How Lovely Are Thy Branches: A Young Wizards Christmas (3 page)

“They’ll say yes,” Carmela said, waving a hand. “We’re going to do it exactly the way you did yours when Sker’ and Fil came to visit the first time. Elective-access ‘puptent’ accesses in the basement….”

“I can always spare powering structures for ten or twenty of those,” Sker’ret said. “Let me know what you need. If the party’s heavily attended we can always install a temporary secondary gating hub like the one in your closet.”

Nita rubbed her eyes for a moment.
It’s always possible they
will
say yes right off the bat…
And certainly since she became a wizard, stranger things had happened.

Carmela was talking to Filif a mile a minute about popcorn garlands and boughs of holly and snow and Christmas cookies. “And a star, Fil, an actual
star
for the top of you instead of a baseball cap…”

“But I like my baseball cap!” The protest didn’t have a lot of energy behind it: Filif was already starting to shake with excitement.

“Just a temporary thing. Something festive! For the season. And
lights
, Fil, all colors of lights, and glass balls and ribbons and…”

If she does get her mom and pop to say yes to this,
Nita thought,
this is going to be amazing. And it’s been such a crazy year. I could use some amazing right about now…

“Sker’,” Nita said very softly, watching the armwaving continue and Filif’s delighted, excited vibrations increase. “Tell me something.”

“Anything.”

“Remember that paperwork I cosigned with Mela when we were here last, after Mars…?”

“Yes?”

“Is it possible…” Nita’s mouth went dry. She tried swallowing, had to work at it. “…that as far as the intergalactic community is concerned, I’m, uh, one of the people who…
rules the Earth?”

Sker’ret burst out in one of his ratchety laughs. “What?
Rules?
Oh, no! Not at all.”

“Okay, that’s a relief,” Nita said. “Good.” And she sagged a little.

“But you
are
on the governing board.”

Nita’s mouth dropped open again. Then she closed it, because she simply could not find a reply.

“We should go,” she said after a moment. “You two have business, and we’ve got a guest list to write.”

“Of course. I’ll let you get on with it. And we’ll see you at your place again! This is going to be so exciting. In… fifty days?”

“Sounds about right,” Nita said.

There was more hugging, and then Filif and Sker’ret took themselves off down the concourse. Carmela kicked her hoverscoot back into levitation mode, climbed aboard, and said to Nita, “So that’s settled. Come on, Neets, we’ve got the far end of the concourse to look over…” And off she went, already humming
“Feliz Navidad… Feliz Navidad… Prospero Ano y Felicidad…”

This is going to be interesting, Nita thought. “Mela, wait up!”

“I want to wish you a merry Christmas… I want to wish you a merry Christmas… from the bottom of my
oooh wow look at that!”

Nita sighed and scooted after her.

 ***

Of course, even when you’re a wizard, getting the basic permissions settled for a house party for an indeterminate number of wizardly or wizard-friendly guests isn’t necessarily
that
easy.

In the Rodriguezes’ living room a man was sitting in the easy chair closest to the entertainment system, with a tabloid newspaper open in front of his face. In front of him, sitting crosslegged on the floor in a position that was supposed to read as subordinate, and wearing what was meant to be a winsome smile, was his younger daughter.

“Daaaa
ddyyyyy…”

“I just got home, Carmela. From a shift that felt three hours longer than it really was. During which every single machine I
touched
found a new and interesting way to screw up.” Kit’s pop worked with the printing-press machines at the big Long Island newspaper, and since the operation had gone digital, he had been complaining more or less nonstop about the crankiness of the new equipment he worked with compared with the beautiful, reliable old printing presses of old. Kit had told Nita often enough that her dad had complained just as hard and as constantly about the
old
printing presses, way back when, but this didn’t seem to be a good time to remind anybody of that. “My head is aching, even my
ears
are aching, and the aspirin hasn’t kicked in yet, so if we could, you know, let this
wait
half an hour…”

“But all you have to do right now is say ‘yes’ and then it’ll be quiet!”

The newspaper behind which Juan Rodriguez was presently concealing himself rustled in a very brisk way. “Let’s try it the other way around, shall we? Let’s try having the quiet
now
, and then maybe the ‘yes’ will happen later!”

“Okay, right on time, that was the appeal to reason,” Kit said in Nita’s ear. They were lurking in the kitchen, pretending to be getting something to eat while listening to the conversation through the pass-through window between the kitchen and the living room. ”Let’s see if she’s buying it.”

“Seriously, pop-pop, it won’t be a big deal! I’m going to take care of all the food and drinks myself, and I’ll clean the house, before
and
after—”

“Uh oh,” Kit said, very low. “Reverting to what she used to call him when she was eight. Helpless baby daughter
and
responsible cleaner of the house? Not a good match.”

“That we’re having this discussion right now tells me that it’s a big deal
already,”
Kit’s pop said. “And that I should be wondering just why you’re leaning on this so hard. And whether I should go off the whole idea right now, so as not to indulge your instant gratification issues.”

“But
daaaaaaa
ddy—”

Kit rolled his eyes at Nita. “Nope, logic’s the only thing that could have saved her there…”

The newspaper being held up between Juan and his middle daughter dropped just long enough for her, and the two in the kitchen, to get a glimpse of eyes that were rather dangerously narrowed.
“
Answer hazy,” Kit’s pop said, rather pointedly,
“ask again later.”
And he went back behind the newspaper again.

Carmela picked herself silently up off the floor and swanned off toward the back of the house and the stairs to her bedroom in a manner that just narrowly avoided being a flounce.

Nita and Kit turned their attention back toward the sandwiches that they were theoretically constructing. Nita hadn’t actually gotten much further than the bread. “How’s this going, you think?” she said, very low.

“Hard to tell,” Kit murmured, opening a cupboard and pretending to rummage around in it. “Sometimes she gets a lot of mileage out of the ‘I’m your favorite daughter’ thing. Some days, nothing at all. Especially when he starts thinking about her
and
Helena being in college.”

“Tuition,” Nita said, and groaned under her breath.

“Student loans,” Kit said. “It’s a good thing she’s just going to SUNY. But this still looks like a ‘nothing at all’ day.”

“Don’t think I don’t hear you two lurking in there!” Kit’s pop said.

“Not lurking, pop,” Kit said. “Nita’s getting a sandwich. She didn’t have time to eat anything at the Crossings.”

“Because we were busy meeting with the friends who’re going to come!” Carmela said, swinging back into the living room and flopping down onto the nearby couch, where she lay staring at the ceiling in a vaguely hopeless way.

“Who you
want
to have come,” her pop said, “and who you really should thought about not wanting to disappoint before you issued an invitation that you don’t know if you’re going to be allowed to fulfill!” He turned a page, and the paper rustled quite hard.

“Uh oh, the getting-permission-first thing,” Kit murmured.

“Yeah,” Nita murmured back, “I hit her with that. Didn’t count for much at the time. She was too buzzed.”

“If she’s smart, she won’t push him…”

Possibly realizing this, Carmela merely made a little disappointed moaning sound and went quiet.

“Anyway, there’s plenty of time to think about this,” Kit’s pop said. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet.”

“But some of the guests need time to get their schedules sorted because they’ll be coming such a long way. Ireland! Germany!”

“16 Aurigae,” Nita added helpfully.

The newspaper rustled again, and this time the right-hand page twitched aside just enough for Nita to catch a glimpse of Kit’s pop’s eyes looking toward her over the tops of his reading glasses. “Sixteen
what?”

“Aurigae. It’s a star about two hundred and thirty light years from here,” Nita said. “An orange giant.”

“About
two hundred and thirty?” Kit’s pop said.

“Give or take,” Nita said. “That’s where Filif comes from.”

“So this is one of the three who stayed in your basement in their little holes in the wall,” said Kit’s mama as she appeared through the door on the far side of the living room that led to the back bedrooms.

“Elective access gated spaces,” Kit said. “Puptents, we call them. They don’t take up any space in
our
space: just somewhere else. It’s like taking your home with you, a little.”

His mama leaned on the passthrough’s shelf. “And the one we’re discussing, 16 Aurigae Guy—? This is the one who looks like a Christmas tree?”

Nita raised her eyebrows at Kit. His mother had always seemed to have the superpower of being able to hear—or overhear—any conversation that took place under the Rodriguezes’ roof, no matter how far away she was in the house. Sometimes it was really useful, and sometimes it was a pain in the butt, but Nita had learned to deal with it.

“He’s a Demisiv,” Nita said. “That’s both the planet and the species. They’re carbon-based like us, but they evolved… really differently.”

“To wind up looking like they do, I’d imagine so.”

Nita shrugged. “They’re related to trees the same way we’re related to the tetrapods.” She noticed Kit’s pop giving her a slightly confused look from behind the paper, and added, “You know, one of those fish species that got out of the water a long time ago, developed legs out of their fins and started walking around. There’ve been a lot of branches in the evolutionary tree between them and us. Same number of branches, pretty much, between Filif and his species’ ancestors.”

“A lot of water under the bridge for his people, then,” Kit’s pop said.

“Five hundred million years,” Kit said, “give or take.”

“Huh,” said Kit’s pop: a neutral sort of sound. He went back behind the paper again, turned another page.

Kit’s mama came into the kitchen and stood still in front of the stove for a few seconds, giving the cooktop a long thoughtful look. “Spaghetti and meatballs?” she said.

“Sounds good, Mama.”

“Then don’t overdo the sandwiches, you two.” Kit’s mama got down on one knee and started going through the cupboard under the counter: Kit and Nita moved to either side to get out of her way. “So what else does Mr. Christmas Tree Wizard do besides get all excited over the thought of being decorated?”

“He’s been working with the authorities at the Crossings as a go-between for the Interconnect Project,” Nita said. “The Demisiv have been a big part of the Project for a long time. It’s a group of species who specialize in long-distance intergalactic transit: keeping it running, helping people get around. They also do emergency work… help move populations who have to find new worlds to live on, because their stars have blown up or they’ve had planetary natural disasters or whatever.”

“So… kind of a humanitarian organization?”

That wasn’t a comparison Nita had thought to make. “Yeah,” she said.

“For a whole lot of values of ‘human,’” Kit added.

Kit’s mama didn’t say anything for a moment, just kept looking around in the cupboard. “Juan,” she said, “are we out of spaghetti again?”

“There’s fettucini…”

“It’s not the same.” She got up, sighing, and opened an upper cupboard. “Okay, we’ll do it with fusilli. But you said you were getting spaghetti on the way back from work…”

The paper rustled. “Sorry. My head was killing me and I just wanted to get home.”

“Well, tomorrow then.”

“I’ll make a note.”

Kit’s mama rummaged around for a big pot and started filling it with water. “Well,” she said while the faucet was running. “He sounds like a good influence. One thing, though.”

Kit and Nita looked at each other. “Yeah?”

“Is your friend a needle-shedding type?”

“Not that I’ve ever noticed,” Kit said.

“The occasional berry,” Nita said. “But only when he’s in trans.”

Kit’s mama put her eyebrows up. “Doesn’t sound like a problem,” she said. She put the pot on the stove and turned on the heat under it. “How many people are we talking?”