by Diane Duane
Nita followed them into the dining room and sat down with them. “Does that mean you won’t be able to make it to the party?”
“Oh, we’ll be looking in,” Tom said. “But we won’t be able to stay long.” And then he gave Nita an amused look. “The joke is that it turns out we wouldn’t have been able to stay very long anyway, because a few days ago the airline changed our flights to Banff and left us looking at an earlier departure.” He brushed a little ruefully at his ski coverall. “But now that’s not an issue. Here Carl and I were all ready to go to the snow, and all of a sudden it turns out the snow is coming to us. With a vengeance. So we canceled, and the slopes will have to wait for us until the new year.”
“Sometimes you just can’t catch a break,” Nita’s dad said.
“The Eagles,” Tom said. “Tell me.”
That made Nita’s dad laugh. “I’d have thought you guys would just try to push this storm away, though,” he said, “if it’s going to be so much trouble.”
Tom shook his head. “We don’t usually fight with the weather unless we have to. And even if you want to, with the biggest storms there’s almost no point; there’s so much kinetic energy already bound up in them that it’s like trying to stop an atom bomb. This one’s got its mind made up—it’s coming through. All we can do is try to mitigate the worst circumstances, help the emergency services quietly where helping won’t get noticed, and generally just make ourselves useful.”
Nita swallowed, because a thought had just occurred to her. “You don’t need any of us, do you?”
“That’s really thoughtful,” Tom said, “and the answer is, in a word, no. None of you are in the required specialty groups, and we’ve got plenty of people stepping up to handle this. So you enjoy your party. We’ll stop in sometime this evening for a while, have an eggnog, and then head out to do our thing.”
He got up, and so did Nita’s dad, walking him to the front door. “But Tom, if you change your mind about the driveway, let me know. We local small businesses have to stick together…”
Their laughter mingled as the door closed. “I’ll let you know. See you two later.”
A little while after hearing the doorbell, and just after their dad headed back to the shop, Dairine materialized in old jeans and an oversized sweater, demanding tea and food. For the time being Nita ignored this. “You have a late night last night?”
“Working out some software issues with Spot,” she said.
“Oh, really?”
“Don’t angle for details,” Dairine said rubbing her eyes. “Party stuff. You’ll find out. How did it get to be two o’clock already?”
“Ten of,” Nita said, glancing at the clock. But it was a fair question. “And you know what? I don’t care. Everything is moving in slow motion today, and I love it.”
Dairine flopped down at the dining room table and stretched. “For once we’re in agreement.”
“‘For once,’” Nita said in good-natured mockery. It was interesting to notice that she and her sister had lately been in agreement a lot more than they used to. Maybe it’s the wizardry, Nita thought. And even if it’s not, I really don’t care why it’s happening. It’s better than fighting. “I took out your garbage,” she said.
“My garbage! It’s the garbage. I’m just the one who gets stuck taking it out.” Dairine wrinkled her nose.
“Doesn’t matter. You owe me one,” Nita said.
Dairine rolled her eyes as if in scorn at this bourgeois concept. “I’m not even up ten minutes and you’re trying to push your simplistic barter economy stuff on me? Please.” She got up and went to get some tea.
Nita laughed at herself. Well, that lasted five minutes. “Shower time,” she said, levering herself up out of the chair and heading upstairs. “Make another pot, okay?”
She didn’t even hear Dairine’s answer, and didn’t particularly care what she’d said. The tone of the day was remaining unbroken; slow and easy, building toward something good. That soft snow light was filling the upstairs hall from the window down at the end, and filling the bathroom too. Nita showered, then went and got changed into her party clothes—nothing dressy, just dark leggings and low black fluffy-lined elf-boots, and what Nita had started referring to privately as the Christmas Sweater of Doom. It was 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. Kit had stumbled across the thing somewhere online and ridiculed it so mercilessly that Nita had decided she had to have it. It had taken entirely too much of her disposable income for that month, but it would be worth it for the look on his face when he saw it on her. And it’s going to be hilarious explaining it to Filif…
Nita glanced at the clock radio and realized to her shock that it somehow said three-thirty. Whoa, how’d that happen, she thought, where’d the time go all of a sudden! Maybe I had a little too much lazy. He’s going to be here soon…
She gathered up the goodie bag with her Christmas cards and small presents in it from where it had been sitting on her desk for a while. Then Nita headed downstairs, noting in passing the sound of Dairine thumping around in her room, apparently going through her drawers or her closet. Last-minute decisions, Nita thought, smiling as she headed down the stairs. Dair always tries to be so organized, but when it comes to clothes she can never make up her mind…
In the living room, Nita paused briefly, glancing around. The place looked tidy enough, so she didn’t have to worry about bringing anybody over if for some reason they needed to see something of hers. Fine, she thought. She headed into the kitchen, noted a few dishes in the sink, and stopped just long enough to wash the and put them in the rack. Then she grabbed her parka off the hook by the back door, threw it over the crazy Christmas sweater, and carefully headed out the back door, down the steps, and through the gate into the back yard.
The snow was deeper out here; she had to step carefully to keep the boots from getting wet. Nita looked around and saw that the silvery snow light was already getting a bit dimmer. Above that gray ceiling, sunset was already coming on. She paused by the tree growing out of the middle of the yard between house and the garden, and put a hand on its trunk. “You awake?” she said.
Liused’s answer took a few moments in coming. A little.
“Got a guest incoming,” she said. “Want to talk to him? Or if this is a bad time, he can stop by earlier tomorrow, when the light’s better.”
…Tomorrow might be best. In the morning?
Nita patted his trunk. “No problem,” she said. “I’ll talk to you then.”
She headed on down the garden—all the flower beds covered over with mulch or burlap bags this time of year, and those in turn covered with the new snow—and finally under the bare trees in the furthest part of the back yard, where the surface of the snow was patched and dappled with little lumps of it that had slid off the branches above. The stillness was very deep back here, and Nita just stood there a while, not caring how cold her feet were getting, and appreciated it.
Around her she thought she could almost see the sky’s light dimming moment by moment. Bobo, what time’s sunset?
Four thirty-one.
“I might not be imagining it, then,” she murmured. And then at the bottom of her vision, she caught sight of something unexpected: a glow under the snow, a sign of the embedded transit circle waking up. He’s early, she thought, stepping back.
A moment later a cold cinnamon-scented breeze blew in her face, and Filif was standing there, as suddenly as if a tree with its lowest branches demurely veiled in mist had suddenly grown on the spot.
He looked at Nita with all the berries on that side, while using the others to gaze up and around him. “Dai stiho, my cousin!”
“Dai, you,” Nita said, and stepped into the transit circle as soon as it had finished discharging, and buried her arms in among the fronds to give him a big hug.
They both laughed at that, and Nita reached up to brush Filif off a little. “I was early…” Filif said.
“I don’t care,” Nita said. “It’s so great to see you! This is going to be so much fun.”
“Where’s Kit?”
“Over at his place helping keep his folks calm. This is their first time to have a bunch of non-Solars over…”
“And they’re so kind to have me! I can’t wait for this.” He shivered with excitement.
At least Nita hoped it was excitement. “You know, I’ve never even asked you. Does it snow where you are? Do you even get winter?”
“What? Of course it snows,” Filif said. “Demisiv has a fairly pronounced axial tilt. And a lot of highlands. The climate’s temperate most of the year, but in the depths of the cold season we get quite big storms, sometimes. Normally no one’s too bothered. In the dark season a lot of people elect to go dormant and just wait it out. Others… stay more active, like to get around then.” He fell silent for a moment. “A long story.”
“But you’re okay with this?”
“Yes, of course.” He ruffled out his branches. “This feels quite homelike, actually. The temperature range isn’t far off.”
Nita paused. “This is possibly the most idiotic time possible to be asking you this,” she said. “But… are you okay with all this? Because you understand about the normal Earth Christmas trees now, don’t you. And where they come from. And what happens to them.”
Filif paused too. “Life is life,” he said. “But I did do my research before I came. Those lives have been brought about just for this purpose, haven’t they?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
“Well, I can feel that. So can they.” Filif rustled his branches as a little more snow fell on him from the branches above. “That being the case, we should allow them all the dignity of accepting what they’ve been destined for. And of knowing that they’re making the best of it: in some cases, not just with acceptance, but great joy.”
Nita nodded. “It seems a lot to ask of them…” Nita said.
“It’s not what you’re asking,” Filif said. “It’s what they’re giving. Gift is a powerful state from which to approach the world…”
Again there was that sense of what Filif was saying having come up from some great depth. But even when he was at his goofiest and most excitable, Nita had never had trouble feeling, at a slight remove, the underlying strength from which sprang everything Filif did and said, and in which he was powerfully grounded. When that power revealed itself in the middle of a wizardry, sometimes it took you by surprise. Nita wasn’t going to push the issue at the moment; if Fil had something that needed saying, explanations would be forthcoming soon enough.
“Anyway,” Filif said, “ you should relax. I’m not a newbie here these days: you don’t have to hide the salad bar from me any more.”
Nita burst out laughing. “Good!”
“And after all this time, I’m finally here to get decorated. So let’s get on with it!”
“Right,” Nita said. “Sker’ret’s put a receptor site out in Kit’s back yard to make transiting in easier for people.”
“Shielded, I take it, so as not to discomfit the neighbors…”
“Absolutely.” Nita walked them both back a step or two into the center of the transit circle. “You set?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go!”
A heartbeat later, the two of them came out in Kit’s backyard. “It’s going to be a zoo in there,” Nita said. “Carmela’s mama decided all of a sudden that she was not going to let her daughter mess around with her best tableware. She was going to set up the buffet herself.”
“If I didn’t know better,” Filif said, “I would suspect Carmela planned it that way in order to get her mother to do the heavy lifting.”
Nita snickered as she reached down to her charm bracelet for the empty-ring charm that held the simplest of several invisibility spells. “You know her too well,” she said as she pulled the bright Speech-tracery of the spell out of the charm, expanded it into a broad faintly-glowing network, and threw it over the top of the two of them. “Not that there’s all that much to do. Sker’ret had Crossings Catering transit the food in about an hour ago. It’s all in disposable serving trays and bins and things…”
They headed up across the snow-covered lawn of Kit’s back hard toward the house. “There’s no rush about installing the puptents,” Nita said. “Sker’s put in a hub to make the installation easier. Just plug your wizardry in, and the hub’ll do the rest.”
“He seems to have thought of everything,” Filif said.
“Happiest when he’s organizing,” Nita said, “that’s our Sker’.”
They went in the back door, through the kitchen. There were four or five pots on the stove, from which wonderful smells were arising: mulled wine, hot chocolate, hot cider. Christmas music was floating out of the living room: as a song finished and Nita heard a veejay’s voice, she realized that the TV had one of the big music video channels on. “You are going to hear every Christmas carol ever written before this is over,” she said to Filif, flipping the invisibility spell off them and collapsing it again.
“I take it that’s a good thing?”
“We’ll see what you think by this time tomorrow.”
They headed into the dining room. The table was covered with silverware and napkins and cups and glasses, and a whole lot of food. Some of it was local—Nita immediately recognized Kit’s mama’s buffalo wings and the little deviled-egg and cream cheese and chilli hors d’oeuvres that she liked to do on crackers. But the rest was covered with human and alien-biology delicacies from the Crossings, everything carefully labeled. Nita made a private resolution to get back here as soon as she could and check out the details, as some of the food looked familiar, and if she didn’t move fast, Kit would shovel it all down his face before she got a chance.
“Come on, Fil,” Nita said, “come meet Kit’s pop and mama!” She pulled him around into the living room, having caught a glimpse of them in there through the passthrough; they were hanging a last few garlands up near the ceiling.
Nita pulled Filif over to them. “So here’s the guest of honor!” Nita said. “Juan Rodriguez,” Nita said, “Marina Rodriguez, this is Filifermanhathrhumneits'elhessaiffnth.”
Kit’s pop’s eyes went wide. He opened his mouth to respond, but before he could say anything Nita immediately added, “Everybody calls him Filif, so don’t even bother trying to pronounce the long version. It always takes me a couple of days to even remember how.”
“Estimable senior cousins,” Filif said, bowing, “thank you for your welcome.” And then he straightened up and offered Kit’s pop a long branch, and his mama another.
They both stared at these for a moment, and then took them. “Nice to meet you, Filif,” said Kit’s pop. “So nice!” said his mama.
“A pleasure on my part as well! I’m very excited about what’s going to happen.”
“Well, we’re excited to have you! And we’re glad you’re here finally,” said Kit’s pop. “It’s been so strange not having a tree already. It’s felt almost unnatural. But we’re good now.” He beamed at Filif. “You’re what… six feet easily, I’d say!”
Filif thought about that for a moment. “Yes, I’d say so,” he said. “And about five feet in diameter at the base.”
“It’s going to be unusual to have a Christmas tree that’s so cooperative,” said Kit’s pop. “But look, you should enjoy the party for a while first! We like to let it get good and dark before we start decorating… it’s more impressive, then, when the lights go on.”
“That’s fine,” Filif said. “What do you normally do at this point with a… locally acquired tree?”
“We
ll, first of all unwrap it outside — normally you bring it home wrapped up in webbing so the branches don’t get hurt. And after that, leave it outside for a little while to let it relax and help the branches find their right shape again.”
Filif rustled a little in agreement. “It makes sense,” he said. “If you like, perhaps I’ll go stand outside for a bit and get myself acclimatized.”
“Uh… won’t the neighbors see you?”
“Not at all,” said Filif. “Nita handled it when we came in, but I’m as good at being invisible as any other wizard. There are lots of ways to do it. Once I stop moving, they’ll see a wrapped up tree sitting leaning against the side of your garage while you get the room ready.”
“There’s zero need for that,” said another voice. It was Dairine, wandering in out of the living room. She was in a long green silky top and darker green floppy pants, something Wellakhit if Nita was any judge. “Sker’ did a smart thing and shielded the whole back yard. The front’s open, but he did a selective visual wizardry with the windows: nobody human will be able to see any of the non-Solars through it, and the filter spoofs anything unaffected so it can’t be seen either.”
“Probably that’s a good idea,” said Kit’s mama. “Especially lately… Well, come on, Filif, what do you like to eat or drink? Or do you want to wait till you’ve come back in?”
“I think Sker’ret will have brought some rooting compound for me,” Filif said. “It’s what I’ll be standing in while decorated.” He shivered again, that excited gesture.
