How Lovely Are Thy Branches: A Young Wizards Christmas (14 page)

“Here,” he said, and brought what he carried over to a nearby table.

Everyone crowded around as he bent to open the box. What Marcus lifted out was a slim piece of gold-colored metal that was bent in a horizontal S-curve like that of the pipe under a sink. At the top of the shorter curve was a socket of the right size and shape to take a candle. At the bottom of the other longer part was a small heavy ball of metal.

“Counterweighted,” he said. “These are far safer than the old candle holders that clipped on. And here—” He reached into the box again, came up with a slim orange-golden candle. “Beeswax,” Marcus said.

Filif began to shiver all over.

“Are you ready for this?” Marcus said.

“Yes,” Filif said, very softly.

“Fil,” Nita said, “are you
sure?”

He bowed himself a little toward her, so that the star glittered. “Will you all help?”

Everyone reached into the box, pulled out one of the candle holders, fitted candles to them, and started balancing them carefully on Filif’s branches. “Kind of a trick to this,” Nita said.

“But once you get the hang of it…” Kit said.

Within a few minutes the candles were arranged at the tips of all Filif’s strongest branches, held well away from the main body of his foliage. Carmela put the last one in place. Then they all stood around him for a moment, waiting.

“Now all we need,” Filif said, “is fire…”

There were a couple of spare candles in the box. Nita reached in and lifted one out, knowing what wizardry she’d need next. “Ready?”

“Ready,” Filif said, and stood very straight.

To make a spark long-lasting enough to light a candle took five words in the Speech. Nita said them, and the wick of the candle she held burst into flame. Nita waited until it had caught completely, and then reached out with the candle toward the closest one perched on one of Filif’s boughs. She could see all the red eye-berries watching the flame as it came nearer, trembling just slightly…

She lit the candle; and then another, and another, carefully watching Filif all the time, remembering how just the thought of fire had terrified him once upon a time. After a moment, trembling herself, she handed the candle to Kit. “Here,” she said, “your turn…”

As carefully as she had, Kit lit the three candles nearest, and passed the lighting candle to Matt. So it went around, to Sker’ret (who grasped it in his mandibles and reared up to do the lighting) and to Ronan, and then to Marcus, and finally to Dairine and Carmela. As Carmela was lighting the last three, Dairine gestured at the lamps spaced around the room, and all of them went out.

They stood there around Filif in a silence so complete that the tiny fizz and crackle of the candles’ wicks fizzing could clearly be heard. In that still place, without a breath to stir them, the candle flames stood up straight, and the light of them gleamed on Filif’s branches and caught in Filif’s eyes.

For what seemed like a long time he didn’t move so much as a frond or a needle: just held absolutely still, like someone testing himself. The candle flames shifted very slightly, were still again.

At last he spoke. “This is my defiance, then,” Filif said, very softly. “This is the Oath made visible. Just as the Outlier was, I am more than my fear. Other fears may not burn as hot or as brightly, but those too I defy. Let what sets such fires in the world see them set here to my purposes, not Its own!” And Filif fell silent.

As still as he, Nita and the others stood quiet and watched him.

And then, after a few moments more, Filif laughed and said, “Now what? Do they have to burn down all the way?”

Marcus chuckled too. “No,” he said. “With candles like these, that would take an hour or so. Normally after a few minutes we put them out. Unless you want to take a selfie first?”

“What’s a selfie?”

Everybody who had a phone handy went for it. Soon that darkened space was illuminated not just by candlelight, but smartphone flashes, and the brief solemnity was replaced by laughter. Then one by one the friends surrounding him blew out Filif’s candles, or pinched them out, and Dairine let the room lights come up again. Carefully they took the candles and their holders off him, and when the last holder was off and put away, Filif gave a great shake of all his boughs and laughed again.

“That was exciting,” he said. “Maybe a little more exciting than I expected. I might take a break…”

“Outside?” Nita said.

“Yes.” And Filif made his way to the portal, and once just outside it, vanished.

Kit rubbed his eyes. “That,” he said, “was intense.”

“Going to be interesting to hear more about just what brought it on,” Ronan said, sounding dry. “But I need a nap first.”

“Yeah,” Dairine said. “We’ll ask him about it at breakfast…”

People started arranging the pillows and cushions into sleepover configurations, and Dairine fired up the TV again and turned it on to one of the music video channels that was doing Christmas rock. Nita yawned, feeling more than ready to collapse. But there was something she wanted to do first.

She went out the portal, climbed the stairs, and peered into the living room. All the adults had gone home or taken themselves off to bed; only the
mochteroof
-tree stood there glowing. Nita smiled at it and very softly went out the back yard, into the darkness.

It was snowing in big flakes, sometimes even gathering together into light feathery clumps. Off in front of the garage, Filif stood for the moment bare to the night, not even wearing his star, wholly unadorned except for the snow falling on him.

“You okay?” Nita said.

“Yes,” Filif said. “Very.”

Nita hugged herself a little against the cold. “You know… your branches
are
lovely.”

“You’re going to tell me,” Filif said, “that the frost and snow are prettier than all the ornaments and garlands.”

Nita let out a breath. “Yeah,” she said, “sounds like cliche city, doesn’t it.”

“Most cliches have at least some truth in them,” Filif said; “that’s how they get that way…”

He sounded contented, though, and cheerful. “It’s good to recognize a challenge when it comes along,” Filif said after a moment. “It’s even better to pass it.”

Nita nodded. She knew the feeling. “You know what?” Filif said. “I think I’ll put on my ornaments and stand out here just a little while more.”

Nita glanced around. “Okay,” she said. “But better leave the lights with the
mochteroof
inside. You’re outside the shield here, and you don’t want to attract any undue attention…”

“All right.”

“We’re all crashing back in Dairine’s puptent,” she said, “so when you’re done here…”

“I’ll be back.”

Nita ran a hand through some of Filif’s outermost fronds and headed back inside, feeling, for some reason, a little uneasy. It wasn’t really until she was down in Dairine’s puptent again, pulling a throw over herself in the TV-lit dimness, that she came up with a reason why.
Because defiance, when issued, is always noticed…

5:

In The Bleak Midwinter

The sound of footsteps was what slowly woke her up.
Nothing but rugs in here,
she thought blearily.
Thick. Soft. What’s crunching? Somebody drop the popcorn?

Nita yawned and blinked and realized suddenly that she was standing outside next to Kit’s house, in the snow. It was very dark. The light from the streetlight down at the corner didn’t reach this far, and the lights of the nearby houses were all off: even the ones that had Christmas lights on them had them turned off this time of night. It was still clouded over, but there was a strange dark pinkish shading on the clouds above.

Well, this is unusual,
Nita thought.
Like city light. But above the clouds, not below.
It was also unusual that she wasn’t feeling any cold, even though she was standing out in the wintry night in nothing but pajamas and a bathrobe and her bedroom slippers. From nearby she could hear the crunching noise again, like somebody walking on a sidewalk that’d been salted.

“Shit,”
somebody said: a male voice. “What’s that?”

The voice was coming from the direction of the street, down at the end of Kit’s driveway, and whoever was speaking was turned toward her: she could just make out the dark shape down that way. A second or so later, another came stumbling along the snowy sidewalk to join it.

“There’s something there looking at us,” said another voice. “See it?”

The voice was thick and slurred and angry. Something about the sound of it brought the hair up on the back of Nita’s neck, made her want to reach back in her mind for the shield-spell that she’d developed a long time ago to protect herself from the depredations of bullies.

“One of them out here now,” said a second voice, slightly lighter and higher than the other, but just as slurred. “All by themselves in the middle of the night.
Hey!
What the fuck you staring at?”

That was when Nita realized that she was dreaming. This had been happening with increasing frequency of late. Mostly it happened that a dream would suddenly turn entirely too rational: dialogue would start making too much sense. Then Nita would know,
I’ve gone lucid,
and she’d start paying attention, or telling Bobo to.

Now she flushed briefly hot with fear… then said to herself,
No. They can’t hurt me. This is
my
dream.
But Nita fleetingly wondered if the two dark parka-clad shapes, one a little taller than the other, knew that.

“I said
what’re you staring at?”

Nita stood still, said nothing, just watched. The two shapes at the end of the driveway staggered against each other. “Man, too much of that beer,” said one of them. “Gotta get Dad to buy a better brand.”

“No such thing as too much. Not around here. Stupid place, stupid fucking—“ One of them staggered again as he tried to regain his balance. “Rude,” he said in Nita’s direction, “that’s
rude
when you don’t answer when somebody asks you something nicely. Gonna get your fucking guts punched out.”

The two of them lurched together again, rebounded, and started coming up the driveway, pushing their way through the six inches or so of new snow that had fallen since a car last used the driveway. As they got closer Nita recognized the two staggering, approaching shapes.
Oh great. The Terror Twins from next door.
She reached for the shield-spell on her charm bracelet: then realized she didn’t have the bracelet on.
Doesn’t matter, I know that one by heart.
They staggered closer. Nita raised her hands to either side, got ready to say the words—

But as they got even closer she realized, even in this darkness, how blank their eyes were, and the way they weren’t focusing on her at all, but on something past her. They didn’t see her. My
dream,
Nita thought as they walked right at her, and then right through her. She could smell the beer on them as they passed through the space her dream-self occupied.

“Hey,” one of them said: Bobby, she thought, by the lower voice. “Not somebody. Something. Look, it’s shiny.”

“Still feels like something looking at us,” said Ronnie, the younger one, squinting at something ahead of them. Nita turned to see. “Creepy. …Wha’d those smartasses do now? Look, they left their tree outside.”

“Why’d they do that when it’s decorated?”

A chill that had nothing to do with the night or the snow ran up and down Nita’s spine.
No! No no no no! Fil, get
out
of here!

But the quiet tree-shape, wound about with garlands, draped with tinsel, glittering indistinctly where it stood in the slightly drifted snow next to the garage, paid her no mind, did nothing at all. Bobby and Ronnie trudged over to it, trying to be quiet and failing utterly.

“Why’d they leave it out like this? Stupid.”

“Trying to keep it fresh longer, maybe.”

“Still stupid. Somebody might steal it.”

“Yeah.” There was a nasty snicker.

“Or torch it.” Nita heard a click, saw a lighter flare bright, then go out again. “Teach them to make noise, spoil other people’s Christmas. You
hear
the fucking racket out of them before?”

“Woke me up.”

The deeper voice swore again. “Assholes, all the cutesy holiday crap they spray around. All the time getting in your face with the carols and the
family-values
thing.” The sound of someone hawking, spitting in the snow. “You
hear
them in there tonight? Couldn’t hear yourself think, all the singing, some foreign freaks or something singing along. And now they leave this thing out here like nobody’s going to touch it—”

Laughter. “Torch it. Bet it’d burn real fast.”

“Yeah. Come on.”

One of them put out a hand. “But wait, what if that geek kid’s got a webcam looking at it or something?”