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Unfortunately, the sunlight through the still-open doorway wasn’t backlighting a ravenous daddy searching for some pre-breakfast fun, but a curious-looking fox—its little paws resting on the pillow besides Luca’s chin.
“Bah!”
The scream was more in shock than to shoo. Still, the latter was the effect, leaving a scurrying blur and eight tiny tears in the bedding.
Luca slammed the only door in the tower, peering suspiciously through the gaps between boards.
The fox was gingerbread brown, mottled dark gray and white in places, with black fur around the paws and in a single splotch on its neck. It had a thick tail that a socialite would’ve killed for.
And he could’ve sworn that the fox cocked its head in confusion before scurrying off.
Luca turned. It was dark as hell inside the tower, save the little beams of gold that crisscrossed the gaps in the boarded-up windows, catching dust motes in the morning air.
Still, it was just enough to see the vague outline of a light switch by the door. And the spike of the wall-hung fireman’s axe he’d inadvertently high-fived in the dark.
A pleasingly mechanical click later, and his new home was revealed.
The fifteen-foot studio room was small but surprisingly neat—surprising because he’d assumed any building inhabited by a rotating cast of misfits for almost a hundred years would’ve accumulated its fair share of crap. And there was some of that, like the little bookcase that either had thirty unrelated owners, or one owner with really varied tastes. It wasn’t every day you saw classics like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Art of War next to a recent thriller like The Da Vinci Code.
But apart from that, it all felt pretty cohesive—like a rustic college dorm. Old posters of rock and folk musicians were taped between the ceiling and the 360-degree windows. In the middle of the space was a rib-tall stand with a circular map of the area. There was a desk against one wall, with a gorgeous antique typewriter, furthering his assumption that only mad creatives would take this job. Even bigger was the radio next to it, with so many dials and numbers and frequency meters that it made Luca’s head spin.
And that was pretty much it. Apart from a few home basics like a fridge, small gas burner, sink, shelves for food, and the unexpectedly comfortable double bed, there wasn’t any space to have anything else.
Well, I guess I should get the boards off?
Luca opened the door, but only made it as far as the porch before freezing. The morning breeze swept cool against his gaping mouth.
“Holy hell . . .”
It wasn’t the green and pink across the railing that took his breath away—the bleeding heart flowers that the tower took its name from. Or the crate of helicopter-dropped rations that he’d somehow missed last night, wrapped in waterproof tarpaulin and roped up a few dozen yards away.
What captured his attention was the view.
Green and blue were the first words that came to mind.
The green below was so vast and so varied that the only obstacle to infinity was the tower itself. There was no other man-made object anywhere in the mountainous distance. Not an electricity tower. Not an outpost. Nothing but ancient pine trees and deep valleys and gray-granite peaks beyond—still speckled white in places, despite how close they were to summer.
The blue above was so broad and so sweeping that Luca felt that he was swimming among the clouds. Like he could reach up and pluck them from the heavens, eating them like ozone cotton candy.
And yet, the branching paths from the tower were sloped surprisingly gently—promising birdsong and crunching leaves and all the incredible smells of summer.
Luca drank it all in, not just the scenery but the serenity. The clouds moved slow. The trees swayed gently. The breeze was calm. And not a single feature in the expanse suggested speed or stress.
He walked his hermit kingdom in disbelief, the ankle-deep grass warm from the sun and clicking with insects.
Beyond the tower was a long drop toilet on the eastern side, sun bleached and mischievously doorless, facing what had to be the most epic sunrise in the whole state.
On the north was the water tank, full to brimming after a wet spring. It had a shower attachment on the side, also open air. It seemed like his bare ass would be getting a very good view of the wilds this summer.
A simple wooden shed was round the western side. He’d expected some terrifying spider box but was surprised to find it in the same state as the tower—neat and ordered. There were axes and shovels and propane tanks and gloves. At the back were some smaller bottles, held tightly closed with those levered pop tops you sometimes saw on foreign beer.
But the most unexpected part of the property was the garden on the southern side, starting from the entrance steps and going all the way across to the window above the bed. They were cut into five little terraces down the slope, with a set of stairs down the middle, giving ten good-sized beds. It wasn’t some makeshift thing, either—the steps and beds were built from perfectly cut pine sleepers that looked almost new.
The soil was rich chocolate peeking out beneath thick layers of straw mulch. He doubted the chopper pilots had done that bit of housework, so the hay must have been laid by the former resident at the end of last season—the same person who’d built another little shed by the base of the garden stairs, made from the same wood and filled with planting utensils and fertilizer. There was a beautiful apothecary chest on a sturdy bench, with dozens of tiny draws for seeds.
Luca almost jumped when he noticed the white suit hanging behind the door, taking a few moments to realize that it was a bee-keeping outfit. That made sense when he followed the soft sound of buzzing into the mountain meadow, toward a bustling village of cute wooden stacks by the edge of the woods, where the bleeding heart flowers grew so thick that the ground was more bubble gum pink than green.
And as Luca returned to the shed, taking a hammer for the boards, he couldn’t help dwell on just how established it all was. How homely and ready to be occupied it seemed.
