Диана Дуэйн - How Lovely Are Thy Branches

“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—’”