Диана Дуэйн - How Lovely Are Thy Branches

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—