by Diane Duane
“—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. “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 an 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!”
Some of the other younger wizards looked thoughtful as they started taking the German lyric apart via their understanding of it in the Speech. “He’s right, there’s nothing about ‘lovely’ in there,” Nita said.
Kit shook his head. “How do you translate treu? ‘Faithful?’”
Marcus nodded. “Or loyal.”
Ronan laughed. “Like Matt said, the usual evergreen trope,” he said. “The whole non-deciduous eternal-life thing.” He had been working on a mug of Kit’s mama’s cocoa, and started to take another swig of it, then stared down into the mug with annoyance. “Bloodyell, I’m out again. Where’s this stuff going? I mean, it’s just cocoa, cocoa’s for the wee kiddies…” He got up and headed for the back door again.
Kit grinned into his own mug. “Mama’s secret recipe strikes again…”
Carmela glanced over at Marcus. “So it would be more like, ‘You’re green all while | the Summer glows, | and in the Winter, | when it snows—’”
Marcus tilted his head, thought. “Yes, that’s close enough.”
“So where’d we get the ‘lovely?’” Dairine said.
Marcus shrugged. “Poor translations are everywhere in popular culture,” he said. “You should see what happens to some of your TV shows when we get them at home.”
“Please,” Carmela said. “Some of the anime dubs…!”
“And do not even get me started on Raumschiff Enterprise—!“
Within seconds Carmela and Marcus were off into some insanely technical discussion in the Speech of the way translation issues affecting space opera. Kit gave Nita a look as the conversation became indecipherable even in the Speech. “You see what I put up with.”
Ronan burst out laughing as he came back with a much larger mug of cocoa. “Oh please,” he said. “Is that you I hear complaining about somebody else’s geekery, Mars Boy? Oh knower of the name of every crater on the planet? Spare me.”
The singing started again shortly thereafter, several rival versions of the carol breaking out. Marcus and Carmela were singing in German, Dairine and her dad and Kit’s mama were upholding the more traditional American English version, and Ronan began singing an entirely different one in counterpoint, featuring the line “Thy candles shine out brightly”. “Each bough doth hold its tiny light, | that makes each toy to sparkle bright – ”
“Wait a moment,” Nita’s dad said, “whoa, whoa, wait a moment!”
The singing on various sides trailed off. “Candles?” said Nita’s dad. “What candles?”
“Sure didn’t you know that lots of folks out our way put candles on their Christmas trees way back when?” Ronan said. “Though you have to wonder how many houses they burned down before the electric lights came along!”
Marcus nodded. “In some families it is still traditional despite the risk,” he said. “One of my uncles’ families still does it. You only do it for a few minutes, though, and you watch the candles like a hawk the whole time. Then you put them out and make sure they’re cold, and then everybody goes off to church, or out to dinner, or else you open the presents…”
A number of people turned in some concern to Filif to see how he was handling this concept. But he looked quite relaxed: at least his needles weren’t bristling, which was something Nita had seen on occasion and which she recognized as a sign of real trouble. “It’s an interesting contrast,” he said after a moment. “Symbolic, I suppose. The Kindler of Wildfires brought under control… even brought in where you live, as a sign of how things will be some day when It’s mended Its ways.” The green boughs shook, possibly in laughter. “Or else it’s just a little extra defiance to go with the usual acknowledgement and greeting…”
There was a little silence. And then Filif said:
“You know… I would really like to do that.”
Nita and Kit looked at each other in astonishment. Carmela’s mouth dropped open. “Seriously?”
“Yes.” Filif shivered all over.
Carmela’s eyes went wide and her mouth made an O. “My shrub,” she murmured, “has an oxidation kink.”
“Well I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a kink—”
“Too late,” Nita said, amused, watching Carmela’s face. “It’s in her head now and you will never get it out.”
Nita’s father, who’d come in on the end of this, looked amazed. “Bit of a change of attitude on the subject for you,” he said.
“True. But I’m not who I was even a year or two ago.” And a lot of Filif’s berries glowed more brightly than they had for a second or so.
“Well,” Kit’s pop said. “We’re not really set up for that at the moment. But we have a lot of other stuff on tap. You think you’re about ready to get started, big fella?”
Filif bowed slightly to him. “Yes!”
“All right,” said Kit’s pop. “Lights first.”
He headed for the back of the house and shortly came back with his arms full of boxes: some of them quite new, some of them looking old and beat up. “I like the new LED lights a lot,” Kit’s pop said. “A lot of control over them, and you don’t have to worry so much about the heat. But at the same time you hate to let the old ways go completely. Tradition…”
He put the newer boxes aside for a moment and turned his attention to the older ones. “Have to be very careful with these,” he said, putting the boxes down side by side. They were both yellowed, thin cardboard, crumbling a bit at the edges in some places; the printing on them was old-fashioned looking, the colors faded. Kit’s pop opened one. Inside it, in yellowed cardboard spacer-holders, was a row of nine candlestick-shaped bubble lights: fat bulbous bases, tall glass “candlesticks” full of colored fluid. A faint scent of very old pine needles came up from the box.
“Now those
are vintage,” Nita’s dad said.
“Relics,” said Kit’s pop, opening the second box with the same care. “Makes me laugh to see how popular they are all of a sudden, with everyone so eager to have ‘retro’ stuff. My father gave them to me when I came of age.”
“Didn’t know there was a minimum age for Christmas lights, Juan.”
Kit’s pop laughed. “Came as news to me too. I think he just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to wreck them.” Very carefully he started lifting the first set out of the box, untangling the wires. “Can’t blame him. You wouldn’t believe what replacements for these cost. Every year I live in terror that I’m going to plug this in and one of them won’t come on…”
They got down together on the floor and stretched the lights out. Nita’s gaze met Kit’s in amusement at the sight of the two dads hunkered down on the floor like kids with a special toy. Nita’s dad picked up one of the lights and peered at the liquid inside it. “What is that in there?”
“Something with a real low boiling point,” Kit’s pop said. “Just the light in the bottom is enough to make it bubble.”
Nita’s dad picked up the box, turned it over, peered at it. “No warnings or anything about what it is…”
“You kidding? This comes from a time when doctors did commercials about how good cigarette smoking was for you. I’m betting it’s poisonous.”
In the back of Nita’s mind, Bobo whispered, Methylene chloride…
“Yeah, you really wouldn’t want to break one of those,” Nita said. “The place would need airing out. And forget about touching it or drinking it…”
“Low on my list of things to do,” said Kit’s pop, rummaging around underneath Filif to slot the light set’s plug into the plug strip. “Let’s test the other set and then start putting the modern ones on first. These go on afterwards, on the outer branches.”
Shortly the first of four sets of LED lights was going on the “tree”, and rather unusually for a household in the suburbs of New York, the tree was helping. Kit’s pop was on one side and Nita’s dad on the other, and they were passing the strings of lights back and forth to make sure they were equally distributed. What was making the process go much more smoothly was the way that when one or the other of them was having trouble getting a light cord around into the corner where Filif was positioned, he would simply put a branch up, curl the terminal fronds around the wire, and maneuver it into the spot where it was needed. It took very little time to get the first strand up, the one that was all plain white lights and was tucked most closely in toward the trunk.
