“Long the one with the berries stood there in the dark and the hiss of the wind with the Cold Fires making her shadow tremble on the frozen ground. And at last she said, ‘Yes, I will.’ And with great labor and anguish she tore her roots away from the roots of the Whole, and broke her bonds, thereby doing the thing that no one in the world had ever willingly done. She Othered herself.”
The word Filif used was again in the Speech, uhweinsei, and one that had echoes of many meanings: to set oneself apart, to be set apart, to be alone, to be alone to a purpose. “There in the dark and the cold,” Filif said, “she fell down crying with the pain. And there in the dark she rose up again and was the first of us, the first Demisiv who was by herself; the first to stand alone, the first to walk alone, the first to have her own thoughts alone in her own soul. That dark time…” He shivered. “Long she suffered there, long she took learning the weight of being one’s self, the pain of moving one’s self alone through the world. But finally there came a day when the sun rose for a little while, long enough for the microregion of which she’d been a part to wake a little and look around. And what did it see there but the berried one, on her own roots, standing, watching. And she said to it, to the Whole, ‘I am the Outlier. In the One Other’s company I chose my Othering and so did not die. As I am, so may you be. Rise up now and break your bonds!’”
Nita shivered, for it was a battlecry, the way he said it. And over on the other side of the room, she saw Marcus lean back on the pillows behind him with a thoughtful look on his face. “’The stone that the builders have rejected,’” Marcus said, as if musing, or to someone else, “’is become the cornerstone…’”
Filif rustled his branches. “She died, of course,” he said. “Very soon, as our people reckon it. Very young. But not before she’d walked deep into the South, from the cold and the dark down into the sun and the summer, and showed more and more of the Whole what had come to her. And not right away, but soon enough, others followed her. Fringe growths as she’d been, at first: those who were pushed to the edges, the sorrowful, the disaffected, the different. And then others, bored or daring or just curious, sometimes angry and sometimes frightened; they rose up, they broke their bonds. More and more of them, over decades, over centuries. Until after many millennia more, almost all of us were Outliers, going about in freedom, making our own differences in the world and each other’s lives. Now very few stay enWholed all their lives. Those whom the worlds now think of as Demisiv, with our roots in the ground but our own souls in our branches, are almost all our species.” Filif rustled. “And that’s the tale. One of the more formal versions, maybe. There are many, many others.”
Dairine, with Spot in her lap, had been gazing off into the distance through all this. Now she looked up at Filif. “Was that your species’s Choice?”
“It was the gateway to Choice,” Filif said. “Many more Outliers were needed before that could happen, and it took a long time. They were scorned and rejected at first. But very slowly things changed, and after that, in due time, Choice came. Another story.” He rustled his branches again. “At any rate, these days, at the right time of year—our version of this time of year—we’re all Outliers. Instead of coming together in the light that doesn’t end, the way we do at the time of the Nightless Days festival, remembering how it was to be a whole world enWholed—in this time of the year we wait for the darkness, and in it we go apart, remembering the Outlier who first walked that road: the first to walk it truly alone. Here and now, like them, like the One with the Berries, I’m an Outlier. I made my own choice and spoke my Word to the wind, and when my time came I took the High Road and learned to walk through a greater darkness than most of my people. I’m in that darkness now, far away from home. And thereby, I’m exactly where I should be.”
All his berries looked at them. “But it’s funny how it goes,” Filif said. “So far out in the darkness, you find it’s not so dark after all. You find light you didn’t expect…”
“There are similarities, aren’t there?” Ronan said all of a sudden. “Something from outside gets into physical existence and pulls it into something bigger. Something deeper…”
“But that’s the One for you,” Filif said. “It’s always getting into Life and transforming it. The Powers do the everyday work, same as we do. But sometimes something extra’s needed, something more profound. And from acts like this the ripples spread, inevitably. It’s for us the same as it is for you. A lot of stories, a lot of songs and poems telling how what happened way back then looks now. How it affects the here and now, day by day: in big ways, or small ones.” He laughed. “Like your songs about trees…”
But there was something strangely wistful about the way he said that. People looked at each other, thinking. And then suddenly Marcus sat up straight.
“All right,” he said. “All right. Let us light this candle!” And he vanished.
***
They sat waiting for him for about fifteen minutes, wondering what he was up to. At that point all of them had begun to yawn occasionally, and Nita was beginning to look ahead with some eagerness to when she could actually pull one of the various throws over her, collapse back into the pillows and just check out for a while. But then, with a very soft pop of displaced air, Marcus was standing off to one side again with big box in his hands.
“Here,” he said, and brought what he carried over to a nearby table.
Everyone crowded around as he bent to open the box. What Marcus lifted out was a slim piece of gold-colored metal that was bent in a horizontal S-curve like that of the pipe under a sink. At the top of the shorter curve was a socket of the right size and shape to take a candle. At the bottom of the other longer part was a small heavy ball of metal.
“Counterweighted,” he said. “These are far safer than the old candle holders that clipped on. And here—” He reached into the box again, came up with a slim orange-golden candle. “Beeswax,” Marcus said.
Filif began to shiver all over.
“Are you ready for this?” Marcus said.
“Yes,” Filif said, very softly.
“Fil,” Nita said, “are you sure?”
He bowed himself a little toward her, so that the star glittered. “Will you all help?”
Everyone reached into the box, pulled out one of the candle holders, fitted candles to them, and started balancing them carefully on Filif’s branches. “Kind of a trick to this,” Nita said.
“But once you get the hang of it…” Kit said.
Within a few minutes the candles were arranged at the tips of all Filif’s strongest branches, held well away from the main body of his foliage. Carmela put the last one in place. Then they all stood around him for a moment, waiting.
“Now all we need,” Filif said, “is fire…”
There were a couple of spare candles in the box. Nita reached in and lifted one out, knowing what wizardry she’d need next. “Ready?”
“Ready,” Filif said, and stood very straight.
To make a spark long-lasting enough to light a candle took five words in the Speech. Nita said them, and the wick of the candle she held burst into flame. Nita waited until it had caught completely, and then reached out with the candle toward the closest one perched on one of Filif’s boughs. She could see all the red eye-berries watching the flame as it came nearer, trembling just slightly…
She lit the candle; and then another, and another, carefully watching Filif all the time, remembering how just the thought of fire had terrified him once upon a time. After a moment, trembling herself, she handed the candle to Kit. “Here,” she said, “your turn…”
As carefully as she had, Kit lit the three candles nearest, and passed the lighting candle to Matt. So it went around, to Sker’ret (who grasped it in his mandibles and reared up to do the lighting) and to Ronan, and then to Marcus, and finally to Dairine and Carmela. As Carmela was lighting the last three, Dairine gestured at the lamps spaced around the room, and all of them went out.
/> 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—
But as they got even closer she realized, even in this dar
kness, 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 smartasses 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—”