by Diane Duane
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 cliché city, doesn’t it.”
“If you mean that it’s a much-repeated old saying,” said Filif, “then likely enough there’s at least some truth to it. That’s how such sayings so often gain such currency…”
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 Nita 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 lookin’ 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 shitheads next door 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?”
“Who cares. Pull up your hood, hide your face, what’re they gonna do? It’s still snowing, an hour or two and our tracks’ll be covered, nobody’ll know who we are or where we went.”
The lighter flared again.
“No, wait,” said the higher voic
e. “This tinsel, this other crap’s got fire retardant on it. Pull it off first, it’ll burn better.”
Hands reached out, grabbed loops of the garland, strands of the tinsel, pulled—
That was when the tree moved.
Nita saw Bobby and Ronnie reel back in shock at the sudden movement. And then they staggered back further as they realized the tree had lights, lights that looked like eyes, eyes that were glaring at them. Every one of these burned a dark and baleful red, like a more concentrated version of the ruddy bloody light lowering above the clouds. Nita saw how the tree was now moving toward them as they backed up, and how it abruptly seemed much larger than it should have been: much broader, much taller, like something about to consciously topple onto them, massive, unavoidable. Shadow wreathed around it like fog, spreading, shutting them in, blotting out even the faint rose-tinged radiance of the snow. And from the depths of the shadow, a terrible voice spoke, it seemed, directly into each one’s heart.
Who’s. Touching. My. Decorations?!
The two parka-clad shapes collapsed onto the snow and froze there.
The shadow seemed to get deeper around them, and the night colder, as if the two would-be vandals had been snatched out of real life into some dark and deadly impossibility that had been lurking unseen on their doorstep.
I know what you are, the tree growled. It was an angry voice, full of power, and wild in a way that suggested that power might be turned loose at any moment. And I know the one you serve. You can do me no harm. Of more concern is what harm may come to you.
The Terror Twins lay huddling and shaking there on the snow, arms over their heads, wanting desperately to run away, not daring to move. Nita stood a few yards away from this and regarded the scene in wonder.
The angry voice spoke again, this time with more restraint: and the restraint was in its way even more terrifying than the power alone, for it implied what could happen if it slipped. Yet the One requests us to deal equably even with such as you, in hopes that the one you serve may sooner find Its way home at last. And I am reliably informed that mercy is valued even more highly than usual at this time of year.
Indeed the echo of voices singing “Peace on Earth and mercy mild” (one of them apparently Bill Murray’s) could be heard faintly all around, as if leaking from the playback of recent additions to the soundtrack of someone’s mind. Nita smiled to herself even as she shivered a little, considering once more—for she’d had it brought to her attention by Dairine in an informal debrief of events surrounding Filif’s visit to their house the previous year—that his toughness under pressure wasn’t to be taken for granted.
So perhaps, the darkly towering shape said, in honor of this season, you will be allowed to depart into your own place unharmed. But should you ever… ever… consider such actions against another’s state of being or place of dwelling again, you will hear me speaking to you again. And I will not be as pleasant with you. We will not be as pleasant with you.
And the back yard was abruptly full of trees.
It was a forest, sudden, deep, thick, dark, frightening in the way that great forests have been since the earliest times—that sense that in the darkness, wild things, dangerous things are looking at you, seeing you though they themselves cannot be seen. Except here, they could. Here the darkness had eyes, hundreds of them, thousands, staring, glaring, in every shade of angry, hungry red. The snow under the mist at their half-seen feet was bloody with that light, and the mist curled pink and warm like blood in water.
Be warned by us, therefore. Depart now into your own place— And suddenly the tone broke, shifted to a roar of fury. And be better!
The darkness surged closer, full of eyes, roaring. The two terrified shapes staggered to their feet, fled around the side of the house next door and (from the sound of it) nearly broke its side door down getting back inside.
And in Kit’s yard, the trees turned their attention to Nita.
All she could do for the first moment or so was shake her head. “My cousins—” she said finally, and bowed to them. “For your intervention, my thanks!”
All that multifarious rustling darkness swayed, bowing back. And a moment later they were gone, and there was Filif all by himself, glittering ever so faintly and somehow managing to look quite innocent.
Nita folded her arms and tilted her head to one side. “Filif…!”
He rustled all his branches, glittering more brightly as the clouds above them thinned just a little, and the Moon, starting slowly to edge out of its coppery shade with the end of totality, cast a little more light on the scene. “Too harsh?” he said.
She laughed softly, went to hug him. And then, as the stress of the previous moments finally let go of her, Nita couldn’t help it: she started to giggle. It took a while to get control again. “Oh, Fil!”
“Are you all right?” he said, sounding concerned.
The giggling threatened to burst out again. Nita wiped her eyes. “Are you kidding? I almost wet myself!”
“Um. Is that good?”
“You have no idea.”
They laughed together for a few moments. “One thing, though,” he said. “Are you physical at the moment?”
“Uh,” Nita said, stepping back and looking at her fingers as she wiggled them. “Not sure.”
“Then this situation might correctly be considered paradoxical,” Filif said, “and you ought to retire until our respective states of existence are back in sync.”
“Breakfast time?” Nita said.
“Sounds good,” Filif said.
And Nita brushed her hand through his fronds and headed back toward sleep, glancing only once over her shoulder to see the shape behind her settle back into the snow and go back to glittering softly in the moonlight.
This, she thought as things went dark around her again, is the best job in the world…!
6: I’ll Be Home For Christmas
The kitchen and dining room area at Kit’s house could in Nita’s experience feel fairly full sometimes just with Kit and his sisters. This morning it was rather fuller than usual when Dairine’s puptent emptied out.
Everyone was in bathrobes or pajamas. Everyone was ravenous (despite having stuffed themselves with popcorn the night before. (“It’s a conundrum,” Kit’s pop said, going back for a second bowl of oatmeal.) Some parties had opted for cooked breakfasts: to take the weight off Kit’s mama, Nita was officiating at the pancake end of things, and was presently making a third batch of batter.
The cereals were getting hit particularly hard, and when Helena got home for the holidays Nita knew she was going to complain bitterly about the loss of her stash of Grape Nuts—apparently Marcus had never heard of the stuff before and had fallen deeply in love with it. The cornflakes were vanishing down Matt about twice as fast as the Rice Krispies were evaporating in front of Darryl. And Ronan was favoring a box of Lucky Charms with an utterly scandalized expression. “Nothing to do with us,” he was saying to anyone who’d listen. “Nothing whatsoever. Shamrocks have three leaves!”
While all this went on around her, Kit’s mama was sitting back in her chair at the dining room table, sipping coffee and scrolling through messages on her phone. Kit’s pop was reading the paper. Off to one side, Sker’ret reared up at the edge of the table and looked longingly at the box of Cheerios from which Kit was dumping the remainder into his bowl. “Is that finished?”
Kit handed him the box. “Sorry, Sker’.”
“Don’t be,” Sker’ret said, and promptly ate it.
Kit’s pop watched this speculatively but without comment. Nita, in the kitchen, glanced at Kit and smiled a little. They’re getting the hang of this…
He smiled back. Looks like it.
Kit’s pop turned a page in the paper and frowned absently at the contents. “So about all that noise in the middle of the night…” he said conversationally.
“Noise?” said Kit.
“Some kind of racket outside, seems like,” Dairine said. “I miss
ed it. Must have been asleep.”
“Got a text from the hospital this morning,” Kit’s mama said, completely straight-faced. “The boys from next door turned up in the ER at four AM or thereabouts. Alcohol poisoning, apparently: their blood alcohol was well up. Might have been drugs too, though the tox screens apparently didn’t show anything.”
“Do tell,” said Dairine.
“Yes. Seems they were babbling about giant demon trees with a million eyes.”
Everybody turned to glance thoughtfully at the Christmas tree in the living room. The Christmas tree stretched its limbs gently, causing all the tinsel on it to ripple, and settled back into its big bucket of rooting compound again.
“You fall asleep with the wrong movie channel on,” Nita said, “there’s no telling what kind of dreams you might have. Especially if you’d been drinking.”
“Mmm,” said Kit’s mama, taking another drink of her coffee.
“I wonder what they’ll do,” Kit’s pop said.
Kit shook his head, finishing his cereal. “First guess?” he said. “Leave everybody’s Christmas decorations strictly alone after this.”
In the living room, Filif rustled. “That was more or less the injunction…”
“Well,” Nita said “you didn’t absolutely mandate it.“
“No,” Filif said. “That would probably have required more power than I was willing to expend at that particular moment. And psychotropic wizardries do require heavy energy expenditure, typically to prevent them being misused as much as anything else.” He rustled his boughs a little bit. “Let’s just consider it… a very strong suggestion.”
Nita laughed softly. “If that was a suggestion,” she said, “remind me not to be around when you order somebody to do something.”
“An unexpected gift,” Kit’s pop said. His mama nodded in agreement.
“So what’s on the agenda?”
“Carols this evening,” said Kit’s mama. “You are all invited. You,” she said, pointing at Ronan, “are required. As many of you as want to come along… we’ll find room for you.” She looked over at Sker’ret. “Wonder if we could disguise you somehow?”