Snowblood

Chapter 9: Not Out Of The Woods Yet

"I bought the tickets and made the reservations, but Nature had other plans," Matthew admitted to Yukie over the phone. "All flights into or out of Reno have been cancelled for today and tomorrow—and the weather forecast for around here makes it look like flights will be grounded here tomorrow."

"And the day after that is Christmas itself," Yukie said, "It seems likely that most flights would already be booked solid for most of the week."

"Yeah, and after that, we're getting close to our other trip," he added. "However, just because we can't do the Tahoe trip, that doesn't mean we can't do anything over the holiday. Especially when there's a hotel just down the street from your apartment building."

"Is that where you are now?" she asked, sounding surprised and pleased.

"Guilty as charged," he replied. "Want to come out and play in the snow?"  It was already snowing in the DC area, but not as heavily as it was supposed to later.

"Yes!" she said.

Before long, they were meeting in front of his hotel. Yukie was looking very pretty in a bright green ski jacket and fluffy white hat and scarf, and he told her so. "I told Kari you were in your mid-thirties. Now I think I should've said mid-twenties."

"You think I'm in my thirties?" she replied, surprise written on her face.

"Aren't you?" he asked.

"I prefer not to say," she answered, putting on a haughty expression, but her little smile teased him. "Please go on thinking so, however. I do not object. Wait—you told your daughter about me?"

"Yes," he said. "We've been seeing each other for a year now, and we're going on an extended vacation together. It seemed like the right time to share that with her. Why? Is that a problem?"

"No, just a surprise," she said, but she looked thoughtful. Then she pointed down the street. "There is a park down this way—. Good, you have boots on too."

The park was the wooded sort rather than the garden or playground types, with a creek winding through it and a path for walkers and bicyclists running parallel to the creek. As the path had been plowed and treated with de-icer, there was no trouble walking.

"Winter is my favorite season of the year," Yukie said as they went, "and not simply because I am most comfortable then. Look at the trees—when they're bare you can appreciate their forms better, and their branches are like lace against the sky. The snow makes everything clean and calm. Summer is not only hot, it's excessive. The thunderstorms, the insects, everything running riot and growing out of control."

"I won't argue with you," he said, glancing at her. "I like autumn, myself. All the colors, the sky, the better weather."

"Hmm," she hummed. "I speak of bare trees, and there is one that still has all its leaves, and they are green." She pointed to a tree on the other side of the creek. "What kind of tree is that, I wonder? It's not a holly. I would say it was a beech from the shape of its leaves, but I have never heard of an evergreen beech tree."

"We could walk over there and take a look," he suggested.

"Yes, let's," she agreed.

There were stepping stones enough to let them cross the creek without wading, even if Yukie did slip a little once, and soon they were having a closer look at the tree.

"No, it's not a beech," he said, looking at the rough, ridged bark, "but what it is instead, I don't know." The tree was not much more than seven or eight feet tall, but its trunk was thick and its roots looked to be shallow. Funny, when he looked at it closely, it almost looked like it had a head and a face of sorts. The trunk had broken off, or been trimmed by the park service, forming a flat-skulled head shape. That knot where a branch had fallen off could be a closed eye, the bark ridges right there looked like lips, and that swelling above then was snout-like.