Yeah, he was the proverbial deer in the headlights.
Daniel looked around for the deer’s mother or others from his herd. From what he knew from growing up in the country and visiting this area, mamma deer usually traveled with several generations of deer. If they were out there, he didn’t see them, nor did he see any tell-tale hoof prints in the thick snow. Whatever. He shrugged. At least they weren’t all standing in the middle of the road staring at him like this young buck.
“Quiet, Rocky. You’re going to give yourself a stroke.” Daniel rubbed his own chest, where his heart was still racing a million miles an hour from the near collision. Hell, he should’ve been paying better attention instead of letting himself be distracted while driving on a dangerous road through a veil of densely falling snow. But he was excited when he saw the Christmas lights on the other side of the river. He’d reached his destination–Cloud Hill.
Twinkling through thick, snow-covered fir, aspen and spruce trees were green, blue, red and white lights on the homes and businesses of the tiny Rocky Mountain community. He’d been so sidetracked by glimpses of them that he’d nearly missed his turn onto the narrow two-lane road that crossed the bridge and curved to run right down the middle of Cloud Hill. He could’ve run into a whole herd of deer if Rocky hadn’t sounded the alarm. If one had been around. Not an exaggeration. There were more deer than people in this high elevation village–population ninety-two.
Daniel often questioned whether that number had been overstated when he visited as a child and adult. There just didn’t seem to be that many people who lived there or in the few houses on the mountain high above Cloud Hill adjacent to the National Forest. He smiled. Ninety-two or two people, it sure as hell was a welcome number after five months on tour to sold-out venues of tens of thousands in so many freaking cities he couldn’t remember them all.
“Yeah, Rocky, I’m living the dream,” he sighed, hating how thankless he sounded for reaching his goal of being the number-one country music artist for the last three years. Exhaustion did that to him. It turned him into a grumpy, ungrateful fool when the truth was he loved his work. He was in Cloud Hill for three and a half weeks to remedy that character flaw. His phone would be silent. All of the countless calls he usually dealt with in a day were gloriously being forwarded to his manager. And, there would be no cheating. There was no cell phone service in the area.
Daniel yawned. The excitement of arriving in Cloud Hill and nearly crashing into the deer hadn’t thwarted his fatigue. Nothing much did. He’d been so damn tired lately, he had been falling asleep at the most inconvenient times–during staff meetings, right before going on stage for a big concert, while eating dinner. He planned to sleep for two straight days as soon as he climbed into the feather-bed in the guest loft apartment at his uncle’s house. Hell, he might sleep until he had to return for a performance in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
“This staring contest is getting old, Bambi,” he said, looking at the grayish brown deer. “Or should I call you Rudolph since it’s almost Christmas. You don’t have a red nose, but you have little antlers. You’re a cute dude deer. A young buck.” A frightened young buck, he realized by the way the deer was breathing heavily, evidenced by the puffs of clouds as his warm breath hit the frigid early morning air. “How long does one of these deer in the headlight showdowns last?”
Rocky’s bark settled into a low, threatening growl followed by a trailing whine.
“Relax, boy.” Daniel petted the long, soft fur on the back of his neck before shifting his vehicle into park. He looked past the deer to the other side of the bridge into Cloud Hill.
Relax. Yeah, that was exactly what he intended to do.
He laughed softly. There was certainly peace, quiet…and a lot of Christmas lights here. The colorful lights, swaying gently in the soft breeze on the historic Inn on Cloud Hill, made a beautiful display for sure. There were four stories of multicolored twinkling bulbs, outlining two wings of the Victorian building with its tall clock tower separating them. Although he couldn’t make out the details at this dark, moonless hour, it seemed every building he’d seen through the trees while driving in, was decorated with the same wattage and color lights, as well. Given what he knew of the people of Cloud Hill from when he spent summers and winter breaks there visiting his grandparents, he imagined that was planned. There was a visual uniformity that had been maintained since the late 1800s, when the village’s Swiss-style, craftsman-era cottages and businesses were constructed.
“It looks like a scene from one of those Hallmark Channel Christmas movies the girls in the band have been watching every night,” he said to Rocky, who had given up on growling at the deer and was now staring it down.
The hair on the back of Daniel’s neck rose. What the hell was that about? A Norman Rockwell painting made him feel a sense of danger? He looked beyond the pretty and shiny through the large flakes of falling snow. The tall spruce trees lining the narrow unplowed road ahead of him were bowed with a heavy coat of white. It hadn’t been plowed for hours and the snow looked undisturbed. The wooden handrail on either side of the bridge had a cap of undisturbed white too. Even the deer standing like a fur statue had snow accumulating on the tips of his crooked Y-shaped antlers.
Rocky growled without much energy as Daniel fought to keep his heavy lids from closing once and for all for the night. He raised the temperature on the heater a few notches, and rubbed at the rough stubble on his face. “I’m pretty much done here,” he said to the deer, knowing he neither could hear him nor would understand him if he did. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
He knew only a minute or two had passed since he’d nearly run into the young buck, but rushing a wild animal stuck in some sort of frozen mode was starting to appeal to him.
“A little toot of the horn…” he murmured, then realized that might move him all right—straight across the hood of his jeep through the front windshield. Nah. Daniel wanted to get a good night’s sleep in a comfy bed, not on a hospital gurney.
Daniel reached for his phone in the door pocket. His mother would get a kick out of seeing this deer blocking the way into the village she knew so well. It wouldn’t make her feel any better that he wasn’t coming home to Alabama for Christmas with their large, noisy family, but she’d know he’d been thinking about her. He tapped on the camera app, zoomed in on the deer’s face, but when he went to zoom out, Rocky barked and his hand jerked, causing the image in the viewfinder to shift. He no longer was looking at the deer’s face.
“What the…? Three legs?”
The deer had three legs. Deer didn’t survive in the wild with three legs—especially not young ones.
That’s when he saw it.
A leash around its neck.
He put the phone down on the dashboard. He hadn’t noticed the leash before. His exhaustion and the steam coming off the deer’s warm body in the single-digit temperatures probably hid it.
Why did a three-legged deer need a leash? He followed the leash down onto the ground where it was attached to a long, white rope. Was someone out there pranking him? Were there hidden cameras somewhere? He leaned forward and followed the length of rope off to the side of the bridge where a tall, wispy figure held it.
“Are you kidding me?” It was a woman, by the look of the patchwork coat she wore. The coat appeared to be bright pink, purple, and cream with a huge hood trimmed in purple fur that circled what little he could see of the woman’s pale face.
She was waving at him.
He waved back.
She waved bigger, then moved her gloved hands in a motion that indicated…what? Did she want to talk to him? Is that what she meant by opening and closing her gloved fingers to her thumb? Was there a duck nearby?
He shrugged that he didn’t understand, but Daniel was pretty certain she couldn’t see him in the dark interior of the vehicle. So, he rolled down his window. “What? What do you want?”
The deer’s head came up higher, turning
toward him. Rocky started barking again. The deer bolted. The woman, still holding the long rope, was right behind him. Her feet slid on the icy ground, like they were rails on a sleigh. She shrieked and Daniel was quickly out of the jeep, racing after her. He reached her in two seconds, grabbed her around the waist with one hand and the rope with the other. He yanked on it to stop the deer, but the combination of the deer pulling in the other direction, the woman slipping wildly in his arm, and the smooth-soled boots that he hadn’t bothered to change after the concert, had him falling forward, taking the woman down with him. They rolled into the snowbank just on the edge of the bridge. The deer stopped, but the rope remained taut. Rocky, who’d jumped from the car, was now barking next to Daniel.
“Are you trying to kill me?” she shouted, her voice not quite the volume he would’ve expected from someone tackled onto the ground. She stood and so did he.
“Sorry, but what are you doing out at two in the morning in subarctic weather? Seems like a death wish to me, lady.”
She didn’t answer, but he saw in her gray eyes that she didn’t like his comment. She pointed at the rope. “Let go of the rope. I’ve got this under control.”
“Sure you do,” he snorted, as the rope slackened in his hand. He looked in the direction the deer had gone and noticed he was walking—or rather, hopping—back toward them. “Is that your pet?”
“No. Franklin belongs to Big Sinclair. Big’s working late and asked me to walk him. Franklin likes to go out when Cloud Hill sleeps. He doesn’t like people…or cars with bright lights.”
“Big, huh?” Daniel shook his head, then brushed the ice and snow from the back of his faded jeans. “I didn’t know he had a pet deer.”
The woman cocked her head, but didn’t ask him any questions, so he didn’t feel inclined to tell her Big was his mother’s eccentric brother. Daniel was there to find some quiet time and relaxation at his uncle’s place. Big was exactly the person to help him find it. He wouldn’t demand anything from his nephew. He would understand Daniel’s need to get away, because he, himself, was a loner who hated having his time filled with things he didn’t want to do. Yet, when he was in the mood, he was known as a competent handyman, builder, and all-around fixer. Hell, he’d even fixed animals. Daniel smiled, tucking his freezing hands into his back pockets. Yeah, Franklin the three-legged deer, was no doubt one of his fixed animals.
The woman stepped back as the deer moved closer, allowing him to meander as he wished. “How do you intend on getting him back to Big? You look like you’re afraid of him.”
She sighed. “We return when he decides he wants to.” She smiled, and her pale eyes seemed to brighten. “If he doesn’t, I have a little bait.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a sealed plastic bag. “He likes molasses cookies. I just toss pieces in the direction I want him to go and he goes.”
Daniel smiled. “Chocolate chip used to work on me when I wouldn’t stop playing music and come out of the basement.”
She looked at the bag of cookies in her hand, then her head jerked up to look at him. She again cocked her head to the side, looking ridiculously cute…and goofy with the purple fur around her face. He was about to ask her what her name was, why she was walking his uncle’s deer…but the deer saved him from injecting himself into something he didn’t need or want to. Franklin took off across the bridge, trotting down the main street, pulling the quirky woman along behind him at a safe distance. She didn’t even glance in Daniel’s direction to say goodbye.
Rocky started to run after the deer, barking, but Daniel was able to catch him by his collar before he got too far. “Don’t get involved with that craziness, Rocky.”
Daniel returned to his car, grateful he knew where to find the key to the back door leading to his Uncle Big’s loft.
Chapter Two
The scent of turpentine and drying oil paints filled the air around Aurora as she sat on a small tripod stool with her knees bent up to her chest. She continued to set her paintbrushes into the dozen colorful pottery cups she’d made specifically for them. Each cup was just the right height and width for the different size brushes she used when painting murals. Each was created with the right amount of precision and whimsy, just like the art she created. Having the right tools and inspiration was important to achieve the final product that both she and the person who commissioned her work would be happy with.
She knew she could be overly meticulous and fussy with the preparations, even going so far as having to wear just the right clothes—non-patterned, long, tan cotton dresses with deep pockets and plain, cotton sneakers. But in the end, when everything was prepared as she liked it, there were no distractions to take her away from the images she brought to life with oil, pigmented plaster, egg, tile, found objects, spray paints, and varnish. She didn’t always use all of the media available, as with the mural she was creating on the wall in the lobby of the Inn on Cloud Hill, but she could if the whim struck her.
Aurora had taken a half-dozen trips, carrying each brush, cup, and paint color to the top of the ten-foot scaffolding where she was working today. She was now ready to begin painting on the mural that was more than half-completed. The most difficult elements needed only final touches while the less complicated sections were still left to be done. Today she wanted to work in the bright daylight…the night before, she’d wanted to work with artificial light. Both her mood and desire to use different light dictated her schedule, if you could even call it that. She was not one to follow a clock or calendar unless she had to. Living by her whims fit her personality, always did. Well, it mostly did. Last night had proved to be the exception.
Aurora sucked in a breath. Meeting Daniel Brooks so unexpectedly had thrown her out of her comfort zone. She’d agreed to walk Franklin for Big because he had to work early in the morning for Mrs. Leary, who needed her roof repair done before she left Cloud Hill at nine. Big wanted to go to sleep early. God, she hated agreeing to walk Franklin. The deer scared her half to death. Although he was still a young buck, he was strong and rambunctious. He could be sweet and gentle too. She just didn’t know which he’d be when she was with him. To deal with his many moods, she’d resorted to using a very long leash and molasses cookies. She wondered what she could’ve brought to prevent him from running into Daniel on the bridge.
Daniel Brooks. He looked the same as he did as a teenager…only more handsome, more masculine, and more frightening. It was ridiculous, but seeing him on the bridge had made her feel like she was fourteen again and he was fifteen. He hadn’t known who she was last night, just like he never knew who she was twenty years ago. Thinking of it had her stomach in a knot and her palms perspiring. Yeah, that was ridiculous too.
Her days of bony knees, clumsy movements, and too-pale skin were a thing of the past. Well, maybe not the too-pale skin. It still remained, along with her same boring beige hair. Regardless, she was a successful and respected woman in her field now. Her peers didn’t tease her for being a gawky, awkward, odd bird. They celebrated it, damn it. And, truth be told, she wasn’t as awkward as she used to be.
Aurora tried to push out the memory of how good Daniel looked getting out the Jeep, with his coat in hand. Before he’d put it on, she’d seen how his faded blue jeans and black T-shirt hugged his muscular frame. He looked every bit the rebel, bad-boy musician she remembered. His stack of leather bracelets and the bold black tattoos on his right arm only added to the image. Dear Lord, she didn’t want to remember his near-black, straight shiny hair, hazel eyes, and straight nose with the slight bump along the bridge–one she’d seen him get when he fell into the Crystal River and knocked it on a large boulder. No, she didn’t want those images in her mind, when other gentler ones had to be formed on the wall with blue and umber and crimson oil paints.
She had to imagine the young, cherubic daughters of the owners of the inn coming to life in a lively scene from the studio portrait photo she had of them. Although they were adults now, their parents wanted a mural of
them at an innocent time of their lives, when they were between five years and twelve months old, each frolicking in the outdoors during the seasons that each child was named after–Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer.
“Damn that’s good,” a deep, melodic, southern accented voice said from beneath the scaffolding. “Real good.”
Aurora didn’t have to look down to know who it was. Daniel always had the kind of voice everyone recognized. Convenient for him, since he made a living using it.
“Trompe l’oeil,” he said, correctly pronouncing the French words that meant to fool or deceive the eye. She’d spent years learning the technique. It was one she dreamed could become reality when she was a young girl stuck in a place she wanted to flee. If she could’ve drawn a door and walked through it…
It felt good that he appreciated her use of the technique. Of course, she’d have felt that way if anyone had acknowledged it, she conceded.
“Yes, I use a little of it with the trees, leaves, and flowers in the different seasons. You know it?” she asked unable to keep the surprise from her voice. She turned and looked down at him. Today, he wore another black T-shirt and faded jeans, but he had a rich chocolate-brown down coat over it. He held a plain, black knit cap in his hands.
He smiled, and stuffed the cap into his back pocket. “Sort of. I heard about it a few years ago when I was in preproduction meetings for a music video. My manager brought it up. He wanted to include a gag like Wile E. Coyote uses when he paints a trompe l’oeil tunnel on a mountain to catch the Road Runner. Of course, the Road Runner races through it, but when a stunned Wile E. Coyote tries to follow him through the tunnel, he crashes into solid rock. Bam.” He punched his palm and smiled a big, genuine, sunny smile.
The Nutcracker Reimagined: A Collection of Christmas Tales Page 42