Диана Дуэйн - How Lovely Are Thy Branches

“Kit? Would you turn the lights off?” said Kit’s pop.

Kit headed over to the switch for the main room light, flipped it. In the darkness that fell over the room, Filif had become the only bright thing. Everyone held still, caught in the warm light as if in amber.

The Demisiv stood there quietly, glittering, glowing. Nita saw that he was shivering with some emotion, or some combination of them. But then he was always good at picking this stuff up, she thought. To him, silently, she said: are you okay?

More than okay, he said. I am honored to bear this weight.

Slowly, softly, conversation started up again around him as lamps were turned on around the edges of the room. People got themselves more cider and cocoa, and everyone spent at least some time in front of Filif commenting on how terrific he looked decorated, some of them adding details on how they did it at their place: all white lights versus colored, or all blue: matched ornaments all in one color versus the “chaos theory” approach that Kit’s family favored: blinking lights or steady ones…

Around them, people started hitting the buffet trays again: the mulled wine came out. Nita stood off to one side with Sker’ret for a few moments, enjoying the sight of Kit pulling people over one at a time to point at his ornament and explain it to them.

“That worked, then,” Sker’ret said to her.

“As the boy says,” Nita said, “more than. Thanks for helping me with that.”

“Well, thanks for keeping my facility and everything I hold dear from being overrun by hostiles!” Sker’ret said. “You don’t pull down half the perks you’re entitled to for that.”

“I’ll start working on that, I promise.”

“No you won’t,” Sker’ret said. “I know you too well. Expect me to start bothering you about it.”

“Hey Legs,” Kit’s mama called from the kitchen, “I need the rest of those trays, it’s time for more of the buffalo wings!”

“You do that,” said Nita, “and I’ll tell your broodmates you’re slumming doing catering work!”

Sker’ret laughed that ratchety laugh and headed for the kitchen. “Don’t get me started,” he said. “I might get my revenge some other way. She’s got the right attitude for liaison work, and we can always use more hominid staff…”

Nita turned back to find Kit’s pop standing next to Filif again, now with something of the air of a workman taking a break with a co-worker. “You going to be okay standing there all night like that?” said Kit’s pop. “I don’t want you to be stuck away from the fun.”

“Oh, this is fun! But I don’t have to be stuck. If I want to, I can just leave all this here.”

Kit’s pop blinked at that. “Uh, am I missing something?”

“Watch.”

The “Christmas tree” seemed to shake itself gently. Then there was a strange sort of a sideways blur in the air, as if the whole scene was a watercolor painting that had had a wet brush pulled across it. A second later the watercolor haze was gone, and the Christmas tree was standing exactly where it was, not a light or ornament jostled, not a needle out of place… but Filif was standing a couple of yards to one side of it, wearing nothing but a twin of the star.

“That being is an artist,” Ronan called from across the room, “and if he drank, I’d buy him one.”

Filif burst out laughing. “Of course I drink,” he said, “what do you take me for, some kind of rockmoss?”

“No, I didn’t mean water…”

“Drinking habits aside,” said Kit’s pop, “that is some stunt.”

“Nothing much at all,” said Filif. “It’s a constructed appearance, what we call a mochteroof.”

“I won’t even try to remember how to say that…” Kit’s pop said. “Or to pretend I’ve got the slightest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Think of it as like a hologram, but solid,” Filif said. “I can slip in and out of it, and of the ornaments, at will. And back in…”

And suddenly Filif was conducting a masterclass in mochteroof construction for the layman, translating the most technical terms out of the Speech into English on the fly. Juan leaned back on the wall nearest him, absolutely fascinated. At the point where Filif dropped into Spanish without warning, Nita’s jaw dropped.

“How is he doing that??” she said to Sker’ret as he passed with his third trayful of buffalo wings, from which she pilfered one.

“Reverse-proactive Speech recension,” Sker’ret said. “He’s a many-talented lad, our Filif. The reverse recensions take a lot of work…”

Nita knew they did: she’d hit them more than once, and bounced. Idly she reached down for a buffalo wing as Sker’ret headed off to do the rounds.

She was just turning around to see if she could find a napkin, because the sauce on the wings was fairly aggressive, when Carmela came wandering over to her, bent toward Nita’s ear, and whispered:

“You know something?”

“What?”

“It’s not enough.”

Nita blinked. “What? This was what he always wanted.”

“But there’s more now. You know what else he wants.”

“What do you—” Then she realized.

“The rest of his Christmas present. Neets, come on. He wants the candles. We have to figure out a way to give him this!”

Nita thought about it. Carmela’s mischief was a bit infectious and hard to resist right now. But so was the intensity of her feeling about this… and Nita’s sense that Mela had this right. That was what finally tipped Nita over into agreement. “The parental types would pitch a fit if they found out…”

“Better make sure they don’t find out, then,” Carmela said. “We’ll handle it later. Down in one of the puptents.”

“Makes sense,” Nita had to admit. “Not even in the same space as the house, really…”

“And believe me, this time of year my folks don’t have the staying power to ride herd on us when we’ll be staying up all night. If they even wanted to try.” Carmela snickered. “Dairine did a smart thing. Installed her own puptent downstairs and took Mama in to show her.”

“And?”

“What the decor didn’t do to her, the size of it did. All the gilding and jewels and weird alien furniture…”

Nita blinked. That description meant only one thing to her. “She installed Roshaun’s puptent…”

“Uh huh. I assume the Mobiles have a version of it saved. Or she does, in her manual…”

That was food for thought. “Well, at least in there you’ve got a lot less chance of burning the house down…”

Carmela laughed at her. “With a house full of wizards, good luck with that happening. And anyway there are about fifty more interesting things that could happen, with the cellar full of elective pinched spaces. All you need is a portal fringe overlap and the whole area collapses into a superdense black hole. Good thing the Master of the Crossings is here walking the hors d’oeuvres around.”

Nita cracked up laughing.

Things got a little more relaxed after that. “Now about this Santa Claus being…” Filif was saying to Kit’s pop. “Perhaps this is only an avatar of one of the Powers? Working clandestinely, and hoping to be mistaken for a chaotic force aligned with the Lone Power? Because the presence of the associated small nonhuman workers does confuse the picture somewhat. That said, possibly that’s its whole idea…”

That was the point at which Nita got around to actually putting the buffalo wing in her mouth. Instants later, she was incredibly, incredibly sorry.

“Oh, it’s a he?” Filif was saying. “Thanks. Sometimes it’s hard to tell around here. In any case, certainly the appearance of being in violation of common Galactic labor accords could lead an unwary observer to believe—”