1. The Landlady

It was bleeding hot when Everest stepped out of Lucerne-Alpane train station. The time was just a little past one, according to the station clock, and she was tired from the long flight and train ride.

She cursed lightly as the sun rays touched her skin, heating it up. She shielded her face with a hand and dragged her large suitcase with the other.

Looking around to see people in baseball caps and sunhats, she wished she had had the foresight to get one too. Not that she was entirely at fault, it had been raining like Noah's prophecy where she came from.

Now, where was that landlady woman?

She squinted and looked around the dusty landscape. The front of Lucerne-Alpane train station was a dry, desert-sque piece of land, barren of vegetation and moisture. Tiny knock-up kiosks littered the area, most of them announcing their services in garish Day-Glo.

None of the women she saw resembled the landlady or dressed the way she had been expecting. She had seen the woman's profile picture on the contact she had obtained from the housing website.

Mrs Casss had looked to be in her fifties. A quinquagenarian. Everest hadn't been expecting to find a housing agent for Lucerne-Alpane region when she went to the housing website, so she had been surprised when the search brought up the profile of a Mrs Bonie Casss and two other male agents in Lucerne-Alpane.

Mrs Casss had promised to be waiting outside the train station by two o'clock wearing a dark one-piece mumu.

So where was the damn woman now? Everest wondered, slightly miffed. The hellish sun was so not for her.

Despondent, she looked towards the litter of kiosks and shops. Most of them professed services like chilled drinks, rentable motorcycles and the likes.

Sighing, she made for the nearest kiosk with large sunhats displayed at the front. Anytime now would be a good time for the landlady to arrive. Maybe her friend, Leesa, had been right after all, pre-booking was not such a good idea.

She made a mental note to book a travel agency, so whenever she caught a travel bug again, she wouldn't have to go through any of this stress.

She was almost at the hat shop, lugging her suitcase behind her when a rusty old truck came peeling towards her side.

A bit startled, she jumped back. Surprisingly, no one around seemed bothered by the incident. She raised an eyebrow and looked at the vehicle that had been coming for her.

The truck driver had swerved and turned the vehicle so that it was now standing nearby beside her, filmy red dust rising around its tyres.

What kind of driving was that? Everest thought, irritated.

She looked up to start giving the driver a piece of her mind but stopped short on seeing the woman behind the wheels beaming and waving at her.

"Camara?" She smiled again and nodded to herself, not even waiting for a reply. "Thought as much."

The woman reached out outside the car to open the door. Then she jumped down with a thump, almost causing Everest to wince. How did she seem so agile with that weight?

The woman, whom she could now clearly see to be Mrs Casss, stuck out a thick hand and inclined her head to look at her.

"My, you're tall, aren't you?" she said. Without waiting for Everest's reply or hand, she withdrew her hand, dusting it down her dirty-green mumu. "I'm Bonnie Casss," she announced aloud.

"It's nice to meet you," Everest eventually said. In just a few seconds, the woman had made her short of words. Her remark about her height had her confused on whether to bristle or preen. People hardly called her tall, she wasn't even fully five feet and eight.

She watched the woman reach for her suitcase and start to drag it towards the back of her truck and went after her to retrieve her holdall from the top.

"You're late," she stated, put out that the lady hadn't even spoken about that.

"Right," agreed Bonnie Casss. "Lassie here had a dry-up again." She tapped lightly at the side of her truck and Everest realized the truck was Lassie. "Her oil tank has a little crack by the side so it always needs topping up on the move every few hours once it trickles all out."

She lifted the heavy suitcase in one fluid movement and dropped it gently into the back of the truck. Everest's mouth dropped open at this. She had barely managed to drag the thing off the carousel at the airport and off the train.

Bonnie Casss seemed to be a woman who was more than she looked. Everest stared down at her from her puffy tuft of mousy hair to her thick biceps and chubby fingers, down her plump frame in the mumu to her light brown moccasins. The woman couldn't be over five feet and, although she had looked to be in her fifties in the picture, she was definitely in her sixties. Sixty-four, maybe.

"I don't look like my profile, I know," said Bonnie Casss, giving a full-shouldered shrug. She motioned Everest forward and made towards the driver's side herself. "Ain't no apology for that though."

The woman pushed herself up into her seat with the creaky door and slammed it closed. Then she peered at Everest from the side. "You coming in?"

Giving herself a mental shake, Everest clambered into the truck, groaning when her thigh muscles threatened to pull. While she was on vacation, she might as well put some exercises learnt into good use.

The car engine sputtered to life and soon they were on their way down the dry, dusty road.

"Seeing as you wanted a secluded house, I was able to shortlist it to two. The first is downtown, near the town's hustle and bustle, but it is surrounded by a few abandoned houses, which makes it quiet on a normal day."

The woman took one hand off the wheel to dig around in the large gear stick hole and finally came up with a silver thermos.

The woman offered it to her, eyes still on the road. "Negus?"

Everest subtly looked down at the gear hole filled with unidentifiable bric-a-brac. She repressed a shudder. "No, thank you."

"Oh well." Bonnie Casss took the other hand off the wheel to Everest's utmost alarm. But it was only for a second as she deftly twisted the cap of the thermos open and the hand was back on the wheel. She hoisted the bottle high and took a deep drink.

Ripe scents of lemon and nutmeg suffused the inside of the car for a moment before it sailed away into the passing wind. Everest's stomach contracted short of a rumble. She hadn't had a meal since the light breakfast of chocolate Rice Krispies at her apartment.

She had purchased a box of saltwater taffy at the duty-free but she couldn't recall if she had stashed it in the holdall sitting on her lap or the suitcase in the back of the truck.

"The second house is on the other end of town," the ample landlady continued, now guiding the wheel with both hands and a vacuum flask. "On Coven's Lane. Of course, it's more secluded than what you might wish for but you might just love it if absolute quiet is what you're looking for. A house in the middle of somewhere's nowhere."

Everest piqued at that. "Oh." A house in the middle of nowhere, that sounded divine. She could just imagine herself alfresco having a great feast on a weaved mat with nature and calm in audience.

"There's a big ranch downhill, but it's so far away it couldn't possibly be a bother. Oh, and the rancher lives two houses down," she added. "There are just three houses on that lane, the rancher is on one, mine is on the other and the house in-between has been sitting empty for years. Used to be a mill or manufactory of some kind."

"I think I'd like that," Everest said dreamily. A rancher and his house couldn't possibly pose any problems, could it?