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About a year of traveling later, Fran and Dom stop back at Ocean’s Bluff.
“Can’t get pizza as good as yours anywhere else,” Dom tells RJ and the others when he sits in a booth, leaning back against the wall and stretching his legs out along the length of the cushioned seat.
Truth is, Fran has missed home too much to say. Moving around all the time is exciting, but it’s also exhausting. Her happiness comes from the company she keeps, and even though Dom is wonderful, too long away from RJ and the ex-Rangers and the parlor regulars has taken its toll.
She readjusts easily, slipping into an apron and serving up happiness at every table. A week in, she’s fully recharged, and RJ forces her to take the weekend off. RJ is good like that, watching out for his own, ever like a wolf looking out for his pack.
“But you’ll be here all by yourself today,” Fran protests, standing by the kitchen door, right by where her apron hangs. It’s not even an arm’s length away. She could be back to work if he’d only say the word.
RJ shrugs, smiling. “I managed before you and the others, right? I’ll be fine. Hey, you haven’t seen our lovely new Pai Zhua masters teach yet, have you? You should go do that. Dom knows how to get to the school.”
Dom comes down from the loft just then, popping one last inch of pizza crust into his mouth. “Great idea!” he says—or, at least, that’s what Fran guesses he says through the mouthful.
“Wow.” She says it with a smile on her face and her head tilted back so she can see the tip top of the roof of the main Pai Zhua school building. Wow doesn’t even begin to cover it, though, because she can feel the school’s age, the countless centuries of tradition, the joy of learning kung fu styles passed down from times she can’t even imagine.
When the initial awe passes, she grins at a calm, smiling Dominic. “This is amazing,” she says, and she faces the building again. “You and all the others trained here. That’s—really cool.”
Dom nods at the steps. “Wait ‘til you see the rest of it.”
In the main courtyard, Casey is running a lesson. His students go into their forms as he weaves among them, inspecting their postures and gestures with practiced patience.
“He’s so good with kids,” says Fran, and it’s just then that she notices the two taller students, decidedly not children, who are at the far end of the group, near the front. She stares at Jarrod, whose eyes look relaxed if focused as he moves from one form to the next, breathing in time with the changing stances. Off to his right is Camille, whose movements look like an old, sacred dance, the intensity in her gaze as present as ever, though no longer frightening.
“This is still a cub class,” Dom tells Fran some several, long seconds later. When she glances at him, he’s staring at Camille and Jarrod, too.
“But they’re so good,” she blurts. “All of them. This has to be—at least intermediate!”
Dom laughs, quiet and kind. “When you advance, it’s because you’ve earned it. It takes more than just knowing the basic forms.”
“Basic?” She shakes her head, watching the students—the cubs. She doesn’t know much about Pai Zhua, but she knows each person has an animal spirit, and that spirit and human work as one to develop the person’s skills and honor the animal’s style.
Do these kids know their animal spirits yet? Jarrod does, and Camille is a spirit—or, no, she is tangible, so perhaps she is the perfect union of both, and so she goes from one form to the other. Well, regardless, she knows her animal and her style, and she is learning the fundamentals of Pai Zhua easily, from what Fran can see.
“It’s all advanced to me,” she says, smiling faintly, shrugging.
After a second—which, she realizes a few more seconds later, is all the time he needed to think of what to do—he says, “Come on,” and takes her hand, leading her toward one of the buildings off to the left of the courtyard.
“Um—what are you—?”
He stops when they’re no longer in view of Casey’s class, turning to face her without releasing her hand. “I’m going to get you a private Pai Zhua lesson.”
In the moment before he’s tugging her down the path again, she says, “Oh, okay.” And then, when she has to follow or be dragged away, she asks, “Um—what?”
Three Pai Zhua masters overseeing a cub’s private class is a privilege, Fran is sure. It’s also probably safe to say that most people aren’t friends with this many Pai Zhua practitioners at all, much less masters, so she knows she has to be grateful for that, too. They’ve saved her life more times and in more ways than she can count, and she’s even helped them once or twice, too. All in all, she is one lucky person.
But that doesn’t make this any less weird. Cool, yes, but also kind of weird.
“You know, I really don’t think you have to do this—I-I mean, it’s such a waste of your time, to try to teach me Pai Zhua when I—well, you know, I’m—”
“Coordinated enough to juggle multiple customer orders at the same time, communicate them clearly to the kitchen staff, balance trays full of drinks and pies through spaces that are pretty narrow on a busy day, remember each individual party member’s order, do quick math for people who’d rather not do it themselves, and still have the energy to clean up by closing time?” Theo crosses his arms and nods at her, smiling. “I think you’ll be just fine at this.”
Fran’s mouth hangs open, but no sound comes out of it for several long seconds during which she is very aware of the light weight of her loaner cub uniform. Shaking her head, she presses her lips together. “Well—if you say so.”
“You’ll do great,” adds Lily, grasping her arms gently for a moment before taking a few steps back and standing tall. “Let’s start.”
Okay, maybe she is coordinated. The first few forms are basic, interconnected postures that she can move through easily once she has run through them step by step several times with Lily. She is not graceful, but she can concentrate and do them as best she can as she counts them in her head. Now and again, Lily gives her a note, and Fran nods and incorporates it into her work. Sometimes Theo taps her shoulder, and she stops until he moves her arm just so, her shoulders this way, her back straighter. He reminds her to breathe, to relax, which is hard because this is so new, but if she can survive a busy night at JKP, she can do this for another ten or fifteen minutes. Toward the end, she finds she is aware of the whole of the little room they’re all in, of Theo and Lily and Dom, of their approval, of every time one of them moves while in her field of vision. By the time Lily tells her to go through the forms only once more, she feels alert but calm, and achier than she’d imagined.
Dom claps when she’s done, Lily rushes up to her for a hug, and Theo follows behind, nodding. Fran sees the jaguar in him, powerful and wise, but also the sweetness and the cautious confidence that kept him from asking Lily out for as long as Fran can remember. She smiles back at him when she and Lily separate, as proud of herself as he seems to be of her.
“That was great,” says Dom.
“I don’t hate to say ‘I told you so’ in this case,” Theo tells her. “Your spirit really shone through.”
“Thanks,” says Fran, her cheeks burning. And then, when the words catch up to her, she adds, “My spirit?” Surely he doesn’t mean her animal spirit.
Glancing at Lily, Theo nods. “Deer, I think?”
“Quick, alert, underestimated,” says Lily, nodding.
“Really?” asks Fran.
“No knowing for sure yet,” says Dom, “but it’s possible. It kind of fits. Also, you are very deer to a lot of us.”
Theo groans and rolls his eyes.
“How long are you staying?” Lily asks.
Fran looks at Dominic, who shrugs. “I don’t know. I was kind of hoping we’d stay for a while…” Fran shrugs. “I’ve missed being home.”
“Well, as long as you’re here, you can keep coming to the school for lessons.” When Fran responds only with wide eyes, Lily adds, “Seriously, we’d love to have you.”
“I—“ Fran gasps. “But I can’t—I couldn’t fight anyone.”
“You don’t have to fight,” Theo tells her. “It’s so much more than just sparring. I mean, look at Dom. He’s got the rhino spirit, and did he fight anyone during your travels?”
“He didn’t fight at all,” answers Fran.
“You didn’t even practice?” Theo demands of Dom.
“Well, excuse me for needing a vacation after helping save the world!” Dom says, throwing up his hands.
“You’re both coming here, then. At least three times a week. You have to keep up your master-level skills,” Lily says to Dom. “And you—” She turns to Fran. “You are my new student. And Casey’s, too. He loves teaching cubs.”
“Wait, shouldn’t I get to teach her?”
“Dom, seriously?” Theo shakes his head at him. “I can’t trust your technique now that I know you’ve been slacking this entire year.”
“Oh, come on!”
“What’s going on?” asks Casey. He is standing at the door, grinning at them all.
“Dom’s a slacker, and Fran is a natural,” Theo answers.
“Theo, seriously, I am not a slacker!”
“Well, that remains to be seen, I guess,” says Casey. “I overheard something about teaching a new student?”
“That’s me,” says Fran, waving at him. “Wait, how long have you been standing there?”
“Just a second,” he answers. “Your voices carry, is all. By the way, Fran, it’s great to see you.”
His smile cuts through the knot of nerves in her chest, and she feels happy again, warm and content. She’s home, and whether or not she ever moves past cub is the last thing on her mind. “You, too, Master Casey.”