How Lovely Are Thy Branches: A Young Wizards Christmas (9 page)

“Wait a moment,” Nita’s dad said, “whoa, whoa,
wait
a moment!”

The singing on various sides trailed off. “Candles?” said Nita’s dad. “What candles?”

“Sure didn’t you know that lots of folks out our way put candles on their Christmas trees way back when?” Ronan said. “Though you have to wonder how many houses they burned down before the electric lights came along!”

Marcus nodded. “In some families it is still traditional despite the risk,” he said. “One of my uncles’ families still does it. You only do it for a few minutes, though, and you watch the candles like a hawk the whole time. Then you put them out and make sure they’re cold, and then everybody goes off to church, or out to dinner, or else you open the presents…”

A number of people turned in some concern to Filif to see how he was handling this concept. But he looked quite relaxed: at least his needles weren’t bristling, which was something Nita had seen on occasion and which she recognized as a sign of real trouble. “It’s an interesting contrast,” he said after a moment. “Symbolic, I suppose. The Kindler of Wildfires brought under control… even brought in where you live, as a sign of how things will be some day when It’s mended Its ways.” The green boughs shook, possibly in laughter. “Or else it’s just a little extra defiance to go with the usual acknowledgement and greeting…”

There was a little silence. And then Filif said:

“You know… I would
really
like to do that.”

Nita and Kit looked at each other in astonishment. Carmela’s mouth dropped open.
“Seriously?”

“Yes.” Filif shivered all over.

Carmela’s eyes went wide and her mouth made an O. “My shrub,” she murmured, “has an
oxidation kink.”

“Well I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a
kink
—”

“Too late,” Nita said, amused, watching Carmela’s face. “It’s in her head now and you will
never get it out.”

Nita’s father, who’d come in on the end of this, looked amazed. “Bit of a change of attitude on the subject for you,” he said.

“True. But I’m not who I was even a year or two ago.” And a lot of Filif’s berries glowed more brightly than they had for a second or so.

 “Well,” Kit’s pop said. “We’re not really set up for that at the moment. But we have a lot of other stuff on tap. You think you’re about ready to get started, big fella?”

Filif bowed slightly to him. “Yes!”

“All right,” said Kit’s pop. “Lights first.”

He headed for the back of the house and shortly came back with his arms full of boxes: some of them quite new, some of them looking old and beat up. “I like the new LED lights a lot,” Kit’s pop said. “A lot of control over them, and you don’t have to worry so much about the heat. But at the same time you hate to let the old ways go completely. Tradition…”

He put the newer boxes aside for a moment and turned his attention to the older ones. “Have to be very careful with these,” he said, putting the boxes down side by side. They were both yellowed, thin cardboard, crumbling a bit at the edges in some places; the printing on them was old-fashioned looking, the colors faded. Kit’s pop opened one. Inside it, in yellowed cardboard spacer-holders, was a row of nine candlestick-shaped bubble lights: fat bulbous bases, tall glass “candlesticks” full of colored fluid. A faint scent of very old pine needles came up from the box.

“Now
those
are vintage,” Nita’s dad said.

“Relics,” said Kit’s pop, opening the second box with the same care. “Makes me laugh to see how popular they are all of a sudden, with everyone so eager to have ‘retro’ stuff. My father gave them to me when I came of age.”

“Didn’t know there was a minimum age for Christmas lights, Juan.”

Kit’s pop laughed. “Came as news to me too. I think he just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to wreck them.” Very carefully he started lifting the first set out of the box, untangling the wires. “Can’t blame him. You wouldn’t believe what replacements for these cost. Every year I live in terror that I’m going to plug this in and one of them won’t come on…”

They got down together on the floor and stretched the lights out. Nita’s gaze met Kit’s in amusement at the sight of the two dads hunkered down on the floor like kids with a special toy. Nita’s dad picked up one of the lights and peered at the liquid inside it. “What is that in there?”

“Something with a real low boiling point,” Kit’s pop said. “Just the light in the bottom is enough to make it bubble.”

Nita’s dad picked up the box, turned it over, peered at it. “No warnings or anything about what it is…”

“You kidding? This comes from a time when doctors did commercials about how good cigarette smoking was for you. I’m betting it’s poisonous.”

In the back of Nita’s mind, Bobo whispered,
Methylene chloride…

“Yeah, you really wouldn’t want to break one of those,” Nita said. “The place would need airing out. And forget about touching it or drinking it…”

“Low on my list of things to do,” said Kit’s pop, rummaging around underneath Filif to slot the light set’s plug into the plug strip. “Let’s test the other set and then start putting the modern ones on first. These go on afterwards, on the outer branches.”

Shortly the first of four sets of LED lights was going on the “tree”, and rather unusually for a household in the suburbs of New York, the tree was helping. Kit’s pop was on one side and Nita’s dad on the other, and they were passing the strings of lights back and forth to make sure they were equally distributed. What was making the process go much more smoothly was the way that when one or the other of them was having trouble getting a light cord around into the corner where Filif was positioned, he would simply put a branch up, curl the terminal fronds around the wire, and maneuver it into the spot where it was needed. It took very little time to get the first strand up, the one that was all plain white lights and was tucked most closely in toward the trunk.

“These colored ones now, Juan?”

“Yeah. We’ll do that string from the top down to about halfway… then plug the other one in and finish down at the bottom.”

The second string began going up, while more people wandered into the living room with various festive drinks in hand to watch the process. As this was going on, Carmela came up behind Nita and peered at the proceedings between her and Kit. “I thought I was going to get to do some of this,” she said, very low, and laughed. “Seems like the youngsters have taken over.”

“I
thought you’d have been all over this,” Nita said. “You gonna let them do
everything?”

“On the contrary,” Carmela said, very softly. “I’m letting them do the heavy lifting.
I’ve
got the part that matters.” And she gave Nita the merest glimpse of something golden that she’d had hidden under her tunic.

Nita laughed very quietly. “No Mets hat?”

“Are you kidding? This is a formal affair…”

Meanwhile, the two fathers were finishing with the more normal lights. “Okay, the bubblers, now,” said Kit’s pop. With great care they moved around clipping them to the outer branches, making sure they were secure. Every now and then Filif would curl a frond up or down and make sure a bubble-light wouldn’t wiggle. All the while, a calm businesslike dialogue was going on. “Can’t imagine why they never put clips on these. Alligator clips or something—“ “Yeah, you’re supposed to just force them over the ends of the branches and then tighten them down, I don’t know what they were thinking of, it’s a design flaw…”

The two men took their time, and when the lights were all up stood back and examined their work so far for balance and evenness. “Not enough up top there, you think, Juan?”

“Mmm, not sure. No… I think we’re okay. Works better to do more garlands up there, I think. Keeps things from getting topheavy…”

“Okay. Bulbs now?”

“Yeah.” Kit’s pop went off to fetch the boxes from the back of the house, and came back with them piled high enough in his arms that he could barely see over the top.

“You have a protocol for this over at your place?” Kit’s mama called from the kitchen, peering briefly through the passthrough window. “Some kind of order that things go up in?”

“Well. Not exactly. But the good stuff goes in close to the trunk. The ones you’re less concerned about if they fall down or something bangs into them, those go on the outside.”

“Makes sense.”

Nita watched as her dad and Kit’s pop carefully opened the boxes, revealing a wild assortment of mirror-polished and satin-sheened ornaments, very few alike—remnants of old sets, replacements from newer ones, all kinds of shapes and sizes and colors. She caught Filif’s excited shiver, smiled at it, grinned a little at Kit as he came over to lean against her, watching.

The two fathers took turns, took their time, lifting the ornaments out, conferring, finding the best spots for them. “How is there are never enough hooks for these?” “I could have sworn I bought more last year.” “Harry, this one’s ribbon broke.” “Son, would you move that branch up a little? I want to get this one in by the trunk.” “Here?” “That’s right, just ease it up a little…” “Perfect.” “Or maybe a little to the left?” “Yeah….”

They stood back again and took stock. “Okay,” said Nita’s dad. “Garlands now?”

“Heresy! Tinsel first. Garlands after.”

This provoked a brief storm of opinion from some of the onlookers. “You’ll crush the tinsel!” “Especially the mylar stuff!” “I never went for this crinkled kind myself, it’s not as
shiny…”
Nita watched Filif starting to tremble a little harder and briefly wasn’t sure whether it was out of nervousness. But then she realized he was laughing, and trying to keep anyone from noticing.

The “tinsel first” school of thought finally prevailed, and Kit’s pop went off and came back with several boxes of it. He and Nita’s dad started applying it, and once more a brief good-natured exchange of ideas broke out. Nita’s dad was one of the “One strand at a time” school: Kit’s pop was more of a “fling it on from a distance” type. Laughter spread around the room as each one started trying to convert the other to his way of thinking. Kit’s mama leaned on the shelf of the passthrough for a few minutes, watching this drama unfold, and then vanished.

A minute or two later she came back with a couple of glasses full of something amber that didn’t look like cider. These she put on a side table and said, “In case anyone wants to take a moment and
get a grip…”

The two fathers looked at each other. “Not smart to ignore medical advice, Juan…” said Nita’s dad.

Smiling, they took a few moments’ worth of break, sampling what Kit’s mama had brought them while standing back again to examine their handiwork. Among the lights, Nita could see Filif’s eye-berries doing what the lights didn’t do: moving around a bit. Her dad noticed this too, leaned in. “You okay there, big guy?”

“Fine.”

“You sure? You’re not ticklish or anything?”

“Oh, no. I just… Finding places to
see
out of is going to be interesting.” Filif was laughing.

“All part of the game,” said Kit’s pop. “The informal object of the exercise is to leave as little of you showing as possible. It’s all about the decorations.”

“Though most of the time,” Nita’s dad said, “the tree isn’t in a position to offer any opinions. This adds a whole new level of challenge to the endeavor.” He pushed a clump of tinsel aside. A berry peered out from under. “You tell us when you’ve got visibility problems: we’ll shift things around.”

“All right.”

“Now
the garlands,” said Kit’s pop, and went off for a final couple of boxes. These were glittery mylar, one in silver, one in gold, and one in dark green. With care Kit’s pop tucked the end of the first one just under Filif’s topmost upstanding bough, the one where he normally wore his baseball cap, and he and Nita’s dad started passing the looped remainder of it back and forth between them as they wound it around and around. “What goes on top?” said Nita’s dad.

“These days, a star,” said Juan. “Though we had an angel once.”

“Not any more? What happened?”

“It
melted,”
Kit’s pop said. “Something went wrong with the bulb inside it. The thing actually exploded one evening. The plastic—”

“It wasn’t plastic, Juan, it was celluloid,” Kit’s mama said as she came in with more cider and mulled wine for those who wanted it. “With fiberglass hair. The thing went up like a torch. It’s a miracle it happened while we were awake and actually in the room with it. God knows what would have happened to the tree if we hadn’t got that thing off it.”

“The next two Christmases completely sucked,” Kit whispered in Nita’s ear. “They refused to leave the lights on unless there was somebody in the room. You couldn’t come downstairs in the middle of the night and find the lights on and everything glowing.”

“They got over it, though…”

“Eventually.” Kit rolled his eyes expressively. Nita, though, was watching Filif again. The shiver that went through him at the mention of the fire was not one of unease.
Definitely,
she thought,
something new is going on…