Velveteen vs. The Seasons Read online

  “It’s rude to start an acquaintance with a correction, but actually, you did,” said a voice from the doorway. Velveteen whipped around, nearly overbalancing on her frozen feet, and frowned at the young girl now standing there. She was dark haired and pale skinned, dressed in a long white dress with a red sash that left her arms bare. Her feet were bare as well; Velveteen could see the toes of one small foot poking out from under her hem. There was a wreath of candles on her head, and she couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. “You said you’d come to Winter. This is part of Winter. The cold that seems like it won’t ever end, the freeze that has no thaw. The Snow Queen may send the snow, but she’s only doing what the season demands of her.”

  “Who are you?” Velveteen demanded.

  The girl smiled. “They call me Lucy, mostly. I’m a light in a dark place. That’s part of Winter, too. The candle that guides you home.”

  “Home” was a word with a lot of meanings, and none of them really seemed to suit Velveteen. Not here, not now, with the world freezing all around her, and her lover lying in a poisoned sleep in the Princess’s castle, and the people she’d loved moving on with their lives while she paid the price of taking favors from the seasons. She shivered, drawing her arms tight around herself, and said, “Okay. Let’s go. I could use some hot cocoa and a good, warm coat.”

  “It’s not that easy.” Lucy sounded sorry. That was something, anyway.

  Velveteen snorted. “Of course it’s not that easy. It’s never that easy. Fine, they-call-me-Lucy, what do I have to do next? Build a team of snow huskies and use them to win the Iditarod?”

  “Not quite.” Lucy reached up and removed a candle from her crown, holding it out in offering. “You have to go deeper into the cold. You have to go to the heart of the season, and let it see you, and let it judge you worthy. If it decides you are, then your time here can begin. If it decides you’re not, then Winter will trouble you no more.”

  “As in ‘it lets me go,’ or as in ‘I freeze to death and it doesn’t matter anymore’?”

  Lucy didn’t answer.

  Velveteen sighed. “Naturally. This is always how it goes, isn’t it? In for a penny, in for a pounding.” She walked across the cavern to take the candle Lucy was offering. “Can you at least tell me which way I have to go?”

  “Let the lights guide you,” said Lucy, and stepped backward, into the snow. She was gone in an instant, wiped away like she had never been there at all.

  “Oh, fuck this noise,” said Velveteen, fighting the strong and understandable urge to punch something. Punching the snowman wouldn’t do her any good, and punching the walls would just damage her knuckles. “Follow the lights, my ass—” She turned to go back to the fire, and stopped dead, cocking her head hard to the side as she attempted to process the change in the room.

  The fire was gone, as was the fireplace, although the flickering, color-changing bricks remained. They had simply stretched up into a high arch, filigreed with frost and crowned with snowflakes. There was a tunnel on the other side, winding deep into the glacier. Flickers of light danced here and there in the darkness, clearly marking the way she was expected to go.

  “Got it,” said Velveteen grudgingly. She beckoned to the snowman, which stepped away from the wall and moved to stand beside her. “Come on, Frosty. Let’s go where the light tells us to go. Maybe we’ll be lucky, and there’ll be something we can hit.”

  Together, girl and snowman walked through the archway into the dark. Outside the cavern, the snow stopped falling. It wasn’t needed anymore.

  *

  “Santa, please.” Jackie looked pleadingly at the red-suited man who was currently the most powerful figure in the Winter, thanks to his dominion over Christmas, and the holiday’s dominion over the season as a whole. “No one warned her. We let her choose to come here first because she thought that we were her friends. She didn’t know.”

  “All of us went through this, Jackie,” said the big man, a sorrowful expression on his normally jolly face. “We had to be tried before we could be transformed. Not many people are born to thrive in this kind of cold. Velveteen’s a strong girl. She’ll come through the Winter’s heart.”

  “And if she doesn’t?” demanded Jackie. “What happens then? We spent years trying to convince her to come to us. This is just…this is wasteful. We need her.”

  “We need someone,” Santa corrected gently. “It doesn’t have to be her, and it doesn’t have to be today. If it takes a hundred years, we’ll still be just fine, as long as we find the right person in the end. Patience is a virtue, my dear. Once you get to my age, you’ll understand.”

  Jackie stared at him. Finally, in a very small voice, she said, “I thought I was supposed to be the selfish one here.”

  “And you are, my darling, you are,” said Santa, in what was probably meant to be a reassuring tone. “You’re worried about your friend. You want her to live because she matters to you. You’re not the only one who loves her, but you’re the only one willing to endanger us all for her sake. That’s selfishness wearing its Sunday clothes, all dressed up and ready to win. I will grieve for decades if she dies out there. I will carry her body to the graveyard in my own arms, and I will never forgive myself. But I won’t save her. Because I am not selfish enough to risk us all for the sake of a single girl, just because I love her.”

  Jackie stared at him, not sure of what to say, or how to say it, or what good words could do. At last, she whispered, “All I want for Christmas is for my friend to live.”

  “I’m sorry, Jackie,” said Santa. “There are some things it is beyond my power to give.”

  *

  The tunnel wound deeper and deeper into the glacier’s heart, twisting and bending until it seemed like they were walking in a circle, at least until Velveteen’s feet slipped on the gently sloping floor and she realized that the situation was both simpler and more complicated than that: they were following a spiral, winding slowly down into the dark. Velveteen swallowed hard and clutched her candle tighter. At least it didn’t seem to be burning down. Whatever purpose that Lucy girl served in the Winter, she was good with candles.

  A flashlight might have been better, given that Velveteen’s only backup was made of snow, but hey. Beggars can’t be choosers, and in that moment, Velveteen would have happily begged if it meant getting out of her current situation. The Super Patriots, Inc. hadn’t provided any training courses on what to do if a previously friendly holiday starts trying to kill you; even for their highly specialized schooling program, that may have seemed a little overly specific. All she knew to do was keep on walking, down into the dark, and hoping for the best.

  Something ahead of her growled. Velveteen stopped, the snowman shuffling to a halt behind her. The growl came again. She took a step backward. Something else growled, this time from behind her. Velveteen groaned.

  “Of course there’s an ambush,” she said. “Of course something down here in the dark creepy ice cave wants to kill me. Because that is just the kind of goddamn day I’m having. Well? If you’re going to attack me, get out here and fucking do it already! I don’t have forever!”

  Unfortunately for Velveteen, the creatures in the walls decided to listen.

  They were something like wolves, and something like bears, and something like nothing she had ever seen before, with their thick white fur, and their taloned paws, and their mouths bristling with icicle teeth long and sharp enough to seem like frozen daggers. They poured out of the walls from all sides, growling and snarling, and Velveteen suddenly found herself missing the blizzard. At least it had been impersonal, a force of nature. These things felt very, very personal—and as the first of them drew close enough to slash at her thigh with one daggered paw, she learned that they also felt very, very sharp.

  Velveteen flailed about with her candle, singeing the creatures as she kicked and shoved them away. Her snowman punched and grappled, reforming whenever one of them ripped off a chunk of his snow. Velve
teen, who hadn’t realized he could do that, resolved to make a dozen more of him at the first opportunity.

  Then one of the white-furred creatures landed a blow solidly across her stomach, ripping through the skin and fat and revealing the layer of muscle underneath. Velveteen screamed, rage and pain and misery all blending together into a single agonized cry.

  The creatures stopped attacking. Instantly: there was no moment of transition. One second they were trying to kill her, and the next they were frozen, looking to her for whatever she wanted to command. Velveteen pressed her hand flat against her stomach, trying to hold back the gush of warm blood, and slowly looked around at the pack. There were a dozen of the things. None of them were moving.

  “You’re not alive, are you?” she asked dully. “You’re made of snow. Everything here is made of snow.” Everything but her, as the red seeping through her fingers would attest. “That means you belong to me now. You have to do as I say.”

  The snow beasts made no sound, but continued to watch her. She would have to choose her next words carefully. The blood was coming faster all the time, and she didn’t know how long she could keep it contained. She also didn’t know what resources were available to her.

  But the snow beasts had been animate before she claimed them. They had to know at least a little bit about their surroundings. Velveteen leaned back, trusting her snowman to be there to catch her, and he was; of course he was, he was an extension of her will.

  “I think I’m bleeding to death,” she said, clearly and calmly. “I need help. I need you to go and find something that can help me. Go as quickly as you can. Don’t come back unless you have something that can help.”

  Still silent, the snow beasts backed away from her, melding with the walls, and disappeared. Velveteen watched them go. Then she looked at the candle flickering in her free hand, and shook her head.

  “What good is a light in the darkness if you die there anyway?” she asked. “Can you tell me that?”

  Lucy didn’t answer, if she even heard. Velveteen closed her eyes and let her head lull back against the snowman. Eventually, her hand fell away from her middle, and the blood flowed a little freer, although it was sluggish now, like it knew how much she needed it.

  Eventually, the candle fell from her numb fingers, landing in the blood pooling on the floor around her feet. It guttered, but did not go out.

  Lucy did her work well. The candle wouldn’t die until its keeper did.

  *

  The Snow Queen wouldn’t help her. Jack Frost wouldn’t help her. Even Santa wouldn’t help her. There was no point in asking Mrs. Claus; she never agreed to anything Santa wouldn’t do. That wasn’t her place in the story.

  Somewhere out there in the cold, Velveteen was freezing and frightened and alone, and all Jackie could do about it was prowl in her safe, warm halls, forbidden to help her, forbidden to save her, forbidden to do anything but be the spoiled, useless brat she’d always been. She’d only befriended Velveteen (and the other members of The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, but they were irrelevant, weren’t they? They were necessary burdens from the start, because it was the animus that Winter wanted) because she’d been told to. She’d only been a heroine because she was bored. Now Tag was dead and Velveteen was dying, and Jackie was still useless. Just like always.

  Jackie looked down at her pale blue hands and wished, not for the first time, that she was braver. Someone braver would have already defied her parents and gone to do what was right—but did she really know what that was? Santa said she was being selfish. He was the spirit of generosity, and she was…well, she wasn’t that. Maybe he was right. Maybe the right thing to do was allow Velveteen to freeze, if that was what the Winter intended for her, rather than risk an entire season just because little Jackie Frost didn’t want to lose a friend.

  She balled her hands into fists, straightening. No. If that was selfishness, then let her be selfish; let her be the most selfish person who had ever lived. Let them sing cautionary carols about her for the rest of time. She could do a lot of things for the season that had borne and raised her, but she had her limits. She couldn’t leave a friend to die.

  Almost without realizing it, Jackie Frost began to run, heading for the nearest door to the outside. Velveteen had to be very nearly frozen by now.

  Time was running out.

  *

  Velveteen was unconscious when the snow beasts oozed back out of the walls, holding loops of ivy and boughs of holly and mistletoe in their icy jaws. They piled the vegetation at Velveteen’s feet, careful to avoid the still-burning candle, but doing nothing to avoid the blood. One of them, mouth now hanging open and empty, nudged Velveteen’s knee with its head. She didn’t move. It nudged her again.

  “Wha’?” Velveteen opened her eyes, blinking bemusedly at the snow beasts, and then at the piled greenery. “What are you doing? I said I needed help. Not a garden supply department. Get me help.”

  The snow beast whined. Velveteen stood up a little straighter, wobbling with the effort. Her head felt light. Spinny. She looked down at the tangle of branches and leaves. All the plants were green and healthy-looking, the sort of things that grew throughout the winter. They were alive. She wobbled again, and then collapsed into the center of the makeshift bier, releasing her hold on the snow beasts and her snowman at the same time. The snowman crumbled into powder. The snow beasts stayed where they were, but did not attack. Instead, they turned the eyes toward the darkness, and waited.

  They didn’t have to wait for long. Jackie Frost came walking down the tunnel, her skin glowing a faint blue in the enclosed space. She stopped at the edge of the bier, looking silently down at the figure lying huddled amongst the leaves and berries. For a moment, all was still. Then, slowly, Jackie smiled.

  “Should’ve known you wouldn’t let me get off easy,” she said, and knelt, touching the nearest holly leaf gently with the tip of her pointer finger. A filigree of frost etched itself across the glossy green surface of the leaf, before spreading—slowly at first, but with growing speed, until it literally raced from point to point—to cover the rest of the bier. Once the frost had covered all the vegetation, it stretched upward, creating a dome that sealed Velveteen away completely.

  “You’re gonna be fine, bunny-girl,” said Jackie. “Just rest a little while. Winter can wait.”

  That was it: that was all she could do, and more than she should have done. Jackie Frost, daughter of the Snow Queen, selfish spirit of Christmas, turned to begin trudging back up into the light. Maybe she could catch a ride home from Lucy. Maybe no one would have noticed that she was gone. Maybe she was going to get away with it. Maybe.

  Jackie would have been stunned if she could have seen her mother in that moment; stunned, and a little bit afraid. For while she had seen the Snow Queen angry, and disappointed, and even laughing, on the rare occasions when the Snow Queen considered something to be worth laughing over. But she had never, in all the long, slow years of her life, seen her mother, the coldest woman in the Winter, cry.

  *

  Velveteen woke up warm.

  She sat up and stretched, shedding dry, dead leaves in all directions, and paused when she saw her hands. They were white. Not “suddenly I am a white girl, how the fuck did this happen, is there a racist reality manipulator in the house” white; white, the color of arctic hares and fresh-fallen snow. There was a loop of ivy wrapped around her wrist. She blinked at it, and followed it up the length of her arm, to where it joined with her new-made leotard of holly and mistletoe.

  “Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more fucked-up, it finds a way,” she muttered, and stood. At this point, it wasn’t really a surprise when standing revealed that her entire costume was now made of winter vegetation, all the way down to her bark-and-ivy boots. She touched her face. Her skin felt slick, like snow.

  A small part of her advised panic. The rest reminded her that she turned into a patchwork scarecrow rabbit when she was in Halloween
; becoming a living sculpture of winter greenery and snow while in service to Winter was really not that far out of the question. At least she could still walk, and breathe, and talk. She stooped to pick up her candle, which was miraculously still burning. If this was how Winter wanted her, this was how Winter would have her. She’d get her flesh and blood back when it was time to leave.

  She had damn well better.

  Velveteen walked down into the dark, following the flickers of light still dancing in the walls. If this was how the Winter wanted to play things, then let them play. She was going to play to win.

  The sky over Santa’s Village was clear, affording the citizens a beautiful view of the Northern Lights, which painted the air in a hundred shimmering shades of orange, green, pink, and pearlescent blue. It was a spectacle quite unlike any other in the world, breathtaking in its beauty, shifting from second to second, so that any photographer alive would have killed for the chance to take just one shot. It was magical.

  Naturally, the small line of figures now standing at the head of the village’s main street was ignoring it completely.

  They were a motley group of archetypes, like something out of a children’s storybook. The tall, elegant Snow Queen, with her pale skin and her white hair and her gown made out of frost and silence. The shorter, more robust Jack Frost, blue skinned and hovering a foot above the ground, his knees bent to tuck his feet up out of the way. The matronly shape of Mrs. Claus, her hands tucked into her apron—and of course, as always when a threat was encroaching upon the village, the tall, unmistakable form of Santa himself.

  He was a big man in every sense of the word. Broad of shoulder, long of leg, with a stomach that could shake like a bowl full of jelly or provide the world’s toughest natural protection for his internal organs. Any man looking to stab Santa in the kidney would find themselves facing a daunting barrier—and doubtless facing Santa’s fist not long after. He was a jolly old elf, yes, but he had been the face of the living Winter for centuries for many reasons, and not all of them had to do with how many toys he could deliver in a night.