Chapter 2
“Oh, yay! You’ve brought everyone with you!” Lilith exclaimed as they arrived at the Alexander clanhouse. “Ewan and Griffin were just telling me that we’d never eat all of this before it goes bad.”
Lars and everyone else who’d been at the Hawthorne Hotel came streaming into the house. The living room was suddenly full of chaos and laughter.
Sage grinned and spun in a circle as Tina unwound her scarf from her neck.
“Where did your mittens go?” Tina asked.
“Um…” Sage looked in her pockets, but she only found one red mitten. They went back out to their car to find the other one.
Corbin plopped on the floor to yank off his boots. He tossed them toward the shoe rack before he came racing over to Ewan. “I saw him! I saw him!”
“Did you?” Ewan gave an oof of discomfort as his young clanmate hurled himself at his stomach, but he didn’t complain.
“He was right up there on the rooftop! Do you think he flew his sleigh up there?” Corbin suddenly rolled off of Ewan’s lap, and a thoughtful look came over his face. “Wait. Why didn’t he just use his sleigh to get back down to the ground?”
“Um, I think that’s a good question for your father,” Ewan said, giving Beck a pointed look.
“First, you need to go put your boots where they belong,” Chelsea chided Corbin gently. “Then we can talk all about it.”
Maeve and Kendrick showed up a moment later, since Chelsea had called them on the way over. “Ah, now this feels like the perfect way to kick off the Christmas season!” Kendrick announced, his arms wide and his voice booming. “Everyone here together, just as it should be. We just need a fire going.”
“On it!” Griffin went over to the fireplace, where he carefully created a pyramid of wood. Instead of lighting it with one of the matches from the mantel, though, he crouched in front of it and blew a controlled stream of flame from his lips. The fire was soon crackling happily.
“I hope you’re not missing home too much,” Beck said to Lars as he came to stand next to him. “Our traditions are all a little messy, and sometimes we forget a few here and there, but at least we’re all together.”
Lars took in the scene around him and smiled.
It was loud and disorganized, but everyone was smiling and laughing.
There were plenty of festive Christmas sweaters, and the smell of delicious food wafted out of the kitchen.
Most interesting of all, however, was Amanda as she made her way across the room to ask Lilith if she needed any help.
“I think it’s just fine. Speaking of traditions, I brought something along that might be a fun addition to the evening. ”
Slipping into the kitchen, he found Lilith at the stove. “Do we still have a little time before dinner?” he asked as he opened a cabinet.
“We do, and I hope you’ve got a good way of filling that time.” Lilith shut the oven door and frowned. “I miscalculated the time I needed for this ham. I don’t know how I managed to do that!”
He held up the tall, clear bottle he’d brought along from home. “I think I can keep everyone entertained for a while if you have some small glasses.”
“What is it? And don’t you need to chill it?” Lilith took the bottle and studied the label. “Aquavit?”
“The water of life,” he explained. “In my country, we serve it at room temperature.”
“I guess that kind of is chilled all the way up there in the Arctic Circle! Yes, I think I’ve got something.
” Lilith found an assortment of shot glasses and put them on a tray along with a couple of other items, and she and Lars came out to the living room.
“Lars has brought us an aperitif!” she announced.
“What’s that mean?” Sage asked.
“A grown-up drink,” Lilith explained, “but I brought sparkling grape juice for you kids.”
“Sparkling?” She looked into the cup that Lilith handed her and frowned. “I don’t see any sparkles. Just bubbles.”
Tina laughed. “Well, that’s what sparkling means when it comes to drinks. It’s more like it tastes sparkly than looks it.”
Sage took an experimental sip and then grinned. “I like it!”
The kids settled down near the fireplace with a game, and Lars began pouring small servings of aquavit for the adults.
“What are we drinking?” Kendrick asked.
“Aquavit. I’m not sure if it’s to everyone’s liking, but it’s a traditional drink back home during the festive season.” He forced his hand to steady a little as he poured. His polar bear had been roiling inside him for most of the evening.
Erin sniffed her glass. “What am I smelling?”
“Probably caraway. There are some other spices, too,” Lars explained as he handed the next glass to Amanda. Her fingers brushed his as she accepted it. “It keeps things interesting.”
Kristy was next. “What’s Christmas like in Norway, anyway? If you don’t mind my asking.”
Lars felt all the eyes in the room on him, but there was only one gaze he was interested in returning. Amanda’s big brown eyes watched him over the rim of her glass, listening, waiting. The general din of the room had quieted down now that everyone was paying attention to him and to the drinks.
He already knew the Alexander clan well from the time they’d spent with his small clan in Longyearbyen, and their invitation to stay with them right here in their clanhouse had been generous.
It was a warm and cozy alternative to a hotel that he truly appreciated.
Suddenly, with so many people there, it felt like his entire village had been packed into one room.
“I don’t think you want to hear about all of that. ”
“Sure, we do,” Kendrick encouraged. “They’ve heard all about the various Christmases that I’ve seen all over the world over the last several centuries.”
“And we’d like someone to save us from hearing them again,” Griffin teased their retired Alpha. “Really, I think we’re all pretty curious.”
Lars sat down with his own glass and thought about the question. That overwhelming feeling had passed, but his polar bear was still fidgeting within him, as though the beast was displeased with where he was sitting. He glanced at Amanda, and it stilled a bit.
“How do you sum up an entire culture?” Lars asked. “Everyone celebrates it a little differently, just like here. For one thing, we open our gifts after dinner on Christmas Eve.”
That caught Corbin’s ear. “You don’t have to wait until Christmas morning?” he asked. “No fair!”
Several of the adults laughed. “Maybe we should start doing that,” Chelsea said to Beck. “We could actually sleep in on Christmas Day!”
“Now we know why so many people come to your part of the world for the season,” Lilith theorized. “They just don’t want to have to wait to open presents!”
“It very well could be,” Lars agreed jovially.
“I think, really, it’s a lot of small things that add up.
We put sheaves of wheat in the trees for the birds, and there are some very nice Christmas markets.
A single almond will be hidden in the rice pudding, and whoever gets it is said to have good luck for the next year.
Some things are not too dissimilar from Christmas in America, the way I understand it.
Our julebord are like big dinner parties, kind of like tonight, and there’s always plenty of gingerbread. ”
“That sounds really nice.” Amanda’s voice floated to him across the room.
He could tell she’d sipped a bit of the aquavit based on the pinkness of her cheeks.
It deepened the color of her eyes and her hair.
“It’s lovely,” Lars replied. His bear surged once again.
If only he could find a way to get closer to her.
The brief moments they’d shared on the street were simply not enough.
“And then you’ve got your aquavit.” Ewan had been holding his glass, but now he knocked it back in one shot. His eyes bulged and his cheeks reddened. He put one hand over his mouth as he forced himself to swallow. “Whoa!” he shouted when his airway was clear again. “That’s some strong stuff!”
“Did it put some hair on your chest?” Kendrick asked, laughing. In fact, most of the room was laughing.
“That’s why we sip it,” Lars said, holding up his own glass and taking a small amount. “When something is that good, you want to make it last.” His eyes flicked back to Amanda again. Looking at her made everything else in the room suddenly seem dull.
“What else, Lars?” Maeve, the High Priestess of the Artemis Eclipse Sisterhood, asked politely. “We don’t want to be rude, but it’s so interesting to hear things from someone else’s perspective.”
“After Christmas, there’s julebukking,” he told her. “Everyone dresses up and goes out, and you sing or perform in front of houses. The younger ones get treats and candy, and the older ones get alcohol.”
“That sounds like a mix between trick-or-treating and caroling,” Beck noted.
“Sounds like it could be a good time,” Griffin said, holding out his empty glass. “Especially if they’re passing out this stuff.”
Lars refilled it. “Everyone tries to guess who you are, which is a lot of the fun, but it can lead to some trouble, too.”
All of the adults were watching him, but the children had gone back to their game. He decided the story was safe enough to share, and everyone was looking at him so eagerly.
“My cousin Roald usually came julebukking with us,” Lars began.
“He’s quite a bit older than my brother Erik and me, so he was always the one who got the drinks and the rest of us got candy.
One year, when we were teens, Erik had just had a growth spurt.
He was much taller than he’d been just a few months earlier.
We’d come around with some other friends of ours, and the neighbors guessed that Erik was actually Roald. ”