Page 75 of Just Say Christmas
Nyree’s voice wasn’t steady. It hadn’t been what she’d expected, thanking Tane for his gifts of the forest. She took a breath and tried to make the words what Nan had. The acknowledgment that this was one day, when they were all together, and it was enough. That winter would come, but it wasn’t here today. She said,
“Cease the winds from the west
Cease the winds from the south
Let the breeze blow over the land
Let the breeze blow over the ocean
Let the red-tipped dawn come with a sharpened air.
A touch of frost, a promise of a glorious day.”
“Beautiful,” Olivia said quietly. “Thank you.”
Amona took a sip of tea, holding the mug in two hands, and didn’t grimace, though Nyree was sure it wasn’t delicious. She looked at Nyree, then, her eyes with that sadness in them, always, but with joy, too. She was still deep purple, but her purple was so beautiful. She said, “I know, I think, about the baby. Do you want to know?”
Nyree said, “Oh. Yes. Oh—wait. I need to . . .” She tried to laugh. “Get Marko. I need to get him. Hang on.” And fled outside, getting the tears under control and shoving on her jandals along the way, because there was construction happening out here. Marko and his dad had finished sanding and staining the pieces of the arbor they’d built yesterday, the one Zora would decorate with flowers when she and Rhys arrived. The stain had dried, more or less, and they were erecting it now. She told Ander, “Looks brilliant.You’rebrilliant.”
“Just eight boards, a bit of glue, and the odd nail,” he said with a hint of a smile.
“And knowing how,” Marko said.
“Could I borrow Marko, please?” Nyree asked. “Just for a minute. It’s Amona. A good thing,” she hurried to say when both men stilled. “But . . . a minute.”
Marko whistled, and his brother-in-law, a cheerful Aussie bloke named Gordon, looked up and headed over. He’d been setting up tables and rows of borrowed folding chairs with his two young sons and Nyree’s stepfather Grant, so it was probably a welcome interruption. They’d already finished erecting eight tents that Ella and Caro had scoured the neighbors to procure the day before—among many other items like, for example, folding chairs—on the grass around the side of the house, and filling them with sleeping bags and air mattresses and pillows. You needed somebody good-natured for that, since Nyree was sure Grant had supervised operations with maximum gruffness and the assurance that, although he had never set foot on this property before today, he knew as much about the proper placement of tents as any army officer billeting his troops. Whoever’d made up “My way or the highway” had been thinking of Grant. Or possibly Napoleon. Same thing.
Marko said, “Right. My hands are dirty, though.” An endless pause inside the kitchen, where he got his boots off and washed his hands, and he was sitting beside his grandmother and saying, “I hear you’ve got wise words for my wedding day, Amona. Lucky I came home to hear them, eh.”
Nyree slipped onto the bench beside him, and he took her hand and pressed it. She could nearly hear him say,You’re all right. We’re all right.She had to put her head on his shoulder for a second. The rest of the women had stopped what they were doing to listen, the photographer was snapping, and it was all the right thing.
Amona said, “Nyree wonders . . . if the baby’s a girl or a boy.”
“Ah,” Marko said.
“You’re going to . . .” Amona coughed again into a tissue, then kept coughing, and everybody waited. Finally, she said, “Have something later, though, where you read out what the doctor said. Don’t need me telling you.”
“No.” Marko’s voice was gentle as a drift of snow. “We need you telling us what you see.”
She said, “I feel a girl, then. Lively, like her mother. Got a spirit to her like . . . silver. Like a stream.”
“Arielle,” Nyree said, then snapped her mouth shut on the word and stared at Marko. “That just came to me. Popped into my head. A silver girl.” The shiver ran through her from her throat to her belly, and she put a hand over the spot where their baby swam.
“Beautiful,” Olivia said. “Though I should let Marko talk. Sorry. I’m just the grandmother.” She clutched Miriama’s hand and said, “It’s like I feel her. Do you feel her?”
“Yes.” Nyree’s mum had forgotten to be concerned about her daughter’s dress, her makeup, her punctuality, or her tendency to laugh out loud at the wrong moment. She was laughing herself, her fingers twining around Olivia’s. “I do. But weshouldlet Marko say.”
“Arielle,” Marko said. “A silver girl.” He leaned over, kissed Nyree’s forehead, put his hand over hers where it cradled her belly, and said, “Sounds like ours.”
“If I’m . . . wrong,” Amona said, leaning back and closing her eyes again, “and it’s a boy, the whole world will know, now.” She smiled, and everybody laughed. “Since that fella took my photo.”
37
Shine Your Light
MARKO
Marko hopped off the ATV once his dad had driven it into the shed, as Molly, the Border Collie, and Max, the black-and-tan Huntaway, hopped down with him and went to their bowls. He filled them with water, gave each dog a pat, and said, “Good dogs. You two make Cat look even more useless.” The dogs drank up, then flopped down in the shade, their tongues lolling and their sides still heaving, resting up for the next job. Of course, when his dad reached back into the ATV for something, their heads went up, and so did their ears, showing how much they hoped the “next job” would start right now.
