And Kit leaned over to Nita and said, “Anyway, I don’t know about you, but I’d say the party has begun…”
3:
O Tannenbaum
The place started descending into cheerful bedlam as more people arrived. Filif slipped out to get himself acclimated, as planned: Nita caught a glimpse of him, a tranquil shadow against the snow, as twilight set in. Tom and Carl turned up in their ski gear, to everyone’s amusement, and were immediately equipped with cider (as they were apparently about to go on duty: “Back for the mulled wine later, Marina,” Carl said, “you know we wouldn’t miss that for anything!”). Matt from Australia turned up, wearing jeans and a truly eye-hurting shirt covered with graphics of Christmas ornaments in Day-Glo colors. Tall rawboned Marcus with his Very Military Haircut arrived, actually in camouflage fatigues in Christmas colors, bringing chocolates for Kit’s mama…
The noise level in the house became amazing: gossip and laughter, some preliminary exchange of small gifts, a lot more drink making the rounds, a lot of food. Sker’ret seemed to have appointed himself catering manager, and was constantly going back and forth with buffet trays. “It’s all downstairs on the other side of one of the puptent accesses,” he said to Nita when he passed her once. “There’s a stasis field there holding everything at the right temperatures. All the other accesses are set up, don’t worry about those…” And he was off again for another tray.
The music channel playing on the entertainment system was bringing out the best in some of the guests. Ronan’s voice was lifted in song at one point and caused everyone to hold still in astonishment as he did a pitch-perfect, raspy singalong imitation of both the leads on the song that was playing. “They’ve got cars big as bars, they’ve got rivers of gold, | but the wind goes right through you, it’s no place for the old: | when you first took my hand on a cold Christmas Eve, | you promised me Broadway was waiting for me…”
Moments later Matt was next to him and singing in harmony. “And the boys of the NYPD Choir were singing ‘Galway Bay’, | And the bells were ringing out for Christmas Day…”
“We need them for the carol singing tomorrow night,” said Kit’s mama, sipping at her own mulled wine with a critical look. “Mmm, needs more cinnamon… Kit, take care of that, will you?”
“Do what I can, Mama,” Kit said as his mother headed back for the kitchen, and himself headed for another of the snack trays. Nita turned back to the gossip she’d been eavedropping on while pretending to watch the music video channel.
“—didn’t want to get into outside decoration, what with the kind of vandalism we’ve been getting lately,” Nita’s dad was saying.
“Five’ll get you ten I know who you mean. The Terror Twins….”
“Who?”
“The new next door neighbors’ kids,” Kit’s pop said, and sighed. “I could really, really wish the Liddles hadn’t had to move. I miss Dave. He was good company in the summer, at the end of a barbecue. Or most times, really.”
“I miss Roz,” said the voice from the kitchen. “She was such a great cook. I was learning things from her…”
There was a sort of communal sigh at that, audible even over the general noise. Kit’s mama knew her cooking skills were limited, and knew that everyone knew it, and was regardless entirely cheerful about it and always looking forward to improving them.
“So what happened there?” said Nita’s dad. “I remember hearing that Dave had some job offer, but I don’t know what else was going on.”
“Yeah. Some firm up in Seattle, I think. Washington state, anyway. It happened very suddenly. He spent most of the spring sending out resumes and got nothing: seemed like nobody needed anyone to do what he did. Repairs on these big computerized industrial printers. Then all of a sudden this one company hit on him, flew him out for an interview, and a week later, bang, deal done. They sold the house in an awful hurry… two weeks later they were gone.”
Kit’s pop made a face. “The new neighbors, the Chastellains… Rory’s all right. Nice guy, he works over at Northrop Grumman. Lena’s lovely, a very lively funny woman, something in IT. But she’s not working right now. Apparently she had some kind of hip injury last year and she’s got another six months of physio before she can go back. I feel for her, though, because she’s stuck being stay-at-home mom to, well…”
Nita exchanged a glance with Kit, who’d come up next to her, and didn’t say anything.
“A pair of badly-behaved antisocial ignoramuses,” Kit’s mother said from the kitchen, sounding very much like someone who didn’t care who might possibly overhear her.
“There you go,” Kit said under his breath. “Mama knows.”
“I can’t imagine how two such nice people have turned out kids who’re so poorly socialized,” his mama said. “Seriously. Rude, destructive, foul-mouthed…”
The two of them listened with amusement to the string of vividly descriptive adjectives flowing from the woman slicing oranges in the kitchen. Neither Nita nor Kit needed to be told more about the subject than they already knew. Bobby and Ron Chastellain had in an amazingly short time become famous at school for spending more time in detention than they seemed to spend in class. They were as much a menace on the sports field as they were in the classroom; it seemed no one was too small for them to bully or too big for them to start a fight with. They were almost universally loathed, and seemed to glory in it. Even wizards with a mandate to prevent speeding up the Universe’s heat death sometimes had trouble keeping themselves from taking action against the Chastellains that would have been pleasantly robust but would probably have landed them in hot water with their Supervisories after the fact.
“You have to wonder,” Kit said under his breath, “whether it’s still them being miserable at having to be in a new school all of a sudden, or if now they’re just kicking everybody’s ass every chance they get because they enjoy it.”
“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?”