Without Ribbons

 

Without Ribbons

By Rolf and Ranger



Part 1 
He was lounging against the wall, as he does, in a raggy t shirt that was bulging over golden biceps, and raggier jeans which after months of hanging around the desert were threadbare at the knees and tattered at the ankles. It wasn’t fitting well with the bare, white walls and the brightly lit electrics across the ceiling, or with the blaring of Spanish Christmas pop hits over the Bogota airport tannoy. He saw me surveying him, winked at me and passed his coffee over. I wasn’t surprised he’d acquired one. Put the man near civilisation for thirty seconds and he’s found the coffee. I took the cardboard cup and knocked back a large mouthful. I needed it. Beau, shouldering her bag, gave me an askance look.


“You are seriously going then?”


I held up the tickets I’d just collected. She raised her eyebrows at Jake. She looked out of place here too, but then Beau looks out of place more or less anywhere. People tend to stare at her height, the sharp nose and brow and the white blond spiky hair, and the fact that she makes equally ragged jeans and a battered and dusty shirt look like something off an expensively grunge runway. Jake stopped propping the wall up and gave her one of the thorough hugs he always gives Beau when he says goodbye to her. It always reminds me that when they were teenagers together they only had each other who was not only gay, but as disproportionately large. A pair of fair high school giants. Weirdness is considerably easier when shared. This was where we separated. Bill had left to catch his plane to Heathrow and Spitz to Madrid; both of them heading out yesterday morning while we stayed to finish off the last details with the local government and the museum teams who were taking over the site. After eight weeks of hanging together around the rust red wilderness near Popayan it was odd to be parting. 


“Madrid. January fourth,” Beau told Jake when she let him go. “Or Vienna if you get bored sooner.”


“We won’t be bored,” Jake assured her. Beau did not look convinced. Her family were currently based in the embassy in Vienna, so she had at least one cocktail party in her near future, if not several. She wasn’t looking forward to it. I’d seen her before in a floor length gown like some Amazon ice princess with a glass in her hand, doing her best to be social but mostly petrifying anyone she approached. It wasn’t something she exactly enjoyed, compared to being up to her ears in dust, mud, rock and either overheating or freezing, often while being lost. That we all had a bit of a taste for.


Dorje, serene in his battered woollen hat that he wore regardless of the weather, gave me a smile and an offered hand. He too was going to Vienna; he’d have been more than welcome with any of us, but he was quietly racking up the number of countries he’d seen with a lot of satisfaction. Vienna was new to him and he would keep Beau sane until January.


“Merry Christmas my friend. Enjoy yourself.”


I kissed his cheek, took Beau’s arm long enough to kiss her too, then raised my hands, grabbed my rucksack and jerked my head at Jake, heading for the gate.


“That’s it, I’m done, that’s as good as it gets. Forbes, let’s go.”


Dorje grinned at me. Jake laughed, gave Dorje a rough hug in passing and ambled after me. “Merry Christmas.”


I handed the tickets and our battered passports to the man at our gate who raised his eyebrows somewhat at the crowded pages, but nodded us through to our seats. First class. Jake had insisted and I hadn’t been able to do anything with him. Whatever the cabin crew thought of the two of us looking like a pair of tramps they were too polite to do anything but smile. Jake waited for me to take the seat by the window, which admittedly was wider and deeper with a lot more leg room than I’d expected, and took the seat next to me, slouching comfortably into it.


“I am not panicking,” I informed him. He pulled a book out of his pocket and propped his knee against the bulkhead, fencing me in. The cabin crewman, approaching us with alcohol since apparently the combination of it being a little past five am and air travel made it appropriate to be drinking at this hour, gave me a reassuring smile.


“Nothing to worry about sir, we’ll get you there.”


“That’s mostly what he’s worried about.” Jake accepted two glasses from the tray and passed one to me. “Thank you. We’ll hit the hard liquor once we’re off the ground.”


“Champagne at this hour is ridiculous,” I told him, swallowing a large mouthful much as I had the coffee and for much the same reason. 


“And we’ll have to buy clothes as soon as we get there, if there is any clothing to buy in an airport right now that isn’t crazed ski wear.”


Jake passed me his glass to hold, dug a hand unerringly into the pocket of my backpack and handed me the letter I’d been carrying around for some weeks. Then he took his glass, his book, slouched a little more so that his shoulder was at an inviting level to lean on, and peacefully settled in to read as the plane began to taxi.


I put my seatbelt on, poked him until he buckled up himself and the cabin crew weren’t forced to make him, and put the letter… into my jacket pocket. I didn’t need to look at it. I knew what it said. I knew every word by heart, I’d been reading it for weeks. It was in Flynn’s handwriting, which was much more neat and formal than usual. More in the style that Dale and Paul usually wrote, complete with immaculate notepaper in the kind of invitation I used to see my mother send out by the dozen. And which, damnit, showed how well he knew me. It was in the blood; I couldn’t help but respond to formality like this.


Tom, we would very much love to have you with us through the holiday, and I know your company would mean a great deal to Riley and Dale.


What the hell were you supposed to do with that? This was why nobody sane went around making friends with psychologists.


I swallowed more champagne, watching the rainy Columbia dawn pass by the rolling plane. An actual, in a house, with tree and people, type Christmas. Seriously. Us. We were doing it. Here we went.
 
 
*
 
 
 
We had a layover in Dallas long enough to ransack the airport for clothes; the kind of ubiquitous stuff we tend to grab whenever we need to stuff the rags we’re currently wearing in the nearest bin. It was mostly ski wear. A sports shop provided lined trousers and soft shell fleeces since we’d be knee deep in snow out there. Another store provided corduroys and underwear, and that covered most of it since we both kept a basic stock of jeans and stuff at the ranch now…. which was still a fairly new thing for me. I hesitated over the t shirts I usually would have taken the nearest and least brightly coloured of, looking at Jake who was assembling sleep wear. Which we hadn’t bothered with in weeks; it had been warm out in Popayan, but wandering to the bathroom at night in a house full of guests required the politeness of not being starkers.


“Are we supposed to be taking anything more respectable if they’re doing dinners or whatever?”


I had horrible memories of my parents many, many dinner parties at this time of year when the house tended to be full of guests from mid November through to early January. Most of it had been black tie level stuff. Jake gave me a nod over a rack of neon cycling shorts.


“We can probably rent the tuxes in Jackson. Dress shoes might be harder, but there’s probably silk ties somewhere here.”


For the split second before his straight face cracked and he started to laugh at my expression, he really did have me. I gave him a glare that promised I’d get him for that the moment I got him somewhere without witnesses, and went back to the t shirts. “That’s not funny.”


His aqua eyes glinted back at me, promising me he’d look forward to it. “You know them. You’ve stayed in that house, you know we’ll all be out with cattle multiple times a day, can you imagine Riley or Flynn in a tie? How formal do you think it gets?”


Yeah there was no point in him being all reasonable. I still grabbed a couple of proper shirts and sweaters as the kind of thing Dale and Flynn and the others mostly hung around the house in, and which was slightly less ‘look sideways at me and I’m going to go camping’ than our usual fleeces.


We rented some bathroom suite type effort in the terminal, and showered together where I spent several minutes sorting him out for that tux crack. He mostly helped rather than resisted, but then he’s like that. It’s always a rather striking experience getting properly clean when it’s the first time in weeks. We lingered for a while under the hot water, shaved, and changed into the new clothes, which left us both looking somewhat more respectable. Hair was harder; we were both distinctly shaggy, but Jake at least carries that off well. In crisp jeans, a blue fleece and a turquoise ski jacket since they were the only coats for sale here and we were going to need them, he looked fit and active as we boarded our next flight.


“Can’t we collect Wade?” I’d asked Jake a few weeks ago when he’d been reading out bits of a letter from Paul to me while we sat in the shade and took a break from the trench we’d been digging. “We’re nearest to Texas right now, it adds hours onto the journey for everyone else.”


It seemed ridiculous to drag anyone else all that way when it was no effort for us to divert a bit. And it was the family thing to do, wasn’t it? I did try about this stuff. Really. Jake had agreed. We’d offered. 
Apparently Wade was quite enthusiastic about the idea.


It was only an hour and a half flight from Dallas to Corpus Christi, and then a cab ride out to the street address Jake knew. I wondered how many times he’d been out here before; he hadn’t since I’d known him, but then he stuffs postcards in boxes to plenty of people in weird locations whenever we can get stamps. He ran up the steps of the building to knock at the door of the apartment. I followed, with mixed feelings since while I’d always liked Wade and time with him was never a chore, this was definitely the start of full Christmas-type involvement. The steps distracted me, I climbed them looking rather askance at the steepness. This wasn’t the best place for someone of Wade’s age.


“Does he manage on these?”


Jake leaned on the rail, waiting for the door to be answered. “James and Luath keep a fairly close eye on it, but he lived here with Charlie for twenty years. He doesn’t want to move on.”


I understood that, although I couldn’t imagine a house Jake and I could stay put in for twenty years. It wasn’t in our blood. Wade, considerably smarter than either of us in a jacket, sweater and shirt, opened the door with a phone to his ear, patted Jake, waved to me and herded us inside, still talking.


“I don’t Jimbo, if I knew any more I’d tell you. Yes, it’s them. No I won’t give the phone to Jacob, go and boil your head. In Chicago. Well if you won’t tell me why you’re going to Chicago I’ll just text Niall. I don’t know why you’re bothering to act like it’s some spy mission you’re both– no, I’m not giving the phone to Jacob.”


Jake, who had been listening with interest, put a hand over Wade’s shoulder and took the phone off him at this point. Since Wade was nearly two foot shorter than him, it wasn’t difficult. Wade rolled his eyes at me and went to get the suitcase waiting in the little galley kitchen.


“Tops. Can’t live with them…. Period.”


“James, it’s me,” Jake said without heat, lounging against Wade’s kitchen counter. I took the suitcase from Wade, appreciating how small and light it was. I didn’t see many of the family guys bring much with them to the ranch; they rarely needed to. I had seen them disappear upstairs in the street clothes they arrived in, and come down a few minutes later in the ubiquitous jeans, shirts and sweaters they all wore without minding about them getting inevitably covered with grass, horse hair, dog hair, hay, straw, engine oil, mud and worse. They all looked more at home dressed that way too; the house was always an informal and practical place. In an admittedly comfortable way. Which explained a lot of Jake laughing at me this morning; I did know this stuff. And from what I understood from Dale and Riley, it took Paul practically threats and holding the orange juice hostage before Flynn dressed in anything neater. I didn’t seriously expect there to be dressing up or anything else alarming, not really. It was just………


About being bloody terrified.


Wade nodded me into the small sitting room, taking me aside from Jake who was making mhm noises at the phone.


“It’s all gone fubar as usual, this lot never do anything in an organised way. James isn’t meeting us at Jackson, he and Niall are going to Chicago. As you do, without warning, this close to Christmas. It was a pain of a city when they lived there, I have no idea why they want to go back but it’s probably some crisis Niall has to go sort out.” Wade’s eyes assessed me. They were always lively, I enjoyed this man’s sense of humour as much as his sharpness, neither of which were remotely dulled by his age, but there was a care behind it this morning that reminded me that Wade, like Jake, had once been a cop and had done his share of breaking bad news. “The other crisis no one could get hold of you two to tell you about since you were gadding about digging up pyramids or something; Dale dragged Flynn out a couple of days ago to some shipyard in Wisconsin for some meeting he had to go deal with, and the shipyard exploded. Dale ended up in hospital overnight. He’s ok, he’s fine,” he added swiftly before I had time to take the first part in. “Scans all clear, he was released within twenty four hours – which Paul said was a relief since even with Flynn there he was terrorising the nurses. You know what he’s like. But he’s got a concussion and it’s messing with his vision. It means they can’t fly either, so Flynn’s driving him back in stages and swears he’ll have him back to the ranch by Christmas Eve.”


“And that’s how far?” I asked warily. Wade’s eyes were kind, but I could see that yes, he was concerned about this himself.


“Yeah, it’s a good couple of thousand miles. But Flynn’s a good driver, they’re doing a few hours a day.”


I took that in, picking up on the many implications involved. “How’s Paul doing?”


“About how you’d expect with Dale having been hospitalised and Flynn on his own with it all,” Wade said wryly. “But if there was anything to really worry about they would say so. We don’t keep stuff from each other like that. It’s annoying, not dangerous.”


I was willing to bet Dale was somewhat more than annoyed. The thought of him stuck out in Wisconsin was not a pleasant one. Wade gave me a gentle thump on the arm and grabbed a coat. Despite his liking for the I’m an old man, don’t ask anything of me image, he was ready and the small apartment was neat and well kept. I paused with him to glance at a photograph on the wall by a small upright clock, not unlike a miniature version of the one in the family room of the ranch. 


“Is that your Charlie?”


Wade paused beside me, giving the picture a satisfied nod. “Yes. That’s my Charlie.”


We looked together for a moment. The man in police uniform looked powerfully set, and he had very much the same kind of liveliness in his smile that Wade did; not someone you’d expect to be a Top. But then few of the family ones fit neatly into the stereotypes, mine included. Mine at that point came out of the kitchen, handing Wade his phone back.


“James says to show me your medication, and to let you know he rang the community nurse.”


Wade looked at me and rolled his eyes. “I did tell her I’d be away.”


“Well he feels the need to make sure, after the last time you went without telling her and she had the police department break the door open in case you’d fallen,” Jake said fairly. Wade grinned.


“I knew the Chief on duty. He thought it was funny.”


Jake caught my eye, not responding to that. I watched Wade pull his coat on and dig in his suitcase for his medication since he obviously realised that Jake would wait indefinitely until he did.


“Do we need to leave a crate of brandy or something for this woman?”


“You’re as bad as Paul.” Wade told me. “No; because Paul does. And Luath does. And James does. For some reason half the family Tops send her alcohol at Christmas, she must get completely soused until new year. You’d think I was hard work or something. Medication. 
There, there, there and there.”


Jake glanced through the packages and nodded. “And the other one?”


“I’m going to get a box to stand on and throttle James.” Wade complained, heading for the bathroom. “He can make me take it with me. He can’t make me swallow the damn stuff.”


“Want a bet?” Jake invited. I heard Wade’s growl in the distance.
 
 
 
*
 
 
            Wade turned out to be remarkably spry on the steps, and although we moderated our stride carefully – the two of us have long legs and we do tend to move at speed that scares passers by if we’re not thinking about it – he walked easily through the airport swinging his walking stick and beaming like a cat with several canaries. He was a seasoned traveller, he happily waved tickets and passports at the right people and led the way to the right gate, watching Jake escort us with a lot of satisfaction.


“Always travel,” he informed me having been chatted up by the airport staff woman at passport control who was moving her eyes between this dapper old man and Jake and I looming over him like a pair of minders who went skiing a lot in their free time, “with a pair of very tall, good looking young men. It’s the only way.”


He was loving the attention; I could see it. It made it rather a pleasure to be able to provide it for him. Jake went to get coffee once we reached the departure lounge, quick Wade said, to get as much caffeine in the system as possible before we reached Wyoming and it became a licenced substance, and I sat with Wade on a bench, watching him scan the departures board.


“It’s all a bit different now,” he told me, nodding at the board. “I remember when everything spun and clacked. Or they just stood in the doorway and shouted.”


He’d been in the Air Force. I knew that. Wade glanced across at me with rather an ironic smile.


“I used to look a lot like you look now whenever I had to fly anywhere. After the war, flying used to scare the pants off me. There was a time when Charlie and I used to take a train out to wherever James and Niall were at the time and we’d fly home for Christmas from there because it took both James and Charlie to get me on a plane.”


“They made you do it?”


Wade smiled. “Oh not in that way, I was perfectly willing to do it in theory. And once I was on board it was pretty much ok; it was just the getting on that was hard. If they were both there with me I could handle it.”


I knew what this elderly brat was sharing with me: there’s plenty of us in this group who do the freak outs and the dramas. You’re one of us; this is ok. And it occurred to me then too, his loudly basking in the glory of having two personal assistants with him, was distracting me and everyone else’s attention away from me in an hour when being invisible was very much what I wanted. It was kind. Far more kind than I deserved.


“You had good reason,” I said, trying to keep as much acid out of my voice as possible.


Wade patted my knee, tactfully lowering his voice as Jake came our way with coffee and what looked suspiciously to me like donuts.


“You know what? I’ve known this lot a long time. I won’t let any of them eat you. You have Riley. You have me. The brat division have you covered. You’re definitely going to live through it.”


Later, he poked around a few of the airport stores by the gate, doing, as he put it, a last minute bit of Christmas shopping.


“What are we supposed to take and who’s going to be there?” I’d demanded of Jake at about five am one morning November when the sun was coming up over the desert, the ramifications of Flynn’s invitation were heavy on my mind and there was a huge lack of any Christmas shopping opportunities anywhere within miles of us. “I don’t know the names of half of them, I know nothing about them-”


“We don’t really do gift giving.” Jake stretched in his sleeping bag until his shoulders cracked. “Come back to bed, its barely light.”


“What do you mean you don’t do it? It’s Christmas, and Paul’s feeding the five thousand from what I can work out. We’re at least going to need to take wine or something,”


Jake leaned over until he located a bit of me he could grasp and since I had to follow my ankle, I ended up crashing down on top of him. He rolled over to keep me still, nipping my ear.


“Stop pumping me for details you can worry about. We never have done much gifting. Too many of us, too expensive, not necessary. Philip didn’t encourage it. People bring groceries to help out, they bring games, that kind of thing. Particular friends swap token small things if they want to, that’s private between them, but it’s never a big thing.”


“And you do what each year?” I demanded, since staying coherent with his tongue in my ear is a skill I’ve put in a lot of practice on. He shrugged.


“We’ve all kind of got our particular bits covered so we don’t end up with nine hams and nothing else. I do fruit and flowers, I’ve done it for years whether I’m there or not. A basket of both goes to Paul a few days before everyone gets there. He likes the flower arrangements on the tables and the fruit helps him with cooking and feeding the hoards.”


Argh. I had, since he and I got together, done the right thing and ensured a Christmas card went to the ranch signed by us both, demonstrating that I was properly respectful to Jake’s extended family and did at least do the really basic civilised things, even if I couldn’t do normal things like stay in the house or have a conversation. I’d done my duty in that way. I’d never known about the baskets he sent. There was the guilt he’d been trying to save me.


“I am useless with this. All I know is what I remember from my mother;” I said grimly. “Champagne. She kept boxes of it to hand for emergencies. If she didn’t know what to give someone, it was always champagne.”


“I think Dale’s mother works the same way,” Jake said dryly. “I hear a crate of the stuff appears at his head office every December. From what Paul says, Dale’s PA has standing orders to take or donate it however she wants to.”


That didn’t surprise me.  


“No one at the ranch drinks much, do they?” I asked him, thinking about. “Even without clients about.”


“Someone’ll bring a few bottles of wine for Christmas day, but no.” Jake agreed. “Philip wasn’t big on drinking either. We never have kept much around and it’s a special occasion thing.”


I did quite like that. It seemed as sensible to me as an edict that expensive and excessive gift swapping was unnecessary, and the whole not dressing up part. Philip might have been before my time, but as was usually the case whenever I heard anything about Philip, I was finding his presence to be a soothing one.  
 
 
*
 
 
            Jackson was knee deep in skiiers and tourists. The ranch was knee deep in snow.


I’d never seen Teton forest in the winter. It was beautiful. Watching it flash by the car window I fought with the longing raised by the drifts and the starkness of the trees and the colour of the sky to get out there hiking in it. To be in it. Touching it. If Jake and I had been alone we would have done. We’d probably have been doing well to have made it to the ranch before dark. As it was, Wade told me about the places he’d hiked in there and the people he’d known who lived out in the wilds of this area, and Jake drove down through the forest as if we were both sane, and then the hour further on down the road until he turned into the drive under the ranch sign. The car skidded slightly on the impacted track between banks of ploughed snow. A tractor was visible out in the pasture, with several bales of hay on the front. I could see cattle in the distance with men in jackets, scarves and hats clambering through the snow beneath them as they worked. A number of the horses under heavy blankets and jackets were grazing at the food bins in the sheltered enclosure to the side of the house that they barely used at all through the rest of the year other than for vaccinating or vetting cattle. Smoke was lifting out of the chimney of the ranch house, the porch roof was heavy with snow but the steps were freshly cleared. This was already looking better from my point of view: after hours on planes and in a car my legs were itching to do some clambering around pastures, and if nothing else I’d have an excuse to get out and clear the porch and steps of ice again every couple of hours. Hard physical work would help. With that to keep me together, I could look relatively normal.


Jake tucked the car tight into the fence beside the pasture along the line of several other hired cars. It made my stomach clench painfully. The house was going to be full. Yes, Jake and I had been around relatively often in the past year or two, but we picked our times. It was usually just Dale and his four people here, and occasionally a couple of the others, which was fine when it was just the few of them. This was The Lot. All of them. And somewhere in the past few years I’d shifted, painfully, from keeping my distance while not quite being able to stay away, to wanting very much to belong. These were alarmingly important people to me; I was prepared to admit it. And yes, that did mean all of them, even the ones I’d never met, because this family business was about the unit as a whole. At an alarmingly important time of year to them. These family rituals mattered to this group who had belonged to Philip and David; it was a part of what held them together, and many of them – us – had little other family they belonged to.


Several men came straight down the steps to the car, someone going to give Wade a hand to get out; they didn’t include anyone I recognised. There was a lot of hugging of Jake and Wade, a lot of loud greetings going on, several of them smiled and waved in my direction and for a moment, awfully, my main and reflexive urge was to escape as fast as possible. Flynn and Dale not being here, both of them being people who speak fluent antisocial git, was harder than I’d anticipated. Jake unhurriedly handed Wade’s suitcase to someone, closed the trunk and ambled towards me, both our coats in hand.


“Come on then.”


He had put himself between me and the crowd, who in all fairness were hustling with Wade up the steps and into the warmth of the house in a helpful sort of way, leaving us alone. The noise was subsiding. Jake, who is large enough to get away with this sort of thing, barged into me, walking in the way that just shoves me ahead of him until he got me walking. After a moment I took my coat from him and put it on, zipping it up. It was stiff and new, but warm, and I was grateful for the gloves we’d thought to buy. We walked out down the line of currently empty pastures, through about two feet of snow which made walking satisfyingly hard, and within a minute we were out in blessed silence save for the squeak and crunch of our boots on snow, surrounded by white, with open land all around us.


That helped.


Close to, the aspen woods were a white winter wonderland, crisp with snow. The sheer beauty of it after weeks of stark desert was striking. We walked slowly all the way to the end of the fence line, and there Jake paused, leaning on his elbows to look down in the direction of the mountains. They weren’t in sight this afternoon. There was a thick, grey cloud over the white covered pastures which disappeared into fog. More snow coming in. I gazed at it with him for a long time before my brain registered what I’d known since Wade told us the news; with Flynn and Dale down, and Jasper gone too, in a few hours they were going to need every fit and able body in the house to keep the stock going. Now I was glad for that reason alone that we were here. I felt guilty about how much having that reason helped.


“We need to dump our bags, see if Paul’s all right and see if Riley needs a hand,” I said to Jake, digging him in the ribs to stop him admiring the view. “What needs doing? Are they going to keep the cattle out all night in this if it snows the way it’s looking like?”


“Yes. We’ll be out checking on them, we generally take that in turns.” Jake leaned on the fence, looking down at me. I shook my head at him.

“Stop lounging around and come on. Do something useful.”

Part 2

The tractor was pulling into the yard as we got there, the huge wheels caked in white. Riley jumped down from the cab. He was heavily coated up and he had his Stetson pulled down over his brow, but he came to me, giving me a rough hug with the welcome that is always sincere, in the way he’s sincere about everything.. “Hey! You made it! How are the knees? Knocking together yet?


I wasn’t going to answer that truthfully. “How’s Dale doing?” I asked instead.  


“Oh you know him,” Riley said lightly in a tone that wasn’t convincing at all, “Always all the drama. Flynn swears he’s ok, they should ring in a couple of hours. Hey Jake.”


Jake hugged him back. “Want us to do anything?”


“Not right now, it’s pretty much done.” Riley was fidgeting on the spot I could see him doing it. He glanced out to the pasture where several other figures were hauling hay bales into position. “I’ve had plenty of help, Luthe and Darcy came last week since Dale and Flynn were headed out and they knew we’d need help. Ger and Ash dropped everything and came early when they heard about the accident. Ger wouldn’t admit it, but he’s great with the cattle and he knows the winter work backwards; once he turned up Jas could go. And Bear and Theo got here this morning, and Bear’s worth two pairs of hands by himself when there’s heavy stock work.”


Yes, I’d seen that; physical competency was always something I couldn’t help noticing. Bear was a solid, powerful worker, and while Gerry liked to make it look as if he was afraid to break a fingernail, I’d seen him in action; there was nothing on the ranch he couldn’t do. Ash knew enough to be competent in helping him, but it was Gerry who was the rancher.


Riley nodded at the line of cars. “And then everyone’s come today, and pitched straight in. The yard work’s done, everything’s shovelled and ploughed, we’ve got the stock in hand, so we’re good for a couple of hours. It’s going to be tonight we need to stay on top of things, if that,” his nod at the sky took in the grey, “does what it looks like it’s going to. I’m going to get a shower, get warm and get something to eat. If you’ve been on planes all day are you wanting to get out and exercise?”


“We’ll probably hike some this afternoon,” Jake said comfortably, walking with us across the yard and up the kitchen steps. There was only Paul in the kitchen. I heeled off my boots alongside Riley and Jake, a familiar thing to do when coming in this familiar door, breathing in the smell of fresh bread baking, some kind of casserole, and seeing the table covered end to end in chopped vegetables, bowls and dishes and whatever Paul was currently working on. It looked like he was cooking for an army. That annoyed me more than slightly. In all this stress, with three of his partners missing, here he was, stuck trying to manage and cater for a houseful of guests. He looked calm, his usual self, although he always does. When he saw us I thought the smile was a very slightly taut one. I abandoned my coat on the back of a chair and went to hug him, awkwardly but he looked to me like he needed it.


“Are you ok? How are they? Where are they?”


“At the moment? Ash Hollow, I hope. Which is out on the plains, they’re more than halfway home. Hello sweetheart, I’m so pleased to see you.” He did need the hug. I felt him hold on a little longer than necessary, and without doing what he must have wanted to do: all the good grief, you are actually here, I don’t believe you’re going through with this, did Jake drug you? questions Paul is always too kind for. “Flynn planned today as a rest day, he only drove a couple of hours this morning and they’re spending the afternoon and tonight in some hotel or something Dale’s PA found that was open and taking guests, he wanted Dale to have the break from the car and travelling.” He let me go, pausing to look at my face as he does, as if he’s checking I’m still properly there and the same way I was when he last saw me. “You look well. Are you starved? Driven mad by planes and sitting? You’re going to do this however you two need to, Thomas; accept that now. You live here and you make yourselves comfortable any way you want, so you grab whatever you need from the pantry and go hike, or run, or drive out to the springs or whatever you need, hear me? The point is that you’re supposed to enjoy yourself. No feeling like you have to put on an act. No suffering to be polite.”


“Oh I need that on a t shirt,” Gerry said fervently, appearing behind me and waving a glass in our direction as he searched the fridge. His cheekbones were scarlet from the cold outside and from the heavy socks he was wearing he’d spent a lot of today in heavy boots in the snow. “Jacob! Hello Tom, it is really rather lovely to see you two.” He poured orange juice into his glass, kissed Jake as he passed, and casually wandered out again, calling over his shoulder, “I threw Darcy out of his room and commandeered it; Ash and I are in there and Darcy’s moved in with Luath, so your room is free.”


“If you want it.” Paul added firmly as Gerry breezed out. In a tactful way without a backward glance, and I was very touched by the gesture he’d just made. And the welcome it implied, since I knew that had been his room long before Jake and I started using it on our visits. “If you’d rather be out in the bunkhouse then that’s fine too,”


Jake was looking out of the window, being entirely unhelpful. I took the kettle out of Paul’s hand before he could do anything else, filling it and starting to get down mugs.


“Give that to me, I’ll do it. If you’re short Flynn, Jasper and Dale then we’re staying here where Ri can get help through the night as he needs it. It’s not like I sleep anyway, I can at least do something useful. What do you need doing? Is Dale coping with all this? Is Flynn all right?”


Paul relinquished the stove to me with what looked like a sigh of relief, and sat down in the chair Jake drew out for him. Jake sat down beside him, hung an arm over his shoulder and I saw Paul lean into him and hug him rather tightly. He looked tired; I doubted he was sleeping well, worrying about whatever was going on with Dale and Flynn.


“Flynn is clear that they’re doing ok. They were offered a driver, but he wanted to do the driving himself. He feels safer about taking Dale on bad roads if he’s the one behind the wheel. And if they’re alone together then it’s easier for him to help Dale stay calm. That’s the hard part. The loss of vision’s been alarming. It’s not black, he can see colour but everything’s blurred and he can’t make sense of it, the concussion’s disorganised his brain’s visual centres. It’s improving, he was able to make out outlines yesterday, but he’s totally dependent on Flynn and it must be terrifying.”


Yes. For all of them, in several ways. I avoided his eye, knowing we were both thinking the same thing. Paul knew exactly how much I got how hard it was for Dale to handle feeling less than 100%. Depending on was something Dale and I only really did well in situations of complete calm and stability, when everything was going well and we were concentrating. I warmed the tea pot, dumped the leaf tea in from the tin and topped it with boiling water as the kettle began to shrill. Jake was still sitting with his arm heavy around Paul’s shoulders, and he was doing a good job; Paul didn’t look in any hurry to move. I put the pot on the table, brought the milk and mugs over, and took the chair on the other side.


“And Jasper’s gone to meet them?”


“Yes, Riley and Luath took him out to the garage last night, he’s hitch hiking out from there.” Paul said mildly. “He said once he reached the main routes it would be easy to get lifts to where he needed to be. He knows their stops, he thought he’d probably meet up with them tonight some time. They don’t know he’s headed out towards them, so don’t mention it to them if they call; he thought it was more stress they didn’t need.”


“How’s Riley doing?”


Paul gave me a slightly rueful smile. “Like a cat on hot bricks. He wanted to go straight out to Wisconsin when it happened, and he wasn’t pleased at Jasper going alone. But hopefully we’ll hear from them this evening and Flynn’s intending for them to reach here Christmas Eve morning. He’s satisfied Dale’s coping ok with the pace they’re setting so far, particularly with today for some down time.”
And how he was feeling sat here with the phone while all this went on, was plain, despite him doing the whole Top face. Ash, Gerry’s partner, wandered in with some empty cups, smiled at me and Jake and went to wash them up. “Wade’s fallen asleep on the study couch. Once he sat down and stopped, he was gone in about five minutes. The gang in there have got an eye on him. Can I do anything here?”


I gave the table a somewhat expressive look. Paul reached over to squeeze my arm.


“Hey. I had an army in here washing up from lunch, the house has been cleaned to within an inch of its life, and there’s about six people braced and ready to take over cooking if I want. I’ve been fighting them off all morning. I like cooking. It’s calming, it helps me think, and at the moment I’ve got nothing else to do. I’m being well taken care of. Are you sure you two want to be here and not over in the bunkhouse?”


I looked at Jake. I knew he was leaving the decision to me; if he thought we needed to be out there he’d have said so and he wouldn’t have consulted me in the process. I could read his calm blue eyes over Paul’s head, relaxed and easy despite sitting with his arm around Paul, as if none of this was a problem. I gave him a slight nod in reply. 


There was no damn way we were heading out of here and leaving Paul and Riley without support.  
 
 
 
*
 
 
Our room was exactly as I’d last seen it this autumn when we came by for a few days on our way to Columbia. I appreciated that. I’d taken Jake’s example of leaving our things in a named box in the linen closet, which held a number of such boxes on the shelves amongst the towels and bedding and spare pillows. Jake retrieved that on our way. The whole house was busy. I honestly didn’t know how many men were here, I hadn’t tried to count, but on the way upstairs I glanced through the open study door and a cluster of older men were in there around a sleeping Wade. Several more were playing cards by the fire in the family room, and I could hear the shower running and the creak of people moving around in their rooms as we came down the landing. Jake opened a door off the turn of the hall near our room, and leaned back for me to see.


“Attic rooms up there.”


I glanced up the carpeted stairs, nodding acceptance of what he was showing me. If we were going to hear people coming down the hall and moving around above us, it helped to know who they were, where they were and what they were doing.


“What do you want to do?” I demanded of Jake as we stuffed new clothes out of our rucksacks into the chest of drawers. Jake folded one rucksack inside the other and put them out of the way, under the bed.


“Hike. Like we said. It’ll be a couple of hours before any more stock work is needed.”


“I’m not leaving Paul to watch the phone and sweat.” I said sharply. Jake shook his head.


“Paul means what he says. He’ll cook, he’ll chat to whoever’s around, and that’s how he keeps his mind off it. But Ri won’t have done anything but work today.”


And Riley was highly twitchy. He was right; that was something we could usefully do.


Jake led the way down the hall to Paul’s room, which made me realise Riley must have moved in with Paul temporarily to free up his room for someone else. Riley was halfway into a clean sweater and shot me a smile although it looked half-hearted to me.


“Hey. The crowd’s coming in from outside; you might want some space for a while.”


“We’re headed out to the woods, we’ve been sitting all day.” Jake leaned against the doorpost, watching him and his voice was casual. 


“Do the shires still like deep snow?”


“Always.” Riley shrugged the sweater straight. “I want to be around though in case they phone.”


No need to ask who ‘they’ were. Jake nodded comprehension.


“Will they call now?”


“……no.” Riley admitted a little unwillingly. “Not before this evening, they know we’ll be in and out.”


“Then come do something fun for a while.”


“I’ve been shoving the tractor around all morning, it’s not like I haven’t been out-”


“I know. Come play with a horse.” Jake held out a hand, waiting. I know when Jake intends to be an immovable pain about something. Riley knows too, and he sighed, but took it. It’s always a bit- odd to watch Jake doing this with Dale or Riley. Or Wade, this morning. Usually when he’s doing the whole subtle stop thinking about that and come and do this bit on me, I’m too preoccupied to notice. Ri of course didn’t think twice; he was too used to it. And he – and I - were here in a house full of Tops. We were knee deep in Tops.


It was a thought invoking mixed feelings to be honest.


Riley tramped with us down the fence line, quiet but keeping pace. And while Jake and I hiked through the snow down to the woods and appreciated the work out, Riley led us down to one of the giant shires from the paddock at the end, who had come trotting down to the fence to see us and who began to dance at the sight of Riley with a rope head collar. Riley opened the gate, put the collar over her head and climbed on to the fence to get on to her back. She was eager to go. Out by the river where the snow got over the knee deep, she plunged and danced, kicking up showers with her shaggy feet, and I saw Riley’s face finally crack into a smile as he moved with her. By the time we reached the river, he looked a lot looser in the shoulders and he was talking to the horse with the lightness in his tone that was Riley as I knew him. Jake was right; he’d needed this.


The river was iced over in stretches from the bank, in white and grey plates that stopped abruptly around the running water. I sounded a little of the ice cautiously from the bank. Quite deep in places, but the current beneath was running faster than usual, I could hear the rush of it.


“What was Columbia like?” Riley asked as the horse paused to shake snow off her face. He leaned down over her neck to help, brushing off her nose and big eyelashes with his gloved palm. It was the first time he’d wanted to chat, and he’s usually a conversational soul; I took it as a good sign.


“It’s odd going straight from the desert to snow.” I dug my hands into my pockets, looking up into the woods. The aspens were sprinkled and frosted. “The finds were pretty good. We handed it all over to the museum yesterday. Foundations mostly but some statuary.”


“What was it? Paul said something about pyramids.”


“Yes, it was a pyramid of some kind. Once. More of it left underground than above.”


Riley grinned, eyebrows raising. “Mummies? Gold?”


He and Dale both loved stories and histories; it was something all three of us shared in. “Dust, rock.” I said dryly, which made Jake laugh. “Lots of that. Different kind of pyramid. But we found chambers with some goods in them, battered and robbed a few times a thousand or so years back. Mostly pots, statues and carvings, some bits that Beau thinks will turn out to be flowers and grasses when they’re properly analysed.”


“And you saw all that first?” Riley’s eyes were alight with interest. I nodded at Jake, who was strolling through the snow alongside us.


“He’s got the camera phone, get him to show you the pictures. We found our way in late one night and had to wait until first light to go back and look properly, Beau paced most of the night because we wouldn’t let her down there until we had enough light to be sure of the ventilation and that the structure was sound.”


That was mostly what we offered the team; guiding, route finding, camp maintenance, and basic safety. We got the brains of the outfit to the important places and then kept them together while they did their job. 


“Wait until Dale hears that,” Riley said with enjoyment. “He’ll be reading everything he can find on it for weeks trying to know more. You know he was leading a meeting in a shipyard when the steel mill there blew up? He and Flynn had to herd a bunch of suits out from a fire down in the lower floors of the factory. That was how he got the whack on the head; shrapnel from exploding bits of pipe.”


“And he’s been researching shipyards?” Jake inquired. Riley gently reined the horse in before she could experiment with one of her huge feet on the edge of the river ice.


“Well he did on the way out there, he was more interested in the ship than the meeting, but he got grabbed by a what in the shipyard and in the town he and Flynn were at yesterday who’s been way more interesting. It’s one you know too.” He looked at me expectantly. 


There was only one I really knew the name of; the one I’d known visit him down by the lake where the cairn stood.


“Sarah?”


“That’s it. Dale put it together and realised; she came from Wisconsin with her family, they were pioneers. They came up the Oregon trail to our land, and it’s pretty much the route Dale and Flynn are driving.”


And that part was helping him to think about, I could see it, and internally I congratulated Dale. Whatever he had told Riley about this was successfully taking his mind off worrying. I hoped it was taking Dale and Flynn’s mind off it too. Riley turned the shire horse, giving me a look that was pure mischief.


“You know what else she’s been doing while she’s got Dale out on this route with nothing better to do? She’s rounding up other what kids.”


“What?”


“Yes.”


I shook my head at him. “Other kids?”


“It seems to be kids she knew,” Riley said reflectively. “Dale’s been trying to figure it out. She found one in the first town they stopped at, which was a supply town she remembered kitting up at when her family travelled. A boy about her age. And last night they went for a walk at some Christmas fair at a fort museum and she found another one she knew, another boy a little older. And then Dale saw another what-kid lurking around watching the fair, and Sarah turned up and rounded that one up too. Dale said the what-kid seemed quite happy about it.”


Well that sounded to me like pure Dale. If he was whatting then I had some hope that he wasn’t feeling too rough. 

 
 
*
 
 
It ended up being a long, and rather good late afternoon. Jake and I hauled bales, waded through snow, smashed ice forming in water troughs, dug out feeding stations and shouldered our way through the cattle and sheep who were clustered in tight bunches for warmth. Hard, heavy, hands on physical work. My kind of thing. I’d never done much farm related stuff before Jake first brought me here, but he’d grown up doing all this and I related to it. There was satisfaction in it. Animals didn’t chatter, ask questions or care about the season. And the other guys out here were doing the same work, doing it well and efficiently, and in a relaxed and good natured way with each other, although the need for collars turned up, hats down low and scarfs up high prevented much chat. It was going to be repetitive work through the night; the same jobs needing doing each time. The snow was threatening to start any minute now; occasional flakes were drifting and the sky was low and heavy, with the air becoming very still. I worked on remembering the routine with a knowledge of where everything was before it got dark, while Riley and several of the older men sorted out the horses in the stables, apparently where the older and more vulnerable horses went to stay warm in the bad weather, and checked on ears and other bits for frostbite of the horses in the sheltered enclosure. The horses too were pressed close together in the shelters, sharing body warmth.


There was a crowd for the kitchen bathroom shower when it got dark enough to come inside. Several of the men, I recognised Gerry and Bear amongst them, were winding huge swathes of fairy lights all along the porch rail and the porch roof. Bear caught my eye and winked at me as I passed him. It was a friendly gesture. A lot of them were just smiling, nodding and carrying on with what they were doing as if I was just a normal, everyday part of the landscape, I could see the effort not to scare the antisocial nut. In a nice way, but I could still feel it. Snow was getting kicked off boots in the doorway, brushed off trousers, shoulders, hats, newspaper and towels were on the floor, several people were stripping in the kitchen rather than take wet clothes into the house, and milling around the table where Paul was organising tea and platefuls of cake. A guy I didn’t recognise was facing one of the kitchen corners. No one was taking a blind bit of notice. It was plain it was just normality in this house, as I knew academically that it was for all of us. It was still a bit… peculiar, watching a guy I didn’t even know doing the obvious brat in trouble thing, in plain sight. And it raised a little of the old panic that if Jake even considered doing that to me here, in front of anyone else…. Except I knew it was ridiculous. Jake never would. I got a grip, managed not to stare, got my stomach under control and carried on. Jake and I being Everest hardened, we stripped off boots, jackets, hats and lined pants in the kitchen, which we hung to dry in the laundry room, and went upstairs for dry jeans, leaving the showers to the less practiced at extreme weather. The house was as busy upstairs as it was down. I followed Jake in pulling dry jeans out and putting them on; neither of us were cold, we’d been too active outside. And then I followed him downstairs again, and …. hovered slightly.


I could see through the open study door that a collection of some of the older guys were in there, Wade among them, and the conversation was often punctuated with laughter. Jake disappeared into the kitchen. I surveyed the family room, trying not to do it too obviously while appearing to examine the bookcase by the stairs, not really sure what I expected or what I should be doing. Someone had put the elderly but very expensive music system on, and it was playing a record of a man with a rich baritone: I recognised it. Stan Rogers. A singer David had loved, and one that Jake and Paul and the others often put on when I was here. There were people gathered on the couches, talking. But a man I didn’t recognise, somewhere in his mid fifties, was sprawled in the armchair by the bookcase near the study, one leg slung over the arm, socked foot conducting something he was humming to himself, and he was buried in a book. Someone else was laying on his stomach on the hearth rug, organising cards in a game of solitaire in front of the fire. Bear’s partner: the small, red headed guy with glasses, was at one end of the sofa, one hand around a cup of tea and focused on the book on his lap. Almost all of them in sight were in old and shabby sweaters that were warm more than smart and stood up to heavy farming, and well-worn jeans. It was a comfortable and reassuring sight. I mean I knew; I knew it here, I’d first figured out the painful steps of doing it here, I intentionally practiced it with the Abeausante team too because I took it seriously; there is a job to do in belonging. A responsibility. One that takes work and effort. They believed in it here, and that made hiding behind a book unacceptable. I knew it. It was still nice that I was around men who would just pick up a book and lose themselves in it among all this.   


I took a slow, deep breath and went to the group on the couches around the coffee table, taking a seat with them on the hearth, near the guy with the cards. Several of them glanced up and smiled; Ash, Gerry’s partner, in particular, and he shifted slightly on the couch so that we sat in a circle rather than I was on the end of one.


“How are things looking outside?”


“I think Riley’s happy it’ll hold for a few hours,” I said rather cautiously, since I was new at the winter work. “It’s the first time I’ve seen the ranch in snow, it’s rather beautiful.”


“You’re seeing it at its best,” Ash agreed. “Pretty snow rather than wet snow or neck deep snow or storms. Gerry’s told me some horror stories about winter snowstorms he saw out here. They sounded awful. Although I do understand I’m telling that to someone who’s done extreme end storms up mountains in tents, and could probably get quite interested in a storm here and the logistics involved.”


Yeah, he wasn’t wrong, and I found myself giving him a rather sheepish smile since my first thought had been that yes, it sounded quite fun to me. Jake sat on the hearthrug at my feet, handing up a mug of strong tea and balancing a plate of cake on his knee in my reach. Proper British Christmas cake, with royal icing in hard peaks above marzipan. Despite all my good intentions it really helped to have Jake, large, solid and firmly leaning against me. And seeing British Christmas cake here was a real surprise.


“Paul makes it,” Gerry told me, taking a seat on the arm of the couch by Ash with a plate of his own. “He always made it for David, so it’s now established habit for all of us. Like Christmas pudding. And mince pies. We do a very Brit-friendly Christmas.”


I broke off a corner of the dark fruit cake and tasted it. Rich and strong in brandy, it was fantastic. I hadn’t had Christmas cake in years. When I was a kid, with guests constantly in the house and tea parties all through December, and the church Advent Sunday celebrations and the after-service chapter house tea, Christmas cake and mince pies used to flood everywhere: bought ones, home made ones, donated ones since half the elderly ladies living in the grace and favour houses in the close used to make their own Christmas cakes and give them as gifts. I was surprised to find I’d missed it.


“If you like the snow,” Bear said in his deep voice, coming to sit on the floor with a mug of tea, “Head on up through the woods and along the river bank. It drifts high up there. That’s beautiful in this weather.”


“He likes wading waist deep in snow as much as you two do,” Gerry informed me with his mouth full, “He and Theo do all kinds of insane hiking routes through the woods near Portland, they go out camping for days at a time.”


“An’ you come too. Sometimes.” Bear said uncritically. Gerry shook his head.


“Oh only when Ash makes me darling, I much prefer the hotel experience and the hot baths available, and no ticks.”


“I’ve been trying to make the time to hike more this fall,” the guy on the floor with the cards put in. He had very short, sleek dark hair close to his scalp that made him look exotic, like some lost Egyptian prince, skin tight black leather trousers, and under the v neck of the bright pink cashmere sweater he was wearing I could see a scarlet sequinned t shirt. “Luthe and I both need it, we do far too much sitting at desks and the mental health part is needed, especially this time of year. We went up Breakneck Ridge a few weeks ago before the snow started- ah. Is that the wanderers?”


Riley had grabbed for the phone as soon as it rang; I watched him emerge into the family room, pressing conference so that Dale’s voice came out of the speaker.


“- the woods and the museum this afternoon. It’s snowing lightly, not much.”


“How’s the kid situation?” Riley demanded.


“She’s found another one.” Dale said somewhat dryly. No one in the room looked at all surprised by this, and Riley laughed, sitting on the hearth next to me.


“You’ve got five of them running around? Who’s the fifth?”


“This one’s a girl. Hannah. She found a knife in the woods and scratched her name into a rock down by the river. We found it.”


“You found where she put her name?”


“That was the bit she wanted us to see.” Dale said lightly. “I think it was fairly shocking for a little girl to have a pocket knife at the time, she’s a little younger than Sarah. Maybe six?”


“I only heard half of this yesterday,” Ash said from the couch, “What are the names of this crew, Dale?”


“Clay is the boy she found in Council Bluffs,”


“That’s the one who remembered letting the stock out of the corral while the adults were listening to a meeting going on?” Gerry added.   


“That’s him. She met him while they were supplying there. The second one was Jesse, she found him yesterday at Fort Kearney. He was on her wagon train, a little older than her, very lively – she remembered something today about them camping here at Ash Hollow, it’s a woodland around a river, rich green land and they rested here for a few days. Her mother made cookies, she hadn’t had time to do it on the trail, but she had time here to make cookies, and Jesse and the other boys stole them as fast as she could make them.”


“A boy of taste, clearly,” Gerry said, waving the cake he was munching on. “I do much the same to Ash.”


“I’d do the same to Bear,” the red headed guy said ruefully, “Except by the time I try there’s usually just crumbs left and a box is disappearing down the street to a neighbour.”


“I make cookies for you plenty,” Bear told him. The red headed guy grinned, but stooped to catch the swift kiss Bear gave him.


“The third one was Clay, also last night,” Dale went on, “She didn’t know him, but he was alone and watching a farrier display and she sort of adopted him. Today’s is Hannah.”


“What was she doing in Ash Hollow?” Riley asked. “What’s there now? What’s this museum?”


With the fire warm against my side – this hearth pumped out a lot of heat – I sat, with Jake against my feet, listening to Dale miles away describing a woodland and river and Neolithic remains, the stories of animals and wagons lowered by rope and hand down hills, and the names of these children and the fragments of their stories. It was fascinating listening; it was never possible to hear Dale talking about these little odds and ends of people he picked up on and the histories of them, without becoming sucked in. And there was a group of them around the fire here, listening with close attention. Several of the men in the study had come out to join us and listen, and were clustered on the arms of chairs and squashed into spaces on the couches, Wade among them.


“Where are you staying tonight?” someone asked with obvious enjoyment. Gerry grinned and leaned across to Jake and me to explain.


“His PA has been finding insane places to stay. I love his PA; I’m sure she’s doing it on purpose. Last night they were in some novelty guesthouse where they had a bed inside a beer barrel, Flynn was apoplectic.”


I was fairly sure Dale was enjoying that.


“We’re in a clear bubble tent in a garden.” Dale said candidly. Gerry burst out laughing, so did several other people. Paul, who was sitting with Wade, shook his head.


“Want to say hi?” Riley said to me, and held out the phone. “He doesn’t know you’re here; we’ve been planning to surprise him.”


I could see, like Flynn, Riley thought my being here would be something Dale might enjoy. I couldn't stop the warmth that flashed over my body. I took the phone from him. “So what did you do to yourself this time?”


“Tom?” Dale demanded. I snorted at the tone in his voice, there was genuine shock and pleasure there. Yes, it’s me. Yes, I’m doing it.  


“We arrived this afternoon.”


“They brought me.” Wade said with deep satisfaction from the couch. “I had a personal escort. Two very dishy and very tall bodyguards. Half the heads in the place turned to look.”


From the floor, Jake blew him a kiss. Wade winked at me.


“And no one wittered about me boozing on the plane either.”


“He didn’t booze, he had a small whisky and that was his choice, we’d have got him a bottle and a straw if he’d wanted one.” I said to Dale. 


Wade grabbed up a cushion and tossed it in my direction, grinning at me. “Stop messing with my reputation,”


Jake caught the cushion, and Luath put a hand over Wade’s.


“Enough, save it for James.”  


“Are you all right?” I said, taking no notice of them. “How bad’s the vision?”


“It’s gradually clearing.” Dale said honestly. “Things are more distinct now than they were this morning. It’s been – interesting? – but day by day it’s getting better. I’m glad you and Jake are home.”


“We were invited. It’s good to be here.”


That was the message I wanted Flynn to hear too, since I had no doubt that Flynn was right there with Dale and listening. I appreciate that invitation. I am pleased to be here and I am trying.


“I’m not letting anyone crowd him.” Riley said cheerfully enough to sound off hand, but that helped too. “I’ve got it covered.”


“Where did you arrive from?” Dale asked.


“Columbia. We picked up Wade on our way. Is this inflatable bubble thing warm enough?”


“Yes, despite the snow. It’s amazingly warm considering how thin it is.”


“If it’s true at all, your PA is doing this to Flynn on purpose, and I want to know who bribed her to do it, and a set of pictures!” someone called, loud enough to reach the phone. “But I think you’re in a holiday inn and somewhere totally normal, and you’re just winding us up.”


Against my knee I could feel Jake shaking with laughter, and poked him.


“Trust me, it’s really a bubble.” Flynn’s voice said dryly. Paul shook his head.


“Poor Flynn. What are they eating in this tent?”


“Paul wants to know,” I repeated, “What they’re feeding you tonight?”


“They did not feed us. They’re feeding the animals bunny chow, it says so on the box they gave us.” Flynn sounded acid.  


“Brace yourselves for this,” Dale advised, and handed the phone to Flynn to let him explain.


Flynn didn’t let them stay talking too long; it was clear from Dale’s voice that he was calm and finding amusement in this peculiar set up, but I could hear too that he tired fast as if the voices and chatter overwhelmed him. Paul and Riley grabbed a moment with the phone alone in the kitchen to wish them goodnight.


“Although Jas should arrive in an hour or two, and make things a bit easier.” Gerry said when they were out of earshot. “How they intend to manage three in a bed in a bubble tent I have no idea, but Dale is nothing if not creative.”


“Stop camping it up like that, you’re terrifying Tom.” The man on the floor said firmly. Gerry shook his head at me.


“I am not, I know him. He summitted Everest, that is one steely eyed mountain man. Nothing scares him.”


Jake tipped his head back to smile at me.


“Except possibly a family Christmas.” I said dryly. Gerry laughed, and so did Bear. The man on the floor gave me a rather sympathetic look.


“Were family Christmases that bad where you came from? I’m Darcy by the way, and that’s Miguel, and that’s ‘Lito. There won’t be a quiz, you don’t have to remember all this; no one will flounce if you get their names wrong, and we will still like you. We are quite a nice bunch really when you get to know us.”


“I see that,” I said with the kind of edge that tends to happen just when I’m feeling sincere, like my voice box does a quick, add sarcasm intervention. Flynn would call it defensive. Flynn would be right. He often is. Damnit. It had been him who taught me the belief of Philip and David who trained everyone here: being willing to share yourself and make those connections was a responsibility of belonging. Being part of a good team. Jake got up, picking up our mugs.


“I need more tea.”


He headed towards the kitchen, leaving me with them. It wasn’t abandoning me; I understood and appreciated it because he’d done it freely, ever since I first started to really want to be here. It went with what Gerry had said to me once: darling, there is no such thing as a brat in-law.


I belonged here, as he did; and that was what he wanted for me. Not to be here as an extension of him, facilitated by him.


“Christmas was pretty formal where I grew up,” I told Darcy. “I was the kid of a Bishop, we lived with the cathedral community, Christmas started big in early November and ran through to January. Busiest time of year. So many events my mother used to keep a huge calendar in the kitchen with it all written out so she could keep track of it.”


“Like what?” Riley had come back to join us. I shrugged, reflecting on the endless events day in and day out.


“Rehearsals, kids’ nativity, the choir – the cathedral had its own choir, the kids went to a small boarding school in the town and they stayed after all the other kids went home for the holidays as they had all the choir events and services to do. Huge deal, the Christmas Eve evening and midnight mass and the Christmas morning services were huge.”


“Poor little things!” Gerry said, sounding startled. “How old were they?”


“Unbroken voices, nine to thirteen usually. Prep school age. They did want to be there, the places in the choir were fought for and they loved doing the Christmas services, but it was hard for them to be away from home on Christmas Eve. I remember my father dealing with some tears in a rehearsal once.”


In the way he did with kids; quiet and kind, I remembered watching him crouch in front of the kid with a handkerchief, half behind a pillar so the kid got some privacy from the other boys.


“The school staff did everything they could to make the time between rehearsals fun for them once the other kids went home, we used to help out with that – my mother organised a party every year for them, we’d have a tree and a gift from the cathedral to each kid, the staff took them skating and to the theatre and so on. After the Christmas morning service they’d go back to the school and their parents would meet them there for a Christmas dinner with the staff, they did try to make it special for them, and then after dinner they went home for the holidays. Apart from all that my parents had a lot of entertaining to do, various groups from the cathedral who had to have their own party or dinner or evening do or afternoon tea which they had to attend, invitations to all kinds of town and national events.”


“You must have hated it.” Gerry said with feeling. In the kitchen doorway, Jake was lounging, drinking tea and listening. I shrugged at him. I don’t think this was something I’d told him before; the topic of Christmas wasn’t one that came up much. We usually did it on the move and somewhere weird, and in our own time. Or rather I did my own thing and he let me.


“The entertaining and the formal stuff – yes. That was endless until I got old enough to start opting out. The cathedral services and the decorations and traditions were rather nice though.”   


“We’ll be doing nothing formal here at all.” Miguel promised me. “Not a thing.”


“What were the names of the kids again?” Bear said abruptly. Gerry and Darcy both looked at him first; I could read their expressions.


“Sarah,” Riley said, and Darcy got up, going into the study. “She’s the little girl from the graves in the woods, she’s the one who’s ours.”


“It’s so nice to know her name,” ‘Lito said. “I’ve passed that spot for years and wondered who it was, those graves were on our land and we seemed responsible.”


Darcy came back with a large sheet of paper and a pencil, spread it out on the coffee table and turned it for Bear to see.


“Sarah.” He wrote as he spoke. “Clay is the one Sarah found in Council Bluffs, Jesse is the one in the fort that she knew, and Reid is the one who seemed by himself,”


“He’s the one with the birthmark.” Bear added. “Dale said yesterday.”


“Probably why the poor kid is so shy,” Darcy agreed, writing the names. He was doing it clearly, in large print, which made me wonder for a moment if Bear had some kind of visual impairment. “And today there’s Hannah. The little one who wrote her name on the rock.”


“Is this the same path the wagons travelled on?” Miguel asked. “I know one of the routes crossed our land eventually.”


“Sarah started out in Wisconsin.” Riley told him. “On the shores of the lake, Dale said. She was showing him her lake and boats in the shipyard.”


“So that would be up and over here.” Darcy said absently, sketching. I watched with interest as suddenly a sailing boat and a shoreline and an ornate label appeared at the side of the paper. This man was an artist, the figures were simple but beautiful. “Then they came down…to where? Where was the jumping on point for the trail?”


“It’s Council Bluffs. South west from the coast, down into Iowa. If you went due south you’d hit Chicago, but it’s south as far as Chicago and diagonally west at the same time. They stayed at Fort Dodge last night, about halfway down the diagonal. Council Bluffs is the end of the diagonal. And then the trail starts going more or less straight west,” Riley said. “I was looking at maps with Jas the night he and Flynn planned the trail.”


Darcy was drawing as Riley spoke. “And Council Bluffs is where the wagons took on supplies, and there was the camp through until the weather broke enough for spring to start out.”


“Dale said there was a line of stores and the other side of the road was an open pasture full of tents.” Gerry agreed. “And the corral with all the stock in, people were buying mules and oxen to pull the wagons. I suppose the stores there must have been a lot like the one in Three Traders started out as. Tents that turned into supplying stores to the wagons.”


That broke into a discussion on what was likely to have been supplied, how well it travelled, and some demands to me and Jake as to what we’d taken to Everest with us for modern comparison. I listened, somewhat amazed in spite of myself. I could see Bear was deeply concerned with the idea of these children, a fool could have seen it; the man had it written all over his face. But it wasn’t just him; it was all of them. They really cared about this stuff. They knew the history of the ranch, the stories of it, the land it stood on. They talked about Dale and his kids as though they really mattered.


While they talked, Darcy sketched. I watched his hand move, creating wagons in pastures, delicate and pencil drawn with wooden railed store fronts behind them. At times, when he was absorbed and the conversation was going on around him, I saw something about him slip. He was bright, chatty and lively whenever anyone spoke to him; he was rather like Gerry in the same glitzy kind of way, the kind of bloke I’d normally have run from. But when he was lost in thought I saw his shoulders tighten and something about his face go blank for a moment here and there.

Part 3

Jake and I did several runs out to do the stock work in the dark through the evening, although there were no shortage of men who appeared to have sorted out turns and coated up and got the lanterns from the barn with the experience of having done this for years. No one looked twice at Jake and I going every time; they clearly knew about hyperactive bastards from years of knowing Jake. The biting cold outside, the snow, the hard and heavy work of it was good; it’s the kind of work out Jake and I would seek out for fun if we were taking a few rest days anywhere. Riley came too, mostly because he wanted to be doing anything but sitting around thinking. I could see it. He was drifting in the family room; not obviously but it was in the way Flynn usually saw fast and interrupted. Once I started watching I saw other things too; things you only notice if you have an eye in. Because while Gerry kept giving him absent hugs in passing, and Darcy kept pulling him into conversation, and Wade tried drawing him into a card game, it was the other things from Top type people that were making more impact. Luath put a casual arm around his waist and kept him sitting on the arm of his chair for a while, engaging him in the puzzle he’d got out and which he and Bear and several others were working on. Ash several times drew him into chat about the horses which kept him going for a while; another guy I didn’t recognise announced as Riley paced past him that he had no idea where to find a book he needed and Riley spent a while helping him with that. Several times Paul casually joined him, sitting wherever Riley was and sliding his arms around Riley’s waist to join in with whatever was going on. But it did eventually splinter too far down; I could see it was going to, and I knew Jake could too; I’d seen him watching for a while. 


He was the one that saw Riley pick up a vase which looked antique to me, and start casually rolling it and tossing it in his hand, which was a for pete’s sake I am going to cause a scene if I want to signal if ever I saw one, and he got up to hold out a hand for it. Saying nothing, with a friendly smile. Riley sighed and handed it over.


“Nobody knows…. the trouble I seen….” someone by the puzzle started to sing. It was the guy who’d been standing in the corner earlier, and he winked at Riley when Riley glanced up and glared at him. Enough people started to laugh that I could see this was an old and private joke. It didn’t look like one Riley was in the mood for tonight. I think he would have probably stalked away except for Paul who called him from the kitchen doorway, wearing one jacket and holding another.


“Riley. Here, right now.”


“Going walkies now are we?” Riley demanded bitterly.


“In that mood, you bet we are.” Paul said cheerfully. “Let’s go hon. Before this ends up involving a hairbrush.”


Riley scuffed across to him, taking the jacket and scowling. “You don’t have to get mean, it’s Christmas.”


“I’ll put tinsel on it.” Paul pushed him and the jacket into the kitchen and a moment later the back door clicked as they went out.


“Poor kid, he’s going to go insane before they get back here.” Gerry said with sympathy, and the room kind of relaxed, it was as if he took the lid off the concern we all had and were all doing our best not to show.


“Paul’s not much better,” Darcy agreed. “I’ve been trying to get him to come and read or walk or do anything but cook all afternoon, and it’s done nothing. We’re going to need a refrigeration truck to store it all if someone doesn’t stop him soon.”


“Any chance of getting them out to the hot springs in the morning?” 
Luath suggested. Jake shook his head.


“You won’t get either of them away from the phone. I don’t blame them; I’d be in the same state myself.”
 
 
 
 
The snow started around eight, and dropped thickly and silently without a pause. Just before ten pm, Luath took the tractor down into the pasture where its headlights lit the snow for us to see what we were doing, as well as shifting hay to where we needed it to refill feeding stations. Riley, who looked in a fractionally better mood but not by much, came with us and it took the group of eight of us about twenty minute to do the chores out there. The snowfall began to slow while we were out there, until it stopped completely. The sky was lighter and brighter now. As the clouds lifted, stars began to appear. When the chores were done, Gerry and Ash took a lift with Luath on the tractor back towards the yard. Two guys more I wasn’t sure of the names of but probably partners given that they were holding hands, waded through the snow after them, whistling to the dogs to follow. 


Luath nodded at Jake as he fired the engine up. “I’ll guess you two are going wandering?”


“Yep.” Jake dug his hands into his pockets. “Tell Paul that Ri’s with us.”


“Am I?” Riley said acidly. Jake slung an arm over his shoulders, turning him towards the woods.


“Yeah, you are. Paul said there was some tree we have to do something to, or Dale’s going to have problems. I wasn’t sure what, but he seemed convinced.”


I didn’t understand why, but for some reason that seemed to break through Ri’s funk. I saw him smile, albeit somewhat unwillingly, but he shook his head. “That only works if we’ve got music, bread and alcohol.”


“Got you covered.” Jake pulled a small black thing from his pocket, a wrapped packet and a small bottle of brandy. “Paul says this is the music, just press play, and you’d know what else to do with the brandy and bread. And he said not to worry about rushing back, he’s got plenty of help.”   


“You do realise it’s after ten pm, and we’re all going to turn into pumpkins?” Riley sounded considerably more cheerful about it, and Jake strolled through the snow, keeping an arm slung around him and pacing me.


“Well if your fairy godmother turns up, we’ll just throw snowballs until she goes away.”


“I never got that story,” I said darkly, crossing the pasture with them. “Shoe size is no basis for a relationship.”


“Well it was 7BC, they hadn’t done much in terms of relational counselling at that point.” Jake said apologetically. “Although the Greeks probably would have been quite up for it. That version was a Greek slave girl who marries the Egyptian King.” He added for Riley’s benefit. “The story of Rhodopis. More eagles, less stepmothers. What are we wassailing?”


“You know about this?” Riley sounded quite pleased about it. Jake grinned at me.


“Of course I do. I’m well trained.”


It was a good, hard, satisfying walk across the semi frozen river in the moonlight that had broken through the last of the clouds, and into the white frozen woods. And in there, it was like walking through Narnia. Breathstealingly lovely. I admit, it was hard to take my eyes off it. The snow crunched loudly underfoot, icicles hung from some of the trees, everything white and reflecting in the crisp night with a high, clear, freezing cold sky above us. We hiked up river and through the woods to the clear pastures on the other side which was mostly where they ran sheep. Not far from the woods, Riley led us to a tree, patting the trunk.


“This one’ll do. It’s one of the ones that got the sheep drunk a few years ago, it’s a good fruiter.”


I’d never actually done this. I’d read about it of course. I knew about it. In my childhood there had been a lot of very polite carols about wassailing, sung by people in hats and gloves and often wearing a lot of tweed, or else under thirteen and in choir robes. But I knew the origins were much less detached. This was a tradition that came from farming. From earth and pagan tradition in villages, smallholdings, animals in steaming byres, and cheerful people with alcohol raising good energy to defend against the dark and the threats of winter. This felt a lot realer.


“This is for a what that Dale knows,” Riley said, unfastening the bread packet. “He stood and looked at us in the yard for a couple of days until Dale figured out what he wanted. He thinks the man was British, from the west country in England.”


“Apples.” I said, as it dawned on me. “Yes. There the wassailing was the fruit trees as their crop. In other places it was the animals.”


“Our crop is the stock, but we tried a fruit tree and it seems to keep the guy happy.” Riley held out the bread to Jake. “Pour a bit of brandy on it? It’s supposed to be cider, but he doesn’t seem to mind.”


Jake splashed brandy on to the bread. Riley took the black thing, which I thought was probably an ipod of some kind, the technology escapes me frankly, and pushed a button. I didn’t know the song or the singers, but it was strongly English, words and style.


Wassail and wassail all over the town
The cup it is white and the ale it is brown


It rang in the pasture. I listened, hands deep in my pockets to keep them warm. Already alerted to and loving the wildness of this beautiful snowy woodland tonight, there was something even more deeply magical about standing in the dark, at the foot of this tree, casting the ancient rites every farming land once did to keep them and theirs safe. Even the words, while they varied in each ancient form, didn’t vary that much; we were hearing the core of what had been spoken for hundreds of years, back before anyone thought to record it. Be safe and be well through the coming year. Let this land be fruitful; let our people not go hungry. I had strong enough roots now to this house and this place to feel that acutely.


Riley splashed brandy on the tree roots when the song finished, and handed the bread to Jake. “Put that up in the fork of the tree there?”


“Aren’t we supposed to circle the tree?” I asked, with vague memory of what I’d read. Riley gave me a good natured shrug and led the way. 


We circled it clockwise, and then passed the brandy bottle from hand 
to hand, taking it in turns to take a swallow. Another ancient ritual to seal a ceremony or a group belief. In the snowy darkness it was warming, the blaze lit me from mouth to stomach.


“That’s it,” Riley said, putting the top back on the bottle and handing it to Jake, “We’re done, that should keep the guy happy for another year.”


“He’ll believe he’s protecting you – this what.” I said, and winced at the incoherence, this bit of family lingo was something I’d picked up a long time ago. “blessing your land. It’s a good intent.”


“That’s a nice thought.” Riley looked at us, nodding at the woods. 
“While we’re out here, do you want to visit him?”


I knew which ‘him’ he meant.


We walked down to the crossing place, and just past it was Sarah’s hollow. It was filled with snow, too deep to see anything, the wreckage of the wagon was wholly buried. But Jake led the way through the hollow and around the thick bushes and tree branches at the bottom, and there was that odd, beautiful little clearing I’d fallen in love with a few years ago, in the long, hot summer Jake and I spent here recovering from the injuries we’d gained on Everest.


Surrounded by trees, the clearing was open to the sky and the stars above. The columns always made me think of a cathedral, a natural one, weathered and white and shades of charcoal in the darkness. Our breath was steaming in front of us. And there against the trees at the side of the clearing, snow dusted and somehow belonging in this natural place as if grown here, there he was. The statue of St Michael. 


He stood more than nine foot high on his pedestal, I still wasn’t wholly sure who or how they had managed to get him here. But he belonged here, stone and in the woods, and St Michael to the core. The artist had got this; no curly haired surfer type or Adonis type stood here, but a man, with a strong face and a direct gaze, sword in hand, the cross marked on the chest of his tabard.


The statue had just appeared one day. Quietly and perfectly as if he’d always been here, the pedestal embedded in the ground, a permanent part of the woods. They’d known how I felt about both St Michael and this spot. This place Dale’s little Sarah had once shown us, where I loved to come and be, where the columns rose around green grass and stillness and light passed through them in dappled shafts of light. Where the spring dripped forever into the hollow in the rock like the stoop in an abbey, slowly wearing the bowl deeper over the millennium. This was a point on the ranch that they’d made mine. Without a word, without asking anything, this was a spot they had labelled as belonging to me, and I doubted many of the family even knew of it hidden deep in the woods, any more than I knew the unique places of the ranch land that belonged to them. It went soul deep to me.     


The stoop was snowed over, but when I brushed it aside, the spring was still dripping over ice. I crouched to dip my fingers and cross myself with the water, murmuring the words I’d known all my life and in the Latin form from the cathedral at home. Another continent, a world away, but the home part of that cathedral had somehow found its way here.  
 
 
*
  
 
With the new and heavy snow and the plummeting temperatures, an agreement had been made of who’d set their alarms for when, with a group heading outside every couple of hours or so. Jake came out with me the first two times, until I told him to for pete’s sake stop wandering about and get some sleep.


“Isn’t this the third time you’ve been out tonight?” someone asked me about four am when he and I were breaking the fast freezing water out of the water troughs. “I thought Jake was on the go morning noon and night, but you’ve got him licked, haven’t you?”


This was obviously someone who knew Jake well; the affection was plain in their voice behind the scarf covering their face. He was tall, American, and in the coat and Stetson I couldn’t guess his age, but Top was written all over the tone.


“I don’t sleep much,” I told him, hoisting a large sheet of ice out. “And I enjoy this kind of thing. I’d usually be out walking wherever we were at this hour; this is a very nice view, interesting weather and a built-in gym, all in one.”


He laughed, hauling another sheet of ice out of the way with competence that said he’d been doing this for years. “Yes, that sounds about right. Although this snow must be pretty tame after Everest.”


“It’s a lot more fun.” I admitted. “It’s not that cold; it’s fun snow and not dangerous snow – at least relatively speaking,” I added hurriedly before he thought I was belittling anything. He nodded, helping me smash out the remaining ice.


“Relatively, yes I get that. You’ve dealt with the real extremes; this is just domestic normality for these parts. I’m Kit, by the way.”


“Hello.”


His eyes smiled. “Will you get any sleep tonight?”


Tops. They can’t help wanting to know that kind of thing, although in this household people had always been tactful in letting it show around me unless they were particular friends of mine. I’d never found it welcome from strangers, but then no one in this house was a stranger. They were Jake and Dale’s people, and this guy said it without criticism, and without any invasive implication behind it that said let me do something about that.


“Some.” I told him honestly. “Usually nearer dawn than before it. Jake’s been used to me coming and going all night for years.”


The snow was really coming again down now. I grabbed a spade from the barn and spent a few minutes digging out the doors, and then the steps and the porch to drop the levels down a bit before in a few hours we couldn’t get the doors open. Kit came and helped, he was efficient and fit and we’d got a path through it all when he said goodnight and headed back to bed.


The fire was still glowing behind the guard in the family room; the house was cool but not uncomfortably, and Jake grunted and shifted over as I slid under the covers beside him. “Your hands are freezing.” 


Nobly, he pulled me closer rather than push me away, although he flinched when I pressed a snow red and chilled face into his chest. “Sheesh. I’m going to have you fitted with a defroster.”


“Go back to sleep.”


“We’ll call him Steve. He can follow you around with a towel and a hot water bottle.”


Starting to warm up, I curled up to him. In all honesty, in a house full of people, sleep wasn’t a possibility at all. I was already starting to look forward to the next expedition outside. And then despite it being the middle of the night, his hands slipped somewhere one does not put them in polite society and he rolled over in quite a purposeful way. I shook my head at him, which splashed him a little with still melting snow.


“Yeah, and I’ll have Terry, who can follow you around with bromide and a cold shower.”


“He can knock off Steve when we’re busy,” Jake said in my ear, “It’ll be fine.”
 
 
*
 
 
We spent the day mostly dealing with cattle, sheep, horses, a fence rail that had given way under the weight of the ice on it, and doing it around older guys sweeping out sheds and sorting out wonky hinges and a lot of other minor odd jobbing that they did in groups and seemed to enjoy. It was quite a peaceful experience. The rest of the time Jake and I spent in walking around the woods. Bear was right; the drifts up by the river were head high in places.


Jake told me that Paul tended to do meals as buffets with the house this full. It was a strategy I appreciated. For a start it meant less pressure on him to prepare and clean up full sit-down meals. It also made it easy for Jake and I to snack in passing or for me to take a plate to a quiet bit of the family room as the light started to go in the evening, and to work on joining in with whatever was going on. The table and counters held a multitude of half emptied plates as we came in that evening. Snow was falling again, but lightly and in a leisurely manner that was fooling no one; the sky was heavy and we were going to have another big fall tonight. Paul was alone in the kitchen reading a letter as we came in, and he glanced up to smile at us. A pretty normal smile, but his having managed to be alone in a house this busy where everyone was trying to keep him occupied said a lot to me.


“Hi. How far did you get?”


“Up to the railway line,” Jake told him. “It’s even deeper up there.”


“Riley ploughed out to the road again just now. He said the snow ploughs are doing a good job with the roads, it’s all passable with care.”


“Flynn’s been driving these roads for years, and it won’t be as bad by the city,” Jake reminded him. “Have you heard from them this evening?”


“Not yet.” Paul passed the letter and a Christmas card to him. “From Trent.”


“That’s the one in Uganda?” I said. Jake nodded, shifting so I could read over his shoulder.


“He’s an aid worker. You’d like him.”


Yes; from what I’d heard he had always sounded appealing. Paul got up and took my jacket from me, waiting for Jake to shoulder out of his.


“Tom, give me those and get yourself something to eat. From what Riley says, you were out half the night and most of today helping out; even you have to be tired.”


“Not really,” I said apologetically. He shook his head at me.


“Nervous energy. Yes it is, sunshine; I’ve got one just like you. I know the signs.”


“He’s worse than I am.” I pointed out. Paul patted my shoulder turning me towards the counters.  


“It’s neck and neck in my opinion. Do something for me hon? Take a few deep breaths, get a plate and eat something. The red plates are the set your throat on fire options, and the hot sauce is over there.”


He did this. Ever since Jake had told him we had a weakness for spicy food, it was an effort he made, a care he always took. And it was invariably fantastic. I hooked an arm around his neck in passing and he paused to hug me back, rather more competently than I was doing, and as if he felt I needed it.


“Thank you for all the keeping Riley busy that you’re doing. Are you ok honey? Coping with it all?”


Typical of him. Worrying himself crazy about his own guys miles away, with Dale with concussion and all of them travelling bad roads, and he was worried about whether I felt sufficiently together.


“I’m good,” I promised him, hoping that was some comfort to him. I didn’t mention that it was together with the aid of highly athletic sex last night, after which both Jake and I had managed another hour of sleep.


Paul had managed to make spicy sausage rolls. There was chilli and lime and sugar in there, the spice and sweet and sharp together was fantastic. I tried one in passing as I took a plate around the selection, closed my eyes for a moment as the flavours hit, and then stuffed one in Jake’s mouth as he came to join me. “Try that.”


He grinned at me, capturing and sucking on my finger with his eyes glinting in a very inappropriate and unfamily friendly way until I swatted him.


“Terry.” I muttered at him, which made him laugh. “Bromide.”


In the family room, the jigsaw puzzle was growing on the coffee table; I recognised it as one of Dale’s trickier ones which Luath and several others were working on. I tended to gravitate more to Riley and Gerry, which was cowardly but I knew them well enough to find a room full of company easier with them there. Tonight they were gathered at the hearth stone and I would have gone to sit with them anyway, but Riley waved me over as soon as he saw me. He, Darcy, Bear and Gerry were sorting out little sets of something on the hearth rug. The four of them had disappeared into Jackson this morning; other than to appreciate that people seemed to be generally trying to cheer Riley up and keep him too occupied to fret I hadn’t noticed more; but they’d obviously been shopping.


Tiny trains were mixed up with little drums and even a little xylophone- small toys. Painted ones, kind of Victorian. They were tying string to them. Setting them, I realised, as decorations to hang.


“We’re planning to put them on a tree up near Sarah’s hollow,” Riley handed me a ball of string and some scissors without ceremony. “It seems – right – if she’s bringing those children here. I hope she does.”
Darcy’s spread map was on the floor near us. He’d worked some more on it; more places were appearing on the trail. Ash Hollow was growing with its steep slope and woods. I cut string into lengths, watching them work. Wade and Niall and several other men I didn’t know the names of joined the group on the floor to help out with the attaching of string. Across the fire from me, Bear was working on five stars. He must have cut them this afternoon, they were small and neat and delicate, and he was sanding the edges into soft curves. These kids were heavy on Bear’s mind, I could see it, and when I glanced from the side of my eye I found the red headed guy with the glasses watching too. He hadn’t missed it. But this was what happened on this land; Philip and David had built the connections between these men, and it seemed to just spread out to everyone they came into contact with. Their history included those five children who had travelled the trail that ran through the ranch. They mattered to everyone, and they seemed to matter a whole lot to Bear. Bear, whom Dale had been able to help find his own history. I’d heard the story from Riley this summer. I shifted to sit beside Bear, aware I sounded awkward as hell.


“How do you sand things this smooth? I’ve always been useless at woodwork.”


He obligingly turned his hands a little to let me watch more closely. Often not a man given to chatter; like Jasper, he had a presence that kind of drew you to him because of him being quiet and peaceful, although I’d heard about a wicked sense of humour.


It was a while before I realised he was humming something. Very deep and rumbling in his rich bass, the soft sounds of a carol I was deeply touched and surprised that he knew. Until I thought about it and thought of a childhood spent with Catholic nuns.


“Lullay my liking,” I found myself singing very softly with him, in time with his humming of the Holst setting of it. It was ancient, a 15th century lullaby carol, one so perfectly right for soothing a young child and it said so much of where his mind and heart was in that moment as his huge hands gently worked that wood to be perfect that I found myself singing the next lines without thinking twice, despite being with another bloke, “My dear son, my sweeting… lullay my dear heart….. my own dear darling.”


I swear he looked up at me like the sun coming out. I couldn’t help smiling back.


“I love these,” Darcy commented, delicately attaching a little train to one of my lengths of string. “I spent the past three weeks organising two separate Christmas events; one was silver and white and looked like Star Trek in the deep freeze; and the other was pink. I am very over modern Christmas decorations.”


“But you met that chap with the velvet waistcoat,” a man commented who was helping Riley with a couple of little dolls. It was the man who’d been in the corner the other day. Probably early sixties, it wasn’t easy to tell; he had the kind of face that aged well and a much younger smile. He nodded when he saw me looking.


“I’m William. Hi Tom. Isn’t it unfair that we all know you and you’re still working us out?”


“I’m making lists.” I said not altogether dryly. He looked at me and grinned, and suddenly the tiny doll in his hand disappeared. He spread his fingers to show me, then reached over and apparently took it out of Gerry’s ear. Gerry laughed, shaking his head at him.


“Tom’s about the only one of us who hasn’t seen you do that. How did things go with the one with the velvet waistcoat?”


“He was extremely cute,” Darcy held up the train to examine it. I thought the flirty tone sounded rather brittle. “We had a rather lovely date that I hope we will repeat in the new year since we’re supposed to be at the same meeting. I shall hope he brings his waistcoat.”


“Well I have you covered,” Gerry told him, “I bought you a pot of that glitter dust you like, and a brush, it’s upstairs in my suitcase-”


“If you dare open another pot of that in the house Gerald,” Paul said very firmly indeed, “this time you’re staying right here until every flake is cleaned up. Which, judging by the last time, will be about May. Opening glitter in this house is an automatic spanking offense.”


“Noted.” Ash said from the couch. Gerry pulled at face at him.


“It’s not like you’re on the nice list either darling, I have seen the state of your sock drawer.”


“There’s a car!” someone called, there was an icy blast as the front door was opened briefly with several people vanishing out into the snow, Gerry squealed and so did Bear, and Wade appeared from the study to look.


“Is that them? They’ve finally made it out of Chicago?”


A moment later a heavily overcoated James ushered Niall ahead of him straight to the fire. Jake went to help with cases, and most of us moved aside to let Niall sit on the hearth where the heat was strongest.


“If you will drive around at ridiculous times of night,” Wade pointed out, advancing on them, “then you’re going to get perishing. What the hell did Chicago want?”


“I’ll tell you later.” Niall got up to give him a tight hug. “We had the car heater on full blast but it was still cold the whole way. Hello Tom, it’s good to see you. Ri, what’s the news from Dale and Flynn? Where are they? How is he doing?”


“They haven’t called yet, they probably will around seven, but they should be in Cheyenne and with only a couple of hours left to go tomorrow.” Paul brought steaming mugs to them both, pausing to kiss Niall and then James. “Get straight in a bath you two, get warm.”


“I’ll go start it,” Riley abandoned the carefully laid out rows of now string attached toys and he too paused to hug Niall and then James, who I saw cup Riley’s head in his hand for a moment, murmuring something to Riley. Riley looked up at him to give him a slight nod and a rather unsteady smile, but ran upstairs to start the bath.


“I see your community nurse managed not to throttle you,” James said rather dryly to Wade, who shrugged at him.


“I said I was going away for Christmas. She didn’t need to know more than that.”


“Well she doesn’t now, as I gave her the dates and location, and Jacob ensured you had your medication.”


“Where’s the fun in that?” Wade demanded. James collared him, rather deftly for a staid and formal looking man, tucked Wade’s head under his arm and kissed the top of it.


“Go away, brat. Until I’m warm and less snow blind. Niall, come on.”


“No stamina!” Wade called after him. He winked at me as he came to sit with us at the hearth. “These are the things you lot went looking for this morning? Bear, the stars are beautiful.” He picked one up, turning it gently in his fingers. They were. Delicate, smooth as glass, things of real beauty. Later I watched Darcy paint a name on each one with his artist’s hand, handling each one with care. Sarah. Clay. Jesse. Reid. Hannah.

Part 4

“There’s nothing sentimental about it,” I said to Jake later. We were walking through the woods again at the time. It wasn’t a planned thing: with the woods looking like this both of us were having a hard time staying out of them for more than a couple of hours at a time. You’d honestly expect to see a lamp post and a White Witch wandering about at any moment.


“It isn’t aww, it isn’t oh it’s cute; they genuinely do think of these kids as people. Neighbours,”


“They are.” Jake had been listening to me talk without much comment; he’d been doing a lot of that in the past few days. I suspect it was to encourage me to vent if I needed to. “We’ve all known those graves. Like Miguel said, it’s good to know who they are and to have that contact with them. We’ve always known they were part of the ranch.”


Like Gam Saan in the little cemetery in the town. I’d seen most of this interconnected family turn out to that, making the travel and committing the costs to come and say goodbye to a man they’d never known had existed. There had been nothing sentimental about that either. They’d acquired Dale into their midst, perfectly sensible, highly committed and born for this place and these people. And he then started finding bodies, seeing ghosts and spirits, waving crystals around and generally indulging in a whole lot of woo, and not only were they perfectly accepting of this, they joined in. En masse. While being mostly, by and large, perfectly sensible and down to earth people, even the ones who worked hard to not look sensible at all.


“What is the matter with Darcy?” I demanded of Jake without bothering to trace the subject leap for him. He didn’t mind. We both do it; we’re used to it. “He’s walking around glittering like some bloody fairy off the Christmas tree, clothes and teeth and jazz hands, and the second he thinks someone isn’t looking he flops like he’s got the world on his shoulders.”


“They’re really ticking you off tonight, aren’t they?” Jake inquired. I looked around the wood, which was devoid of bird life and any other wildlife and realised I’d probably raised my voice more than slightly.


“No, they’re not.”


“Yes they are.” Jake said without heat. “Want to tell me why?”


Want to unpack that?


Yeah it was a question that needed asking. I still bared my teeth at it.


“I don’t know,” I said savagely. “I have no idea.”


He nodded understanding. “We can move out to the bunk house. We can head out to a hotel, or anywhere you like, we’ve done our bit.”


“Are you mad?” I demanded of him. He raised an eyebrow at me, clearly not that bothered about his sanity or anything else. I scuffed snow at him. “No, we are not going anywhere else.” I added the second bit while walking away from him; which lessened the chance of him hearing it, or me having to see him hear it. “I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
 
 
*
 
 
 
The night involved plummeting temperatures, more snowfall and therefore more stock work. I liked stock work. Especially at three am when I was going mad counting knots in the beam above the bed. Riley and I dug the porch out again before we went back to bed. In the spots we hadn’t dug, the snow was now level with the rail and the yard was filling up like a basin.


“Are you ok?” he asked me at one point. I think I grunted more than answered; it was the middle of the night.


Paul waded back through the snow from the shelter where he’d been checking the horses, and I saw him go into the stable, opening the door as little as possible and his voice low. “Guys, are you warm enough in here?”   


Since he was asking dogs and horses, I doubted he was going to get a reply. He was back a minute later, shoulders hunched and his arms folded against the wind. There wasn’t much of it, but what there was, was cutting like a knife.


“That’s dug, come on. Let’s get back to bed.”


“I’ll finish it.” I told Riley. Paul shook his head at me.


“Sweetie, you’ve done more than enough. Bed. Come on now.”


I am very fond of Paul, and he was having a hard enough few days; I did the good little brat thing and went inside with them.  


I went into our room as quietly as possible, since I hoped Jake was asleep. He still felt for me when I lay down.


“Planning to undress at all?”


“No.”


He’s never averse to a challenge. He rolled over and stripped me without difficulty. I dropped back on the bed, scowling as he tossed my clothes out of reach.


“You’re supposed to be asleep.”


“Well since we’re awake anyway…”


I fended him off. “Sleep. I was trying not to wake you. I’ll read.”


He lay back, but one hand rubbed briefly over my shoulder. “Put a light on. Or go on up to David’s map room, no one will be up there.”


“I am not lurking around this house in the middle of the night.” I said rather sharply, grabbing up a book from the night stand. “I’m not quite that weird. There’s moonlight. I can see fine. Shut up. Get off. Go to sleep.”


Jake gave me a friendly smile. It should have warned me. However he put his head heavily on my thigh, went back to sleep, and I read the same sentence on and off in my book while I stared out of the window at the dark.
 
 
*
 
 
 
It was a relief to be able to get up, dressed and escape the house which felt very crowded this morning, despite only a handful of them being out of bed yet. Even when they were all in bed and asleep I could feel a house full of people breathing. Getting out into the pasture was about all that was on my mind. We were therefore coated and booted at around seven am to go outside with the handful of others who were turning out to do the early work. Except before I made it off the steps, Jake, with a packet in his hand, caught my eye and signalled to me to head the other way.


Towards the bunkhouse.


I may have argued slightly.


Ok, I may have gone just a bit….


Well, ‘no’ was the general gist of it, if not quite that politely put.


He walked serenely past my mutiny and headed up the fence line as the others went down towards the stock, tactfully taking no notice of me. It was a while of standing in the yard and silently swearing, a lot, in a very unseasonal way, before I stalked after him.


The bunkhouse was unlocked although it was standing empty. Upstairs in the hayloft room, which I’d always rather liked, the bed was made up. Paul had obviously been prepared.


“Which is not necessary,” I told Jake – all right, I was probably flat out ranting by that point, “I am perfectly capable of-”


“Staring at the ceiling all night.” Jake agreed cheerfully, taking a seat on the bed. Since like him, albeit under protest, I had taken off coat, boots and snow dusted pants downstairs and left them to dry, he simply took the waistband of my shorts, pulled them straight down, and turned me over his knee, bare bottom up and at his disposal. I was too furious by that point to do anything sensible, like shut up.


“If I need to move out here I am perfectly able to…” I remember managing, before he got started. He didn’t comment. He rarely does when he’s putting down a rebellion; it’s cheerfully done with a firm hand. I was willing to sign an affidavit regarding that firm hand by the time we were about six spanks in, and my backside, which had been cold, was seriously smarting. I was not managing to be as nearly as angry as I’d thought I was, pretty much everything was getting shifted fast in terms of emotion and any hardness I was hanging on to was draining rapidly northwards in the form of yelping and a lot of other highly undignified sounds. My rump was going up in flames and was a thorough, Christmassy red all over when he paused, my eyes were blurry, my breath was catching, and there was nothing left in terms of stuck at all. He left none of it anywhere to hide. He’s never heavy handed, but some things he really means.


He shifted us both far enough over to pull the bed covers back, and then herded me ahead of him to climb under them. I sat for a moment, breathless and disintegrating, watching him open the old hayloft side hatch. Which means pretty much that the whole wall of the room opens outwards. It opened out on snowy pastures and trees with a rush of freezing, fresh air. Leaving it wide, Jake yanked the pillows into a heap, sat with his back against them and got hold of me, putting me directly on my blazing backside to sit in front of him, my back against his chest. And he pulled the heavy quilt and blankets up around us both and his arms wrapped very firmly around me from behind. I leaned hard against him and went on gulping for a while.


He doesn’t do arguing. Or negotiating. Or warning. Which I know better than anyone. And damnit, damp eyed and chest released, it was annoying to admit; I’d needed that. Probably about as much as I’d deserved it. It often makes me think of the Snow Queen and the fragment of broken mirror in the heart of the boy, freezing it to cold and spite. A good spanking invariably has a defrosting effect on me.


We sat there together for a while, looking out at the flowing white lines of snow. And then he reached for the packet he’d brought, which turned out to be sausage filled rolls he’d collected from the kitchen, and we shared them, or at least he put bits in my mouth as he ate.
When we were done, I obeyed the signal to lie down, pressed against him for warmth, and his hand wandered over my back, and I looked out at the snowy pastures beyond the bed. It was silent out here. Starting to snow again; flakes were drifting down unhurriedly in a ridiculously story book way over the fallow fields outside, the bunkhouse was still without another living soul in it but us…..and my head was admittedly coming out of screaming mode. My shoulders were starting to unknot in sheer relief.


Admittedly I’d been out every time stockwork happened during the night; in part because I liked being out at night and in part because it was something much more entertaining to do than stare at the ceiling, since sleeping in a house full of people… wasn’t really happening. Jake had been remarkably patient considering it must have been like sharing a bed with a grasshopper last night; not that he isn’t used to it. But he was not taking any grasshoppering this morning. I felt him reach one handed for a book from the shelf beside the bed, and prop it on his knee to open it, with the serene air that said if I said a word or moved an inch he was very happy to carry on right on defrosting right where we left off.


Against him, in the snow, I slept. Probably for several hours.

 
 
Whoever planned the bed covers for this room had done their research: the blankets were a thick, heavy weave and old wool that reminded me of Welsh blankets, and we were more than warm beneath them. Laying in bed like this, watching snow fall a few feet away, was rather hypnotic. Even after I woke, I went on resting where I was and watching the flakes drifting for some time. Jake was nearly halfway through his book when I looked, and he laid it down to push my hair back out of my face.


“Feeling any better?”


He didn’t need me to answer that. I reached up on my elbows to kiss him instead, a mixed apology and acknowledgement. He nipped gently at my lip, put the book out of the way and lay back, wrapping his arms around me as I subsided on his chest.


“We cannot occupy two bedrooms.” I said into his sweater. “It’s not fair on the rest of the house.”


It was a tentative prod on my part since I wasn’t sure; was this him deciding we moved out here? Or was this just his usual requiring me to come with him somewhere quiet and rest in the day if I couldn’t sleep at night.


“I have been overdoing it at night,” I said as honestly as I could when he didn’t comment, since prodding him for information rather than doing the work and talking about it was not exactly… …something I was supposed to get away with. Yes. I was screwing up in spades today, and he was lying there being large and warm and refusing to get remotely stressed about any of this, which makes it a lot easier to try and get it into words. “I’m sorry, I like the heavy stuff and its outside and the weather’s….”


“Exciting.” Jake agreed. “And it’s hard to relax with a house full of people around you. How much is that bothering you at night?”


“I won’t ever get used to it if I don’t practice.” I pointed out. “We’ve always got a tent miles away from everyone else, or a hotel room-”


“You never sleep in hotel rooms.” Jake said mildly. “People moving around. Too near. It doesn’t work for you. I know you like this particular lot of people. I know you really want this to work,”


“It’s not like I sleep much anyway, even if it’s just the two of us in the middle of nowhere.” I said rather bitterly. He ran a hand through my hair, tousling gently.


“Well I like wolves. We’ll live.”


“I…” I paused, very embarrassed to confess this, even to him, but I made myself say it. “I don’t want them to think I had to give up. That I can’t do it.”


“Why? You think they wouldn’t understand?” Jake said reasonably. 
“You’ve seen Dale come apart at silly o clock more than once.”


“I don’t want them to feel I want that distance. That I can’t cope with them and don’t want to…I spent years doing that. And I’m sorry for it.”
And I very much wanted to make amends for it.


“I don’t think it’s a case of not trying hard enough.” Jake said gently. “I think this is how it is. Tommy, we’ve been ok when it’s just a few people in the house; that works and that’s probably the compromise. Just not when there’s a houseful.”


“Do you want us to move out here?” I said heavily. It was his decision; not mine. Jake settled deeper into the pillows.


“We’ll mix and match. Some of both.”


“Jake, we cannot occupy two rooms when there’s a houseful. Gerry moved out of that room to let us have it; it’s not fair.”


“I think Gerry understands better than you know. Ask him.”


It didn’t seem at all fair to me. I reflected on a few things, fiddling with a loose thread on his fleece. “What is with Darcy? I’ve seen you notice it too.”


“So has Paul. And Luath. He’s keeping an eye; Darce might talk to him. Or to Jasper when Jas gets back. They’ve always been close. It’s not unusual. Darce misses Roger at this time of year, his working Christmas season is tense and overpacked to say the least so he often comes here still jangling and needs a few days before he relaxes, and I think it’s hard for him to be one of the very few single people in the house.”


Hm. Frankly I thought the whole I’m not a brat thing was getting in his way there; if you were asking me on gut instinct what I thought the guy really needed, it was a good dose of what Jake had just given me, and for much the same reason. Some of us are wired that way: when it gets too much and the channels get too clogged, the route to the heart unfortunately lies via the butt.


“Does Bear have a sight problem?” I asked, before I waded in out of my depth there. Jake shook his head.


“No. Twenty twenty. For some reason he can’t make out text. It’s broader than something like Dyslexia, Flynn did a full assessment for him years ago when he wanted to apply properly to the zoo for a post. If he can touch it and handle it then he can do pretty much anything mechanical, electrics, plumbing, carpentry – you know how the memory thing works for you and me? All the bits are there, but when we’re trying to get started on something the brain doesn’t collect up all those bits of memory in a coherent way so it’s hard to see the priority of what to do, or stay on task?”


Yes, that happened to both of us. I knew about interest-led attention; we both managed well building an entire life around that. On things we were interested in, excited by, passionate about, we could… get completely overfocused and work all night until we were in the mood from hell. Or at least I could. Interest, emotion; for some reason it summoned up the brain chemistry we couldn’t otherwise hold together. Things we weren’t interested in…were hell to do. Which was largely why we had the working life we had, and weren’t going to be living in one place for twenty years with neither of us able to stay on top of the washing up.   


“It’s a bit like that from how Flynn explains it, just with other bits of brain function. He’s a gifted guy. There’s other bits to it, he can’t really handle money as a concept although he can measure and cook all you want.”


“Who taught you the memory stuff?”


“I told you Philip found a school for me that specialised in…”


“Raving lunatics.” I finished for him. “And a specialist teacher. That was your Mr Hauser.”


“Who did quite a lot of sorting me out, along with Philip. He taught me a lot about how I worked and how to manage it. Eighteen months with him, and I coped in school ok after that.”


Yes. In several public schools I’d had several scary but efficient matrons who’d identified my issues and then achieved the same thing with me on nothing more than plain common sense. I couldn’t say I’d enjoyed it or liked any of them, but looking back they had trained into me sufficient life skills to manage and I owed them for that.


“Did you like him?” I asked. Jake grinned.


“Very much. He got the concept, he kept us active, busy and interested. Although I think he’d have an interesting answer for Gerry about me on the whole naughty and nice issue.”


“I never really did that kind of oh it’s Father Christmas thing.” I said a little awkwardly, since there was definitely a part of me being clear it was silly, meaning embarrassing, meaning I was way too tough and masculine and rugged to be caught thinking anything like that. Bunnyphobia. It’s a long, slow recovery.


“Even as a kid?” Jake asked me. I shrugged a little.


“Frantically busy time of year, and the focus was on the traditions and the meaning, gifts were from family to celebrate the season. Although my father liked the old mythology. He read books with me about it when I was small – the origins of St Nicholas, the manifestations in different countries, the Green Man and the wild hunt.” Which I’d probably been a lot more interested in to be honest. Fairies and wild hunts and spirits and saints had been very much up my street when I was four or five. I was a weird child. Plus I suspect I had parents who had realised in desperation that the one way to get me to fall asleep was to read at me until I surrendered.


“My aunts used to do the whole nine yards with the cookies and milk left out and the chimney.” Jake said with affection.


“And you bought into it?”


“When I was little enough, yes, absolutely.” Jake shifted his shoulders deeper into the pillows to get comfortable. “I gave it careful thought. When I was about five I set a trap around the chimney. It was a good one too, except instead of any large bearded men I caught an aunt, and she screamed the place down.”


“I have no idea how you ever got a Top qualification,” I told him severely. He ran a hand down my back under the covers and patted where I was still very pink and tender.


“Philip blamed it on David for teaching me how to play Mousetrap. What?” he added. I didn’t think I’d let it show on my face. He patted again, then rubbed, a little more gently, which soothed but very definitely shifted my mind back. “What?”


I took a breath, trying to sound calm about it. “Just thinking, you had them involved in your family Christmases that far back-”


“My home and my traditions are with you.” Jake interrupted me, and he sounded amiably certain about it. “If I’ve got you, I don’t need anything after that. Trust me; Philip would have been right behind that too. David came first with him, and you and David would have got along like a house on fire. You have never stopped me doing anything, so stop. Now.”


“But you are pleased we’re here.”


“I’m pleased I’m here with you.” Jake said frankly. “That’s the top of the mountain for me. Being with you having fun here. Paul said when we got here: we do this our way. The point is enjoying it. Enjoying being with them, not making it into an ordeal. Ordeals are your family. Not mine. Mine like you. They’re all for you being happy.”    

 
 
*
 
 
We were back in the yard and helping with digging out paths and clearing the porch of snow and ice mid morning when Riley came out of the house with a couple of saddle bags in his hand, and rolled his eyes at me as the open door brought the sound of Luath’s voice explaining quite firmly to someone that there was not going to be noise and crashing about once Dale got here. He couldn’t process it, it wasn’t safe for him, and if the environment wasn’t held together in a way that he could manage he’d be stuck upstairs in his room for Christmas. I’d heard James and a couple of the others with Top type voices say very similar last night; there was obviously a Top type agreement on how the next few days would go.


“They are already holding it down for you,” Riley told me, closing the door behind him. “If they hold it down much more it’s going to be like having Christmas in a tomb.”


“Then tell them not to hold it down on my account.” I said sharply, “Let rip. I’m not that much of an arse, I survived bloody years of public school and no one ever held it down there.”


“You mostly survived it by sitting on the roof,” Riley pointed out. “Coming to help us decorate this tree?”


I looked for Jake who grinned at me and went on shovelling ice. I growled, put my spade to one side and followed Riley down the porch steps. Gerry, Bear and several others were coating and booting up in the kitchen; I could see them through the glass. I wasn’t sure; it wasn’t like they wore identity badges, but this looked to me to have become a brat committee. We crossed the frozen river together, mob handed, and although there was a fair amount of noisy and cheerful chatter about which tree and the height things should go, the tree got decorated. Bear with his huge hands placed things delicately, he and Darcy seemed to have the artistic eye and know how to present things in the way that made them look like some official Christmas display. Tall enough to reach some of the higher branches, Bear and I put most of the last ones up, although Bear boosted Darcy to place the highest of all. When we’d done, here in this quiet, snowy wood, the decorated tree looked like something magical, the bright colours of the toys brighter against the snow.


“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself,” I muttered without thinking. I’m too used to Jake, who knows most of the quotes and does this too. Riley looked across to me, interested.


“I know that one, what’s it from?”


“A Christmas Carol,” Bear told him before I pulled myself together to apologise for gibberishing. His dark liquid eyes smiled at me. He’d been looking at the tree with open pleasure; the man radiated warmth. There was a kind of purity to it that went with the face and body of an angel, a quality Dorje had too and which made me think of another and far more ancient quote Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of Heaven as a little child shall not enter therein.


And what does that mean? I had heard my father ask in many sermons, and considered for myself many times. Joyfully. Trustingly. Innocently.


Without hardness. So much of it so often came back to that. Without the protective shell of cynicism, without holding yourself one step removed. It was what I was drawn to in this man, it was the beauty I saw in him. It was what I’d always loved in Paul.


“Dickens!” Gerry said happily. “Philip used to read that to us every year at Christmas, we loved that book.”


Yes well I’d thought for a long time now that Philip was a right-thinking kind of a chap.  

Part 5

 

We’d been back a while when the four by four came into sight with Flynn at the wheel.


The end of a long journey across multiple states; I could only imagine his relief. By that point, probably over half the men staying in the house were out in the yard helping clear snow, and I saw the effort all of them made to stand back and let Riley and Paul get there first, to not crowd or fuss. It was a sensitivity I’d seen before when people arrived and left; I suppose it was natural in a large group like this. Dale looked paler than usual and somewhat tired, but the relief and the delight was evident in his face as he got hold of Riley. The two of them hung on for a moment, I could see them talking, then Riley grabbed Flynn who picked him up off his feet. Paul was waiting at the foot of the porch steps, and he held his arms out when Dale looked for him. Dale went to him like an arrow from a bow. Fairly steady on his feet, he could obviously make out who it was and where they were. It was good to see him. It was a huge relief to see him looking better than I’d been afraid he would. I found Flynn’s arm around my shoulders. He looked tired too; I wasn’t surprised since he’d driven several thousand miles, and the last few hours of it would have been on bloody awful roads after several bloody awful days. But he too had the same relief and release in his face, and his eyes were warm when he tugged me over and kissed my cheek.


“Hi. I’m glad you’re here.”


“Me too.” I gave him a swift, tight hug in return, very glad he was here too, and with a lot of sympathy for what he’d just been through. “I’ll get you for that later.”


He laughed, and went towards the steps, lengthening his stride to get there quicker as Dale began to climb them. As if he had to be certain of being in reach, as if Dale might fall. He’d suffered the brunt of this; he’d been the one there when Dale couldn’t see anything at all, he’d seen Dale not able to find his way across the room. If I was any judge that had to be one stressed Top. Jasper’s shoulder brushed mine. I looked across at him, saw the smile that said hello, and twisted around to give him a quick hug too. Gently, since while Flynn does bone cracking hugs like Jake does, Jasper tends to enfold more than hug. There’s something as respectful of space in it as there is affection.


“How are you doing? Have they driven you out to the bunkhouse yet?”


“We’re hanging in there.” I told him. “I haven’t driven anyone else out there either yet.”


I rounded up Jake for help and we put cases upstairs, then sorted out tea, since Paul had gotten Dale as far as the family room, pulled him into his lap, and I didn’t think he planned to move for a while. I couldn’t blame him; the past few days must have been hell. Flynn, once he saw Dale safely settled, had gone out to look at the stock. And if I was any judge to stretch his legs and back, get some fresh air and try and get his bearings. I left him in peace. Jasper had seated himself on the hearth and taken Riley into his lap having been several days away from him, and I didn’t doubt he had an idea of how those days had been. We spread tea pots and cups all over the coffee table, in easy reach of anyone who needed it. Dale took a cup with obvious relief. A few others had gathered there with them, Darcy next to Jasper, Gerry and Ash, and Theo was holding Bear’s hand as he sat on the arm of Bear’s chair as I could see the big man was physically wanting to get hold of Dale as if he needed to know he was ok. Jake leaned on the back of the sofa behind Gerry. The signal to me was clear; its ok. Come on.


I did it as quietly as possible but I took a seat at the far end of the hearth, and Dale immediately looked across to me as if he’d been looking for me. He didn’t say anything but I nodded in reply to the faint smile and the tilt of his head.


Hello.


Good morning.  


“You’re tired.” Paul rubbed a hand down Dale’s arm. He was having a hard time taking his eyes off Dale’s face, although he was keeping his voice in the usual calm Paul tone, as if nothing was a problem. “What was the Casper hotel like?”


“Loud.” Flynn said shortly, coming to join us. He took a seat next to Paul, helping himself to tea and wrapping his hands around his cup. Luath had come with him, he also picked up a cup and caught my eye, flashing me a rather kind smile. On the couch I saw Paul reach a hand to find Flynn’s and hold it.


“Only downstairs.” Jasper corrected. “We were fine up in the room, the bed was comfortable, and we left before it had a chance to get loud again this morning. There was some kind of party going on downstairs when we arrived yesterday, it was more than we needed to handle.”


“If you’d have let me hike out with you,” Riley informed him, “You’d have had more pairs of hands to help,”


“And it would have been louder and busier.” Flynn finished.  


“You’re no fun.”


“On iced roads in heavy snow, no.” Flynn said bluntly.


I swallowed a smile at that which wouldn’t have been tactful.


“Is anyone coming to get this tree?” Bear inquired. Jasper got up, taking Riley with him before Riley had time to think about it.


“We are. Ri, let’s get Boris.”


“If we don’t take all three of them Petra’s going to sulk.” Riley looked keen for whatever this was; I could read his face. Dale and Flynn were here, Riley was satisfied they were ok, life went on as normal and life was good again. There is something really rather lifting about being around someone with this kind of trust and optimism, Riley does it well. “She loves making this trip. Dale, coming?”


“No.” Paul said with finality, over the top of Flynn’s equally definite “No.”


Well that would be a no then.


“I’m coming.” Darcy got up and Luath joined him.


“Me too. Jake?”


Riley was looking at me with a come on! expression, waiting in the doorway.


“We’re in.” Jake straightened up and held out a hand to me. Someone had apparently tipped off the group in the study; men were starting to gather in a large crowd in the kitchen to sort out coats and boots. This tree thing was obviously going to be a large, full family affair. I didn’t know this ritual but it obviously mattered. I got up somewhat warily, bracing myself for whatever this was going to involve.


Trustingly. Joyfully.


Yes, that mattered.


While everyone was busy getting organised, I stooped over the couch to kiss Dale’s cheek.


“Fortune favours the brave,” I muttered at him in Latin, knowing he’d get the private joke and knowing too he’d understand that it wasn’t wholly a joke. This was taking nerve; he and I both knew well about the importance of taking the people-type risks.


I knew the quote he muttered back to me: “Ignis aurum probat.” 


Shorthand for the whole quote: “as gold is tempered by fire, so strong men are tempered by suffering”.


Largely by suffering Christmas in a family setting. He hadn’t lost his sense of humour in the past few days. I shook my head at him.


“Quae semper.”


“That sounded dramatic,” I heard Paul say behind me as we left. “What did that mean?”


Dale sounded cheerfully serene about it, the way he does when he’s reached a state of enjoying himself. “Quae semper? It means ‘whatever’.”


Riley and Jasper were tacking up two of the huge shire horses in the snowy yard, with a lot of willing pairs of hands helping them. Prepared to be open hearted about this, I went to join them, and watched in disbelief as Riley made an adjustment to the harness of the largest of the two. Then I went to find Jake, who was at the back of the crowd.


“He’s put bells on that horse. He’s put actual bloody bells on that horse.”


“Yes, he does that.” Jake offered sympathetically. I looked again at the men in Stetsons and coats and the horses, and the bells which were jingling softly as the horse shifted position, and shook my head, inching further behind Jake and dropping my voice lower as I couldn’t help saying it. He’d done a good job sorting me out this morning, and so had Bear, and Flynn, and Dale, and now it was melting and bursting out whether I was willing or not.


“They’re going to walk through the freaking snow with horses with bells on…. Any minute now there’s going to be fluffy little animals having bloody tea parties around a mushroom!”


“It gets worse,” Jake slung an arm around my shoulders. “We sing too.”


“And then you can go and get Mabel, and we can all die of glycaemic shock.”


Across the yard, Gerry burst out laughing. As soon as he cracked I saw several others lose the battle to pretend they hadn’t overheard, Riley included. I flushed, darkly, since this was being extremely rude, and Gerry advanced on me, still laughing but shaking his head.


“No darling, it’s fine. You lose it any time you need to, we have all been there.”   


“Ger if you try and hug him I think he’ll probably implode,” Jake kindly got between him and me. “You and Ri take the horses, I’ll keep Tom topped up with insulin, we’re going to make it.”


Gerry gave me one of his really warm smiles, the man does it well. And he thankfully walked away and the crowd began to follow the horses out into the pasture. Kit, the man I’d met yesterday was in amongst them, walking with James and Niall who seemed to be particular friends of his. He too caught my eye and flashed me a very kind smile, not in the least critical and a whole lot more chin up, you can do it. So definitely a Top. Rather than annoying, it was somehow quite encouraging.


Jake glanced down at me, aqua eyes soft and laughing because he knew I didn’t mind that much. Not really. Not in any bad way. Arm still around me, we tramped in the wake of the others and Jake lifted his voice in the way he usually only sings if we’re alone somewhere,


“Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the feast of Stephen…”


He was barely one line in before they all joined him.
 
 
*
 
 
They did, you know. They actually sang, all the bloody way to the woods where with a fair bit of friendly arguing they selected between them and cut a tree, and the shire horse with the bells on dragged it over the snow, back to the ranch.
 
 
*
 
 
 
I watched them decorate it that afternoon, eating home-made mince pies off the plate Jake and I were sharing by the fire as the wind was getting up outside and more snow was threatening. There were wrapped decorations that Niall and Gerry and Darcy were gently laying out ready; a mix of carved wooden ones that seemed to include a number of boats, and delicate red glass baubles.


“David carved a lot of the boats,” Gerry told me when he saw me looking. “The red glass ones were Philip’s mother’s.”


It was plain in his voice how fond he was of both. It didn’t surprise me. This house and land were full of the reminders of the two men who had founded the ranch; their presence mattered to everyone in this room. I knew some of the individual stories. Philip and David were loved, there was real feeling and history of those connections sitting here. The Christmas trees and decorations I had grown up with had been magnificent at the cathedral, I had loved to see them appear, but they came – in the Cathedral and the close and in our house – with professional decorators, and giant trees, and vast strings of lights. They were formal displays, part of the staging of one of the most important events of the cathedral year.


There hadn’t been a tree, still dripping a bit from the snow, being decorated by a group of people bickering amicably about where things should go with advice around them from those eating mince pies on the sidelines, and using familiar decorations that went back so many decades in the family history. Using the same colours and decorations two years running would have been, to my mother, the height of social unacceptability. I suspected Dale’s experience was likely very similar in many ways, if he had much experience at all. I had at least had the cathedral Christmases, and I had loved them. The beauty of the close in its decorations, the beauty of the music and the language, the formal services repeated in this building where they had been repeated word by word for a thousand years, the atmosphere that drew out the mystery and the mixed joys of the festival. King and God and Sacrifice. Whatever had been going on in the house when I was a child, I always had that.


I turned a bit on the hearth towards Gerry as he unwound a string of gold beads, lowering my voice for his ears only.


“Gerry, it was beyond kind of you to let us have your room, but Jake- I-”


“- got hauled out to the bunkhouse this morning for a few hours sleep.” Gerry said without delicacy and a lot of shared understanding when I baulked. “From what I hear it was about time too, Riley said you were grouchier than Flynn in a mall.”


I tried valiantly not to turn too red and to sound coherent; there were a lot of men in this house who got the concept of the best cure for grouchiness on a very personal level, and we both knew exactly what he meant. “So it isn’t fair of us to hold your room when we’re probably going to be needing to use the bunkhouse too. I’ll talk to Paul and move us out of there this afternoon-”


“No, you won’t.” Gerry said simply. “You’re not going to worry about it. It’s fine.”


“It isn’t fair to you, or Darcy and Luath-”


Gerry dropped his hands to his lap looking near to laughing. “Darling. Darce would have gone in with Luath anyway. At this time of year they both need the company. And I first came here feeling a lot like I think you do right now. I get it.” He said it gently and sincerely. “I really do get it. And believe me, I was nothing like as easy as you are to have around; I was a pain. Loudly. A lot. Ask James, or Wade to tell you. They both went out of their way to make me feel safe and wanted and comfortable here, a whole lot of them did. So this is my turn. And that means if you need room options to sleep comfortably, then that is no problem at all.”


“But it’s your room and it matters to you, I know it does.”


“Yes, it really does.” Gerry gave me a happy smile. “It’s my room, in my home, in my family, that matters to me very much indeed, and that is exactly why it’s ok. In fact it’s great. I’m really rather smug it’s that room that you like; I’m fond of it and I like that it matters to you too. I told you; it’s my turn. Please let me take my turn, it feels kind of good. And give it twenty years, and it’ll be your turn. That’s how we work.”


I had no idea what to do with that. And he smiled at me, and went on stringing Christmas decorations, shoulder to shoulder with me on the hearth.


There were a few things Dale and Flynn had brought Paul from the Christmas fair they had attended at Kearney: I watched Paul unwrap them and add them to the tree. Woven twig stars and clove balls. Several bunches of cinnamon sticks were already on the tree; like the apples in a bowl on the coffee table there were a number of the most ancient pagan markers here. Dale, in pyjamas and a sweater on the couch where Flynn and Paul were keeping a close eye on him, joined in with the tree commentary and when the tree was decorated, Flynn turned off the electric lights, and Paul lit the many candles on the mantel, until the room was lit only by firelight and candlelight. People were everywhere; in the study, in the kitchen, even some were out on the porch in the Christmas lights, with not so many of us left clustered in here. It was peaceful, which must have helped Dale.


Riley pulled out the rolled map Darcy had been drawing and spread it out on the coffee table in front of Dale, and Gerry brought a couple of logs from the log basket to weight it flat.


“I know you can’t read this,” Riley told Dale, as Dale tilted his head to try and see. “Don’t try and strain your eyes, this is a map of the Oregon trail. Niall and Darcy sketched it out from what you told us about it and from the books in the study – they did a beautiful job, Darce draws like an artist.”


“Thank you.” Darcy knelt on the floor beside him, putting several pencils down on the paper. “It’s all the drawing out I do of stage designs at work, I get practice. We were trying to mark out Sarah’s route, but there’s a lot of gaps.”


“Do you know where she started from?” Gerry said hopefully. “We have this kind of space over here marked ‘Wisconsin’ but it seems a bit vague in a ‘here be dragons’ kind of a way.”


“Green Bay.” I could see Dale resisting the urge to squint or get closer to the map in an effort to read it. “Start from Green Bay. Then come south and south west to Council Bluffs, that’s where they joined the trail itself.”


“And Council Bluffs is where she showed you Clay.” Bear brought a plate over to sit on the hearth stone near Gerry. A small crowd of family was assembling with us around the map. “That’s the supply town.”


“Don’t look so shocked, darling.” Gerry said gently to Dale. “We’ve all of us known Sarah, long before you found out her name for us. Niall and Wade knew where her wagon was when they were younger than any of us are now, she’s always been part of the ranch. Philip and David would have loved to have known this stuff as much as we do.”


I sat there, rather numbly, listening to them chatter together as the map grew and Dale explained. Jake leaned on the back of the sofa, stooping to hook an arm around Dale’s neck and give him a gentle hug that was the first hello he’d given Dale. I’d been watching people take it slowly, coming to find him one at a time in their own time rather than crowd him. “If the kids hang around the yard or the pasture at all tonight they’re going to notice the porch and wonder what’s going on. Space shuttles must pass overhead and wonder what’s going on.”


“It looks good, you leave the porch alone.” Gerry told him severely. “Tom, make him behave. And turn up the radio, the carol service is due any minute now. Is it something you’ve listened to before? The Kings College service?”


“No. When I lived in England I mostly attended the real thing at home.” I turned up the radio since I was nearest, which was explaining the shipping forecast for the English channel at present, and came back to sit on the hearth, looking down at the map with the rest of them. “Our cathedral was beautiful at Christmas. Where’s Windlass Hill in relation to Ash Hollow? We couldn’t figure out how close the two were.”


Dale explained for a while, and they went on sketching, and more people assembled around us, and the carol service began on the radio. Apparently they always listened to carols from Kings College on Christmas Eve; a tradition that surprised me in its familiarity. I’d never seen the Kings College broadcast on television where it was the mainstay of British Christmas Eve BBC output; I’d always either been involved in the real live carol service taking place in our own cathedral at Christmas Eve, or after I left home I knew of the real thing happening at Kings, since I was at University in the same town. Or else I slid into whatever cathedral carol service was nearest to whatever holiday job I was working. Likewise midnight mass; to stay awake until midnight for mass was something I’d done annually since I was six years old, probably helped in part that I was a six year old who didn’t sleep much anyway. But some part of me still felt the excitement of being old enough to be allowed to join the vigil; the sheer wonder of waiting into the night.  


I’d been taught as a child, I’d heard it so often in my father’s sermons at Christmas; this festival was rooted in the history of going home. Returning to the place of your birth; the return of the holy family to their place of birth for Roman census, the reason of their being at Bethlehem. By my teens it had become a painful duty, and I abandoned it at eighteen, once they no longer had to financially support me.


It still hadn’t stopped being something that called to me.


And here was a houseful of people to whom it meant everything. They returned not to their place of birth but where their family were; the place they had made home. They loved this time together. It was what I’d heard in my childhood, exactly, but never before felt or understood as I did tonight.


I wear the chain I forged in life, I made it link by link……I girded it on of my own free will


The quote ricocheted around, rather acid in its intensity.
 
 
            Jake drifted into the study with Flynn and with James, in the harmless way he does when he’s purposeful about something; there were a few of the older Tops looking to me as if they were wanting to decompress Flynn a bit. Everyone else was gathered at the hearth and were mostly quiet, listening to the carols on the radio in the firelight. Dale had slid down to the floor in front of the couch with a mug of tea between his hands, and was leaning against Paul’s legs. Riley and Jasper were building a card house on the coffee table with Darcy periodically helping. Gerry had quite frankly moved to cuddle with Ash, the two of them curled together on the sofa, and plenty of others were hand in hand. The room was very peaceful. Peaceful enough that I tried to move very quietly when I edged around the couches and went upstairs.


There was no one up here. It was dark and still, and I didn’t turn the light on. Instead I went into our room at the end of the hall and around the corner, and dug in my rucksack for my battered, sandy hiking boots. And a fleece, and gloves. And with somewhat grimly controlled impulse, I slid our bedroom window open, got up on to it, and found my way up through thick snow, onto the roof.


It was even quieter up there. The snow had stopped falling; it was very still outside, the sky was high and clear, my breath steamed in front of me, and the darkness was…. helpful. Up on the slope of the tiles, I folded my arms on my knees, tipped my head back to stare at the stars above me, and tried to breathe. It wasn’t going too well. I was still wrestling with it when a quietly conversational voice said from somewhere nearby,


“I’ve never been able to identify anything more than Orion’s Belt. Not for lack of trying, I just seem to find it hard to see the patterns.”


I jumped a mile. Looking down, I could see a tall, dark figure sitting on the windowsill of Jake and my room. I couldn’t see his face, and anyway he was looking out into the night rather than up at me, but I recognised the voice. Kit.


“And now I’ll bet you’re thinking it’s even worse being caught taking some time out on the roof than it is to get to the point of needing it,” he went on in much the same tone. “Except it really isn’t; it seems a most sensible approach to me. Going high feels better?”


He appeared to feel it was normal to have a conversation with someone on a roof. He’d obviously noticed enough of my exit to follow and find me, but it was conversation; there was no hint of concern, or fuss about the insanity of sitting in snow, or encouragement to come down. I had to clear my throat to get my voice to work.


“I used to do this when I was a kid.”


“Did you? I imagine it shuts down all the stimulation in one go. You get the space and the perspective all at the same time, up above everything.” His voice was slightly dreamy, as if he understood the appeal, and he had pretty much nailed it. “I know Jake chills out and goes with flow when things get busy; it’s always been a buzz to him. It looks like things get more overwhelming to you. What’s it like being in a house this full of people? Feeling every one of them breathing?”


“At night, a bit.” It wasn’t easy to admit, but it was the truth. And his relaxed posture sitting on the windowsill looking out at the stars with me was helping; he was making it easy to talk. “That wasn’t exactly why….”


“…You needed a break?” he suggested when I trailed off. “Look at that one over there. Is that the big dipper?”


“I think it’s a bit of Cassiopeia.” I said apologetically.


“Ah. Yes. Chained to the heavens by Poseidon. Who I’ve often thought was not the most stable of Olympians even by their standards.”


Well that was one way of putting it. Out here, in the dark, in the crisp, fresh air and with this man’s easy voice near, I found myself saying it aloud, to the pastures and the stars. “I wear the chain I forged in life…”


“I made it, link by link,” he finished for me. “A Christmas Carol.”


“I heard Philip used to read it aloud at Christmas.” I said, carefully sounding off hand so that it might have been something that just occurred to me.


“He did.” Kit agreed. “Gerry and Bear and David in particular loved it. What’s your chain, Tom? It’s an interesting idea Dickens has there. I think mine has always been a tendency to worry too much about the small things. How does the story go – you fear the world too much, Ebeneezer.”


I couldn’t answer. He didn’t press it. Just said in the same relaxed tone, “The thing I always understood from that story – you gird your chain on by your own free will, which will always mean, by the same free will, you can choose to take it off. Hello Jacob. How is the carol service going?”


“They’re onto the fifth lesson.” I heard the creak as Jake climbed up the porch roof and made his way across to me. “The Archangel Gabriel is doing his bit according to St Luke.”


“I’d better head down and get ready for the shepherds then. See you later.” He got off our windowsill and I heard the window close as he disappeared inside. Jake made his way across the roof and sat down beside me. He didn’t say anything, just tipped his head back to look at the stars alongside me.


“Whosoever doth not receive the kingdom of Heaven as a little child…” I quoted eventually, somewhat incoherently. Jake nodded reflectively. His breath was misting, as was mine. An occasional cattle lowed, in accordance with tradition.


“How does that happen?”


“Well Bear lives and breathes it for a start.” I said shortly. “You should see the tree out in the woods they’ve done for Dale’s kids; it’s beautiful. A beautiful, natural thing, and they just did it without thinking twice. It means joyfully. Innocently. Trustingly. And there’s one I’m chickening out of because I don’t want to say it,”


“Which generally means it’s the one that matters.” Jake finished for me. “What’s that one?”


“Expectantly.”


“Ah.”


It didn’t surprise him. It didn’t surprise me; Dale and I both hated asking for anything. He practiced it; he made himself. We both knew it mattered. As a part of your trust in the world and the people you loved, asking for and expecting mattered. Being willing to take the risk of expecting. Take the risk of believing.


“When I was a kid, Christmas was something beautiful,” I said to the sky and to him. “The ritual and meaning of it, the awe of it – that was in the cathedral in spades, I’ve lurked around the edges of it to get that fix pretty much every year, any sacred space we were near to.”


“I know.” Jake said simply. “That’s always mattered to you.”


“But the rest of it,” I waved a frustrated hand at the yard, “The whole… I saw it, as a kid I saw it. It was staging and organising and expense and pretending everything was lovely when it was damn hard work. All the other traditional stuff around the sacred parts always seemed a bit… Oh I don’t know. Forced. Artificial. Going through the motions. Trees and meals and gatherings.”


He looked across at me, listening. I glared at him. “I have spent bloody years thinking the stuff I read in books about all this joyful and magical wonder of being with family and home was romantic fiction. Empty sentiment. Only kids and bunnies really believed in it.”


Jake nodded slowly, leaning his elbows on his knees. He said nothing for a moment. And then he quoted lightly, “It came without ribbons, it came without tags….”


Yes. Exactly.


Here, they bloody tied it all together, the sacred and the domestic, all in one neat bale like hay, and they pretty much stuck holly on top. All of it. All of them. It was lovely to watch. And until you experienced the contrast… until you were somewhere with joyful people who made you welcome, who loved to be together, who genuinely enjoyed and felt the season they were enacting-


“There is nothing so irresistibly contagious in the world as laughter and good humour,” I snarled at Jake, whose face twisted with a mix of laughter and deep sympathy, and he put an arm around me and pulled me over against him, holding me there as I dissolved into a snivelling, wet mess.


“I know.”


“And I am not missing my parents, or regretting any of it, or wishing it had been different – in fact I don’t really bloody think of them at all,” I said into his shoulder. “That part is over.”


“It’s three spirits in the story, isn’t it?” Jake leaned his head against mine, sounding as if he was thinking out loud. “I will live in the past, the present and the future. The spirits of all three will strive within me.”


“Which is accepting the knowledge of the past without hardening, embracing the joy of the present and seeing the future it leads to,” I said even more irritably, through a lot of dampness. “I know. Why do you think I’m in a mess? Trustingly, innocently…you think this is easy? It’s a bit late in life to…”


“Discover that you really do like Christmas.” Jake finished for me. “I know. It’s as unfair as putting bells on horses.”


“And singing at sodding Christmas trees.”


“I’m very sorry about that.”


“No you’re not.” I pulled away enough to run my snow plastered sleeve over my face. Jake helped, rather more gently.


“All right, not very.” He held my face in his hand for a moment, leaned over and kissed me. “I’ve got you though. You’re going to live through it.”
 
 
*
 
 
We went back in through the bedroom window. Neither of us are civilised. It meant shaking snow off clothes as much as possible and balling them up to take down to the laundry room since our room was too small to put them to dry, and Jake pulled me into the shower with him since we had upstairs mostly to ourselves. The carols were still going on downstairs, I could hear faint strains of Good Christian Men Rejoice.


Preferably without climbing up onto a roof and sobbing.


I was slightly surprised to find that when we dried off, he pulled cords and the proper shirts and wool sweaters I’d bought at the airport instead of our usual fleeces and jeans. The family room was still very dimly lit, and quiet as pretty much everyone now was relaxed in a chair or on the floor and listening. Paul glanced up and smiled at us as we passed. Dale’s eyes met mine with a slightly more considering look that said he had some idea of what was going on. Kit was on the floor with the magician guy – William – lounging with his head on Kit’s lap. Darcy was between Luath and Wade on the hearth, a glass spinning gently in his fingers as he listened to the carols. Jake took me to a space on the floor by the hearth and pulled me down beside him, putting an arm firmly around my waist.


“When did Kit live here?” I muttered to Jake. “I can see he’s fond of you.”


Jake grinned, lounging back against the hearth stone which made him more available to lean against. “Despite everything. He was a friend of Philip’s, he and William stayed here on and off in the vacations when I was a kid; I was in his class for those eighteen months I told you about.”


I nearly spluttered. “He’s your Mr Hauser? He’s the teacher you had?”


Part of me was reviewing, fast, in alarm, how much I’d given myself away to a specialist teacher of raving ADHD nuts. Jake nodded calmly.


“Since he’s always had an eye on his handiwork with raising me, he said it’s been lovely to get to meet you.”


The last of the nine lessons was concluding, and the choir began the final carol, the one with the verse only ever sung in the hours we were in now; the night before and tomorrow morning.


Yea Lord we greet thee, born this happy morning…


Flynn and James came from the study together, James to take a seat Niall made for him by shifting over on a couch and Flynn to lean on the back of the couch above Paul and Dale. I sat, listening to words I had known all my life, which stirred and lifted me as they had always done, in a room full of the people I was part of, who were also listening sincerely.


I’m as light as a feather… I’m as merry as a schoolboy.


I was full to the point I was going to start overflowing again if I didn’t get it together. I pressed a bit harder against Jake, blinking until the firelight stabilised.


Flynn put a hand down to Dale as soon as the carol ended.


“Right. That’s it. Bed.”


“Flynnn…...” Riley complained. “He’s only been home a few hours and it’s Christmas Eve,”


“Head injury.” Flynn helped Dale to his feet. “Get dressed halfpint. I’ll see Dale upstairs and then I’ll come shift some more hay down to the feed stands with you.”


“And I’ll go,” Luath added, stretching, as Paul and Flynn took Dale upstairs. “It’s my turn.”


I glanced at Jake, who did not bother looking at me or moving. The answer was fairly clear.


“You two,” Luath added, pausing by us on his way to the door, “Take tonight off. It’s not as cold, there’s no more snow forecast, we’ll only be out once or twice tonight and you’ve done more than your share. We’ve got it covered.”


“Bunkhouse.” Jake murmured in my ear as they went out. “I have brandy in my backpack. And chocolate. We’ll head over there and…”


Yes, I was fairly sure I knew what he had in mind, and it sounded very good to me.


In the meantime, we sat by the fire with the others, and waited for midnight to come.
 

The End

 Copyright Rolf and Ranger 2021