Velveteen vs. The Seasons Read online

  Who’s to say that hasn’t happened already? It was a terrible question. She didn’t want to ask it, not even in silence, not even to herself. But…Which of these makes the most sense? Little girl stumbles over Easter Bunny; eleven-year-old jumps off roof; teenager passes out at the wrong party and attracts the spirit of the dance floor; twenty-something washed-up superheroine somehow magically catches the attention of the goddess of spring and becomes her student and gets a pretty dress and everything is wonderful? Her own life looked like a bad self-insert fantasy when she looked at it critically.

  But it was her life, and if it looked less believable than the other options, that was because it was real. Experience and consequence and circumstance had embroidered every day into something rich and radiant, something too complex to be faked by a simple overlay of false memories. All the lives Persephone was trying to force on her were shallow. She was sure they would deepen if they became real, until they were just as bright and varied as the one she’d actually led. She wasn’t going to give them the chance.

  Persephone lunged again. Velveteen barely dodged.

  “You’re supposed to be teaching me balance!” she shouted. None of the others would look at her. A spray of blood had splashed across Lady Moon’s bodice, gleaming bright against the sequins. “You’re supposed to be teaching me how not to hurt people!”

  “This isn’t about hurting you, Velveteen,” said Persephone. She wasn’t even winded, which was so unfair. “I offered you the chance to do this peacefully. You chose this path.”

  “I—what?” Velveteen stumbled backward, far enough that Persephone wouldn’t be able to hit her without a running start, and stopped. “This is about the graveyard. This is about you asking if I would stay. You said Spring didn’t want me. You said I got to choose.”

  “It is, it doesn’t, and I did,” said Persephone. She began stalking forward, moving as fluidly as the wind across a meadow. “Spring never wanted you. I wanted you, because you had so much to learn, and because of your power. You’re the last. You shouldn’t exist outside this season, not anymore, and I’m sorry, I truly am, but I have to make sure you don’t throw things even further off by going back. If you can’t stay as the woman you are, then I’ll cut her away, and make you into somebody new. Think of it as a fresh beginning. Any of us would be glad to be your mentor, your family and home. We’ll give you a past that hurts less than the one you’re giving up.”

  One of Geb’s geese honked loudly. Persephone looked at it and sighed before looking back to Velveteen.

  “Geb wishes to remind me that you asked a question I didn’t answer, and that I’m compelled to answer while we’re here, in the planting ground. Yes, I am rewriting the world. That’s what happens when a season changes one of our own. We change everything. Whatever you did in the Calendar Country will be credited to someone else. Whatever you changed will have been changed by another hand. We won’t leave a hole in the world—we’re more skilled than that—but we won’t leave an empty space for you to tumble back into, either. We’ll cut you away, and no one will ever remember your name.”

  “You said you wouldn’t force me,” said Velveteen quickly. “You said you wanted to teach me, not break me and force me into a shape I didn’t want to hold. You’re going back on your word.”

  “I’m not, though,” Persephone protested. “I said I wouldn’t force you. I’m not. You are the sum of your experiences, the culmination of every bruise and every scrape and every victorious smile. If I take all those things away from you, if I make you into someone who can stay, willingly, and lend your strength to Spring, instead of taking it back into the Calendar Country, where no one stands ready to counter you, I’m not forcing you to do anything. I’m just opening the appropriate doors.”

  For a moment, all Velveteen could do was stare in horrified silence. Then she screamed and charged, knife held out in front of her like a lance.

  Persephone didn’t dodge. The knife sank into her belly just below the sheltering frame of her ribcage, continuing its passage through her flesh until its hilt rammed up against her flesh and could go no further. Her own blade flashed white before it fell from her hand and hit the ground. She had time to smile, to whisper, “There you go,” and to press her lips against Velveteen’s forehead before she was falling backward, gravity pulling her away from the knife. She crumpled without another sound.

  Velveteen hit her knees a split second later, gathering Persephone close and looking frantically around at the others, none of whom had moved. “Well?” she demanded. “What is wrong with you? Help her!”

  “We can’t,” said Jack. He sounded genuinely apologetic, for whatever that was worth: at the moment, Velveteen felt like it wasn’t worth a hell of a lot. “I’m the only one of us who’s any good at dying, and I don’t come back all the way. Not for a long time, anyway. Persephone is a different sort of resurrection than I am. I can’t show her the path.”

  “I’m more fertility than renewal,” said the Easter Bunny. “Sorry.”

  “I’m all about the joy of living, not the cessation of dying,” said Lady Moon. “I dance while the plague rages outside the gates. I don’t see to the wounded.”

  “So you’re all fucking useless, is that what you’re saying? Fuck you all.” Velveteen turned back to Persephone. Was the goddess still breathing? It was hard to say. She thought so. She hoped so. Closing her eyes, she reached.

  All living things had life to offer her. She had learnt that when she fought Supermodel, and had been reminded when Persephone had dammed up her own inner reservoir. Persephone had also told her that an anima in the Spring couldn’t feed themselves; they had to use the world around them. So when she hit the small, flickering thing that was Persephone’s life, she kept reaching, down into the soil, down into the bones of the world. She filled her hands, tightened them until they could hold no more, and then she pulled.

  It was like sticking her tongue into a live light socket. Life flooded into her and through her, burning and lighting up the world. There was so much of it that she couldn’t have kept it if she’d wanted to; all she could do was channel it, forcing it through herself into Persephone.

  It was no real wonder, under the circumstances, that she didn’t feel the seal on her own life force when it shattered and let her access her own power again. All she knew was that there was a little more life to give, and so she gave it, and gave more, until there was nothing else that she could hold. She collapsed, barely breathing, across Persephone’s body.

  There was a moment of silence, broken only by the disinterested hissing of Geb’s geese. Then, with no preamble or warning, Persephone opened her eyes and smiled.

  *

  The flowers making up Velveteen’s dress had died when she channeled most of the power of Spring through herself. Lady Moon was a master costumer; she could whip up a ball gown with a wave of her hand, suitable for any occasion. Conjuring a simple superheroine’s unitard and tights was almost an insult to her skills.

  “I’m just saying, don’t you think the girl would like to wake up and find herself wearing something that was a little less, I don’t know, common?” Lady Moon looked at the uniform and sniffed. “It’s so bland. And already damaged. How is it already damaged? I made the damn thing, I should at least be allowed to decide whether it goes out into the world looking like crap.”

  “It’s her uniform,” said Persephone gently. There was no weakness in her voice, no sign that she had suffered any trauma from her near-death. “It’s going to appear the way she believes it should. The poor girl’s been through hell and back again. Of course she’s going to show a few bruises.”

  “Yeah, about that,” drawled the girl who was sitting, impatiently, on the other side of the room. She rose as fluidly as a cat and slunk over to Velveteen’s side. “Did you break her? Because you weren’t supposed to break her. We’re supposed to get the same shake as everybody else.”

  “We didn’t break her,” said Persephone. She looked
calmly at Hailey Ween until the girl—the spirit of Halloween incarnate, if her words were to be believed, and a low-grade magical heroine who would have been a matter manipulator if a holiday hadn’t decided to put its strength behind her and push—looked away. “We showed her that there were other options. We opened our doors to her. Isn’t that what we’re all supposed to be doing?”

  And if she had tried to give Velveteen the tools to understand what had really happened in Winter, if she had tried to frighten the girl into limiting her own power, could she be blamed for that? She had kept to the bargain that the seasons had made. Each of them was allowed to push their claim, however they saw fit.

  “Well, you had your chance,” said Hailey. Her smile was cold. “Now it’s Halloween’s turn.”

  Persephone looked at Velveteen for a moment before she turned away. She had done everything that she could. Velveteen might not remember Spring as the kindest season, but it had been. Oh, yes; it had been.

  “I suppose it is,” she said, and there was nothing else to say. Hailey lifted the sleeping girl as effortlessly as if she were a feather, and tucked her into the voluminous pillowcase that was slung over the Halloween girl’s shoulder. Then they were both gone, leaving the smell of autumn leaves and sticky toffee hanging in the air.

  Persephone put her hands over her face. No one saw her weeping but the geese.

  Victory Anna’s whoops of joy echoed over the rooftops. Someone on the ground below might have mistaken them for screams, but Polychrome was close enough to see the sheer glee in the other woman’s face as she pursued the giant clockwork bats across the sky. Victory Anna had been tinkering with a new model of jetpack recently, and this was its maiden outing. She looked something like a bat herself as she bobbed and weaved through the air. A very large bat, inexplicably dressed in Victorian finery, and carrying an extremely large gun.

  She looked nothing like a bat at all. She looked like a profoundly self-satisfied time-displaced mad scientist who enjoyed the challenge of blasting someone else’s automatons out of the sky. Polychrome smirked as another bat fell. Sometimes dating was really all about knowing where to take your significant other. For some girls, dinner and a show might have been the answer. For Torrey, “want to go see if the people who’ve been reporting giant bats near the site of recent robberies were high or onto something?” was the perfect outing.

  Normally, Polychrome would have been right there in the thick of it, zapping bats with beams of coherent light and sending them, smoking, to the alley below. Not tonight. Tonight, she was on the lookout, hovering above the battle on a platform of glitter and bad physics, watching to see if any of the bats broke formation. According to Torrey, either the swarm was pre-programmed for a variety of situations, which didn’t mesh up with their relatively limited processor power, or there was a “control bat” being used by the scientist who’d created them. If they could follow the control bat back to its belfry, they might be able to cut this crime spree short.

  “Look alive!” shouted Victory Anna, before blasting another bat. Polychrome spun in mid-air, scanning the edges of the fight. There: a bat, slightly smaller than the others around it, was breaking from the flock and flapping frantically down an alleyway.

  “On it!” called Polychrome, and dove, adjusting the angle and power of her light beams instinctively as she bled height and gathered speed, turning herself into a shooting star. There had been a time when flight was difficult for her, something she needed to think about. Her early training runs had been made while wearing heavy padding, to save her from bruises. Now flight was as natural as breathing. She only had to know where she was going.

  The sound of Victory Anna’s joyful destruction faded behind her as she followed the bat through the night. It would have been difficult for anyone else to see, but her eyes were adapted for everything from blinding light to absolute darkness. Her own bioluminescence provided more than enough light to make chasing one little robot easy.

  She spared a brief pang of concern for Torrey, who was going to have to finish the cleanup on her own, and gave chase through the night.

  *

  The weakening of The Super Patriots, Inc.’s hold on the superhuman community of the world was immediately and keenly felt, although nowhere as immediately as in North America, where the corporation had always been at its strongest. Splinter groups sprung up essentially overnight, with formerly retired heroes putting their spandex and masks back on, while minor supervillains whose wickedness had always been more informed than actual suddenly announced themselves as heroes. Super teams with no corporate sponsorship sprung up across the continent.

  (While the foundation and funding of the majority of these teams does not reflect on the scope of this project, it is important to note that of the “sponsorless” super teams, a full eighty percent were backed by one or more independently wealthy members, and more, that all but one of the documented private backers were white males. Most had inherited their wealth from previous generations, and were uniquely well-situated to serve the public good without worrying about where their next meal would come from. The remaining twenty percent of super teams were dedicated to protecting one neighborhood or community, were active less than fifty percent of the time due to other commitments, and often received financial and material support from the people they were sworn to serve. Even superpowers do not guarantee a level playing field.)

  More common than independent super teams were the independent heroes, vigilantes working either above or alongside the law. Many of them worked solo, at least at the start of their careers, before later settling into duos and trios—groups small enough to avoid the funding issues that plagued the super teams, but large enough that no one had to fight the forces of evil without backup. Going into danger completely unsupported was often fatal, especially for those heroes who had been working with The Super Patriots, Inc. for the majority of their careers. The collective noun “funeral” entered common use to describe solo heroes during this time period. “Enough of them showed up for the mugging that it was like a funeral.”

  Most people viewed the reduction of The Super Patriots, Inc.’s control over the superhuman community as a bad thing. After all, most people did not know a superhuman personally: with a distinct minority among the human population, those who had close family or social ties to a superhuman were equally rare. From the perspective of the common man on the street, taking away the careful controls on superhuman movement and behavior was akin to taking away all gun legislation in an instant. The new age of superheroic freedom was more like the pause between “bad” and “worse.”

  Within a year of Supermodel’s death, superhumans around the world were mourning for the “glory days” of absolute control by The Super Patriots, Inc. Sure, the corporation had been draconian, cruel, and dedicated to complete ownership of the heroes in their employ, but at least then, there had been someone to answer to. Most superhumans had never known a world in which they were expected to make their own decisions or choose their own paths. Like show dogs suddenly released back into the wild, they reeled.

  It was perhaps only natural that the governments of the world would begin stepping in, proposing legislation to protect “the common man” by controlling and commanding the uncommon one. By the time the superhuman community realized that their freedoms were once more being eroded, this time by people whose interests were less commercial, and more military, it was too late for any organized resistance.

  Perhaps it was ironic that within a very short period of time, the superhuman community would look back on their days under the control of The Super Patriots, Inc. as a time of peace, prosperity, and decent dental care. But then, they were always only human, and it is human nature to mourn the past.

  *

  The bat was fast. Polychrome was faster, especially now that she was putting all her power into speed. She hung just behind it as it flew, keeping her sparkles black and dark gray to prevent them from being too obvious. The last thing she wa
nted was to be called to stop and show her license when she was in pursuit of a possibly dangerous automaton, especially since Victory Anna was at least a mile behind her now. Torrey didn’t get along well with the local authorities. She’d been a supervillain for too long, back in her last reality, and while she had always been on the side of good—assuming anyone knew which side was the “good” one anymore—she didn’t take kindly to people asking her what she thought she was doing. People asking her what she thought she was doing was a good way to wind up having a long wait in a windowless room while the Portland P.D. drew straws about who had to talk to the superheroes this time.

  Governor Morgan was doing everything she could to protect her state’s superhumans. The fact that the governor’s sister, Jennifer Morgan, was an earth-manipulator from a parallel Earth where she hadn’t been killed as a child hero, helped a lot. No one with actual family ties to the superhuman community could ever be completely against them. That wasn’t going to keep the wolves away forever. Public opinion was swinging too hard, and sooner or later, even Oregon would have to admit that times were changing.

  The mechanical bat abruptly folded its wings, dropping like something that had just traded all its aerodynamics for the elegance and grace of a brick of solid brass. Polychrome almost overshot before she could correct herself, flip around, and drop after it. Once she went into her own descent, she quickly found that keeping up required her to fall so fast that the wind brought tears to her eyes. She gritted her teeth and swallowed her natural instinct to tell gravity to go fuck itself. Just this once, she needed to be as subject to the laws of nature as everybody else.

  The bat unfurled its wings and flew through a gap in a pair of storm shutters. Those alone would have been noticeable enough to attract attention, had they not been on a window two floors above the ground. Most people didn’t look up, especially not when there was a chance that they might see a superhero getting ready for the night’s patrol. Pictures of superhumans at work were no longer worth money: they were a quick ticket to a police summons and a long night of matching costume details against known powers, trying to keep the databases up to date and accurate. No one was paying the hero insurance anymore, after all. Someone had to be accountable.