time. It breasted the slope of the snowy mountain track and came out from between the pine trees onto an area of flat standing in front of the cabin. She killed the motor and total silence reigned. They were high up. The main road from the airport in Berne had led them east about twenty miles and then Shizuma had turned off south into a valley road and then turned again later up a small track which was thick with snow. In the dark everything was mysterious and glowing, the moon on the snowy landscape was like a dream world.
The mountain track led uphill through forests for ages, the big Mercedes SUV crunching and bursting through small snowdrifts and the snow chains around the tires rattling and clanking.
Nagisa had squealed with delight as they had passed a building down in the valley. "Shizuma look at that it's an ice hotel! How pretty!"
"You wouldn't get me in one of those things even if you tied me up and dragged me in, so get that out of your head."
Nagisa considered a tied up Shizuma for a minute and kept quiet.
"It won't matter," Miyuki had chimed in, "They'd never give you a room. You two would make the hotel melt away anyway with the heat you generate."
Shizuma said nothing. Nagisa tore her mind away from thinking about handcuffs and retorted "Very funny Miyuki. I'll get you back. Just you wait."
A little later as they drove up the small valley road Tamao had giggled.
"What's so funny you two?" Nagisa swung her head around to face the ladies in the back.
"We were just talking about The Hill as it was a few years ago when Kagome and Remon were Etolie. And Kizuna was so cool as a student council president".
"Do you know if those three are still together now? I haven't had a chance to see them for ages."
"Nagisa, where have you been hiding? Chikaru is with Kagome now and Remon and Kizuna will always be together."
"That's not fair Tamao! You had the privilege to travel and see anyone at anytime. We had to go to college. My arts degree killed my social life for four years!"
"Hahahaha Nagisa, you forget I had to go to school too, but I just went to a little school also I took a two year degree instead a four year one like you guys. You know as a writer I was living off my family until I sold my first book".
"Now I understand a little more about the boundless energy you have Tamao." Miyuki cut in, "You were driven to get on your own before anything else. I envy how independent you are."
"And now Miyuki, it's your time to be independent, so here we are for you!"
"Thank you, Tamao you're so cute I could eat you all up!"
Tamao turned a deep red and turned away to look out the window. Miyuki spoke to Nagisa. "How much longer till we finally get there?"
"Just a little further I think, we turn off this valley road soon and go up this hill."
"This hill?" Miyuki peered out her window and up at the towering mountainside covered with forest that threatened to lean right over and crush the car, "Astrea Hill is a hill. That is a mountain. How will we get up there?"
"As you know, I'm not one for getting cold so we are not walking. Ah, here's the turning!" Shizuma said as she slowed the SUV and steered off the two-lane blacktop and up an incredibly narrow, bumpy and steep track. It seemed not much more than an animal trail.
"Oh my God!" Tamao and Miyuki chimed together in the back. To stop from being bounced around like luggage they held onto each other.
The girls were all a little jetlagged. Tamao had almost fallen asleep in the car but the view from the space here in front of the cabin was beautiful. Snowy pine forests stretched away down the hillside before them down into the valley they had left in which small towns and villages clustered, the lights making a ribbon along the snowy road. As the four girls sat there in the white silence the sun came up splashing the scene in the most beautiful washes of pink and orange.
The hill fell away steeply in front of the cabin and behind it the mountainside thick with pine trees seemed to climb up forever. Beyond the wide driveway space was a small lake, its surface frozen but in some reeds near the cabin where it was warmest swans were nesting.
I've been to ski lodges before, Miyuki thought but this cabin is right out in the sticks. Tamao had caught her breath as the cabin had come into view.
"Oh, Shizuma! It's beautiful! Straight out of a fairy tale!"
It was a traditional Swiss chalet style house in timber having the look of something from a post card with a wooden open balcony along the upper storey at the front and a steeply pitched roof to encourage snow to slide off. The main doorway was wide and made of dark wood and protected by a deep porch with its own-pitched roof. Smoke rose slowly from the stone chimney into the still air. As the curling grey coils reached above the trees the rising sun touched them and turned them pink.
Despite looking quite primitive the house looked warm and inviting. Slowly the door opened to reveal a person wrapped from head to toe in winter clothes. Shizuma let out a sigh of relief.
"Good, the caretaker is here," she kept her surprise up right to the end, "It won't be freezing cold inside."
Nagisa's face shone with what can only be described as utter joy and ecstasy. Shizuma continued to sit quietly. With mischievous eyes she smiled to herself knowing exactly what was about to happen.
Nagisa squealed with delight as he jumped out of the truck and running with arms out she tackled the black-haired woman standing in the doorway. The woman gathered the smaller red-headed girl up and under the wide porch spun her around laughing the whole time. Miyuki and Tamao climbed out of the truck, not understanding why Nagisa love winter cabin caretakers so much when Shizuma launched a snowball at the spinning pair smacking the support post of the porch. Nagisa giggled and released the woman as the ladies made their way to the porch.
Miyuki, Tamao and Shizuma got to the entrance as the young woman removed her scarf to reveal her face.
"Yaya!" both Tamao and Miyuki screamed with sparkling eyes.
Shizuma laughed, "I asked Yaya and Tsubomi to take care of the cabin seeing as they live close. Speaking of Tsubomi, where is the little succubus?"
"Shizuma you know better than that! She's in the kitchen of course. She says the only habitable place in the house is the kitchen. Come on in out of the cold now before I get yelled at for leaving the door open."
"Yaya! Will you shut that door!" a small voice called out with perfect timing from the depths of the cabin. All five women in the porchway laughed.
"You know you like it Yaya, she is your little dictator," Nagisa said as she walked in to the hallway leading to the kitchen.
"TAKE YOUR BOOTS OFF!" came a furious scream from beyond the kitchen. A sullen Nagisa returned to just inside the porch to remove her boots.
The ladies entered the kitchen to find a big scrubbed pine table groaning under a sea of hot delicious smelling breakfast food. A relaxed grinning Tsubomi sat to the left through an archway on a couch beyond the fireplace on the far side of the main room. The kitchen was at the right hand side of the cabin at the rear, reached by a hallway from the porch. An arch led from the hallway down two steps to the main room, as did another arch between kitchen-dining room and main room. The great room took up most of the ground floor of the building and had in its center a round open stone hearth with big squishy couches circularly arranged around it. Above the hearth in which was a roaring log fire, a large polished copper hood drew off the fires smoke but radiated out a delightful heat throughout the lower storey of the cabin. The cabin had an open loft or mezzanine floor at the front half facing the driveway and lake with an open wooden staircase descending down the far wall. Tsubomi sat relaxed on the couch, her feet in long pink socks that matched her hair tucked up beside her.
Miyuki and Tamao stood in the archway and looked around the room.
"Oh what a lovely room, it's beautiful! And it's so much bigger than it looks from outside," Miyuki exclaimed.
"It's so warm!" Tamao began to unwind her scarf and pull off her quilted jacket.
"What do you expect?" Yaya retorted, "With Shizuma having to come here in dead of winter it has to have heating of tropical levels. And of course it needs to be a big room so she has plenty of space for her games with Nagisa," Yaya threw this last comment over her shoulder as she sauntered across and folded down gently against her partner on the couch.
Games? Miyuki thought, what games?
"You have everything you need here, Shizuma," Tsubomi said, "We stocked up with everything you asked for right after you called."
"Tsubomi, you always stock up too much we are not here for a year."
"Nagisa, I know you better than you do. You'll eat your pretty way through this larder-full in two weeks you little piggy!" Tsubomi retorted
"Be nice to our caretakers, my love, or they might move away," Shizuma smirked.
"NO WE WON'T!" Tsubomi grabbed Yaya and smothered her on the couch.
"Geddoff!" her partner shouted, her voice muffled under a waterfall of pink hair, "We like living near here too much!"
"Alright, we'll put up with your teasing, Nagisa. But just this once," Tsubomi wagged a finger at her as though she were a school teacher ticking off a kindergartener, "But one thing I will not put up with is outdoor shoes on my clean polished hallway! Now get out of those boots and coats everyone, breakfast is getting cold. You can unpack later!"