She shifted her weight and swept a quick mental headcount, mother-queen hybrid scan.
Matilda: plastered to her leg. Frank: attempting to climb the radiator. Florence: holding the hem of Erin’s jumper, voice tiny but steady. Hyzenthlay: hovering slightly apart, watching everything with eerie calm.
“Everyone else,” Alex continued, “is being handled. That’s why you trained them so well. Delegation, my love.”
She heard the catch in Erin’s inhale. In the faint glow from Julia’s phone, she could see the conflict written plain on her face—duty, instinct, desire, all tangled.
“Look,” Alex said, gentler now. “This is why we came up early. Why Vic planned herself into a spreadsheet coma. So that when things like this happen—and they always do—we’re not alone. You don’t have to be at every metaphorical fuse box.”
“I know,” Erin said quietly. Then, in a smaller voice that made Alex’s heart twist: “I don’t know how not to be.”
It was the most honest thing she’d heard from her in weeks.
Before Alex could find words to respond, the children loudly derailed the moment.
“Show us the reindeer,” Frank demanded. “We need to catch it.”
“We are absolutely not catching any wildlife,” Erin said, seizing gratefully on the distraction. “We are going to look calmly and quietly out of the window like civilised human beings.”
“I’m a dragon,” Florence reminded her.
“Like civilised dragons,” Erin amended.
They shuffled down the corridor, a shambolic procession of adults and offspring. Julia’s phone torch bobbed ahead. Somewhere, someone had lit a lantern; a warmerglow leaked from the far end of the hallway, where a side table had been co-opted for emergency candle duty.
They reached the narrow window halfway along the wall. Outside, the snow was a thick, shifting curtain, blown by the wind. The grounds beyond were barely visible—just the vague darker shapes of trees and one of the smaller outbuildings.
“There!” Matilda shouted, jabbing a finger. “It moved!”
“That was the tree,” Hyz said. “The snow is very heavy on that branch.”
“It had antlers,” Frank insisted.
“It had twigs,” Hyz countered.
Alex peered more closely, pressing her hand to the cold glass. A branch did sway, casting a shadow that, if you were five and predisposed to magic, could absolutely look like something with antlers.
She smiled. “I think the snow is playing tricks on you,” she said. “Reindeer don’t usually come this close to the house without an invitation.”
“We invited them,” Matilda said indignantly. “We made food.”
“You threw oats all over the front steps,” Julia said. “Which Mrs. MacLeod will have words about when she sees.”
“Reindeer like oats,” Frank said.
“So do mice,” Julia said. “And staff. It’s a multi-species buffet.”
“Look,” Florence whispered suddenly.
Everyone quieted, more at her tone than the actual word. Florence rarely insisted.
They followed her gaze.
For a moment, Alex saw it too: a darker movementagainst the drifting white, beyond the nearest clump of trees. Big. Four-legged. A flicker of antler-like shapes.
Then the generator coughed again, sending a ripple through the lights in the courtyard below. The movement vanished.
“That,” Vic said, “was either a deer or my imagination having a nervous breakdown.”
