“It’s in the dedicated corner already,” came Sker’ret’s voice from the kitchen. “A big pot of that acid stuff you like, Fil.” And in came Sker’ret, apparently after a visit to one of the storage closets in the back of the house. He was walking on only a few pairs of legs, and with all the others he was carefully holding three other piles of serving plates above his upper carapace.
Nita had to turn and stare, fascinated. “I didn’t even know your legs hinged like that!” she called after him.
“Apparently they do,” said Sker’ret, and kept on going into the dining room.
“Where’s Kit?” Nita said.
“He’s upstairs changing,” Carmela said as she came wandering into the living room from the back of the house. She looked very much the Christmas hostess in a glittery red tunic top and red-and-white leggings with a very subdued candy-cane pattern on them, and low red boots to complete the effect.
“Fashion plate,” Nita said as Carmela grabbed Filif and hugged him, half vanishing into his branches and making some of his berry-eyes on either side of her pop a little.
“Yes, well, with such a special occasion you have to make a little effort,” Carmela said. “Kit’s doing his best but I don’t know if it’s going to be enough…”
Footsteps were coming down the stairs. “I heard that!” said Kit’s voice. “Just because some people can’t manage to find themselves a genuine collectors’ item like this…”
Kit came down into the living room, turning toward the group gathered there, his mouth open… and then stopped dead.
“Oh no,” Nita said, and started gasping with laughter. “Oh no!” Because Kit was wearing black jeans and sneakers and a ridiculous hairy angora-knit crewnecked construction adorned with fake Icelandic patterns in red and white, and scattered all over with revolting embroidered green yarn Christmas trees with little sewn-on Mylar ornaments.
They stood there in shock, staring at each other as Kit’s mama and pop burst out laughing in unison. “You look like the Bobbsey Twins,” Kit’s mama said.
“Who?” said Kit and Nita in unison.
Mrs. Rodriguez threw a glance at her husband, then gazed briefly at the ceiling as if begging for help from some unseen source. “Generation gap,” she said. “Never mind.” She headed for the kitchen.
“I didn’t mean for you to buy it,” Kit said, “I meant for you not to buy it! So I’d be the only one having it.”
“Emailing me pictures of the thing was no way to get me not to buy it!” Nita said. “What am I, six?”
Dairine pushed past her toward the dining room, snickering. “No better than eight on a good day,” she said.
“Whatever you do,” said an Irish voice from that direction, “don’t change. Don’t either of you dare change.”
Nita turned. There, leaning in the dining room doorway, having apparently just arrived, was Ronan. He was in black, as usual… but for a change, surprisingly formal blacks. Trousers instead of jeans, shiny black brogues instead of goth boots, a very slim-fitting black shirt with black glitters in it, and to top everything off, a Santa hat in white and black.
Nita burst out laughing. “What are you supposed to be, some kind of dark ‘jolly old elf?’”
Ronan waggled his eyebrows. “Other people can worry about who’s nice. I prefer to concentrate on the naughty.”
“I don’t even want to know,” said Kit’s mama as she came back into the room with a tray full of glasses of hot cider. “Nita?”
Nita grabbed one. “You’re earlier than I thought you’d be,” she said to Ronan.
“Wanted to get out before it got too crazy. We’ve got weather like you’re going to get.”
That surprised Nita. “Can’t be the same system—”
“It’s not. Trust me, we don’t need your help to trigger major snow events! We’ve got Siberia.” Ronan wandered over to where some buffet trays had been laid out on one of the low living room tables and went picking among the crackers piled up there. “And we’re getting hammered. A foot on the ground already and lots more coming. Heathrow’s closed, Charles de Gaulle is closed, Frankfurt and Geneva were just shutting when I left.” He found a plate for his snacks. “In fact, most of Europe’s a mess. Every wizard who specializes in that kind of thing is out in the cold right now. So glad I’m not one!”
“Here,” said Kit’s mama, putting a glass of cider in Ronan’s hand. “Who else wants one?”
Nita had a long drink of the cider and felt the world seem to settle a little around her. Whatever spice mix Kit’s mama had worked out to use in the stuff, Nita never got tired of it. The next thing she knew she and Kit were laughing about their sweaters, and she was stealing snacks off a plate he was holding, and the room was getting fuller of people. Her dad showed up, and the next thing Nita knew he and Kit’s pop and Filif were discussing the best management of the electrical outlets for the lights they were going to be putting on him, and Kit’s mama was laughing in the kitchen with Dairine at something Spot had just done, and the entertainment system was showing what appeared to be an ancient rock star playing a guitar in the nude.
And Kit leaned over to Nita and said, “Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I’d say the party has begun…”
3: O Tannenbaum
The place started descending into cheerful bedlam as more people arrived. Filif slipped out to get himself acclimated, as planned: Nita caught a glimpse of him, a tranquil shadow against the snow, as twilight set in. Tom and Carl turned up in their ski gear, to everyone’s amusement, and were immediately equipped with cider (as they were apparently about to go on duty: “Back for the mulled wine later, Marina,” Carl said, “you know we wouldn’t miss that for anything!”). Matt from Australia turned up, wearing jeans and a truly eye-hurting shirt covered with graphics of Christmas ornaments in Day-Glo colors. Tall rawboned Marcus arrived, actually in camouflage fatigues in Christmas colors, bringing chocolates for Kit’s mama…
The noise level in the house became amazing: gossip and laughter, some preliminary exchange of small gifts, a lot more drink making the rounds, a lot of food. Sker’ret seemed to have appointed himself catering manager, and was constantly going back and forth with buffet trays. “It’s all downstairs on the other side of one of the puptent accesses,” he said to Nita when he passed her once. “There’s a stasis field there holding everything at the right temperatures. All the other accesses are set up, don’t worry about those…” And he was off again for another tray.
The music channel playing on the entertainment system was bringing out the best in some of the guests. Ronan’s voice was lifted in song at one point and caused everyone to hold still in astonishment as he did a pitch-perfect, raspy singalong imitation of both the leads on the song that was playing. “They’ve got cars big as bars, they’ve got rivers of gold, | but the wind goes right through you, it’s no place for the old: | when you first took my hand on a cold Christmas Eve, | you promised me Broadway was waiting for me…”
Moments later Matt was next to him and singing in harmony. “And the boys of the NYPD Choir were singing ‘Galway Bay’, | And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day…”
“We need them for the carol singing tomorrow night,” said Kit’s mama, sipping at her own mulled wine with a critical look. “Mmm, needs more cinnamon… Kit, take care of that, will you?”
“Do what I can, Mama,” Kit said as his mother headed back for the kitchen, and himself headed for another of the snack trays. Nita turned back to the gossip she’d been eavesdropping on while pretending to watch the music video channel.
“—didn’t want to get into outside decoration, what with the kind of vandalism we’ve been getting lately,” Nita’s dad was saying.
“Five’ll get you ten I know who you mean. The Terror Twins….”
“Who?”
“The new next door neighbors’ kids,” Kit’s pop said, and sighed. “I could really, really wish the Liddles hadn’t had to move. I miss Dave. He was good
company in the summer, at the end of a barbecue. Or most times, really.”
“I miss Roz,” said the voice from the kitchen. “She was such a great cook. I was learning things from her…”
There was a sort of communal sigh at that, audible even over the general noise. Kit’s mama knew her cooking skills were limited, and knew that everyone knew it, and was regardless entirely cheerful about it and always looking forward to improving them.
“So what happened there?” said Nita’s dad. “I remember hearing that Dave had some job offer, but I don’t know what else was going on.”
“Yeah. Some firm up in Seattle, I think. Washington state, anyway. It happened very suddenly. He spent most of the spring sending out resumes and got nothing: seemed like nobody needed anyone to do what he did. Repairs on these big computerized industrial printers. Then all of a sudden this one company hit on him, flew him out for an interview, and a week later, bang, deal done. They sold the house in an awful hurry… two weeks later they were gone.”
Kit’s pop made a face. “The new neighbors, the Chastellains… Rory’s all right. Nice guy, he works over at Northrop Grumman. Lena’s lovely, a very lively funny woman, something in IT. But she’s not working right now. Apparently she had some kind of hip injury last year and she’s got another six months of physio before she can go back. I feel for her, though, because she’s stuck being stay-at-home mom to, well…”
Nita exchanged a glance with Kit, who’d come up next to her, and didn’t say anything.
“A pair of badly-behaved antisocial ignoramuses,” Kit’s mother said from the kitchen, sounding very much like someone who didn’t care who might possibly overhear her.
“There you go,” Kit said under his breath. “Mama knows.”
“I can’t imagine how two such nice people have turned out kids who’re so poorly socialized,” his mama said. “Seriously. Rude, destructive, foul-mouthed…”
The two of them listened with amusement to the string of vividly descriptive adjectives flowing from the woman slicing oranges in the kitchen. Neither Nita nor Kit needed to be told more about the subject than they already knew. Bobby and Ron Chastellain had in an amazingly short time become famous at school for spending more time in detention than they seemed to spend in class. They were as much a menace on the sports field as they were in the classroom; it seemed no one was too small for them to bully or too big for them to start a fight with. They were almost universally loathed, and seemed to glory in it. Even wizards with a mandate to prevent speeding up the Universe’s heat death sometimes had trouble keeping themselves from taking action against the Chastellains that would have been pleasantly robust but would probably have landed them in hot water with their Supervisories after the fact.
“You have to wonder,” Kit said under his breath, “whether it’s still them being miserable at having to be in a new school all of a sudden, or if now they’re just kicking everybody’s ass every chance they get because they enjoy it.”
“My money’s on number two,” Nita said. “Never mind them. They are not spoiling my Christmas.”
”Mine either,” Kit said. “Hey, where’s Fil?”
“He was out having a breath of air. I’ll go check him.”
She slipped out of the heat and noise to glance around the back yard. Filif was standing straighter against the garage, playing the role of a relaxing Christmas tree perfectly and slowly letting down his branches. Snow was still falling gently through the darkness, but not as heavily as it had been. Still, Nita could feel something in the air, possibly something to do with the ionization associated with incoming storms: a sense that when the snow really let go, it wasn’t going to stop for a while.
She wandered over to him with her hot cider. “Fil? How’re you doing?”
“Just fine,” he said. She could see his berry-eyes looking upward into the night, possibly a sign that he was engaged in the same kind of weather analysis she was. “One of the small creatures from down the road came along and watered me,” Filif added. “Very kind.”
Nita stole a glance down at the snow. There was enough light from the house for her to easily see the yellow in it, and she burst out laughing.
Behind her, Kit’s side door went. “You all right out here, son?” said Kit’s papa.
Nita smiled at how quickly Filif seemed to reached this status after having been a first-time houseguest just an hour before: she detected her dad’s subtle hand in that. “Just relaxing,” said Filif. “How do the branches look?”
“Very natural,” he said. And then he laughed at himself. “Well, it’s not as if you’re an artificial tree, for God’s sake. You look just fine. It’s going to be a pleasure decorating you.”
“I hope so,” Filif said. “I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”
“Well, whenever you’re ready, we can always—“ Kit’s pop turned a little toward the house.
Then he paused, and his eyes widened. “Uh,” he said. “Maybe I’m missing something, but…”
“But?” Nita said.
Kit’s pop swallowed. “I know they’re supposed to be warm-blooded,” he said, “but is it good for a dinosaur to be out in the snow?”
Nita turned, stared at the shape glowing softly blue- and white-patterned out on the snowy lawn behind Kit’s house. “Mamvish!!”
It couldn’t have been just her shout that brought them, but within a second or two every wizard in the house was pouring out of it. It occurred to Nita that the instantaneous reaction had to have something to do with the sudden presence in the neighborhood of someone with Mamvish’s power levels. Momentarily she was surrounded by wizards attempting to hug her hello and others trying to get her to stick around.
“No, no,” she said, “I can’t stay. But I had to come see you all. I didn’t want you to get the idea that I didn’t want to come and spin the dreidel!”
The laughter that broke out confused her a little. “What?” she said. “Oh, no! Wrong holiday?”
“No, just a little late for that one,” Tom said. “But who cares? You came!”
“I had to,” Mamvish said. “Even though the season’s wrong in this hemisphere…” She sounded wistful.
She literally could only stay for a few minutes. “On my way to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, there’s a nova about to pop and we’re running short of time… But all of you do whatever you would do if I could stay!” And just like that, without even a breath of wind to mark her teleport, she was gone.
“You’re going to explain that to me, I hope,” said Kit’s pop.
“It may take a while,” said Kit. “Fil, want to come in and root a bit? Sker’s freaking out in there, he thinks he brought the wrong flavor of compound or something and you’re trying to be nice about it.”
The crowd that had dashed out of the house now wandered back in with Filif in tow. Shortly he was settled down in the broad deep bucket of rooting compound that Sker’ret had set up for him, and a group had gathered around him in energetic discussion of Solstice festivals in general. Nita stood there with another glass of cider and listened to Matt and Ronan and Kit and Carmela batting the subject around and trying to get a feel for what Filif actually knew about what was going on.
“Well, I did a certain amount of reading before I came,” Filif said. “The normal amount of research. But there did seem to be some, well, conflicts among various versions of the basic story…”
This set off another wide-ranging discussion featuring mangers, caves versus little wooden chalets, the concept of Nativity scenes, the business of identifying angels as the Powers that Be (or not), the Annunciation, the Three Kings and whether they of Orient really Were, or whether they might actually have been wizards. (“Magi, fer feck’s sake. The plural of magus. Someone who does magic! Seriously, does no one even notice these things?…”)
“And this being called Santa Claus,” Filif said at last. “Where does he fit into this? Certainly so senior a Power would not have failed to attend such a
n event.”
“Oh boy,” Ronan said, covering his eyes, “here we go!”
“And why is it supposed to happen at the Solstice when the documentation says that there were shepherds out in the fields with their sheep?”
“Lambing time,” Matt said. “He’s got it in one. First-degree theft of pagan celebrations!”
“Green boughs and all,” Carmela said. “The Holly and the Ivy…”
“O Christmas tree, O Christmas Tree,” Matt started singing, “how lovely are thy branches…”
Marcus, who’d been listening off to one side, suddenly looked indignant. “This is a terrible translation. What does ‘lovely’ have to do with anything?”
They all looked at him. Marcus stared back, bemused by their bemusement. “…What? The original song doesn’t say anything about the tree being lovely.”
“It doesn’t?”
“O Tannenbaum, O Tannenbaum,” Kit sang, and then stopped, looking perplexed. “I don’t know the rest.”
“It was a German song for a long time before it was an English one,” Marcus said.
“This was all Queen Victoria’s husband’s fault, wasn’t it?” Carl said, having wandered over into this when Matt began singing. “He put a tree up in Buckingham Palace. Started a fad.”
“I thought it was Martin Luther’s fault,” Tom said, drifting up beside him. “Saw one out in the forest with its needles full of frost and starlight… brought it home to show the family…”
“His fault too, yes,” Marcus said. “But listen: the song—” He started to sing in a strong tenor.
“O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerzeit,
Nein, auch im Winter, wenn es schneit.—
O Tannenbaum, o Tannenbaum,
Wie treu sind deine Blätter!”