The Rain King

Velveteen vs. Temptation.

2017-02-15T00:02:05Z

Title: Velveteen vs. Temptation.
Summary: What happens to a child superhero who finds that after everything she has done, everything she has endured...life goes on?

***

“No comment.” The person on the other end of the phone kept talking. The Princess listened with increasingly visible irritation, her lip slowly curling upward, until she was actively sneering. Finally, she snorted hard, and snapped, “I told you once, I told you twice, and now I’m telling you for a third time, if you want an interview, you go through my publicist. You certainly do not call me up in the middle of the damn night to ask questions you haven’t earned the answers to. Lose my number, and have a magical night.”

Cellphones lacked the heft for satisfying slamming down--not unless she wanted to risk cracking the screen--but since the other option was using the magic mirror, she had to settle for viciously swiping her thumb across the screen, as if to punish the person on the other end. They would be punished, she knew that much: people who were told to lose her number generally did, and they had an awfully hard time finding it again, assuming they ever managed. Even if somebody felt bad enough for them to give them a reminder, it would just get lost as soon as they took their eyes off of it. It would take a sincere apology, delivered in person, to get this caller back into her good graces.

Somehow, that didn’t make her feel any better. The Princess rose, her comfortable sweat pants and slogan tee (“Not Looking For A Prince, Just Here For the Shoes”) melting into a gold and rose ball gown much more suitable for sweeping along the castle halls. The weight was a reassurance as much as it was a burden. This was who she was, who she had to be any time she wanted to walk in the world. It wasn’t going to change. Not for her, and not for any of them.

That was really the crux of the problem. Who she was inside could change, and did, all the time, because that was being human. Something she’d said or done or believed a decade ago might be as false now as the lashes on a theme park dancer, molded by experience and opinion. Trouble was, people didn’t like to let things go. They’d dig out an interview she’d given when she first started speaking to the public (still a child, all crinoline and curls and wide-eyed, earnest determination to never disappoint anyone, to never let anyone down, because if she did, the magic might go away and leave her back as she’d been, back in the wrong life), and say “But Princess, we thought you believed...”

It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It ignored the human capacity to change, and more, it ignored the fact that language shaped opinion, and many of those interviews and articles had been written by folks who were working from their own set of biases. There were more than a few nasty, snippy little articles about her, ones that claimed she was a liberal conspiracy to corrupt the children of the world. As if fairy tale magic and wonder gave a damn about what small-minded people believed? As long as the magic stayed with her, she knew she was doing right by those kids. But Vel...

Sometimes the Princess wished they weren’t the same age, because if there had ever been a little girl who needed a fairy godmother, it was Velma Martinez, better known to the world as “Velveteen.” If there had ever been a child who could have benefitted from having an adult mentor who actually gave a damn, who would actually teach, and not just endlessly train, it was her. But that ship had sailed, much like Jolly Roger’s Phantom Doll, and it was never coming back.

Velveteen had never done anything really wrong; had never had the opportunity to do anything really wrong. She’d been snatched up by The Super Patriots, Inc. when she was too young to have started down the road to supervillainy, and even though she’d walked away as soon as it was legal for her to do so, the habits of heroism that they had beaten into her thick little skull had stuck more than anyone could have hoped. She’d hung up her mask and headband, sure, and she hadn’t been doing anything to protect the cities where she’d lived, trying to eke out an existence on her own terms, but she hadn’t gone the other way. She’d never robbed banks or taken hostages or played the black hat in the endless superhuman game of capture the flag.

But as far as the Marketing Department of The Super Patriots, Inc. had been concerned, Velveteen had committed the ultimate act of villainy when she had chosen to tear up her contract and walk away. She had stolen an irreplaceable corporate asset: herself. And so they had, with cruel indifference, done everything they could to destroy her without violating the terms of their interactions with legally retired superhumans.

They had made calls to employers, implying that her separation from the team had been less voluntary than she would like to admit. They had contacted landlords, and when that hadn’t worked, they had purchased buildings through shell companies, evicting her for any offense the law would allow. They had pushed the boundaries of legality until they broke, and all the while, they had been delicately massaging the past, changing the documentation, updating the old films, until she was clearly painted as the team fuck-up and an inevitable villain in training.

They had been planning to make her a villain, and they might well have succeeded, if Velveteen hadn’t been smart about who her friends were, and lucky about where she’d landed when she finally took the risk and ran. Now...

Velveteen had changed the world when she had gone up against her former employers and won. That sort of thing didn’t just blow over. Most of the story as it had been written so far painted her as the bad guy. Now, with the press sniffing around, their window for changing the narrative was closing.

The Princess just hoped she could make Velveteen understand that sometimes, the true superpower was in knowing how hard to spin.

*

Envy, jealousy, and covetousness, with their gently divergent definitions and their functionally identical roots, have been a part of the human psyche since the beginning of recorded history and, presumably, before. Even animals can express the desire to own that which does not belong to them, whether it be the best territory, the most plentiful food, or the most fertile mate. Wars have been fought and nations have been divided by the many flavors of greed, both subtle and direct.

When the first superhumans appeared, the natural human response was awe. Here were men who could fly, women who could summon storms with a wave of their hand, people who could talk to animals or teleport or recover in the blink of an eye from what should have been fatal wounds. Here was the future, walking up to the door and ringing the bell, asking politely to be let inside. The first news reports of superhumans have an air of jovial futurism to them, implying if not outright stating that sooner rather than later, humanity would enter a new golden age of possibility.

Then more superhumans appeared, and more, and more, and it became increasingly clear that this new golden age was not going to be available to everyone, or to anyone outside of the chosen few--and those choices so often seemed to be wrong! Villains and n’er-do-wells and the obviously undeserving were granted the gift of super powers while those who would have made better use of those same gifts were left standing idly by, unable to compete, unable to even start playing the game.

Was it any wonder when those “more worthy” onlookers seized control of the narrative? When the story of the superhuman who fell, rather than flew, became infinitely more compelling? Envy has always found a home in the human heart.

Envy, which rejoices when the mighty are brought low.

*

An instance of the Night Shift was in the banquet hall when the Princess arrived, coaxing another cup of coffee out of an urn so covered with glittering crystals that it looked almost like a bedazzled beehive. (Corporate would never admit it, but the Princess’s need for coffee before she could face the morning was the reason they had finally allowed a major chain to open outlets in their theme parks. Seeing the coffee shops in conjunction with the fairy tale flourishes of it all had reinforced the idea that princesses liked espresso in the minds of children the world over, and had made it possible for the Princess to keep a steady supply of the stuff flowing in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle.)

“How’s our patient today?” she asked, walking up to the Night Shift and stopping a respectful distance away.

“Cranky,” said the Night Shift. She took a swig of coffee. “Belligerent. Making me think it may be time to up my rates again. But she’s healing. Her bruises are almost gone, that one bad break has managed to set, and she’s up ten pounds. You could probably dismiss me, as long as you’re willing to sit on her and make her take things easy for another week or two.”

“You really think we can keep that girl quiet for another week?”

“I think you’ve got three days before she starts climbing the walls and animating all your garden statues out of sheer nervous boredom,” said the Night Shift. “I’m removing toys from around her bed constantly. She’s not calling them on purpose, or she says she isn’t, and I’m inclined to believe her, because she looks unnerved every time I find another one. She’s anxious and she’s bored and it’s got her leaking energy in every direction. The sooner we can put her back on patrol, the better off she’ll be.”

“Now hold on,” objected the Princess. “You’re the one who tore strips out of my hide for letting her go on patrol in the first place.”

“Yes, four days ago,” said the Night Shift. “I’m good at my job. Probably the best in the world.”

“As you are the only one-woman emergency room and care staff in existence, I’m going to say that yes, you’re definitely the best there is at what you do. What’s your point?”

“That she’s stronger now than she was four days ago. If you asked what I thought of her going on patrol tonight, I’d say that it was fine. As long as she’s not trying to save the world solo, she should be all right.”

“Huh,” said the Princess. “She’s doing that well?”

“She really is,” said the Night Shift.

“Well, then, you think you could give us a moment’s privacy? I need to speak with her about something.”

The Night Shift blinked, clearly nonplussed. “What? I’m already leaving her alone. I only have three instances right now, and we’re all taking care of biological needs.”

“Look how well-behaved I am, not asking what that means,” said the Princess. “Why did you leave her alone?”

“She has company,” said the Night Shift. “I thought you knew.”

The Princess didn’t reply. The Princess was already gathering her skirts in her hands and running for all that she was worth for the door.

*

In the recovery room, painted with stained glass shadows and propped up by the softest pillows this side of Slumberland, Velveteen crossed her arms and scowled. The expression lacked the heat it would have possessed only a few weeks prior; it was, in its way, almost fond.

“I don’t know which is worse,” she said. “The fact that you came here to ask me that, or the fact that I opened the door and let you inside. You’ve got to be out of your mind.”

“I’m not,” said Action Dude, twisting his hands anxiously in front of him. He was back in his orange and blue costume, the very embodiment of truth, justice, and the corporate way. He looked like everything she’d been running from since she was eighteen years old. He looked like everything she’d ever wanted, all served up on a silver platter and ready for her to enjoy. “We talked it over, and we think it’s the right thing to do.”

“And ‘we’ would be...?”

“Me, and Dotty Gale, and the American Dream. We all think that, well. We’re not bad people, Vel. We were raised to be heroes, and we’re doing the best we can. But we were raised by The Super Patriots, Inc., and we know now what that meant. Supermodel set the curriculum. She guided our training. We don’t know whether what we think of as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ is actually...good.” Action Dude grimaced. “It sounds sort of stupid when I say it like that, but really, it’s scary.”

“A lot of things are scary.” There was steel in Velveteen’s tone, and no forgiveness in her gaze. “You know what’s scary? Finding out how much of your paycheck got funneled to your parents in exchange for them looking the other way while a big corporation beat the childhood out of you. Having no high school diploma or place to live or idea of what things are supposed to cost. Not knowing how to survive without Marketing holding your hand. Have you ever cooked? Anything? Or done your own laundry, or paid your own bills?”

Action Dude’s face flushed. He turned away.

“Yeah,” said Velveteen. There was no rancor in her tone. “I thought not. People would have noticed if their heroes turned into villains, and so Supermodel never went there. She taught you--or she allowed her people to teach you, rather--the things real heroes had to know. You are real heroes. She just didn’t teach you how to survive in the wild, or how to think for yourselves. Why the hell do you think I want to step in and take her place as keeper of the Island of Misfit Toys?”

“Because you’re not like her.” Action Dude seized onto the question like it was a lifeline. “You could never be like her. Power corrupts, sure, but we’ve known people more powerful than her who didn’t get corrupted. You’re better than she was.”

“Tell that to Jolly Roger,” said Vel. “I am not interested. Tell Dotty and the American Dream that they aren’t getting what they want.”

“But...”

“No, Aaron,” said Vel. “No. I don’t want to come back to the team, and I don’t want to come back to the corporation, and I don’t want to lead anything. I just want to get better and go home to Portland before Victoria Anna decides that what we really need is a steam-powered septic system. I want to eat donuts and fight crime and do cheesy photo-ops at malls. I’m a small time girl. Leave me that way.”

“You weren’t always,” said Action Dude. “You used to want to lead the team more than anything.”

“Back when I thought we’d be leading it together, you mean,” said Vel.

“We still could,” Action Dude blurted. Then he froze, face going pale.

Velveteen was equally still. She stared at him, and he stared at her, and neither one of them spoke or moved for almost a minute. Finally, Velveteen took a slow, deep breath. “If I have done anything that would lead you to believe--” she began.

“No,” said Action Dude. He shook his head firmly, and repeated, “No. You haven’t done or said or implied anything, okay? And I’m not just here because of that.”

“Not just.”

“What?”

“You said you’re not just here because of that, which means you are here because of that, at least partially. You’re here because...what, you thought that as soon as we got a happy ending, I’d just fall right back into your arms? You’re the one who broke up with me, remember? If it had been my call, we’d be...fuck, I don’t know. We’d be married with three kids by now, and I would never have looked at another man. But it wasn’t, and we aren’t, and I did. Or did you forget about Tag?”

“I didn’t forget,” said Action Dude. “I still...we were kids, Vel. We were just kids. We didn’t know what we were doing. I loved you so much that I couldn’t imagine living without you. I thought that we’d break up for the sake of Marketing, so you wouldn’t be transferred, and then when we turned eighteen, we’d leave together. You and me, together. I could have learned to be happy as a civilian, if I’d been doing it with you.”

Velveteen, who had seen more than a few parallel realities, who had seen that in all the ones where she and Aaron were still together, they were together in uniform, shook her head sadly. “You never told me that. Not once. You never said ‘hold on and we’ll get out of here.’”

“I couldn’t. Marketing was listening.”

“So how did you expect me to know? You were cuddling with Yelena whenever there were cameras around, and she wouldn’t even speak to me. Every time I tried to get close to you there was someone waiting to get in the way. It was like I didn’t exist anymore.” Velveteen blinked back the tears that threatened to rise up and overflow her eyes. “You were my best friends, and you threw me away because someone in a position of power decided I was inconvenient. They broke us.”

“So that’s it?” Aaron raked his hands back through his hair, leaving it mussed and wild and completely camera-unready. “Lena gets a second chance, and I get you refusing to even look at me, forever? If you’re going to punish one of us, you should punish both of us.”

“You really want me to punish her?” Velveteen shot back. “Because there’s one big difference between the two of you, Aaron. She tried to get out. She looked at what The Super Patriots were doing, what they had become, and she ran, and yeah, I helped her, because she was finally making a choice for herself. You did do that. You fought against me, against us, me and Yelena and Jackie and the Princess! The fucking Princess said that The Super Patriots were corrupt, and you still stood against us! You never made a choice, Aaron. Sometimes I feel like you’ve never made a choice in your damn life. You go with what’s easy. You do what doesn’t challenge you. When the corporation said I wasn’t for you, you listened. Now the corporation is gone, and I’m suddenly good enough again. Well, guess what? You’re no longer good enough for me.”

“I never was,” said Aaron softly. “And you’re not wrong about most of what you just said. But you’re wrong about one thing.”

“What?”

“I made a choice. I chose you. Marketing was against it from the start. You were supposed to be the hero they could sell to the kids seven and under, the one with the cute stuffed toys and the playline accessories, and I was...I was supposed to be their jock. They were talking about hooking me up with Firefly, once she was out of the East Coast trainee program. We tested well with focus groups. But you were funny, and smart, and mean sometimes in that way that made you the most beautiful girl in the world. I wanted to be with you. I wanted to be the kind of boy you’d be with.” He shrugged, looking down at his feet. “I got in trouble the first time I kissed you where the cameras could see.”

“I never knew that,” said Velveteen, after a moment’s stunned pause. “No one ever said anything to me.”

“Of course they didn’t. You weren’t the one who was acting against orders. But from that kiss, they knew they had me. You and Yelena were the hostages against my good behavior. Ask her. Ask her sometime, how often she saw me get pulled aside for a talking-to when she didn’t perform, or when we didn’t want to go looking for you. Ask her how many threats she overheard. Or get a telepath in here, and they’ll tell you that everything I’ve said has been the truth. You got out in part because when they said ‘stay,’ I stayed. Yelena got as far as she did because I did everything in my power to stop them from going after her. I fought against you. I can’t take that back. But we have always, always been on the same side.”

Velveteen looked at him for a long moment, eyes wide and very large in her still hollow-cheeked face. Finally, in a low voice, she asked, “Why are you really here, Aaron? You knew I was never going to come back to the team. So why did you come?”

“Because I don’t give two shits about the team,” said Action Dude. He walked cautiously toward her cot. When she didn’t immediately throw a pillow at him, he sat down on the very end, watching her all the while. “I don’t want you to rejoin The Super Patriots. Dotty and Dream do, but they’re as overwhelmed as I am, with a lot more left to lose. Me, I’ve already lost everything. I don’t actually care anymore.”

“So what do you want?”

He looked at her gravely. “I want you,” he said. “I want you to smile at me. Not the way you used to, because we were kids, we didn’t know anything, I was keeping secrets and playing hero and you thought I was some sort of a superman, and not just a superhero trying to get his shit together. I want you to smile at me like a grownup. I want to smile at you without worrying that you’re going to flinch away. I guess I want to be friends more than almost anything.”

“Almost.”

“What?”

“You said ‘almost.’ You want to be friends more than almost anything. So what’s the almost?”

Action Dude sighed heavily. “The almost is that I want you to remember why you loved me. I want you to realize that you never actually fell out of love with me. I want you back, and I know that’s stupid and childish and not going to happen, but you asked, and so I’m telling you. What do I want more than your friendship? Your love. Your approval. Your forgiveness. Not necessarily in that order. I want to be a part of your life again, whatever that looks like--and not as your nemesis. I miss you. I miss us, in all the different flavors that had before the end. Don’t you?”

“I miss the days when people called before coming over, mostly so I could tell them not to come,” drawled a new voice. They both turned to find the Princess standing in the doorway, arms crossed, scowling at them. “What in the name of happily ever after are you doing here? I do not recall inviting you back this soon.”

“I needed to talk to Vel,” said Action Dude. “The Night Shift let me in.”

“The Night Shift and I are going to have words about that, believe you me. I don’t want you here, Aaron. I don’t want you in my home, and I certainly don’t want you bothering Vel. She needs her rest.”

“You told me before that as long as Vel wanted me here, you were okay,” said Aaron. He glanced back to Velveteen. “Vel?”

“I want you to go,” said Velveteen. His face fell. The Princess’s lit up with triumph. Velveteen continued, “Not forever. Just for a few days. I need to think. Please. Can you do that for me?”

“I could do anything for you.” Action Dude stood, pausing only to give the Princess a respectful bow before fleeing out of the room and down the hall.

An iteration of the Night Shift was waiting by the door that would take him back to the theme park where it had opened. She looked him up and down before asking, “So how did it go?”

“I have no idea,” said Action Dude. His face split in a wide grin. “Isn’t that amazing?”

The Night Shift rolled her eyes. “If you say so. Tell Dreamy to pick me up at eight, and remind them that they promised me a really nice night. After dealing with that little girlfriend of yours, I deserve to be spoiled.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” said Action Dude, hand on the doorknob. Then he grinned. “Yet,” he added, and stepped outside, still grinning ear to ear. She wanted him to come back.

There was still a chance.

*

“What the hell were you thinking?” The Princess held her hands out toward Velveteen, voice and posture united in pleading for an answer. “That boy is nothing but trouble. He’s going to try to seduce you back to The Super Patriots, you see if he doesn’t, and when that happens--”

“It already did.”

The Princess stopped dead, staring at her. After several seconds of silence, she managed to demand, “What?”

“That’s why he came. Dottie Gale and the American Dream wanted him to tell me that if I’d agree, they’d hand the entire corporation over to me. I could be the new CEO of The Super Patriots, Inc. I could set policy, steer their course, everything. The shareholders would accept it, since technically I’ve defeated their entire current board in combat.” Velveteen shook her head. “I still don’t believe they codified the structure of superhero battles into their bylaws. That’s not just silly, it’s stupid.”

“But it fits the mythology they’ve been trying to build, and that’s what matters sometimes,” said the Princess. “What did you tell him?”

Velveteen snorted. “No. Fuck no, hell no, absolutely no, not going to happen. No. I’m done with that company, and I’m done with that team. They can figure their shit out without me.”

“Good girl,” said the Princess, not bothering to conceal her relief. Then she frowned. “What he was saying when I got here, now, that didn’t sound like the answer to a ‘no.’”

“I guess not.” Velveteen looked down at the silken blanket covering her legs. She began folding the edge between her fingers, swallowing hard. Finally, in a studiously casual tone, she asked, “Do you think he’s still in love with me?”

“Sweetheart, that boy is going to die still in love with you.”

Velveteen looked up, eyes wide. The Princess smiled, wry and wan and apologetic all at once.

“Sorry,” she said. “I wish I could lie to you, say it isn’t so, but I can’t tell lies where love’s concerned. He’s never been anything but in love with you. It’s a little sad, really. He couldn’t love you enough to tell his masters no, but he’s happy to love you so much he can’t leave you alone.”

“I think...” Velveteen took a deep breath. “I think he loved me so much that he told them ‘yes.’ When they asked him to do things he didn’t want to do, and told him that if he did them, they wouldn’t come after me. They lied. He didn’t know that. There are plenty of cases of the company going after people harder and faster than they did me, and the difference is that I had Aaron. Being the good boy. Being the hostage I didn’t even know about.”

“That doesn’t mean you owe him anything,” said the Princess. “He didn’t ask you if you wanted to be saved. You didn’t say ‘stay there and make us both miserable instead of telling me what’s going on and giving me a chance to save you back.’ You owe nothing for things that are done without your permission or consent.”

“I hated him for so long,” said Vel, looking down again. “I couldn’t understand how he could throw me away like that.”

“And now you’re questioning everything, and I’m here to tell you that it doesn’t matter, because this is not your fault. How dare he put this on you. He had no right.”

“Cara? Why haven’t I tried to wake Tag up yet?”

The Princess was silent.

“Because if...if it were true love, if you were sure I could wake him, I would have expected you to bring it up as a part of my healing process. To say ‘hey, you know what would make the fairy tale logic of this place put you back together even faster? If you woke someone up with true love’s kiss.’ It makes sense. Only you haven’t said that. You haven’t mentioned him at all. He’s still there, isn’t he? In the glass coffin, waiting for me?”

Still, the Princess was silent. Velveteen nodded, mostly to herself.

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “You haven’t been mentioning him because you’re not sure I can wake him up. Because you think there’s a chance, maybe, that I’m still in love with Aaron.”

“Honey--”

“I guess I should be mad, because why put him to sleep if there’s no chance I’ll wake him up, but I can’t be. He’d be dead if not for you. He is dead. Until someone wakes him up.” Vel raised her head, tears shining in her eyes. “Do you think it’s going to be me?”

The Princess took a deep, unsteady breath. “I don’t know,” she said. “Honey, I’m sorry, but I don’t. Anyone with eyes knows you’ve been carrying a torch for Aaron for so long that we’re all sort of afraid you’re going to burn the house down. You seemed genuinely happy with Tad. It seemed like you were maybe healing a little bit. I think that you would have loved him enough to wake him up, if you’d had the time. Did you have the time? I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”

“He wouldn’t have been there to get hurt if he hadn’t been with me,” said Vel. “He was fighting with me. Because that’s what you do when you’re a superhuman and you love someone else who’s...who’s like you. You fight by their side. You make the world a safer place, together. That was all I ever wanted, was someone who would fight by my side. And Tag did, and he died because of me, and if I can’t bring him back because I’m still all fucked-up over Aaron, that’s just...that’s just unfair.”

“You call Tad ‘Tag,’ but you call Aaron by his name,” observed the Princess. “Why is that?”

Velveteen was silent for several seconds before she said, in a small voice, “I still believe Tag is a hero. I don’t know whether I believe that Aaron is one.”

“Oh, honey,” said the Princess, and went to her friend, and held her close while she cried.

It felt like there was nothing else to do.

*

It was almost six o’clock the next afternoon when Action Dude rang the bell at the door Uncertainty had indicated would lead to either the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle or a hipster speakeasy specializing in artisanal preserves. He was in street clothes, and supposed he should probably be thinking of himself as “Aaron,” but Vel made it hard. She almost never seemed to go back to her civilian identity anymore.

(That worried him, a little. A good balance between super identity and secret identity was vital to a healthy mind and attitude. Or at least that was what the therapists supplied by The Super Patriots, Inc. had always said, and he might have doubted it, too, if his older sister hadn’t decided to become a psychiatrist after watching what he went through. Sho agreed that the balance was essential. She also agreed that he needed to eat more and would it really kill him to call their mother once in a while? Sho was great. So yeah, he was worried about Vel. It just didn’t seem like it was his place to say anything about it. Didn’t she have people she trusted, at least more than she trusted him, who would notice if something was wrong?)

There was no answer to his ring. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, waiting for one of the Princess’s endless supply of overdressed woodland creatures to open the door and tell him that he wasn’t welcome, or for some skinny twenty-something in an “ironic” T-shirt blazoned with one of those same woodland creatures to open the door and try to sell him authentic vintage heirloom tomato parsnip jelly. Basically the same thing, right? Except that the Princess was more likely to offer jelly in the form of jam tarts, and she was less likely to share them with him.

He was considering the merits of knocking again when the door finally opened to reveal a statuesque blonde woman in jeans and a tight T-shirt that read NOT YOUR HAPPY ENDING in elaborate red and gold letters. She looked like a love letter to fan art, and he thought, privately, that most of her fans would have died of either shock or joy to see her like that.

There was something a little blurry about her features, like her makeup was made of funhouse mirrors. If any of her fans saw her tonight, they wouldn’t recognize her. “Walk with me, Aaron?” she asked, and it wasn’t really a question. It never was, with her.

“Um,” he said. “Sure.” Then: “How do you feel about parsnip jelly?”

The hipster speakeasy turned out to be three blocks over and one block down, sandwiched between a store that only sold mayonnaise and another that only sold small blind boxed toys imported from Japan. Aaron wasn’t sure any of these establishments had a very long life ahead of them. There was specializing to stand out from the crowd, and then there was...this.

But maybe that was easy for him to say. His power set was one of the most common and most all-around useful in the superhuman toolbox, after all. There had never been a question about his marketability. Only about his loyalty.

The Princess settled across from him, dropping a metal stand with the number “5” clipped to it on the center of the table. “There’s a good chance she’s still in love with you, and I want to know what you’re planning to do about it,” she said, without preamble.

“Um,” said Aaron. “Be...very, very happy, and very, very careful?”

“You bet your ass you’re going to be careful,” grumbled the Princess. “You don’t deserve her. She’s too good for you by half.”

“I’m not going to argue with that.”

“Good, because you’d lose.” The Princess folded her arms and slouched in her seat in a distinctly un-princess-like fashion. “I got us scones and jam. They do an assortment. It seemed efficient.”

“Um,” said Aaron. “Thank you?”

“You going to answer everything I say with a question, or what? Because if you are, this is going to be a long damn conversation.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” said Aaron. “We’ve never been friends, and that’s never been a bad thing, because Vel needed people in her life who weren’t also a part of my life. She needed people she could trust. You’ve been amazing for her. But it means I don’t know how to talk to you. I don’t know how to make you understand that I’m not trying to be the bad guy here.”

“It’s a funny thing, being the bad guy,” said the Princess. “Just about nobody does it on purpose. They do it slowly, and accidentally, and with all the best of intentions. You love her?”

“I’ve never loved anyone else.”

“You’re sure pushing your way back into her life when she’s scared and confused and trying to figure out how all this fits together is the best plan?” The Princess paused as a large, overly ornate tray of scones, cream, and tiny jam pots was delivered to the table. Meeting Aaron’s eyes, she said, “Braver thing to do might be leaving her alone.”

“Because look how well that worked out for the both of us last time.” Aaron didn’t look away. “I’m not going to force her to do anything she doesn’t want to do. I doubt I could if I was planning to try. But I’m not giving her up again unless she’s the one who tells me to go. And if you have a problem with that, ma’am, you can stick it sideways up your own ass.”

The Princess blinked before giving a small, startled laugh. “Where was this Aaron before everything went wrong?”

“The usual,” he said. “Late-night talk shows and corporate brainwashing sessions.”

“I suppose that’s true.” The Princess picked up a scone, loading it carefully with jam and cream before she said, “The rabbits will let you in if you want to go and see her. There’s a to-go bag for the two of you at the counter.”

Aaron was gone almost before she was finished speaking. He did not, she noted with frustrated amusement, say goodbye.

“All right, you two,” she murmured to her scone. “Figure it the fuck out. There’s a lot of hearts at stake here.”

Her thoughts were full of glass coffins and poisoned apples, and the scone tasted like ashes in her mouth.

Velveteen vs. Recovery.

2017-01-28T00:46:16Z

Title: Velveteen vs. Recovery.
Summary: What happens to a child superhero who finds that after everything she has done, everything she has endured...life goes on?

***

As a rule, life at the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle followed a fairly strict set of guidelines. “Magical, predictable, marketable,” was the household motto, frequently proclaimed by any one of a number of rabbits wearing waistcoats. They were, in their own lapine way, the best possible demonstration of how a thing could be both magical and predictable. Sorcery was not a barrier to boredom. Nor should it have been. Magic without predictability was better known as “chaos,” and that was not the way to make the parades run on time.

Predictably, a five minutes past noon, a scream rang out across the sculpture garden. It was followed by the sound of a voice swearing, loudly and creatively. The Princess looked at the decorative hourglass in the center of the table, sighed, and put her teacup down.

“Sometimes I think that girl doesn’t actually want to get any better,” she said, pushing back her chair as she stood. She cut a striking figure, as was only right for the pinnacle of all princesses in the heart of her power. Here, her innate magic combined with the unconscious desires of a million children, making her peerless, perfect, and virtually incapable of getting jam on her sleeves. Her golden hair was gathered into a crown of ringlet curls. Her gown was a confection of silver satin and silk that had somehow been dyed the rippling rainbow color of mother-of-pearl. She was, in short, perfect, assuming one was willing to discount the scowl on her face.

On the other side of the table, Jacqueline Claus--“Jack” to her friends, and “Jackie” in her dreams, when she found herself shoved into another life, wearing another skin, one which fit her substantially better--regretfully put down the sugar cookie she had been preparing to dunk in her cocoa. “At least she’s feeling better enough to yell?”

“Honey, that girl’s been feeling well enough to shout at people since before she regained consciousness.” The Princess began the long walk down the garden path toward the stained glass doors that led to the rest of the Castle. Every path here was a long one, to allow for stately sweeping-down, as well as accommodating the sometimes ridiculous trains on her really fancy gowns. Just one more perk of living in an impossible fairy tale castle. “Now if she’d just start feeling well enough to listen to her damn doctor, we’d be in business.”

“Technically, the Night Shift isn’t her doctor.” Jack had to virtually jog to keep up with the taller woman. It probably looked pretty silly, but the birds and woodland creatures who had been serving them tea didn’t say anything. “She’s--I mean, they’re--her nurse. Es. Nurses. What is the pronoun for one person who is a female person but sometimes is a whole bunch of people at the same time?”

“Confusing.” The Princess raised her hands and shoved against the doors, which flew open with a satisfying “slam.” That, too, was a part of the castle’s magic. It fitted its responses to its owner’s mood.

The recovery room was the sort of vast, airy space that would have been used as a ballroom in a smaller, more logical residence: it was the only ordinary use that could justify a ceiling that high and walls made entirely of colored glass panes. Here, it was one of the less impressive rooms. Why, that vaulted ceiling wasn’t large enough for a Pegasus race, and they would have been hard-pressed to fit more than half a herd of unicorns inside!

Jack had grown up at the North Pole, surrounded by the infinite vastness of the living Winter, and sometimes she felt like the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle was a little bit over the top.

Maybe more than a little bit.

In the middle of the room, three identical women in white nurse uniforms straight a World War II documentary were frantically playing what looked like a game of keep-away with a woman in a burgundy ball gown. Their prize, and her objective, was a simple brown domino mask. As Jack and the Princess watched, the woman in the ball gown lunged for the nearest nurse. The nurse flung the mask into the air, where it was snatched by a newly-appeared fourth woman in uniform.

“No fair!” howled Velveteen, trying to push herself off the floor. The nurse she had been sprawled atop disappeared, and the other two originals sat on her, pinning her down. She shouted in wordless fury and frustration, unable to break free.

“And that, my dearest, is why we will not help you defeat your keepers,” said the Princess, gliding across the floor toward the ruckus. “If you can’t even beat the lady who brings your morning Jell-O, how are you supposed to stand up to a mugger? Or a supervillain? Or, Grimm forbid, the press?” She shuddered delicately.

Velma, who had never met a delicate gesture she didn’t want to punch, scowled at her. “Did you tell her to start sitting on me?” she demanded. “Is that why my nurse is getting so aggressive?”

“I’m getting this aggressive because I suit the treatment to the patient,” said the Night Shift primly. Two more of her appeared. After helping herself up, she informed the Princess, “I’m taking my lunch breaks,” and stalked out of the room.

Velma rolled onto her back. “Ow,” she said.

“Well, honey, I’m not going to argue with that,” said the Princess.

*

Superhumans are injured at a rate which is substantially higher than that of the general public. Even those who do not actively pursue a career in either heroism or villainy are likely to be drawn into the epic battles which their more civic-minded fellows provoke. Action hero or actuary, if you can throw a car, you’re likely to be called upon to save the city. As many superhumans are unable to file insurance claims or visit municipal hospitals without compromising their secret identities, the question of recovery looms large over the community.

While the occasional hospital devoted to superhuman services has cropped up, they have all been forced to operate under conditions of utmost secrecy--not, as some assume, due to threat of personal rivalry following a hero to chemotherapy or a villain to their prenatal checkups, but due to the increasingly invasive and restrictive legislation pushed through by The Super Patriots, Inc., who did not want anyone associated in any way with their organization seeking medical care outside their own R&D Division. These laws have historically kept the hospitals from either assisting the community they wished to serve or meeting their own funding need, and most have closed their doors in under a year. Some hope that the collapse of The Super Patriots, Inc. as the dominant figure in superhuman legislation will make it easier for these facilities to establish and maintain themselves.

Others take grim joy in pointing out that as long as the superhuman community loses a certain number of its members to ailments which have nothing to do with their work--as long as they’re dying of cancer, burst appendixes, and blood poisoning--there will never be any risk of their numbers growing beyond a certain point. Fear, in other words, will continue to take their medical options away.

When a superhuman is injured in the line of duty, the only options available are positively Victorian in nature: bedrest, the aid of friends and trustworthy specialists, time, and hope. Hope for healing; hope for a good outcome; hope that their friends will not fire of them before their recovery is complete.

With hope playing such a large role in the process, is it any real wonder that hopelessness is the most common of complications?

*

“Sweetie, I don’t know if you know this, what with you having been basically broke for your entire adult life--and that’s a choice you’re allowed to make, you being a grown woman and all, but maybe if you’d called on your friends a little sooner things wouldn’t have gotten so bad--but nurses cost money.” The Princess folded her arms and glowered down at Velveteen, who was showing no inclination to get off the floor.

(Honestly, Jack wasn’t sure Velveteen could get off the floor. It had only been a week since the other hero’s return from the Seasonal Lands, and while she was recovering quickly, she wasn’t recovering that quickly. Velveteen had been malnourished, dehydrated, and run down in every way it was possible for a body to be without actually dying. She was over the dehydration, and the petting zoo that staffed the kitchen was working on the malnutrition, but still. She needed about a month in bed, eating bonbons and thinking soothing thoughts, before she tried to wrestle anyone, much less another hero.)

“I’ll pay you back,” said Velveteen.

“No, you won’t,” said the Princess, not unkindly. “Even if I wanted you to, which I don’t, you couldn’t possibly afford it. The Night Shift’s hourly rate is more than admission to our flagship theme park. For a family of four.”

Velveteen blanched. The Princess had always been a truly independent heroine, in large part due to the global entertainment concern that paid for her services and kept her hero’s license up to date. Between that and the fact that her housing, wardrobe, and meals were all provided by her powers, it was no surprise that the Princess was able to save the majority of what she made. According to Masks magazine, she was one of the five wealthiest superhumans in the world, and the only one in the top ten whose powers did not relate directly to the creation or accumulation of wealth.

“Now that we’ve settled that, what were you thinking? The Princess bent to offer Velveteen her hand. “You could have been hurt.”

“I’ve been hurt before,” said Velveteen, allowing herself to be pulled to her feet. “I need to be working out if I’m going to get my strength back. I need to go on patrol.”

“We’ve been over this. Beating the living snot out of muggers isn’t physical therapy, no matter how therapeutic it is.”

Velveteen shrugged. “It’s how I’ve stayed in shape for all these years.”

“The thing is, though, you usually let the teddy bears do most of the fighting for you,” said Jack carefully. She still wasn’t sure how to talk to Velveteen. All her memories of the woman were second-hand, colored by the fact that she had been someone else when they had been formed.

It was too bad no one else could remember that part. Velveteen shot her a wounded look. “You’re supposed to be on my side,” she complained.

“I think I’m mostly on the side of whatever doesn’t end with you getting stabbed and bleeding to death in an alley,” said Jack. “I thought you liked not having to go out and fight for truth and justice just to keep the lights on. Lena and Torrey are paying all the bills, and Governor Morgan is still maintaining your position as official state superhero. You can rest. You can get better.”

“I can go out of my mind from boredom,” said Velveteen, folding her arms and looking away.

Jack frowned. “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling us.”

“Ask Aurora,” suggested Velveteen, in a dull voice.

Jack recoiled from the other woman like she had suddenly transformed into a raging fire. Hurt and shame filled her eyes as she clapped her hand over her mouth. Then she turned on her heel, sending her skirts kicking out around her in a froth of velvet and unnecessary lace, and ran out of the room.

“Vel.” The Princess shook her head. “That wasn’t very kind of you. She saved your life, remember?”

“My life wouldn’t have needed saving if she hadn’t lied to me about what was going to happen when I went to Winter,” snapped Velveteen. She stopped before she could say anything else, running her hands through her hair and taking a deep breath. Once she was sure she wasn’t going to yell, she continued carefully, “I love Jack, I do. She’s one of my best friends, and I know how much I owe her for saving me. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be angry with her at the same time, for putting me in that position.”

“And Jory? You going to be mad at her too?”

Velveteen was silent.

Jennifer Morgan--Jory--was a superheroine, an elementalist whose power focused on the manipulation of earth and base minerals. She was reasonably powerful, extremely well-trained, and up until Velveteen had decided to get involved, she had been dead in this reality, the victim of a supervillain who should never have gotten close enough to kill her. Her sister, Celia Morgan, was the current Governor of Oregon. Celia had grown up bitter over the death of her sister, and determined to get her revenge on The Super Patriots, Inc., who should have been able to keep Jory safe.

Death became something of a revolving door once powers beyond the mortal ken got involved, and Velveteen had ransomed another version of Jory from the universe, via the North Pole’s Hall of Mirrors which connected every known reality, in exchange for promising to do her service to the Seasons. Now that service was done, and Jory was free to spend the rest of her natural lifetime with the little sister who, in her original reality, had been the one to die.

Getting Jory and Celia another chance to be together had been a truly selfless thing, and it really wasn’t fair that the universe was punishing Velveteen for it. But then, when had the universe ever been fair?

Velveteen looked so genuinely despondent that the Princess sighed. “Do you honestly feel like you’re ready to get back out there? You only get one chance at a long convalescence. As soon as you’re sighted in the real world, where my lawyers can’t protect you, the press is going to come looking for blood. What you did...”

“What I did should have been done a long damn time before I came along.” There was no room for argument in Velveteen’s voice.

Not for the first time, the Princess silently cursed whoever had decided that Jack couldn’t talk about what had happened to Vel while she was traveling in the Seasonal Lands. She had left them sad and bruised and needing time to heal. She had come back so close to broken as made no difference. The slightest strike from the wrong angle, and she was going to shatter.

That didn’t mean they could coddle her forever. It was clear that Velveteen’s patience was drawing to a close, and if the Princess didn’t want to wake one morning and find her gone, some compromises needed to be made. “If,” she began, holding up a finger for emphasis, “I let you go out on patrol, you’re going to have to make me a few promises.”

Velveteen’s eyes lit up. “Anything.”

“You may regret that in a moment. First, you’re not going solo. I will call a bruiser to go out with you.”

“You could go with me.”

“No, I couldn’t. Until you’re done hidin’ from the press, I can’t be seen with you in public, and you know it. I love you like my own sister, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to piss off my corporate overlords. Especially not now.” There were rumbles of legislation on the horizon, of politicians who wanted to make absolutely sure that there could never be a repeat of the Supermodel incident. It was all greedy bastards looking to control the one thing they’d never been able to get a grip on before, but they had money and they had fear, and those two things sometimes went together distressingly well.

“All right,” said Velveteen. “You pick the team-up. What else?”

“You agree to have a sit-down with a public relations expert, again of my choosing, to start figuring out how you’re going to explain your absence, and how you’re going to navigate what’s ahead of you.” The Princess shook her head, expression grim. “I am not going to rush your recovery, but as soon as you’re well enough to face the press, you’re going to have to. It’s not optional anymore.”

“Deal.”

“I’d try to get you to agree to an image consultation too--that headband of yours is so last decade--but I don’t want to push my luck.” The Princess unfolded her arms. “When did you want to go out?”

“Tonight?” Velveteen put on her best hopeful expression. It twinkled. The effect was unnerving. “I’m sure there’s evil somewhere that needs to be defeated. Small evil. Misdemeanors and muggers, not like, world-shattering supervillainy.”

The Princess sighed. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“I don’t know, but aren’t you glad you did?”

“I am, honey.” The Princess smiled. “You know I am. Now go tell the rabbits that you’re going to need a costume for tonight.”

“Thank you, Cara, I won’t forget this,” burbled Velveteen. She dove in, hugged the other woman, and then darted off to find a rabbit, leaving the Princess sighing and alone.

“You ain’t going to like it much, either,” she said, and turned. She needed to make a couple of mirror calls.

*

There were many advantages to life in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle. One of the larger, and less well-known, was the fact that as a fairy tale construct, it existed in its own time zone, connected to the “real world” via a network of magic mirrors. While the Princess largely stayed on Pacific Time out of deference to the entertainment company which supported her career and autonomy, she could travel virtually anywhere in the world in the blinking of an eye.

“So who’s coming to play babysitter?” asked Velveteen, tugging one of her burgundy gloves up over her elbow. It was an unnecessary adjustment: the rabbits that had styled her had done an impeccable job, as always, and not a hair--or hare--was out of place. Her costume was its usual simple self, burgundy and brown, cut to preserve her sense of modesty and topped with a domino mask and a bunny-eared headband. Various soft toys and dolls were clipped to her belt, culled from the quality control rejects generated by the Princess’s parent corporation. In Velveteen’s hands, they were as good as an army.

(The Princess wished she could find a way to film this night’s patrol. Despite several offers, Velveteen had never allowed a single entity to fund her army of toy soldiers and stuffed bears, preferring to take volunteers from thrift stores and garage sales, toys that had been around the block and didn’t mind the chance of being broken beyond repair. Tonight’s army of princesses and cartoon mascots was going to be unprecedented, and it would have been nice to be able to watch it over and over again.)

“A friend,” said the Princess carefully.

“Way to narrow it down,” said Velveteen. She gave her glove another tug, seemingly unaware of how incredible that statement had been. The Princess wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her until she snapped out of it.

It hadn’t been that long since Velveteen had been totally alone in the world, cut off from the rest of the superhuman community by her own choice and her feelings of betrayal over Action Dude’s supposed relationship with Sparkle Bright. She’d been a child hero, and then she’d been a dropout, and then she’d been a supervillain, at least in the carefully curated media spin provided by The Super Patriots, Inc. The Princess was pretty damn sure that if she were to snag a chronopath and ask them to run her back in time a year or so, she’d find a version of Vel who wouldn’t be able to name a single person she called “friend,” much less refer to them so casually.

You don’t even know how far you’ve come, thought the Princess, and the thought cheered and saddened her in equal measure. Miracles were meant to be appreciated. When they weren’t, sometimes the universe saw fit to take them back. Aloud, she said, “If I told you, that would spoil the surprise.”

“I know it’s not you, and I know it’s not Jack. Did you get Yelena to come?” Velveteen cast her a quick, hopeful look. “I know she and Torrey have been busy keeping Portland under control, but it’s Portland. It’s not like they’re trying to protect Manhattan without backup.”

“She wishes she could, sugar, but the two of you together, there’s no way you’d be able to avoid the media. She’s literally a neon sign saying ‘look over here.’”

“Not always.”

“Doesn’t matter. She’s not coming.” The delicate sound of crystal wind chimes filled the air. The Princess relaxed. “Oh, good. Your escort is here.”

Velveteen turned with her, all but bouncing on the balls of her feet with her eagerness to get out there and punch something. The Princess watched her out of the corner of her eye. She saw the moment the other woman’s face fell.

“Oh,” said Velveteen. “It’s you.”

Action Dude, dressed in a slate gray and black version of his customary blue and orange costume, smiled wryly as he shrugged. “Always am,” he said. “I’ve asked about changing it a few times, but it turns out all I can really change is my code name. Not even entirely that. People were calling Dead Ringer Liberty Belle right up until she died. They still do it. Like what she wanted to be called and who she wanted to be doesn’t matter.”

The Princess snorted. “People always feel like they know who you are better than you know yourself. It’s not fair, but there it is.”

“We’re getting away from the point, which is why is he here?” Velveteen pointed at Action Dude to prevent any possible confusion. “I’m not going on patrol with him.”

“Well, then, you’re not going on patrol,” said the Princess. Before Velveteen could protest, she said, “Once you take your usual team off the table, there’s no one out there who cares more about your well-being than this asshole. He’ll make sure you get out of there alive.”

“I’m going to look for muggers, not supervillains,” protested Velveteen.

“Oh, yeah, because supervillainy never takes anybody by surprise.” The Princess looked at her flatly. “Accept the escort or don’t go. Those are the terms that you agreed to, and I’m going to hold you to them.”

“This was a low-down dirty trick and I hate you,” said Velveteen.

“I can live with that,” said the Princess. Her smile was as radiant as the fireworks above the castle battlements. “You kids have fun now, and don’t stay out too late. You know how I worry.”

*

Kansas City had been chosen as a good place for Velveteen’s first post-return patrol. It was big enough to have a decent amount of crime, while small enough not to have a resident supervillain with technopathic inclinations. Having the local Legion of Naughtiness show up before Vel could punch any local muggers in the face would have made the entire exercise pointless.

“The door will stay here until you come back,” said the Princess, opening what should have been the library door to reveal a narrow alleyway. “If you pass an all-night barbeque place, bring me some. I could really do with some decent barbeque about now.”

“On it,” said Velveteen, and dove through the open door into the alley. Action Dude moved to follow.

The Princess’s hand on the collar of his cape stopped him cold. He turned to find her beautiful, unforgiving face only inches from his own. Suddenly nervous, he forced a smile.

“Yes?” he asked.

“If you hurt her, if you allow her to come to harm, I don’t care how important you are to rebuilding your little clubhouse, I will break you in ways you have never considered being broken.” The Princess’s tone remained perfectly pleasant in every way. “I will shatter you and leave you behind without a second thought, and the only people who’ll mourn you will be the ones who didn’t know you as well as I did. Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“Good.” She let go. “Run along now. She’s not likely to stay out of trouble while she waits for you.”

He ran along. Admirably fast, too: the Princess wasn’t sure she’d ever seen someone run along that quickly when not running for their lives. Then again, maybe she still hadn’t.

Chuckling to herself, she closed the door and wandered toward the kitchen. After all that, she’d more than earned a little pie.

Half a continent and a time zone away, Action Dude jogged to catch up with Velveteen, who was making for the end of the alley like she was afraid her shore leave was going to be canceled at any moment. She barely spared him a glance as he stepped up beside her; the bulk of her attention was reserved for the empty street.

Nothing moved. Not even a raccoon. Privately, Action Dude thought that might be for the best: he couldn’t imagine a situation in which a raccoon would have committed crimes great enough to deserve the full force of Velveteen’s pent-up wrath. “Do you want to hit the rooftops?” he asked. “You can get a better view.”

“No fire escapes, and I’m really not feeling up to scaling a building,” she said.

Action Dude lifted an eyebrow in answer before allowing his feet to lose contact with the ground. Drifting, he waited.

It wasn’t a long wait. It never was. Velveteen turned to look at him, already scowling. “Show-off,” she snapped. “I don’t need anyone to carry me. I’m not a trainee anymore.”

“I never said you were,” he said. “But when one half of a team-up can fly and the other can’t, it only makes sense to take advantage. Don’t think of it as me carrying you. Think of it as you riding me.”

As soon as her cheeks flushed red, he knew he’d said the wrong thing. It was too late to take it back, and too late to avoid the finger she jabbed at his chest. “I’m not still mooning over you, got it? I got past that a long time ago. So if you’re here because you think we can start up where we left off--where you dumped me off--then you’re out of your fucking mind. Got it?”

“Got it,” said Action Dude wearily. “Honestly, I got it a long time ago. I fucked up. If I could go back and do it all differently, I...well, honestly, I don’t know if I would, because maybe if we’d stayed together Supermodel would still be alive and screwing with everyone’s heads, and Sparks would still be pretending to be happy when she was completely miserable, and I don’t know if I could live with myself knowing I’d been that selfish. But I’m also pretty glad I’m never going to have the chance to find out. So please, can you give me the benefit of the doubt for one minute, and just let me boost you onto the rooftop?”

“I...” Velveteen stopped, looking at him carefully. Then, finally, she said, “Sure. We’ll have a better view from up there anyway.”

His smile was a fleeting thing, there and gone almost before it could fully register. He opened his arms. Velveteen turned her back on him and, with the ease of long practice and training, fell into them, positioning herself so as to be easy to hoist and even easier to drop. (When doing teammate transport, the onus was generally on the one being transported to protect the flier, rather than the other way around.)

Effortlessly, Action Dude launched himself into the sky, shooting upward at a speed that defied several laws of physics. Velveteen was heavier than she’d been the last time he’d carried her this way, but he was stronger, and it balanced out: it all balanced out, oh, this was where his equilibrium was, where it had been waiting for him for years on years. This was where he had always been meant to be.

By the time they reached the rooftop and he set her gently down, Action Dude was grimly certain of two things. First, that he had made a mistake by agreeing to be the Princess’s representative on this little adventure, and second...

Second, that he was a hypocrite of the worst kind, because if some cosmic force had appeared to him in that moment and offered him the chance to take it all back, he would have done it without hesitation or regret. He would have traded a world that wasn’t better yet, necessarily, but was getting there for a world where he had been smart enough to hold on tight and never let go.

He was so screwed.

Velveteen spared him a quick smile, just a few shades warmer than professional, before creeping to the roof’s edge and peering over. Her form was perfect. Her form had always been perfect. Out of their training class, she had been the only one who couldn’t handle a bullet without serious repercussions, and so she had been the one to work hardest at never getting shot.

After a moment’s silent surveillance she stepped back from the edge, straightened, and started for the corner, moving at a dead run. Action Dude realized what she was going to do a bare second before she did it. He zipped after her, grabbing her outstretched hands while she was at the peak of her jump and using himself as a sort of human trapeze bar, launching her onto the next roof. She rolled easily through it, getting back to her feet and resuming her run.

They fell into an easy rhythm, familiar and novel at the same time. How often had they used this pattern to canvas, him in the air but flying low, her moving under her own power as much as possible to increase their combined flexibility? How many nights, how many evenings, how many patrols?

Not enough. It could have been a lifetime--should have been a lifetime, the two of them against the world--and it would never, ever have been enough.

On the fifth roof, Velveteen stopped, creeping to the edge again before she gave a little hop of delight and signaled for him to come closer. She held up three fingers, then pointed. Action Dude followed the angle of the gesture. Three men lurked in the alley across the street, their attention fixed on a woman who was walking briskly toward them, rummaging in her purse the whole time. She was paying no attention to her surroundings, so close to her car that she probably thought she was home free.

Action Dude nodded. It was possible the men weren’t planning to do anything wrong. They weren’t wearing masks or carrying visible weapons. Superhero insurance covered a lot of things. Property damage, injuries sustained by individuals who had been actively committing a crime when apprehended, even injuries sustained by the people they had been trying to save. It did not cover injuries sustained by individuals who just really enjoyed lurking in alleys.

(Every so often someone who had taken the works of Phillip K. Dick a little too far to heart would start babbling about “pre-crime” and the duty of the superhuman to protect mankind from itself. The hero and villain communities were united in thinking that this sort of thought-policing was a step too far for either good or evil, and had dutifully ignored--and occasionally poisoned; half of them were villains, after all--anyone who suggested it.)

The woman reached the mouth of the alley. One of the men reached out and grabbed her. She screamed, high and shrill and terrified.

Action Dude looked at the smile on Velveteen’s face and thought the muggers were about to learn a very important lesson about true fear.

*

Because it was Velveteen’s show, Action Dude had been more than happy to hang back in his charcoal-colored stealth suit and watch as she and her army of highly motivated toys descended on the poor, unsuspecting muggers like the wrath of a highly ironic god. She couldn’t fly, but she had mastered the art of using small flying helicopters, their vacant cartoon faces distorted into grimaces of malicious glee, to slow her fall.

It might have been better if the muggers had never seen what hit them. As it was, Action Dude was pretty sure that their prison terms were going to be followed by a lengthy time under the care of a psychiatrist. The one on the left, for example, was probably never going to see a fashion doll without screaming again. Those tiny stiletto heels were sharp. Anyone who thought toys had to be chrome and shaped like weapons to do damage had clearly never been besieged by an entire herd of angry plastic horses.

When the dust had settled and the screaming had stopped, Velveteen picked up the woman’s purse from the sidewalk, offered it back to her, and said, “Here. This is yours.”

The woman took it cautiously, watching the various plush toys for signs that they were about to attack. “Um,” she said. “Thank you?”

“It was my pleasure,” said Velveteen. She hesitated. “Look, I don’t mean to be a rescue-and-request girl, but I’m sort of not licensed for Kansas City. Can you do me a huge favor and not, you know, mention exactly who saved you?”

The woman’s eyes widened. “You’re Velveteen,” she said. “I thought you might be, but then I though no, no way. No one’s seen you in weeks.”

“I got hurt,” said Velveteen. It wasn’t quite a lie: the hollows of her cheeks and the bruises under her eyes made it endlessly believable. “I’m supposed to be resting, but I was getting cabin fever pretty bad, so they let me out for a little bit. Please, can you keep this secret? For me?”

“Absolutely,” said the woman. Before Velveteen could react, she grabbed her and pulled her into a tight hug. “Thank you,” said the woman again, voice slightly muffled by the tangle of Velveteen’s hair. “What you did...my nephew is an elementalist. He’s going to get training and stay with our family, and it’s because you made them change their rules. We owe you so much. Of course I’ll keep your secret.”

“Thank you,” whispered Velveteen, and pulled away.

The woman stood there watching silently as Velveteen walked across the street and vanished into the shadows. If she saw the flicker of motion from the nearby rooftop, she didn’t say anything. She just waited until she was sure Velveteen was gone before turning and heading, finally, to her car.

*

They stepped through the mirror together, Velveteen laughing a little as she leaned on Action Dude’s arm, her face flushed with exertion and her army of toys sticking to her heels. Not for the first time, Action Dude wondered how she could ever fit them all on her belt; there had to be a small amount of matter manipulation built into her power set, tucked off to one side, where almost no one noticed it.

The Princess, who had been curled in an overstuffed chair reading through a stack of romance novels, looked up at the sound of their footsteps and smiled, rising gracefully as she set her book aside. “Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she said. “How was your night of freedom, sweetheart?”

“Amazing,” said Velveteen. If the hand she had braced on Action Dude’s arm shook slightly, he was too polite to mention it. “Thank you both so much.”

“Just keep getting better,” said the Princess. The Night Shift--one iteration of her, anyway--stepped out of the hallway, and Velveteen found herself summarily bundled away, back to bed, back to her recovery.

The Princess turned to Action Dude. “Thank you for keeping an eye on her tonight. Everything go all right?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Action Dude, thinking of a smile bright enough to light the sky, of laughter ringing out over the unforgettable sounds of plastic hitting flesh. “Everything was great.”

“Good,” said the Princess. “Now get out.” She turned on her heel and walked away, leaving Action Dude behind. He waited until he was sure he was alone before he groaned and put his hands over his face.

“Fuck,” he said. “I am so screwed.”

Nothing in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle saw fit to argue.

Velveteen Presents Jacqueline Claus vs. The Lost and the Found.

2017-01-17T17:01:31Z

Title: Velveteen Presents Jacqueline Claus vs. The Lost and the Found.
Summary: And now for something completely different! Santa’s daughter must find her place in the world...whether she wants to or not. This is the end of volume three, and brings us to the next stage of Velveteen's adventures.

***

Jacqueline Claus, adopted daughter of Santa Claus, one day to inherit his place as toymaker and guardian of the dreams of children--no pressure--started her day the way she started every day: by opening her eyes on a ceiling spangled with crystal snowflakes, each one perfect, each one unique. She remembered receiving them, one by one, tucked into Christmas stockings and birthday presents. She remembered Papa laughing as she exclaimed in joy at their fractal delicacy, the mysteries of their shifting shapes. She remembered Mama smiling, warm and welcoming and happy to see her daughter so delighted.

She remembered that none of this was true. That she was a punishment for another version of herself, a selfish, blue-skinned girl named Jackie Frost who had slept in a bed of her own, in a room of her own, in a different house. Jackie had collected crystal snowflakes too, but Jackie had made them for herself, rather than waiting for someone else to make them for her. Jackie had made a lot of things for herself, including, in the end, a mess that she couldn’t clean up on her own. Now Jacqueline was here, and no one seemed to understand that she wasn’t supposed to be. That she was supposed to be someone else, someone colder and crueler and better suited for the acts of heroism that seemed to happen around her on a daily basis.

Jacqueline rolled out of bed and shivered in the early morning chill. It never got truly cold at the North Pole. In the rest of Winter, yes, but not here; Santa wanted any children who came to visit to be as comfortable as possible. Her robe was draped over the foot of the bed, snowflakes and smiling polar bears on a blue fleece background. She shrugged it on, still yawning.

“Dear, are you up?”

“Yes, Mama.” She turned expectantly toward the door.

It swung open, revealing Mrs. Claus. She was still wearing her dressing gown, a cap covering her hair. Jacqueline smiled. She liked Mama best in the mornings, when she wasn’t being Santa’s wife yet, but was just being herself, open and warm and caring.

Jack’s smile died. She still didn’t know whether Mama and Papa knew that she wasn’t supposed to be here. She hadn’t been able to come up with a way to ask that wouldn’t make them think that there was something wrong with her, or worse, that there was something wrong with them. There was nothing wrong with any of them, except in that she shouldn’t exist.

The Snow Queen knew. She knew that much for sure, because the Snow Queen wouldn’t even look at her unless she didn’t have a choice. The Snow Queen remembered the daughter she’d lost, and she would never forgive Jack for being someone other than her.

To be honest, it made Jack’s head spin. She hoped Velveteen would finish her passage through Autumn soon. Once Vel was back, they would all go to the Hall of Mirrors, and Velveteen would choose a season, and maybe Jackie would be forgiven. Maybe Aurora would set things right.

It was a little weird, hoping that she’d be written out of reality before things got even more confusing, but she had long since come to terms with the idea.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” said Mrs. Claus, with her usual broad smile. Jack felt a pang of guilt. Whether Mrs. Claus knew that she wasn’t supposed to have a daughter or not, there was no denying that she enjoyed being a mother. It wasn’t fair that Jack was going to be taken away from her.

Maybe she was an overlay for Jackie after all, and once she went back to being who she was supposed to be, she would remember being Jacqueline, and she could make sure to be kind to Mrs. Claus. Maybe.

But probably not.

“Good morning, Mama,” she said. “How did you sleep?”

“Snug in my bed,” said Mrs. Claus. Her eyes twinkled with delight at her own small joke. “I’m sorry to burst in on you like this, dear, but you have a call on the mirror. You should pick up, if you feel up to it. It’s one of your little friends from the Calendar Country, and she seems to be quite worked up.”

Excitement welled up in Jack’s chest, hot as cocoa and twice as sweet. “Which one?”

“The Princess,” said Mrs. Claus. “Just let me know if you can’t stay for breakfast.” She backed out of the room, closing the door behind herself.

Jack waited for a count of five before lunging for her desk and the hand mirror that waited there. The frame glittered with traceries of bright, gleaming frost: the North Pole equivalent of call waiting.

“Hello?” she said.

The glass fogged over, clearing to reveal the face of the Princess. Her normally perfect curls were in disarray, and her lip gloss was a shade paler than her norm, conveying her dismay. “Bless, Jack, I was starting to think you’d gone into hibernation,” she said. “I need you to get your pretty polar behind down here, pronto.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

The Princess smiled grimly. “It’s Velveteen. She’s back. And honey, she does not look good.”

*

Superhumans with powers and skills related to healing have been rumored since the dawn of human history. Most cannot be verified, but in recent years, several dozen documented heroes, villains, and private citizens with health-based powers have made their presence known.

Candystriper, whose empathic powers work best on those who are sick or injured, allowing her to brighten their spirits and speed the healing process. Even some cases believed to be terminal have turned around after a few hours in her presence. Sadly, her lack of any actual combat abilities has led to her becoming a target for desperate people looking for a magic bullet, and she has not been seen in public since the Jimmy Michaels incident of 2013.

The Surgeon, whose hands can suture any wound or perform any operation, leaving behind seamless incisions which heal cleanly and without risk of infection. The demand for his services is too great; for the last several years, he has appeared only at children’s hospitals and when offered amounts in the high seven figures. Most believe that he has no need for money, but chooses to operate in this fashion to prevent being overwhelmed.

Apothecary, who can diagnose anything, and whose remedies make no medical sense, but which always work. Leeches are frequently involved.

The Night Shift: a trained RN with a duplication power, she has been known to serve as the entire staff for a hospital, appearing during times of crisis and vanishing again when the crisis has passed. Without her, several city trauma wards would report much higher fatality rates. Unlike the Surgeon, she does not accept payment, and does not have a public contact number. Many theorize that the two are a team, traveling together, with him underwriting her work. Regardless, no one can deny the amount of good she has done.

The list goes on, and raises the question of whether the superhuman community’s best service of the human race might be in ceasing their seemingly endless battles and allowing these many healers to devote themselves and their powers to service to the world. After all, if heroes and villains were not constantly in need of repair, who’s to say what could be accomplished by the people who spend so much of their time in putting them back together?

*

Travel between the North Pole and the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Castle was easy to the point of being trivial. Sometimes Jack used the Castle as a stepping-stone to the rest of the Calendar Country rather than trying to ride a mirror straight into the “real” world. Why do that, when a split journey was so much easier on her nerves?

She emerged from a full-length mirror in the Princess’s receiving hall, dressed in a red and green ball gown that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the ski pants and sweater she had donned before leaving her room. The Princess’s transit system was good that way. If she didn’t have time to brush her hair or put on a socially acceptable amount of lip gloss, the mirrors would do it for her, dumping her in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle as pretty as a photo op.

(It would have bothered her, if not for the fact that most of the people who supplied the Princess’s power were between the ages of four and eight, and still considered magically appearing eye shadow to be the absolute height of sophistication. Really, she was just glad that all her clothes were mirror-made, and not sewn by the army of woodland creatures that supplied the Princess with her wardrobe.)

A scarlet macaw in a waistcoat flew over to land on her shoulder. “You’re wanted in the recovery room, ma’am, ma’am, ma’am,” it said, before emitting an ungodly screech. Part of a fairy story or not, birds would be birds.

“Thank you,” she said, because manners were especially important in a fairy tale, and between figures of mythic import. If the Princess was every storybook princess in the world, Jacqueline Claus was the spirit of goodness and generosity, and it wouldn’t do for her to forget her manners. “Can you take me there?”

The macaw screeched acquiescence and launched itself into the air, gliding away down the hall. Jack hiked her ball gown up enough to let her move and ran after it, trying not to focus on the way the hall around her kept getting decked for a winter holiday celebration that was never going to come. Papa was somewhat secular, having been divorced from the religious aspects of his holiday by decades of advertising and comfortable folklore. Jack was completely secular, with the entire palette of winter colors and decorations available to her. Tinsel and wreaths and silver snowflakes dripped from the walls both ahead of and behind her, shimmering into existence in answer to her presence.

They wouldn’t last long. The normal aesthetics of the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle would reassert themselves in no time, and the unseasonable holiday decorations would melt back into the walls, vanishing until the next time Jack walked by. Sometimes she wondered what the place looked like when she wasn’t around. She wasn’t sure she’d ever have the opportunity to find out.

The macaw led her to a tall door in a gilt frame. It flapped over to perch on the top of a tapestry, watching to see what she would do next.

She opened the door and let herself inside, of course. There wasn’t really anything else to do.

The recovery room was huge and airy, with walls made entirely of colored glass panels. It was like walking into a rainbow. “Polychrome would love it here,” she blurted, unthinking.

“We should call her.” The Princess looked away from the...pumpkin? Maybe. Some sort of gourd, anyway. It was huge and orange and sitting atop a mattress, attached to the bedframe by a green stalk. The Princess was standing next to it, and it was sort of sad that this was still not the strangest thing Jack had seen all day. “I was hoping to wait until the Night Shift got back to me, but I don’t think Yelena will be all that happy if she finds out we’ve got Vel and we haven’t been pickin’ up the phone.”

Jack opened her mouth. Then she stopped herself, understanding sweeping across her face, and said, “She’s in the pumpkin, isn’t she? You put her inside the pumpkin.”

“Pumpkins have a lot of strength in fairy tales. They can put broken things back together, if you know how to use them right.”

“You’re not worried about giving Halloween more of a claim over her?”

The Princess looked at her levelly. “Sweetie, am I worried about that, or are you worried about that? Think carefully on your answer now. I asked you here because I was hoping you could help, but I won’t hesitate to send you back to the North Pole if you’re here on holiday business, instead of as a friend.”

“I’m Vel’s friend before I’m anything else,” said Jack firmly, and the words were true and false at the same time. if she’d been the honest spirit of Winter, instead of the selfless one, she would have shunted herself out of existence in that moment, joining Jackie in whatever waited for Spirits of the Season who could no longer do their jobs. “I’m here for her. And I know that she doesn’t want to go to Halloween. Or she didn’t, before she did her term of service with them.”

“About that,” said the Princess. “I thought she was going to be gone for a year.”

“So did I,” said Jack. “I guess the people in charge had other ideas.”

The Princess looked at her thoughtfully, and Jack met her eyes without looking away. It was funny. People knew that her father was scrupulously honest--that he had to be, in order for the Nice List to mean anything--and so they assumed that the same was true of her. They didn’t understand that sometimes selflessness was more dishonest than selfishness. That she had to be prepared to hide hunger and thirst and desire under a veil of giving back to the world. Jackie Frost had been a natural disaster, but she’d been an honest one. Jacqueline Claus was a sweet smile and a warm hand, and she could lie through her teeth without ever letting her smile slip.

“You ever going to tell me what happened to her while she was in the Seasonal Lands, Jack?” the Princess asked, and her voice was soft, but it wasn’t gentle.

Jack shook her head. “It’s not my place,” she said. “Papa gave me my orders. I’m allowed to say that she came to Winter. That she stayed for a year. That she moved on to Spring. That’s it. Anything that she did or didn’t do while she was outside the normal flow of time is nobody’s business but hers and the Seasons that she served.”

“I don’t see how she could have served a year when she’s only been gone from here for a week. Not even a week, in fact. Six days. How does six days equal a year with you and however much time she spent with the other Seasons?”

“Time doesn’t work the same when you’re outside the calendar. I guess Papa just wanted to be sure she could come back home before people got too used to her not being there.” That felt right. It felt wrong at the same time. The Seasons wanted Velveteen to choose one of them. Why would they go out of their way to make her comfortable in the world they were trying to get her to leave behind?

Jack felt like she was missing something, and she didn’t like the feeling one little bit.

“If you say so.” The Princess touched the tough orange skin of the pumpkin with one hand. “I already called Torrey and left a message for when she gets back. She’ll pass it on to Lena, I’m sure. I couldn’t think of who else to tell. Our girl has allies, but she’s never been much of one for makin’ friends.”

“Are any of us?” Jack buried her hands in the skirt of her ball gown to keep herself from fidgeting. The fabric was soothingly slick. She twisted it between her thumb and forefinger, bending it into rosettes. “I have you, and Vel, and the penguins.” Jackie had had more. Jackie had had Tag, and everyone she’d met through ice skating and the X-Games and how had Vel even met Tag, in this world without a Jackie? Jack didn’t know. She knew so much about this life she’d been dropped into, but there were still pieces missing, and she had no idea how to patch them.

“Aw, sugar, it’s all right. You know I love you, even if you don’t have much of a social life. I just worry about our girl. She was supposed to get a break. She was supposed to go off and serve the Seasons and have some time to think about what just happened. She wasn’t supposed to get dropped right back where she started, beat all to hell and with no room for recovery. You know the wolves are gonna be at the door as soon as the news gets out.”

“Wolves?” asked Jack blankly.

“Honey, I know you’ve been off at the North Pole bein’ above all the bull we have to deal with down here on the ground, but I’ve done six interviews in the last six days. Would’ve been more if I didn’t have the company filtering the press inquiries for me. They’re fielding the subpoenas, too. There’s a lot of folks who want to know more about what happened at The Super Patriots, Inc., and Vel’s more than just a person of interest in this whole affair. Once they know she’s here, they’re going to get a lot more aggressive.”

“So we don’t tell anyone,” said Jack. “We give her time.”

A ringing like crystal chimes spread through the castle. The Princess sighed.

“I don’t think that’s our call,” she said. “Come on. Let’s go see our guests.”

*

Getting to the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle was supposedly difficult, for people who didn’t have access to magic mirrors or other forms of fairy tale travel. Sadly, the nature of the Princess’s contract with the corporation which funded her and kept her free of The Super Patriots, Inc. meant that she had to have at least one doorway connected to at least one of their properties at all times. She moved those doorways regularly, trying to preserve her privacy, but people always found them.

Sometimes the doors were found by children clutching plastic wands and wearing puffy, costume-grade ball gowns over their jeans and character shirts. They wandered into her really for real fairy tale castle with wide eyes, and could be bribed into leaving with hugs and autographs and silver apples from the bowl she kept in the foyer. Sometimes the doors were found by teens with scars on their wrists and shadows in their eyes, looking for magic in all the wrong places. Those, she walked with in the garden, and talked, and listened, until they were ready to leave her for the real world. Sometimes the doors were found by adults who needed, truly needed proof that magic was real, that their lives hadn’t been wasted on wishing. They were her petitioners, and she welcomed them all.

Mostly, though, the doors were found by assholes. Like this one. The Princess crossed her arms and frowned disapprovingly at the man who stood in front of her, shifting his weight from foot to foot, trying to look like he wasn’t uncomfortable. The Night Shift waited behind him, currently split into four identical bodies, each one holding a bag of medical supplies.

“What’n the name of the seventy-three known variations of ‘The Princess and the Pea’ are you doin’ here?” the Princess asked. “And don’t say you just dropped by to talk to me. I know that ain’t true. Wasting my time isn’t going to make me like you any more than I already don’t.”

“Is it true?” asked Action Dude. “Is Vel back already?”

The Princess unfolded her arms in order to study her nails. “Night Shift, you can come in. Just follow the bird butlers back to the recovery room, an’ you can get started. If you need anything, tell a critter. Squirrel, raccoon, it doesn’t matter. They’ll get it for you. As for you...” She focused her gaze on Action Dude. “You want to tell me how The Super Patriots already know about this, if y’all don’t have me under surveillance? Consider your answer real carefully. It’s going to have consequences.”

“The Night Shift was on a date with the American Dream when you called and said you needed her to come in,” said Action Dude. “Please don’t be mad at her. She didn’t mean to tell.”

“And I didn’t tell her it was a secret big enough to keep from a lover,” allowed the Princess. “I don’t think I want you here.”

“I know,” said Action Dude. “Can I come in?”

The Princess sighed and stepped to the side. Action Dude stepped over the threshold into the castle, offering a genial nod to Jack. “Hi,” he said. “How’s things?”

“Things are okay, I guess,” said Jack. She searched his face for some sign that he didn’t know her, that he thought she was a servant or something. She didn’t find it. Instead, she found recognition born of a shared history that had never really existed.

This world was like treacle. It was pulling her deeper with every minute that passed, and it wouldn’t be long before she was sunk so deep that she would never get out.

“Cool.” Action Dude waited for the Princess to close the door before he turned to her and said, “I am not here as a representative of The Super Patriots, Inc. I’m not here to get in the way, either. I’m here because I’m as worried about Vel as you are, and I wanted to know how she was doing. That’s it. That’s all.”

“And where was all this concern when she was running for her life and fighting for her sanity, huh?” The Princess crossed her arms again. Jack found herself profoundly glad that the Night Shift had already gone to look after Velveteen. Getting sucked into the middle of a superpowered throw-down wasn’t going to encourage better medical care.

“I fucked up, okay?” Action Dude shook his head, looking frustrated. “You really want to stand there and tell me that you’ve never made a mistake, Cara? That you’re the only person in the world who’s always been perfect? Because I don’t buy it.”

“At least when I fucked up, I didn’t break anybody’s heart but my own,” the Princess shot back. “You damn near killed her. Maybe you never raised a hand against her, but you damn near killed her all the same. You think you can just walk back in here and have me forgive you for that?”

“No,” said Action Dude.

The Princess, who had been gearing up to yell at him some more, stopped. “Well, all right then,” she finally said. “I suppose you can’t hurt anything by seeing her. But if she wakes up and doesn’t want you here, you’re gone. You got that? Gone.”

“If she doesn’t want me here, I’ll never come back,” said Action Dude.

“Good,” snapped the Princess, and swept off down the hall, moving with the sort of elegant grandeur that only came with having a ball gown and a castle to wear it in.

Action Dude and Jack followed at a more normal, less regal pace. Action Dude glanced at her several times, apparently steeling up the nerve to speak.

He’s going to do it, she thought giddily. He was just waiting for us to be alone so he wouldn’t have to worry about upsetting me. He’s going to do it.

“So, uh, how’ve you been?” Action Dude reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. “I haven’t really seen you since, you know. Everything got weird.”

“You mean since Papa had you put on the Naughty List for breaking Vel’s heart,” she said, with automatic primness. He didn’t know that she wasn’t supposed to be here. He didn’t remember Jackie. That felt weirdly like a betrayal. “I’ve been good, I guess. How’ve you been?”

“Awful,” he said. “But I guess that’s what I deserve.”

They walked on in silence for a little bit. Jack wanted to tell him that it hadn’t been his fault; that he’d been a child, listening to people he should have been able to trust, people who should have had his best interests at heart. She wanted to tell him that he’d done a lot of good and saved a lot of lives. She couldn’t. She was a good liar, but she was a good friend, too, and she remembered Velveteen’s face when she had walked away from her entire life because of him.

“Is it still ‘Jack,’ or do you prefer ‘Jacqueline’ these days?” he asked finally.

“Jack is fine,” she said.

“All the press calls you ‘Jacqueline.’”

“That’s because I’m Santa’s daughter, and they don’t want to print anything that might offend him.” But oh, how they skirted the line. If she’d had half the romantic assignations they’d penned for her, she’d be just about the most popular girl in the world. Instead, she spent her weekends home alone with the penguins and Lucy, or helping the elves build toys, or playing video games with the Princess. Normal things. Nice things.

She just wished they didn’t all feel like they’d been stolen from someone else. This life wasn’t hers. And she didn’t know how to give it back.

When they reached the recovery room, the pumpkin was gone. Instead, Velveteen was lying on the bed, sheet pulled up her collarbone, still wearing her mask. It was a small piece of professional courtesy: officially, the Night Shift didn’t know her secret identity. As for the Night Shift herself (herselves?), she was everywhere, hanging IV bags, checking vitals, feeding data into a laptop computer while also picking up printouts and mixing medications. Jack and Action Dude stopped in the doorway, taking it all in.

Velveteen, who had been healthy and strong a week before, if injured from the battle with Supermodel, was suddenly thirty pounds underweight, too pale, with circles under her eyes deep enough to have spread beyond the margins of her mask, like bruises. Her hair was brittle from malnutrition, and at least six inches longer than it had been. For all of that, she didn’t appear to have aged: not as they measured aging in the Calendar Country.

Action Dude made a small, choked sound of protest. “What did you do to her?” he asked.

“I don’t know what Spring or Autumn did,” said Jack. “I can’t tell you what Winter did. I’m not allowed, and I don’t know all of it. I wasn’t there for all of it.”

“Because you’re her friend. They knew you’d try to protect her if you saw what they were doing.”

That wasn’t true at all. Jack nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Exactly.”

The Princess walked back over to them. “The Night Shift says she’s malnourished, dehydrated, and exhausted,” she said, without preamble. “Our girl hasn’t been sleeping. For years, apparently, which isn’t possible. She hasn’t been gone that long.”

“Yes, she has,” said Jack. “We don’t do time the way you do, remember?”

“Jack...” The Princess frowned. “I love you like a sister. You know that. But if there’s anything you know that could help us help her, and you don’t tell me right now, so help me Grimm, there are going to be consequences.”

“There are always consequences, Cara.” Jack looked at the taller woman calmly, and shook her head. “All of this is consequences. Velveteen asked the holidays for a favor, because she wanted to keep the Governor of Oregon on her side. They gave her a dead woman as a gift for a broken-hearted sister, and she agreed to serve them for a year. Not to choose one, necessarily, but to serve them. If they knew they weren’t going to get to keep her, why should they play nicely with her? I don’t endorse what they did--she was my friend before she was yours--but this is already consequences. I’m sorry the holidays hurt her. I didn’t do it. And I can’t do anything to help, so I’m going to get out of the way and let you work.”

Jack turned and walked away, leaving the Princess staring after her, leaving Velveteen insensate on her bed, leaving the Night Shift to her work. Action Dude turned to watch her go, grimacing before he looked back to the Princess and said, “I’m just going to...I’m going to see if she’s all right. Okay?”

“Okay,” said the Princess.

“Thanks,” he said, and kicked off from the ground, rising into that odd half-jump that almost all fliers used. He quickly straightened out into a more traditional flying position and soared after her.

The Princess waited until he was gone before putting her hands over her face. “And here I was hoping this was going to be one of the good days,” she said, to no one in particular.

Velveteen slept on.

*

Jack walked until she was out of sight of the recovery room. Then she broke into a run, heading for the nearest set of tower stairs and plunging straight up them. Her dress didn’t slow her down. Ridiculous finery was something she had long since gotten used to, in her role as Santa’s daugh--

No. No. She wasn’t, she wasn’t, because this wasn’t her life, this wasn’t her world, this wasn’t her. She was supposed to be...she was supposed to...

She was sitting on the edge of the battlements, crying silently into her hands, when Action Dude found her. Her tears glittered silver and gold, like the dusting on a Christmas cake. He landed cautiously a few feet away, clearing his throat to let her know that he was there.

“Bad day?” he asked. He winced. “Um, okay. That didn’t...okay, that didn’t quite come out right. Are you okay?”

“I’ve been asking myself over and over again whether they changed the world and me, or just changed the world and got me from a mirror that no one was using.” She lowered her hands, looking at him miserably. “They changed us both. I remember being me and I remember being her, and I was supposed to be her, not me. I know it in my bones. This is my punishment. This is how they make me understand that I broke the rules. And it isn’t fair.”

She started crying again. Action Dude looked alarmed.

“I, uh, don’t know what to do with that,” he said. “Yelena never cried.” Not around him, anyway. He was sure she’d done her share of crying behind closed doors, where no one would see her, or judge her, for being a real person. “Vel did, but I’d usually kiss her tears away, and I think you’d punch me if I tried that. Justifiably so.”

Jack laughed in surprise, still crying. “You’d be getting coal in your stocking every Christmas for the rest of your life.”

“I’m Jewish.”

“Every Hanukkah, then.”

“That would be a lot of coal. I could probably heat the whole headquarters.”

Jack laughed again. Her tears had virtually stopped. “Papa doesn’t like anyone to go completely empty handed.”

“Well, he’s a pretty cool dude.” Action Dude looked at her sympathetically. “I don’t know what any of that stuff you were saying before was about, but I’ll listen, if you want me to.”

“No, that’s--” Jack stopped. She’d been talking to Jackie’s friends since she’d woken up tucked into a bed that shouldn’t exist, in a world that shouldn’t have been hers. She’d been trying to cope with the internal clash between two sets of memories, one that felt lived and one that felt like a story about a woman she wished she could have been. She knew she should have been. “I don’t know where to start.”

“What do you mean, you broke the rules?”

Jack looked down at her hands. “The Seasons...we’re not as nice to the people who work for us as we are to guests, and when Vel came to Winter, Papa wasn’t in charge of her trials.” But he hadn’t been Papa then, had he? He had still been Santa, the Big Man, blessedly distant from the frozen home she’d shared with her parents. The dissonance between memory and what she felt she should remember burned. “The person who was, she wanted to be absolutely sure that Vel was strong enough to do what Winter needed. She didn’t pull any punches. She didn’t take her time. Vel was going to die. She was going to freeze to death and die, and it was going to be Winter’s fault, and...”

And there would have been no more visits to the Calendar Country for Jackie, not until enough time had passed to put all Velveteen’s friends and allies in the ground, because they would never have forgiven her for letting Vel freeze. That was a selfish motivation. Maybe if that had been what moved her, she would have been okay. Maybe if she’d thought to cling to that, her hands would still have been cold, her heart would still have been frozen, and she would have still moved in a comforting spray of snow.

But Vel had been Jackie’s friend. Vel had been important to her. In the end, she had acted selflessly, against the wishes of Winter, to save her friend, and it had killed her.

Jack sighed. “It doesn’t matter, I guess,” she said. “I live here now.”

Action Dude frowned. “I have, like, no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “But I’m pretty sure you just told me that you saved Vel’s life. Did you save her life?”

“I guess.”

“Okay.” He shrugged. “Whatever you need from me, ever, you’ve got. For the rest of our lives.”

“What?” Jack stared at him. “I didn’t do it because I wanted a reward.”

“I have two ex-girlfriends. They’ll both tell you that having me offer to be your errand boy is less a reward and more a cosmic punishment of some kind. But I’m still offering. Thank you. For saving her. Even if I don’t quite get how.”

“Jack?”

They both turned toward the sound of the Princess’s voice. She was standing at the top of the tower stairs, a solemn expression on her face.

“Vel’s awake, and she’s asking for you,” she said.

*

The Night Shift was good at her job--all her jobs. She could have run a hospital emergency room without anyone’s help, and had, in emergencies. When Jack and Action Dude followed the Princess back into the recovery room, Velveteen was sitting up in her bed, the sheet still wrapped firmly around her, exhaustion in her eyes.

She blinked at the sight of Action Dude, looking nonplussed. Then her attention moved to Jack, who tensed, waiting for the yelling to begin.

Instead, Velveteen smiled. “Jack,” she said. “Hey.”

“Hey,” said Jack, stepping around the Princess and starting for the bed. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I just lived three years in less than a week, and did most of it without a pulse.” Velveteen’s smile turned wry. “I think I scared the Night Shift.”

“Sometimes nurses need a good scare,” said Jack.

Velveteen nodded. “I guess so,” she said. “Jack...”

Here it comes, thought Jack, tensing.

“You saved me,” said Vel. “I wouldn’t have made it out of Winter without you. Come here.”

Jack went to her, and if the people watching assumed that her tears were joy and relief, well, that wasn’t her fault. Telling them that they were wrong wouldn’t have changed anything, and so she didn’t say anything at all.

*

It was three days before Velveteen was strong enough for mirror travel. Jack wasn’t the only one who accompanied her to the North Pole. The Princess was there as well, and three instances of the Night Shift, and Polychrome, Victory Anna, and Action Dude, all of whom glared at anyone who suggested that they might be unnecessary. The Seasons had stolen Vel away from them once. They weren’t going to let it happen again.

Velveteen leaned heavily on Jack and the Princess as she walked, with the Night Shift following close behind, clucking about how she shouldn’t be out of bed. Together, the group walked to the Hall of Mirrors. The doors were closed. The steps were full. Santa Claus and the Snow Queen; Hailey Ween and Scaredy Cat; the Persephone and Lady Moon. All of them looked to Velveteen, waiting to hear what she would say.

“None of you,” she said, in a voice as worn-out and weary as the rest of her. “I choose none of you. I’m going home.”

Santa Claus smiled. Persephone nodded. Hailey Ween scowled.

“Then you’re free to go,” said Santa Claus. “The Seasons thank you for your service.”

“Fuck you all,” said Velveteen. She turned to go, and Jacqueline Claus, daughter of Santa, heir to the North Pole, was there to help her home.

At least one of them was going home.

Velveteen vs. The Retroactive Continuity.

2016-11-08T15:57:43Z

Title: Velveteen vs. The Retroactive Continuity.
Summary: What happens when a former child superhero returns from her travels in the seasonal lands, only to discover that things have changed, possibly forever? Velveteen is home. Home is not the same.

***

The four women were locked in an uneasy standoff, none of them willing to be the first to move and hence kick off the fight. On one side, a woman in a battered velvet leotard and tights, with a rabbit-eared headband and a domino mask completing the impression that she’d dressed herself out of the back of the nearest Halloween store. Next to her, a white-haired woman in clothes that were better suited to a ski holiday than a superhuman smackdown, a snow globe in each hand and a distressed expression on her face. Not exactly the sort of figures who struck fear into the hearts of evildoers.

On the other side, Iris, co-captain of The Super Patriots, living rainbow, champion for justice, and person responsible for the condo’s safety deposit, which probably explained why she had yet to move. She was still dressed for work, in a sleek white bodysuit that shimmered with rainbows every time she shifted her weight even slightly. She had a rainbow sash tied around her waist, and rainbow eyeshadow framing her big blue eyes. Behind her, in jeans and a tank top, stood a woman with green and purple hair and a small storm cloud hovering over her left shoulder: Hyacinth, weather-controller and seriously annoyed superheroine on her day off.

Really, she was probably the scariest person in the room. No one with the ability to sling lightning bolts should ever look that aggravated.

“I’m Velveteen,” said the woman in the rabbit ears. “I don’t know who your fourth team member was in this world, but in my world, you and I--”

“My Velveteen and I were recruited at the same time,” snapped Iris. “We grew up together, which is not some big secret you can use to manipulate me. It’s been in every official bio.”

“And a lot of the fanfic,” said Hyacinth. “Sparkle Bright Velveteen slash is one of the biggest Super Patriots RPF categories on AO3.”

“All of those words were words but I don’t think any of them made any sense at all,” said the white-haired woman, looking baffled.

“Be glad,” said Velveteen. She raised her hands, palms outward, and said, “If you and your Velveteen grew up together, then you know who I am. I’m her. Or rather, I’m who she would have grown up to be if things had gone a little differently. I don’t know much about this reality, so I don’t know whether things were better or worse for me, but I know that no version of Yelena would attack me without hearing me out.”

Iris’s eyes narrowed. “You know my secret identity?” She looked toward the white-haired woman. There was something familiar about her, something in the way she held herself. “You’re saying it out loud, in front of a stranger?”

“My name is Jacqueline Claus,” said the white-haired woman hurriedly. “I’m Santa’s daughter. I promise you, she’s telling the truth. She’s the Velveteen from another reality, and I’m her guide, and you’re actually our version of Yelena. We lost track of you when we came through the mirror.”

“Oh, good, it’s getting seriously weird,” said Hyacinth. “Here I was worried that this was just another fangirl home invasion, but no, now it’s dimensional-hopping and body snatching and mistaken identities. This is exactly what I wanted.”

“Cin...” said Iris.

“It’s my day off,” Hyacinth snapped. “It wasn’t bad enough that you had to work, that we couldn’t do something normal, but now you’re bringing work home with you on my day off. I thought we talked about this.”

“Could we maybe not have this fight in front of the people who are either from another dimension or trying to mess with our heads?” asked Iris plaintively. “I did not bring work home on purpose. I was talking about retirement, remember? They just sort of showed up.”

“Magic snow globe,” said Jack. She held one up, with an apologetic shrug. “They get me where I need to go. And since where I needed to go was to our Yelena, and the snow globe brought me here, that means you’re really our Yelena.”

“We’re not supposed to be here,” said Velveteen.

“You got that right,” said Hyacinth. The storm cloud over her left shoulder began dumping rain onto her shirt. “What are you doing in our apartment?”

“We need to find a door so we can find whatever the hell it is that Santa sent us to find, or there’s a chance our world is going to be ruined forever,” said Velveteen.

Iris and Hyacinth both blinked.

“Oh,” said Iris finally. “Is that all.”

*

When considering the multiverse, even within the context of a localized divergence (i.e., a multiversal plane in which all individuals existing in world A will have been at minimum conceived in world B, if not allowed to live to a fruitful adulthood), it must be considered possible for there to be more than one potential “good” outcome for any given situation. Take, for example, the matter of Yelena Batzdorf, known, depending on the parallel world in which she is found, as “Sparkle Bright,” “Iris,” “Polychrome,” or “Prism.”

Born to a highly conservative family, the young Miss Batzdorf has expressed an early attraction to members of the same gender in virtually all known parallels (in those which she did not, she was either born male or assigned male at birth; in the three where she was assigned male at birth, she was still attracted to women, but was not recognized as a lesbian until after her actual gender became publicly known). This conflict between her family’s values and her heart has led, almost inevitably, to her being surrendered to The Super Patriots, Inc. for training and “rehabilitation.” The fact that such rehabilitation is not possible, and is in fact harmful to those individuals who have been subjected to it, has never yet been known to change her family’s decision. World after world, they have chosen the same irresponsible solution, leaving their daughter to be raised by people who saw her more as potential profit than person.

In some worlds, Miss Batzdorf has become the perfect face of the corporation, burying her desires under her dedication to the people who raised her. In others, she has been the one to walk out at the age of eighteen, choosing freedom over living someone else’s script. And in other, rarer worlds, she and her friends have been able to seize control of the corporation, ushering in an era of superheroic honesty and openness, where she has not been required to conceal herself under anything more than a mask.

In many worlds, she has been happy. She has been loved. She has made a home for herself, and she has had few regrets. But Victoria Cogsworth, code name “Victory Anna,” exists in only one world. While few who have met Miss Cogsworth will deny that she has been a positive influence on Miss Batzdorf, her absence from the rest of the multiverse must be taken as an indication that more than one match ideal enough to result in a truly “happy ending” must be available.

In some worlds, Sparkle Bright and Velveteen have found a way to grow together, instead of growing apart. In other worlds, Iris and Jacqueline Claus have provided one another with the greatest gifts of all. In still others, she has found love with a weather-controller named Hyacinth who has yet to manifest in our world.

Happiness can be found anywhere. Who is to say that the status quo we believe to be ideal is the “right” one, or indeed, even the most common in an unending multiverse? Every happy ending denies another. It always has.

*

The four of them gathered in an uneasy peace around the coffee table, Iris on the couch with Hyacinth standing behind her, while Velveteen and Jack squashed onto the loveseat like a pair of teens on prom night. The only way it could have been any more uncomfortable would have been if someone had asked about someone else’s intentions, and in a way, that was the entire thrust of the conversation. Why were they here; what did they want to do to Yelena; did they have any right to do it.

“Okay, slow down and let me try to unpack this a little bit,” said Iris, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand. “Basically you’re saying that I am who I think I am, but I’m also a version of myself who goes by ‘Polychrome,’ and is supposed to be helping you find this door because I’m really a mirror ghost?”

“Neither of us said ‘mirror ghost,’” said Velveteen. “We said ‘psychic reflection.’ When we crossed into this world, you and Aaron both got overlain on your local cognates, because you haven’t spent enough time outside the Calendar Country to have any actual resistance.”

“I said ‘mirror ghost,’ because it sounds vaguely less completely stupid than ‘psychic reflection,’” said Hyacinth. “I would know if she weren’t my girlfriend, okay? And there is nothing about her that isn’t my Iris. Also, what the hell is a ‘Calendar Country’?”

“Hasn’t your Jack Claus ever taken you to the North Pole?” asked Jack, carefully. “To see Papa--I mean, to see Santa?”

“Santa Claus is a construct of the collective unconscious, and I have no idea how he’s real, but he doesn’t prove the existence of whatever a ‘Calendar Country’ is,” said Hyacinth primly.

Jack took a deep breath before launching into an explanation of the Seasonal Lands, how they interacted with the “real” world, and why the Spirits of the Season called anyplace that wasn’t an anthropomorphic representation of metaphor the “Calendar Country.” Velveteen, who had heard all this before, turned her out in favor of focusing on Iris, looking carefully at the other woman, searching for some sign that her version of Yelena was still in there.

She couldn’t blame Aaron for being seduced by the life the mirror had offered him, enough so that he had stopped fighting and let himself be absorbed. Jackie wasn’t here, and Jack didn’t control these mirrors, and every version of cosmic travel had its risks. She was worried about him, yes, but she was also confident that they would be able to get him back after they’d found the door and whatever was behind it. Santa wouldn’t have let Jack take them through if there was a chance they could be lost forever.

Or maybe he would have, because Santa lied. But there wasn’t time to worry about that now. She’d lost Aaron. She couldn’t lose Yelena too. Not when they still had so far left to go.

Iris met her eyes, and something in the other woman’s face wasn’t Iris, not really. Something in her face was confused and conflicted and contrary, the same look she’d had when she was pretending to be Blacklight just to give herself a break from being the perfect icon The Super Patriots, Inc. had wanted her to be. Something in her face gave her away. She knew. She knew they were telling the truth. She knew this world, while real, wasn’t hers. She knew.

“Hey,” said Velveteen, the sound of her voice startling Jack into silence. She kept her eyes on Yelena. Not on Iris: on that flickering little scrap of understanding and dismay that was her first and oldest friend. “What do you say? Trust us?”

Iris didn’t have the chance to say anything. Hyacinth grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet, saying, through gritted teeth, “Iris can I talk to you for a second alone?” before turning and hauling the taller woman after her into the kitchen.

Velveteen blinked. “I guess she always likes the short girls,” she said, voice low.

“I guess so,” Jack agreed. She reached over and squeezed Velveteen’s hand. It was a friendly, companionable gesture, the sort of thing that implied years of similar gestures. “It’ll be okay. She’ll come with us.”

“I hope so,” said Velveteen, and looked down at Jack’s hand covering hers, and wished that it were blue. “I really do.”

*

“You can’t seriously be listening to them,” snapped Hyacinth. “They’re...I don’t know what they are. Role-players trying to suck you into their weirdness. Fangirls looking for your attention. They’re something, and whatever it is, I don’t like it.”

“Or maybe they’re exactly who they say they are, and we should listen to them so that everything can go back to normal around here.”

Hyacinth’s eyes widened. Her tiny storm cloud belched lightning. “You’re not serious.”

“I can’t remember your real name.”

Everything seemed to freeze. Even the cloud stopped raining quite as hard. That was never a good sign, Iris knew that much; when Hyacinth was too stunned to keep up a good storm, heads were about to roll. She pressed onward anyway.

“I know I know it, because I know we’ve been together for seven years. I know I met you at a mixer for LGBT superhumans. It was my first one. You saw me across the room, and when you came over, you laughed, because I was literally changing colors out of fear. You called it ‘power incontinence.’ You offered to show me around.”

“I wound up showing you my apartment,” said Hyacinth, in a low, almost horrified voice.

“Yeah, and I moved in three weeks later, because I am nothing if not good at moving way too fast,” said Iris. “I remember seven years, Cin, I remember coming out on national television, and you kissing me like I’d just done the bravest thing in the universe, and I don’t remember your name. But I remember some of the things they’re saying.”

“What are you saying? Are you saying you’re not real?”

“I’m saying I think they may be right about me being a psychic overlay on your Iris, and if they can get me to this door, then I can go with them, and you get your Iris back. The real one, who deserves you.” The one who wouldn’t keep waiting for a flash of red hair and a complaint directed at a god or goddess that didn’t exist. The one who could love Hyacinth without the shadows.

For someone who created light from her very skin, Iris spent a distressing amount of her time terrified of shadows.

Hyacinth scowled. “Well, I think they’ve put this stupid idea in your head, and now you’re starting to believe them, even though you know you shouldn’t.”

“What harm does it do?”

“What harm? What if they’re con men? We go to this door, and when nothing happens, suddenly you need to pay them a thousand dollars for an exorcism, or...or something. I just don’t like it.”

“I don’t either.” Iris glanced to the kitchen door. She could see a slice of the maybe-Velveteen’s leg, weight balanced on her toe, heel bouncing. Vel had always done that when she was anxious. Always. This was Vel. Maybe not hers, or maybe the one she remembered so vividly wasn’t hers, but...Vel. “We have to find out for sure.”

Hyacinth, who had been with Yelena long enough--first as Sparkle Bright, and then as Iris--to know when her mind was made up, sighed. “You’ll be careful. And if we find out you’re not a psychic overlay, you’ll let it go.”

“I don’t remember your real name, Cin. Do you really think I’m not?”

“No,” said Hyacinth quietly. “But a girl can dream.”

Iris paused. “Cin, why would you...if I’m not your Iris, shouldn’t you want her back?”

“I do! Believe me, if you’re not my Iris, I want her back more than anything. Except for the part where I’ve been afraid for years that one day you were going to wake up and realize that you could do better than a weather-slinger named after a T.S. Eliot poem. You’re one of the top three superheroes in the world. I wouldn’t even be second string if I weren’t with you.”

“I don’t remember your real name, but I remember so much else, and you need to stop thinking like that,” said Iris sharply. “If I’m your Iris, and I’ve been making you feel that way, we need to talk. If I’m not your Iris, then as soon as I’m gone, you and she need to talk. Because you’re amazing. You deserve to know that. Now come on. Let’s go find out whether the world is broken.”

Hyacinth followed her out of the kitchen. It seemed that there was nothing else to say.

*

“This is a terrible plan,” said Velveteen.

“All plans are terrible plans until they succeed, and then they become the best plans ever,” said Jack. The four of them were trudging through a snowbank that smelled like hot chocolate and pine-scented air freshener. The sky above them was a rainbow of living light, and Iris had barely taken her eyes off of it since the snow globe had dropped them all in the North Pole.

“Are we really going to see Santa?” asked Hyacinth, eyes shining.

“How’s the phrase ‘fuck, I hope not, I am really running out of the willpower required not to punch him in his smug, stupid face’?” asked Vel. “Because I think that’s way closer to the truth.”

“You know, we don’t like it much when people come here to punch the Big Man,” said a voice from behind them. All four turned. A white-haired boy in a red and white suit was standing atop the snow, which would have been more impressive if he hadn’t been wearing snowshoes. He looked enough like Jack to seem related, and enough like himself to be a stranger. He blinked at her, eyebrows lifting, before he asked, “Universe-jumping? That’s adventurous.”

“Are you saying that because I’m a girl?” asked Jack, frowning.

He shook his head. “No, because you’re a me, and I would have to be in a very adventurous mood to do something like that. Well, maybe if I needed a kidney. Do you need a kidney?”

“No,” said Jack.

“That’s a relief.”

“We need access to your Hall of Mirrors,” said Velveteen. “We’re looking for a door.”

“A door.” Jack--er, Jack II--looked at her flatly. “Miss, I know you’re not the Velma from our universe, but our Hall of Mirrors contains only, well, mirrors. If you want a door, you’ll need to go to the Hall of Doors.”

Velveteen and Jack I exchanged a startled look before Velveteen asked, carefully, “What’s the Hall of Doors?”

“That’s how Papa visits all the children in the world, of course. It used to be fireplaces, but not many children have fireplaces these days. He switched over to a closet-based access system in the 1950s. Why?”

If Hyacinth had been looking for proof that Iris wasn’t her Iris, she would have received it in that moment, as the light-manipulator joined Jack I and Velveteen in staring at Jack II.

Finally, Velveteen said, “Take us there.”

“Of course,” said Jack II. He bowed. “Follow me.”

They did.

The Hall of Doors was located right next to the Workshop, presumably to make it easier for Santa to refill his sack. It was a large, ornate structure, rendered odd by the shining second door that seemed to have been painted over the first. Velveteen made straight for it, Jack I on her heels. Iris paused, looking at Hyacinth.

“Cin...” she said.

Hyacinth shook her head. “Just go,” she said. “If any part of you is mine, she’ll come back to me.”

Velveteen plunged into the ghostly door, vanishing. Jack did the same. Iris ran after them. As she stepped through, her image split in two for a moment, one in white, one in black. The one in black disappeared an instant later, following the others out of the world. The one in white collapsed.

“Lena!” shouted Hyacinth, running to kneel in the snow next to her girlfriend. The flickering door was gone. Somehow, that didn’t matter. “Hey. Hey. You okay?”

“Alexis?” Iris opened her eyes and blinked up at Hyacinth. “I had the weirdest dream...”

Hyacinth laughed, and everything was going to be okay.

*

The other side of the door was absolutely nothing. It wasn’t black, because black would have been something, and it wasn’t white, because white would have been something; it was nothing, stretching on forever.

Velveteen, who could not, in fact, fly, made a small sound of dismay. “How am I not falling right now?” she asked, looking to her left, where Jack was clutching one of her snow globes and trying not to hyperventilate. “How am I not plummeting to my doom?” She looked to her right. Polychrome was there, incarnate once again in black and rainbows and a bewildered expression. “You, I get, but how are we not falling?”

“Gravity only exists when there’s such a thing as up and down,” said Polychrome, sounding dazed. “I was inside a different version of my own head. Like, did that happen to you? Or did I get the special ticket for the what-the-hell express?”

“Just you and Aaron,” said Velveteen. “Jack’s a metaphorical construct, and I guess the fact that this is technically my mission kept me out of my own head.”

“Yeah,” said Polychrome. “Where is Aaron?”

“He didn’t want to give up what he never got to have.” Velveteen’s expression turned briefly sad. “Jack wouldn’t tell me exactly what it was, which I think probably means that was a world where we figured out how to make things work when we were teenagers.”

“It was,” said Polychrome, and reached for Velveteen’s hand, tangling their fingers together and holding tight. “We were braver there. I don’t know we found it in us, but we were braver.”

“If we were brave there, we can be brave here,” said Velveteen. “It’s still in us. And if Santa Claus sent us here, it’s because there’s still something we can do. So we walk.”

“How far?”

“Until we find an ending. Jack, you with us?” Velveteen turned to look at Jack again, and stopped, eyes going wide. “Jack?”

Jacqueline Claus, adopted daughter of Santa Claus, metaphor given flesh and now pulled outside the realm of fleshy concepts, offered her a wan smile. She was translucent, more like a girl projected on the air than a girl in any actuality. “I don’t think I can exist here,” she said. “Sorry about that. I hope this doesn’t mess things up for you.”

“No,” said Velveteen, shaking her head firmly. “No, you are not going to disappear on me. We need you. We can’t get Jackie back without you.”

“Sure you can,” said Jack. “Just make a Christmas wish, and maybe it’ll come true.”

“Jack--” Velveteen reached for her, fingers closing on empty air. There was nothing there to grab onto.

Jack offered one last, flickering smile, and she was gone, leaving the two superheroines standing alone in an endless, empty nothingness.

“Um,” said Polychrome, after a long pause. “Does this sort of thing happen to you often?”

“Disturbingly more often than I like,” said Velveteen. She looked blankly at the place where Jack had been. “I keep losing people, Lena. That’s been my whole life. Losing people. I lost my parents, and then I lost you, and then I lost Tad, and Jackie, and now I’ve lost Aaron and Jack. None of you should come anywhere near me. I’m dangerous.”

“Everyone’s dangerous, Vel.” Polychrome squeezed her hand. “You lost me because I was a scared kid. I came back. You’re not going to lose me again. Pinky-swear.”

Velveteen laughed, a little unsteadily. “I don’t think infinite nothingness cares about pinky-swears.”

“Maybe not, but I do, and that’s what matters here.” Polychrome looked around the emptiness. “What do we do now?”

“I guess we keep going.” Velveteen took a cautious step forward. The nothing continued to hold her up. “All right: looks like we walk. You up for this?”

“Sounds fun,” said Polychrome, and followed.

*

Two women walked across an infinite plane, surrounded by absolutely nothing. They held fast to each other’s hands, as if they feared that letting go could mean being separated forever. It wasn’t an unreasonable concern, given the blankness around them. It was impossible to even tell if they were gaining ground, because there was no distance; only the emptiness.

“This isn’t working,” said Velveteen. “We’re not getting anywhere.”

“How could we tell if we were?” Polychrome shook her head. “I’m not tired. I feel like we’ve been walking for hours, but...I’m not tired.”

“Jack disappeared. That means time isn’t really passing here. If this place knew about time, she’d still be with us.”

Polychrome gave her a sidelong look. “You really don’t think she’s supposed to exist, do you?”

“No. I don’t. If you could remember Jackie Frost, you’d understand why. Jack is...Jackie made more sense as someone I’d be friends with. Aurora assigned her to befriend me, so that Winter would have a way in, but she still made sense. She wasn’t just sugar cookies and smiles. She was snide and cynical and one of my favorite people. The idea that she’s gone forever because of me, it hurts.”

“But we’re superheroes,” said Polychrome gently. “Even if you’re right--and Jack said you were, so I guess I believe you--we were always going to be taking bullets for each other. That’s part of being a team. And the way I remember things, Jack has always been on your team. That means Jackie would have been, too. If she took a bullet for you, she did it because she wanted to. Because she was your teammate, when I couldn’t be. That means she was a hero.”

“She never liked you,” said Velveteen fondly. “She used to call you horrible names, and threaten to feed you bacon.”

“Sounds like a real charmer,” said Polychrome. “I’m glad you had her.”

“I’m going to get her back. I’m going to get them all back.”

“I believe you,” said Polychrome. She looked around. “We’re not getting anywhere. Got any clever ideas?”

“We could call for a taxi.”

“Genius,” said Polychrome. She paused before saying, “You were always smarter than you thought you were. Even when we were kids, I knew it would be your team someday, no matter what Marketing said. I guess I was jealous. I thought you’d leave me behind.”

“I would never have done that.”

“I know that now. We grew up. That makes a lot of things easier.” And some things harder. Polychrome gave Velveteen another sidelong look. Some things so much harder.

Sometimes she felt like the greatest gap between her and the woman who had been her best friend for so very long was experience. While Velma had been running from her powers and her past, Polychrome--then Sparkle Bright--had been turning into a professional superhero. She’d taken the advanced classes. She’d learned the tips and tricks and warning signs that Velveteen had never been able to study.

This, all of this, was a test. There were chapters in her textbooks about situations like this one, and it fit every requirement of a test. They’d lost one person for each phase. Victory Anna in their world, Action Dude in the mirror-world, and Jack Claus here, in this shapeless plain. Polychrome didn’t need to be a genius to know that it was going to take a sacrifice for them to move on to the next level, whatever that was.

“Do you really think you’re going to be able to rewind the world?” she asked. “To get everything back the way it was before you went away?”

“I do,” said Velveteen. “There has to be a way, and Santa...he may not always tell us everything, but he doesn’t outright lie. Not even to me. He wouldn’t have sent us here if he hadn’t thought that this could fix things.”

“So those three years would, what? Not have happened? Or we’d remember everything, only we’d be back at the start?”

“I don’t know. I guess we have to get there to find out.”

Polychrome took a deep breath. “I have an idea about that,” she said. “Remember how I used to fly with you when we were kids?”

“Yeah,” said Velveteen. “We were smaller then.”

“Relative sizes have stayed about the same. What do you say? Let me give you a boost?” Polychrome offered what she hoped was an impish smile. She didn’t want Velveteen to realize what she was doing.

There was a pause before Velveteen shrugged and said, “Why not? It’s not like we’re getting anywhere just walking.”

“Great,” said Polychrome.

It took them a few minutes to find a carry that would be comfortable for both of them. They wound up with Velveteen riding piggy-back on Polychrome, her legs locked around the taller woman’s waist, her arms slung around her shoulders. Polychrome gripped Velveteen’s wrists like she was a backpack.

“Hold tight,” she said, and launched herself into the colorless, spaceless sky on a trail of rainbow light.

*

Many people had asked themselves, over the years, just how high Polychrome could fly if she didn’t have to worry about silly little things like “running out of air.” Most of them would have had their questions answered if they had been present when she launched herself into the sky that had no borders, flying upward as fast and as hard as she could go.

After two miles straight up, her rainbow trail turned into an oscillating swirl of colors, melting into one another like an oil slick painted in the air.

Two miles after that, the colors vanished completely, replaced by a beam of pure, eye-searing whiteness. It was light without gradation, and it was as beautiful as it was alarming. Velveteen would have panicked, if she had been able to see it, but her eyes were squinted tightly shut against the rush of air, and she couldn’t see anything at all.

“You’re going to fix everything,” said Polychrome serenely. “I believe you. I believe in you. You’re going to fix it all.”

“What?” shouted Velveteen.

“I said, I’m sorry,” said Polychrome, and exploded into light.

It wasn’t a literal explosion: more the sudden conversion of all the nothingness around her into prismatic reality. Polychrome had created illusions before, but this was the largest, and the most complex that she had ever attempted. One instant, there was nothing; the next, Velveteen was tumbling onto a black and white floor, like a chessboard, like something out of a story, and she would have laughed at the sheer cliche of it all if she hadn’t been so damn scared.

“Poly?!” she shouted, slapping the floor like she thought she could somehow make it disappear again. “Yelena?!”

“There’s no rulebook to this place,” said an unfamiliar female voice. Velveteen whipped around to find herself looking at a dark-haired woman in a Grecian gown, with a spindle slung across her chest like the world’s most pointless fashion accessory. “Your friend, though, she remembered something from one of her lessons about ways this sort of terrain can be navigated, and she took a chance. We rewarded it.”

“Where is she?” demanded Velveteen, scrambling to her feet. “Give her back!”

“She forced us into visibility,” said another voice. Velveteen turned. A man stood behind her, dressed similarly to the woman, with hair the color of pomegranate seeds in the sunlight and an hourglass dangling from his belt. “It took everything she had. She’s falling, currently. She’ll fall forever, if you don’t make your case.”

“What?” Velveteen looked back and forth between the pair, finally taking a step backward, so that she could watch them both at the same time. “Who are you? Where am I?”

“You don’t ask who you are,” said the woman. “That’s interesting. Are you that confident in yourself, that you don’t need to ask who you are?”

“My name is Velveteen. I’m a superhero, and I’m here because Santa Claus told me that if I went through a door hidden in a mirror, I could find a way to fix the world.” Velveteen paused. “Okay, when I say it like that, it sounds sort of stupid, I’ll admit. But it’s the truth.”

“All the identities you could have claimed, and that’s the one you’re going to go with,” said the man. He took a step toward the woman, and his clothing changed, melting into 1920s American finery. His hourglass became a pocket watch. “Superhero. Super. You don’t want to be ordinary.”

“For me, this is ordinary,” said Velveteen. The woman still matched the man. She hadn’t seen her change. This was all getting a little cosmic for her tastes, and she really just wanted someone to hit. “Where am I?”

“Where the Spirit of Giving sent you,” said the woman. “I am Ananke, and this is Chronos.”

“We’re basically the template off which you were struck,” said the man--Chronos. He smiled thinly. “I’m a chronopath.”

“And I’m a precognitive strong enough to adjust the world to fit the futures I see,” said Ananke. “I see that you are still confused. Remember when you had your power level assessed?”

“Yes,” said Velveteen warily.

“They told you the scale went to five.”

“Yes.”

Chronos smiled. “We’re the tens.”

“...oh,” said Velveteen, after a horrified pause. “So you’re the reason everything is so fucked-up.”

“We’re not gods,” said Ananke. “We’re just not equipped to live in the world the rest of you inhabit. We’ll break it simply by trying to walk in it like we belong there. So we live here, where things do as we tell them, and every so often someone from the ‘real’ world will show up and tell us that things have gotten out of hand.”

“So say the word, little hero,” said Chronos. “We can put it all back in the bottle for another fifty years. No more heroes, no more villains. You’ll be free.”

Velveteen jumped. “What? Wait--what? That’s not why I’m here.”

Chronos looked bemused. “But that’s always why you’re here. You can only come once, you little mortal heroes, so that’s always what you ask for.”

“No! I like being a superhero. Maybe there was a time when I didn’t, but I like who I am. I like my friends. If I weren’t a superhero, I wouldn’t know Jackie, or Torrey, or anybody. We would never have met. So no, I don’t want the powers to go away. I just want to go back three years and keep everything from going wrong.”

“If that’s all--” Chronos reached for his watch.

It was too easy. Velveteen glanced toward Ananke, who was shaking her head, very slightly. She was missing something.

“Wait!” she cried. Chronos stopped. “If we go back three years, am I going to remember this?”

“No,” he said.

“So it’s all going to happen exactly the same way.”

“Yes.”

“But I won’t be able to come back here. We’ll be stuck with it.”

He sighed, pouting like a child who had just been cheated out of a great prank. “Yes,” he said.

“Is there another way?”

“Yes,” said Ananke. “The Seasonal Lands are less temporally anchored than the Calendar Country. They can send you home the moment you left. No time will pass. No one will have the chance to miss you, or to exploit your absence.”

Velveteen paused. She was missing something, she knew she was...and then she wasn’t. The inevitability of it all was almost poetic in its painful simplicity. “But that time, for me, will have passed exactly like it did in this timeline.”

“Yes.”

“Jackie...”

“Everything has to cost, little animus. Even a second chance.” Ananke reached for her spindle. Somehow, it remained, even as her clothing had changed. “Will you take it?”

All those laws, passed in her absence, designed to narrow the world when it should have been getting wider. Polychrome and Victory Anna, hiding from the world; the Princess, increasingly needing to hide from herself. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. Even Jackie would have agreed. Jackie never liked anything that made the world smaller than it had to be.

“I’ll find a way to get her back,” said Velveteen. “For now? Take it all back. Three years, and I do my term of service to the Seasonal Lands, and this never happened.”

Ananke smiled as she drew her spindle. “I’m glad I got the chance to meet you,” she said, and held it out, needle-first, toward Velveteen.

I’m sorry, Aaron, thought Vel. It would have been nice to have been heroes again, together.

Then she touched the spindle’s point, and collapsed on the checkerboard floor.

Chronos and Ananke looked at her. “That was new,” he said.

“Some things have to be,” she agreed. “Send her back. No cheating.”

“Yes dear,” he said, and kissed her cheek, and disappeared, taking Velveteen--and the floor--with him.

*

The door that opened in the fabric of reality had no foundation, no wall to hold it in place or justify its existence: it simply was, a twisted thing of knotted paper roses that dripped with black type and red ink. It didn’t fit in with the rest of the gardens at the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle at all.

The body of a woman, bone-thin, was shoved through the doorway and collapsed in the dewy grass, unconscious, barely seeming to breathe.

Once again, Velma “Velveteen” Martinez had come home.

Velveteen vs. Everything You Ever Wanted.

2016-08-24T00:43:06Z

Title: Velveteen vs. Everything You Ever Wanted.
Summary: What happens when a former child superhero returns from her travels in the seasonal lands, only to discover that things have changed, possibly forever? Velveteen is home. Home is not the same.

***

The mirrors stretched out to infinity around them, recognizable as mirrors only while they were at a distance. As long as no one was standing directly in front of them, they reflected the hall around them, creating a fractal wonderland of light and shadow. As soon as a member of the group passed, however, the mirrors flickered to life, showing distorted reflections of the people they were not, but could have been, had things gone ever so slightly differently.

Velveteen walked past Marionettes in white and gray, past Roadkills in black leather and silver spikes, past a hundred variations of her bunny costume. Past versions of herself who were holding Action Dude’s hand, or Tag’s hand, or no one’s hand; past Velveteens with toddlers on their hips and older children standing nearby. Those children were just as fractal as their parents. Some wore costumes; some wore street clothes; some--and oh, those hurt her heart--wore the training uniforms of The Super Patriots, Inc. She did her best not to meet their eyes. She just kept walking.

Action Dude walked past mirrors that showed him married to Sparkle Bright, both of them smiling company-approved smiles, both of them with eyes that might as well have been painted on. He walked past mirrors that showed him married to Velveteen, both of them smiling honest smiles, if occasionally strained ones (and one that showed her in a white and gray uniform, which was a little weird, but she was still holding his hand, and they still looked happy). Sometimes his uniform changed, the “AD” on his chest replaced by a smaller “E” high on the right side. Sometimes there were children, in the mirrors he shared with Velveteen. He tried not to look at them. They hurt his heart.

Polychrome walked past mirrors that showed her in white, in black, in rainbows; alone, or with Velveteen, or once, with a woman who looked like Jack, only blue-skinned and wearing a leotard that would have made an ice skater blush. None of them showed her Victory Anna, and she tightened her grip on the hand of the woman she loved, reminded, once again, that they were never meant to be together. Somehow, the universe had given her two shots at the impossible, and she was never, never letting go.

Jack walked past Frostbites and Jackie Frosts and Snow Princesses, and she wept with every step she took, and her tears fell as trails of glitter, and there was nothing frozen about them. She had lost all the ice that had ever been in her, and some things, once lost, as impossible to regain. Some things are lost forever.

Victory Anna walked past mirrors that showed her nothing but herself, and wondered what all the fuss was about.

“Do we actually have a goal in mind, or are we simply enjoying our tour of all the mirrors in the damn world?” she asked pleasantly. “I inquire primarily because I did not bring any libations for this journey, and will eventually require a cup of tea, lest I murder you all for the crime of existing in my general vicinity when I do not have anything to drink.”

“You sure do know how to pick ‘em, Lena,” said Velveteen. She kept walking, eyes fixed resolutely forward. She knew better than to give the mirrors any power over her. “You heard Santa. We need to find the door. Once we find the door, we go through it, and we find out what comes next.”

“You’ll forgive me if I put little faith in an anthropomorphic personification rooted in a culture I have never fully been a part of.”

“So put your faith in me,” said Jack, looking over her shoulder at Victory Anna. “I’m your friend. You know I wouldn’t lie to you. If Papa says this door exists, then it exists.”

“Any idea what’s on the other side?” asked Action Dude. Somewhere between the front steps and the first mirror, he had started thinking of himself as his heroic ID again. It didn’t matter that he was still in street clothes. This was a job for a hero. This was a job for Action Dude. Not Aaron Frank, who was a nice guy, but who would honestly have been happy to just be left alone for a little while, especially now that Vel was speaking to him again. It was such a novel situation that he just wanted some time to enjoy it.

“Not a clue,” said Velveteen, and kept walking.

*

The existence of parallel realities--the multiverse, if you will--has led to the rise of several schools of philosophy. Some argue that the very existence of branching realities means that all choices are good choices: all choices are reflected somewhere, after all, in some parallel world. Because of this, morality is a social construct, intended to make this world, this reality as palatable as possible. It is not inherently good or evil. It simply is.

Those who have made an actual study of the multiverse dismiss this view as simplistic, and probably a sign that the person adhering to it just wants an excuse to be a supervillain. Not all possible choices can be reflected or, if they are, not all possible choices can be viewed when starting from our world. Every reality they have been able to find has had some points of commonality with our own. Even Victory Anna, currently viewed as unique within the multiverse, can be traced back to a time-travel accident in a world that would fit nicely into a cluster of neo-Victorian steampunk realities which endure even to the present day. Her uniqueness is a consequence of her world’s demise; in all the other parallels where she might have once been born, she has long since died of old age.

The greatest argument against a truly infinite accessible multiverse is the persistence of individuals. Conception, argue the scholars, is a matter of timing, a matter of luck, a race against a million other factors to even begin the long, slow process of gestation. So many pregnancies end in spontaneous miscarriage, unable to attach properly, unable to mature--and that accounts only for the wanted ones, the pregnancies that are somehow desired across the multiverse.

Finding a single world which contains a single cognate for a person known to exist in this reality should, in a truly infinite multiverse, be cause for global celebration. But we do not find a single cognate. We find worlds of cognates, reality after reality which matches our own in all but the smallest of details. Their points of deviation are frequently within the last century. Those worlds are more comprehensible than the steampunk worlds, the cyberpunk worlds, the worlds where the divergence happened hundreds of years ago, yet somehow resulted in the same familiar faces populating the stories we have access to.

The multiverse, it seems, has a plan. What that plan is, and whether it is being formed by an unthinking personification of the vastness of reality or by some group of heroes as far beyond our comprehension as our superhumans are to squirrels, we have no way of knowing. Perhaps that is the most terrifying aspect of what is, after all, a terrifying topic: we have no way of knowing.

If our branch of the multiverse exists for a reason, and not simply because this is the way reality organizes itself, we have no way of knowing what that reason is. We have no way of influencing the outcome. All we can do is hope that whatever it is, it will be kind.

*

They had been walking for a long time. Long enough for the reflections around them to grow more and more bizarre in comparison to their reality, showing scenes of mermaids and vampires and worlds where everyone dressed like Victory Anna, all gears and copper stitching and impractical little hats. Victory Anna had paused in front of one of those mirrors for almost a minute, hungrily drinking in the details of her friends and teammates dressed in what she considered appropriate clothing.

Other mirrors showed a blackened, blasted, empty world, the aftermath of some great and unspeakable catastrophe. All of them hurried past those reflections, not looking at them any longer than one necessary. One of the devastated worlds was empty except for a stuffed bear wearing a felt domino mask, and somehow that small reminder that there had been versions of them in all those felled worlds, versions of them who hadn’t been able to stop the apocalypse, just made things worse.

“Wow, Jack,” said Action Dude, after a particularly nasty world overgrown with mutated brambles had gone silently past. “How do you deal with all this?”

“Mostly I don’t,” she said. “I’m not the Snow Queen’s heir. I thawed too much to be a Snow Princess, and thawing at all meant I couldn’t be a Jackie Frost. The Snow Queen keeps the mirrors, and that means it’s never going to be my job. I’ve been here before. I had to walk from one end to the other in order to become Papa’s heir, because this is part of Winter, and someday it’s going to belong to me. but I’ll never have to be responsible for them. I’m glad.”

“Jackie was,” said Velveteen, not looking back at Jack or sideways at Action Dude. Her eyes remained fixed on the hallway ahead, searching, always searching for the door. “She brought me here when I needed to understand my place in the multiverse. She didn’t like the mirrors, but she understood them.”

“I guess it’s different for everybody,” said Jack uncomfortably.

Velveteen started to reply. Then she stopped dead, dragging Action Dude to a halt with her. The others stopped in turn, Victory Anna’s heels clacking against the floor in angry punctuation.

“Warning, please,” she said waspishly.

“Look. Do you see that?” Velveteen pointed to the nearest mirror. Like some of the others, it was reflecting the hall: they hadn’t reached it yet, and it had yet to summon up a parallel world for their amusement.

Unlike any of the others, its reflection of the hall showed a door on the opposite wall.

“The door,” said Polychrome. “Shit. I wasn’t sure it was real.”

“Papa doesn’t lie,” said Jack.

“Yeah, he does, but not about things like this,” said Velveteen. She started to reach for the mirror, and hesitated. “If it’s reflecting the door, does that mean it contains the door, or does that mean the door is on the opposite wall?”

“Ah, good,” said Victory Anna, stepping briskly forward. “A logic problem. Let us consider. Mirrors reflect: that is the nature of mirrors. But with each reflection, they lose fidelity. As I am the only one among us who will not actually trigger a window into another world by stepping in front of a looking glass, it would behoove you to stay where you are.”

“Got it,” said Velveteen. “Do your weird science thing.”

“My science is not weird,” said Victory Anna primly. “Improbable, perhaps. Arrogant, absolutely. But never weird. My science behaves with the appropriate poise and decorum at all times.” She continued walking until she was standing between the two mirrors in question.

She had no parallel selves to reflect; she had no other futures to explore. The mirrors rippled like they were trying to tune themselves to a new frequency before settling on a simple reflection. She smirked. “You see?” she said, looking back over her shoulder. “I defy their programming. Magic is just science with the safeties off, and everyone knows that safeties are why your hair isn’t currently on fire.”

Victory Anna turned her attention to the mirror with the door in its reflection, studying it for several moments before turning to look at the mirror on the opposite wall. Logic said that it should have been reflecting a reflection of a door, continuing the back-and-forth exchange of images that defined the hall of mirrors. Instead, it reflected her reflection, with no sign of a door.

“The door is in the mirror that reflects it,” she said, turning back to Velveteen. “Were it not, it would appear more than once. You may proceed to do whatever ridiculous thing you feel is appropriate.”

“Thanks for that vote of confidence,” said Velveteen. She looked at Action Dude. “If you want to let go, now’s the time.”

“Nope,” he said. “I did that once. Worst decision I’ve ever made. I’m holding on from now on.”

Velveteen smiled a little and stepped through, Action Dude by her side. The world shattered into prisms of silver glitter around them, and was gone.

From the perspective of the three people still standing in the Hall, the two of them had disappeared completely. The mirror continued to reflect nothing but Victory Anna. She touched the surface experimentally, and grimaced as her fingers found only unyielding glass.

“Small problem, I’m afraid,” she said. “This style of travel only works for those whose cognates live beyond the glass.”

“Maybe it’s just because you’re alone,” said Polychrome, and took her free hand, offering her girlfriend an earnest smile. “I’ll take you through.”

“As you say, my Pol--but try not to be too upset if it doesn’t work. I want you back again. That means not becoming distracted by my absence.”

“I won’t, because you won’t be absent. You’ll be right by my side. You’ll see.” This sincere proclamation made, Polychrome turned and stepped through the mirror, pulling Victory Anna with her...or trying to. As her wrist vanished into the mirror, her fingers slipped out of Victory Anna’s, suddenly too slippery and intangible to be held.

Victory Anna sighed heavily. “Sometimes genius and perception are terrible burdens to be borne,” she said, turning to Jack. “Well? Scurry through, winter-girl, and keep my beloved safe. Her friends as well, I suppose. I may not be currently well-inclined toward either one of them, but she is the dearest star in my sky, and they are important to her.”

“I’ll do whatever I can,” promised Jack, and stepped into the mirror, vanishing like the others.

Victory Anna sighed, looking around herself at the empty Hall before calmly, almost regally sinking down to sit on the floor. “One down,” she said, and there was no one there to argue.

*

“Daddy, catch me!” That was all the warning Epitome--golden boy of The Super Patriots, Inc., strongest man in North America, Hero Beat’s sexiest superhuman three years running--had before his seven-year-old launched herself off the balcony.

She was an incredibly good faller. She didn’t plummet; instead, she spread her arms, increasing her surface area, and dropped with all the grace and poise of an Olympic diver. He had a split second to admire her form before he realized two things in the same horrified moment:

First, that he both did and did not know who she was. Looking at her, he knew that her name was Katie, that her favorite color was purple, at least this week, and that she had a severe allergy to beestings, prompting every member of the family to learn how to operate an epinephrine injector. He knew that she loved puppies, interesting rocks, and singing along to Taylor Swift songs. He also knew that he had never seen her before in his life.

Second, he knew that she was falling, and falling fast. Whoever she was (his daughter), she didn’t know how to fly. Not yet, and maybe not ever. Superhuman genetics were still a largely unexplored field, and there wasn’t that much known about what circumstances led to powers being passed from parent to child. She was falling. She was going to hit the ground.

Technically, his powers didn’t include super-speed. Speaking practically, anyone who could fly was going to seem like a speedster to a bystander; he could dismiss gravity and move with a mentally-fueled self-propulsion that put him in the top percentage of human potential. Less than a second after he had registered the danger to the little girl, his feet were off the ground and his arms were snatching her out of the air, gathering her to him with an instinctively parental tenderness.

She was giggling. She had been falling, and now she was giggling, and her eyes...she had Velveteen’s eyes. No. She had Velma’s eyes. She had her mother’s eyes. She had her mother’s eyes, and she had blonde hair like his, and she was his daughter. She was his incredible, impossible daughter.

“Hi,” he said, sounding dazed.

“Good catch, Daddy!” she said, and squirmed until he put her down. Then she took off running, heading deeper into the house, off on some unknowable child’s errand.

Aaron--Action Dude, Epitome, whatever his name actually was--stayed exactly where he was, staring after her with wide, hungry eyes. Then he turned, finally looking around the room where he’d appeared. It was the sort of comfortable, lived-in foyer that he had seen in a hundred homes, including the one where his parents still lived. There was an umbrella stand next to the door, and a framed copy of Newsweek on the wall, showing him standing between Polychrome and Velveteen. The caption read “A new generation takes the skies!”

“What the hell...?” he asked, taking a step toward the picture. The glass, strangely reflective for what it was, caught his image and bounced it back at him. There he was. Aaron Frank. Blond hair and blue eyes and an all-American jawline that had triggered a hundred angry meetings with Marketing, all of them geared at making him pretend to be some flavor of Christian, some flavor of football star, some flavor of “you’ll play better in Ohio if you’d just.” If he’d just let them tell him who to be, the way he’d once allowed them to tell him who to love.

But he hadn’t done that here, had he? His uniform still held echoes of his old Action Dude persona: the blue, the cut, the positioning of his logo. But the orange was gone, replaced by a burgundy that he knew without even asking himself would echo the color of Velveteen’s current costume. This was a world where he had somehow managed to dig his heels in and stand up for what was actually important. He’d managed to stand up for himself. He’d managed to stand up for her.

“This isn’t fair,” he whispered, and the world didn’t answer him. Worlds so rarely did.

Like a man in a dream that he feared would end at any moment, he began making his way deeper into the house, following the trail blazed by (his daughter) the little girl. He hadn’t gone far before he heard her laughing. He followed the sound, and emerged into a room that was half kitchen, half greenhouse, with domed glass panels making up one entire wall. There was an island built into the middle of the room. There was Katie, sitting on a stool, kicking her feet and munching on a carrot. There was a highchair, holding a small child of indeterminate gender captive, like a miniature supervillain being brought to justice for their crimes. And there...there...

There was Velma. She was wearing her costume, or something like it; she was wearing the costume he guessed she would have had if she’d been allowed to grow into it, updating and refining it with every stage of her superhero career. It was still burgundy and brown, still form-fitting, but the neckline was gently scooped across her chest, neither a child’s turtleneck nor a sexpot’s plunge. Marketing hadn’t designed that neckline. She was wearing neither mask nor headband--this was a private moment with her family, either right before or right after patrol. A pair of fashion dolls were holding up a bowl of mash, while she steered a spoonful of the same stuff toward the smaller child’s mouth.

He must have made a sound, some small, almost inaudible expression of longing and dismay, because she looked up, and she smiled at him. Really smiled at him, the way she used to before he broke her heart and left her unwilling to trust him ever again.

“There you are,” she said. “I was starting to worry that you weren’t going to have time to grab something to eat before we had to go. Do you want some lasagna? I can reheat it for you. Or you can reheat it for yourself while I handle the kids.” Unspoken was the threat that if he asked her to fix his dinner, he was taking over childcare.

He wanted to take over childcare--he wanted it more than he’d wanted anything in years--but he had no idea how to handle children, and besides, he was about to take that smile off her face. He didn’t want to be holding one of her children when it happened. “Blueberries,” he said, in a low, almost strangled voice.

Velma blinked. “We don’t have any,” she said. “It’s lasagna or you could make yourself a sandwich. There are some cold cuts in the fridge. Or there’s Sho’s mash, but she’ll get mad if you eat too much of it.”

“I...” He stopped, shaking his head to clear it, and said, “You know, we made one mistake when we were kids.”

“What’s that?” asked Vel. She put down the spoon, standing up a little straighter. She was starting to look wary. That was a good thing. She might be less furious with him if she caught on without him actually needing to say it.

Who was he kidding? He was an intruder in her home. He had replaced her husband and failed to keep her daughter from jumping off the stairs. She was going to straight-up murder him once she realized what was going on. “Remember how we used to play ‘How Would You Know If I Got Replaced’?”

“Yes,” she said slowly.

“We didn’t account for the fact that maybe our code words would be different from world to world.”

Velma froze. Utterly froze. Aaron waited. He knew what came next.

When she started moving again, she was Velveteen, even without the mask and rabbit ears. Her posture was tight, her motions sharp; her every angle screamed “justice,” even if there was nothing here for her to fight. “Katie, why don’t you take your sister and see if you can find all those Legos you dumped out in the backyard?”

“Can’t the dollies do it?” asked Katie.

“They could, but this way it’s like a game,” said Velveteen. “Go on, now. If you can find them all before I come outside to get you, you’ll get a prize.”

“Okay, Mommy,” said Katie, and slid down from her seat, waiting until Velveteen had freed the smaller girl from her high chair before taking her sister’s hand and skipping toward the back door. Velveteen watched them go, posture still tense.

The children vanished out the door. The door swung shut. A surprising number of plush toys appeared in the corners of the kitchen, pulling themselves out from under shelves, stepping out of shadows. A few of them had knives. Because that wasn’t terrifying or anything.

“Who are you, and where is my husband?” demanded Velveteen, in a low voice.

“My name is Aaron Frank. I go by the code name ‘Action Dude’ in my home dimension. I--do you know a Jacqueline Claus, or a Snow Princess, or anybody like that?”

“I know Jack Claus, Santa’s son.”

“Okay. Okay. So I went into the Hall of Mirrors at the North Pole with my world’s version of you, and my world’s version of Jack, because we’re trying to find a special door that Santa Claus told us to look for.” The more he talked, the more ridiculous it sounded. “Um, anyway. I’m not your Aaron, I’m not sure whether I’m inhabiting his body or what, but this isn’t my costume, so I guess probably? And I’ll leave just as soon as I know how, I promise.”

“You could have tried to lie to me. You could have passed yourself off as my husband.”

“I would never lie to you,” he said--and even though he had, if only by omission; even if he’d allowed his Vel to think, for years, that he didn’t love her, that he loved her best friend instead--he absolutely meant it. He could remember a life lived without lying to her. He could remember their wedding. His eyes widened. “And I think we have a problem.”

“Oh, trust me, you have a few dozen problems right now, and I can come up with twenty or thirty more if you give me a few seconds.” She bared her teeth. It wasn’t a smile. It was closer kin to the expression he would expect to see on a cornered animal. “I’m an animus in a house with two small children. Do you know how many things in here have faces? You shouldn’t have approached me on my home ground.”

“If I were here to attack you, do you really think I would have told you that something was going on?” Their honeymoon, spent on a cruise ship owned by the company the Princess worked for, miles from shore or supervillainy; Velma, trading in her civilian clothing for a swimsuit that had stolen most of his capacity for rational thought for days... “Please. Listen. Something’s wrong.”

His voice broke on the last word. Maybe that was what made her stop, looking at him warily, and ask, “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m not your Aaron, I know I’m not your Aaron, but the longer I stand here,” he waved his arms, indicating the kitchen around them, “the more I remember of his life. Like the swimsuit you wore on our--on your--honeymoon.”

She blinked before smirking at him and saying, “You know, somehow it doesn’t surprise me that if you were going to remember one thing about our marriage, it would be that damn swimsuit.”

“I’m not joking.”

“Neither am I. Aaron, take a deep breath, and focus. I believe you when you say that you’re not from this reality, especially if you’ve been hanging out with Jack again. I just think that you’re also my husband. You’re experiencing a dimensional overlay. Hold on, and it will pass.” Concern shone in her eyes. “We’ll need to go back to base and have Apothecary take a look at you, but it’s not like this has never happened before. You’re going to be fine.”

It was like a rope thrown to a drowning man. Aaron took a sharp breath. “You really think so?”

“I don’t want you near the kids until this has passed and Apothecary says you’re all right, but I know my husband, and you’re my husband. I know so.”

The doorbell rang.

Velma smiled wryly. “All right: you can’t answer that right now. If Katie comes back in with Sho, give them juice and come get me. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

“Okay,” said Aaron, and watched as she walked out of the kitchen. Most of the toys stayed behind, their knives still pointed at him. That was soothing, in its own weird way. She might believe that he was her Aaron, but she wasn’t going to leave him alone in her house, with her children close by. She was going to protect them.

Could he be her Aaron? Was there any possible way that she was right when she said that? His memories seemed so bright and clear, and increasingly improbable in the face of this comfortable kitchen, in this lived-in home, with those little girls--his daughters--playing outside the window. How could that be any more real than this?

Snow swirled in the middle of the kitchen. A white-haired girl in a red sweater patterned with snowflakes appeared at the middle of the portable blizzard, sagging with relief when she saw him. “Aaron,” she said. “There you are. We’ve been looking everywhere.”

“We?” asked Aaron blankly. She looked a little bit like Jack Claus, heir apparent to the North Pole, but Jack would never have worn pants that tight, or let his hair get that long. He liked the casual playboy look. It got him into more bars. “I’m sorry, have we met? And what are you doing in my house?”

The woman wrinkled her nose. “Maybe we should have looked a little faster. Aaron, it’s me, Jack. We lost you when we stepped into the mirror. I need you to come with me. Vel’s waiting, and we still need to find Lena.”

Vel was in the other room, and the children were out in the yard, and this woman’s words were calling images out of the depths of his memory, thin and wavering and already fading away. He could go with her. He could fight. Or he could give in, just once, and be happy. He could be happy.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know who you’re talking about, but my wife is in the other room, and I think you should go. She’s going to be angry if she finds me here.”

“You’re not, because you know you don’t belong here. Aaron, please.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, with genuine regret. “I don’t know you. Please leave.”

The woman looked pained. She produced a snow globe from inside her sweater and smashed it against the floor. A swirl of snow rose around her, and she was gone.

“Door to door solicitor,” said Velma, behind him. He turned. She was leaning against the doorframe, smiling a little. “He was a little freaked out when he realized who I was. I had to give him an autograph to get him to leave. What were we talking about before? I know it was important, but I guess he distracted me so much that I forgot.”

“I was thinking it might be time to take the kids to the beach,” he said, and was rewarded with a bigger, brighter smile, and everything was finally perfect.

*

The snow swirled, resolving itself into Jack. She was panting, and looked pained. Velveteen hurried to help her stand up.

“What happened?” Vel asked. “Where’s Aaron?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t find him fast enough. This isn’t my world, and it isn’t my North Pole; it doesn’t like me pulling on its magic. He’s already been overwritten by the life of his cognate.” Jack grimaced, straightening. “I couldn’t convince him to come with me.”

“Dammit, Aaron,” muttered Velveteen. She shook her head. “Why isn’t that happening to us? And where’s Yelena?”

“We’ve both been touched by the Seasons. I think that makes it harder for the mirrors to reflect is incorrectly. We’re still ourselves, even when we go to other worlds. Also, I’m a guy here, and I think that would be weird for all involved.” Jackie pulled another snow globe out of her sweater. This one had a tiny rainbow in the middle, surrounded by swirling white flecks. “I don’t know where Lena is, but we need to find her soon, before we lose her too. That, or we need to find the door.”

“I’m not leaving Yelena,” said Velveteen firmly.

“You may not have a choice,” said Jack. “You can only stay in a mirror for so long before it either tries to eat you eject you. Aaron’s already lost. If we both get lost, or worse, thrown out, that’s it. That’s the carol, chorus and verse. We need to find this door, or we’re never going to find what’s behind it. We get there, you go through, I’ll stay here and get Lena out.”

Velveteen looked unsure. Jack forced herself to smile.

“I know you don’t know me,” she said. “I know you’re trying to think of what Jackie would do, and hating me a little bit for still not being her. But I remember Lena being my friend for years. I remember how much it hurt when we had to cut her off. I remember how she stood up for me when Marketing got too aggressive and scared me. I’m not going to abandon her, even if it means letting you go on alone.”

There was a long pause before Velveteen nodded, slowly, and said, “Okay. If we find the door, I’ll go through it. But first, we’re finding Yelena.”

Jack didn’t argue.

*

“God, Cin, I swear, I don’t know whether petty criminals are getting stupider, or whether I’m just too grown-up to deal with these amateurs.” Iris--light manipulator, co-captain of The Super Patriots, Inc., and utterly exhausted businesswoman in need of a drink--virtually threw herself onto the couch, her powers kicking in automatically at the last moment to soften the landing. She sagged, letting her eyes slide closed. “I quit. I retire. I am going to grow roses and write my memoirs.”

“No, you’re not,” said Hyacinth calmly. She stayed in the kitchen, waving her hand above the tiny herb garden and summoning equally tiny storm clouds to rain on the plants and aerate the soil. “You’d get bored and come out of retirement inside of a week, and you know what that sort of reboot does to your sales numbers. You’re going to have dinner, and have a good night’s sleep, and go back out tomorrow, ready to make the world safe for truth, justice, and whatever else comes to mind.”

“I’m going to retire, and I’m going to get another girlfriend. A more supportive girlfriend, who understands the importance of my dreams.”

“Uh-huh,” said Hyacinth indulgently. She had clearly heard all this before: it had the feel and flavor of an oft-repeated routine, the sort of thing that happened at least once a week, in the pause between daytime and dinner. “Where would you find that sort of woman? And would she be prettier than me? Because let me tell you, lady, I am bangin’.”

“No question there,” said Iris, tilting her head back and smiling at her partner.

She had had years of experience at concealing her actual feelings. Before she, Velma, and Aaron had overthrown the old leadership of The Super Patriots, Inc., she had been expected to hide almost everything about herself. So it was only natural that she should put a brave, calm face on her confusion, which had been raging since midway through her daily patrol.

When those robbers had pointed at her and shouted “It’s Iris! Run!” she had looked behind herself to see who they were talking about. The code name felt wrong. She couldn’t put her finger on what she expected it to be--certainly not “Sparkle Bright,” a name she had gladly put behind her years ago--but it was still not right. And while Hyacinth might be joking...

She looked at her long-time girlfriend and live-in love, knowing every curve of her body, every shade of her laughter, and couldn’t help feeling like they were strangers, like she was betraying someone else by even being here. Like this, too, was wrong.

“Cin...” she began.

Snow swirled in the middle of the room, clearing to reveal two women, one in what might as well have been ski gear, the other in an old version of Velveteen’s costume. They looked wildly around, finally focusing on her.

“Yelena, thank Santa,” said the stranger, and suddenly there were more important things to worry about than a little existential dread.

Iris stood. Iris spoke.

“Who the fuck,” she asked, in a calm, clear voice, “are you?”

The woman who looked like Velveteen groaned. “Oh, goodie,” she said. “This is going to be fun.”

And now I am in Seattle.

2016-07-02T03:03:23Z

It is done: I am in Seattle. I have a place to live. It is a nice place to live. I have housemates. They are nice housemates. I have my cats. They are no longer quite as angry at me.

All is as well as can be at this stage in the wild party game that is moving.

Since some people have asked, I've made an Amazon Wishlist of things we need for the house (which, because I am clever, I added right onto the list of things that I just sort of idly wanted, so there are random CDs and the like toward the end). Here is the link, for the curious:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/X8ZE9W21BP1G/ref=topnav_lists_1

There will be pictures soon. Also sleep.

So much sleeping.

Velveteen vs. Going Home Again.

2016-03-24T00:39:19Z

Title: Velveteen vs. Going Home Again.
Summary: What happens when a former child superhero returns from her travels in the seasonal lands, only to discover that things have changed, possibly forever? Velveteen is home. Home is not the same.

***

The Princess sat on her (increasingly tarnished) throne, hands gripping the armrests so tight that it felt like she was going to break a nail. The petitioners standing before her on the blood-red carpet clustered tightly together, trying not to look like she terrified them. It would be easy to raise a hand and banish them to the thorny wastes, so easy--

“Nope,” she said, and her accent was still honey and good red dirt, still Alabama all the way down to the core. She was still herself, down where it counted. “Not going to do that. Thanks for offering, though.”

“Uh, Princess?” Velveteen looked around, searching the shadows that swarmed, almost impenetrable, in the corners of the hall. They were getting deeper. They were getting darker. And they were getting closer, which was not a comfortable feeling, given that they had no obvious source. “Who are you talking to?”

“All the fairy tales the world has ever known, and let me tell you, they’ve got some teeth on them.” The Princess grimaced, leaning back in her throne. “I’ve known the Fairy Tale Girls for a long time. They’re a grim little band, and they reflect the darkest sides of our mutual stories, but they’re on the right side. They’ve always fought for good. I thought, if I ever had to channel those same aspects, that I’d be all right. Turns out I’m weaker than I guessed I was.”

“You’re not weak,” said Vel, remembering her time in Winter, when freezing all the way to the bone had been so much easier than she had wanted it to be. “You’re overwhelmed. The Fairy Tale Girls got one story each. You’re getting them all.”

“Too true. Too, too damn true.” The Princess pinched the bridge of her nose. The motif on her throne seemed to be shifting every time Vel looked away, now roses, now skulls. The skulls were winning. “It’s good that y’all have a plan that gets you out of here. I don’t think you should come back.”

“What?” Victory Anna straightened, eyes wide and alarmed. “I can’t remain in Winter’s domain. My presence is enough to call the Snowfather out of your Santa Claus, and my aspect of the giving season isn’t meant to exist in your world.”

“See, this is my life.” The Princess waved her hand vaguely at the group. “Most people hear that sentence, they’re going to assume you’re drunk. Me, I figure you’re sober and telling the truth and that you’ll explain things if I ask you about them, which is why I’m not asking. I don’t know who this ‘Snowfather’ is, and right now, I don’t actually care. It’s not safe here anymore.”

“Why not?” asked Action Dude.

The Princess turned her blue, blue eyes on him and smiled like the first frost of winter: cold and unforgiving and beautiful, in its own way. Velveteen, who had felt that frost consuming her, shivered.

“Because you’re a good man,” said the Princess. “Look at you. The all-American boy, very picture of a prince, standing there with your one true love and her faithful friends--you’re a fairy tale waiting to start, and I don’t know how long I can resist you. All of you. I’m going to be the worst enemy you’ve ever faced soon enough, and it’s killing me not to do what my story wants. I can’t let it go. It’ll find someone else if I let it go, and it’s not clean right now. It’s going to do to them what it’s tryin’ to do to me. But I’ll sure have an easier time fighting it if I don’t have to look at your stupid heroes’ faces and remember that I’m never gonna be one of you again.”

Jacqueline stepped forward, away from her friends, climbing the shallow steps in front of the Princess’s throne. The Princess watched her come with weary eyes.

“I’m sorry,” said Jack, touching her hand. “I really am. I’ll tell Papa what’s happened. I’ll get him to start the North Pole’s media counterattack. We’ll get you back. We’ll figure out how to make the children start believing in you again, and we’ll get you back.”

“I sure do wish I could believe you, sugar,” said the Princess.

Jack leaned in and kissed her on the temple, leaving a glittery smear of lip gloss behind. Then she jumped down from the dais and ran back to the others, pulling a snow globe out of a pocket concealed somewhere in the skirt of her gown. “Hold tight,” she said, grabbing Vel’s hand.

Action Dude grabbed Vel’s other hand. Polychrome grabbed his, and Victory Anna grabbed hers. Jack stole one last glance at the Princess’s anguished face before smashing the snow globe against the floor. A swirl of marshmallow-scented snow swirled around them, and they were gone.

*

According to scholars and historians alike, superhumans have always existed. They may seem like recent additions to the world stage, but they have, in fact, been around for millennia. Their recent prominence is attributable to two major factors: an increased willingness to celebrate one’s neighbors for being able to fly or bend steel with their bare hands, rather than having them burnt at the nearest stake, and centuries of stories talking about the exploits of ostensibly fictional individuals doing the same things for the public good.

Much as modern audiences have difficulty believing the intelligent people capable of coming up with brilliant mathematical and architectural theories could believe that disease was caused by vapors from the earth, and that handwashing was thus optional, there was a time when most chose not to believe in the existence of superhumans. They were consigned to myth, legend, and cautionary tale, and remained that way for centuries.

The rise of the superhuman in modern times is interesting in part because it has happened so swiftly and steeply, and in part because it seems as if it should have happened centuries ago. Unmasking is an inevitability, once there is a mask to remove, and while certain power classes have certainly become more common with time--a prehistoric technomancer, for example, would no doubt be indistinguishable from a modern earth manipulator--the birth rate of most superhumans seems to have been consistent throughout human history.

What changed?

Some scholars of superhuman history believe that we did, alongside the rest of humanity. They point to gaps in the historical record, to disappearances that were never solved, assassinations in locked rooms, and mysterious plagues known only from the graves they left behind, and cite them as obvious proof that history has been rewritten. Chronopaths and continuity manipulators are among the rarest of the superhuman types: most revise themselves out of existence before finishing high school, while others are known only by the holes they leave behind.

It would not be hard, they argue, for a sufficiently powerful chronopath to rewind the world every time superhumans were revealed to the public, erasing their reality from the collective consciousness. By doing this over the course of centuries, it would be possible to prevent mankind from ever realizing its full potential.

The question then becomes why? And if the answer is a good one, why has it ceased? Why has the modern age been allowed to grow ripe with heroes and villains, with superhumans of a hundred different stripes, sometimes seeming to darken the skies as they pass by overhead? If some cosmic force or secret organization has dedicated this much time to keeping the greater population ignorant of the existence of superpowers, what would make them stop?

Is our world a soap bubble, waiting for the day when the secret masters of all decide that we need to be cast back into ignorance? Most importantly of all...is there anything we can do to stop it?

*

For Polychrome and Action Dude, the transit through the swirling snow was familiar, even comforting; they had been taking this trip, through this mechanism, since they were children, and knew that only good things waited for them on the other side. For Victory Anna, it was a tooth-grindingly wrong reminder of how much she had lost when her home reality was destroyed; the world might have accepted her as a part of it, but the Seasons never would. That was only right. Something had to remember that she didn’t belong here, if only to reassure her that she was not, in fact, mad.

For Velveteen, it was all wrong. Traveling with Jackie wasn’t a swirl of warm snow and the scent of cocoa. It was a burst of freezing cold, like chewing peppermint gum with your entire body. It was mint and tingling brightness, that first slap of chill before the winter really settled any deeper than the skin. It was invigorating, it was impossible to ignore, and it was not a warm embrace and the scent of hot chocolate. This was not the way things were supposed to be. This was wrong.

When the snow fell, they were standing in a snowbank. Well. Most of them were standing in a snowbank. Yelena was hovering a foot or so above it, the air around her lit up like the Northern lights. Just the sight of them was enough to make Vel’s skin crawl. Torrey was standing primly atop the snow, her holiday-themed costume change having come with a pair of snowshoes. And Aaron...

Aaron was sitting down in the snow, his weight resting on his hands and his face turned toward the sky, laughing helplessly. Unlike the rest of them, the passage hadn’t dressed him in a variation on his normal costume (which was probably reassuring; she’d always been a little weirded-out seeing her Jewish teammate and boyfriend dressed head to toe in Christmas colors, instead of something blue and white and culturally appropriate). Instead, he was wearing dark blue ski pants and an ugly holiday sweater stitched in snowflakes, stars, and snowmen wearing ironic beanies.

“Oh, how delightful,” said Torrey dryly. “The poor man’s snapped under the strain. Well, I never liked him anyway, and our time here is inherently short, due to the strain I place upon our environs. I say we leave him for the wolves.”

“That’s not kind to the wolves,” said Yelena. Her own costume was still skin-tight, but was no longer midnight black: instead, auroras climbed from her ankles to her knees, and from her elbows to her wrists, while her normally rainbow sash was an ever-changing strip of winter sky.

“No one is getting left to the wolves,” snapped Vel, and knelt next to Aaron, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. You okay?”

“I’m here,” he said, and beamed at her. “You look great. I love it when you have holly in your hair.”

Velveteen resisted the urge to reach up and feel what Winter had done to her this time. She had skin, not snow; she could feel her heart beating. That was good enough for her. “Yes, good, you know where you are. We sort of rode a magic snow globe to get here, and that sounds weird even to me. But are you okay?”

“I haven’t been here since I let them drive you away,” he said, and grabbed her, hauling her down into the snowbank with him. It was a child’s embrace, giddy and joyous and utterly platonic. Velveteen squeaked before she was sprawling in the snow. He didn’t let her go. “Santa didn’t let any of us come to visit after Marketing drove you away. We were all on the Naughty List.”

“What in the world is a ‘Naughty List’?” demanded Torrey.

“Papa keeps watch over all the children in the world, and makes records of whether they’ve been naughty or nice,” said Jack serenely. “Nice kids get a genuine collectable North Pole toy on the winter holiday most closely aligned with their personal belief systems. A lot of them wind up getting sold on eBay. There was a Jacqueline Frost doll one year. She goes for about six hundred dollars mint in box.” All four of her companions were staring at her by the time she finished speaking. She blinked. “What?”

“I do not even know where to begin,” said Torrey slowly. “Shall we begin with a Snowfather who would spy upon the world’s children, watching them at their most vulnerable? Or with the concept of tracking one’s own collectable action figures via Internet auction sites? Truly, I’m not sure which is the more disturbing.”

“How have you been living in this world for three years without at least getting the basics behind Christmas?” Vel sat up in the snowbank. Snow clung to the rabbit ears attached to her headband, giving her a comically jaunty air. “Honestly, Lena, I thought you’d have her singing carols by now.”

“We’ve been busy.” Yelena offered her hands to Vel and Aaron. “Besides, Santa is the secular side of the holiday, and I really didn’t feel like enduring another of her rants on the evils of monotheism just so she’d understand why Jack traveled by snow globe. This is Winter, Santa fills the same role as the Snowfather, and that was good enough.”

“I’m finally back at the North Pole,” said Aaron, smiling beatifically as he allowed Yelena to pull him out of the snow bank. “I’m finally back on the Nice List.”

“Yeah, well, that makes one of us,” said Vel, getting her own feet back under herself before she let go of Yelena. She dusted the snow off of her skirt. “The rest of you might want to stay here. I’m about to get myself permanently filed under ‘Naughty.’” With that, she went stalking off across the frozen field, heading for the distant lights of Santa’s Village.

The others watched her go in silence for a long moment before Yelena sighed, said, “She’s going to get her ass kicked,” and launched herself into the air. She soared after the angry animus, leaving a trail of rainbows behind her.

“On it,” said Aaron, and took off, flying after Yelena.

Jack and Torrey exchanged a look.

“Some people need more gravity,” said Jack. Torrey laughed, and the pair followed their friends, on foot, through the snow.

*

Velveteen waved her hands as she walked, almost without thinking about it. Snow animals formed out of the drifts around her, shaking themselves to life and running after her. By the time she reached the edge of the village, she was accompanied by a menagerie of frozen beasts. They ranged out behind her in ascending order of size: bunnies and squirrels at the front, wolves and bobcats in the next rank, and at the back, snow lions and snow yeti and great bears with icicles for teeth. The elves and penguins saw her coming and scattered, running for their cheerful little houses and slamming the doors behind them.

Silence fell. In Santa’s Village, normally the cheeriest place in the Seasonal Lands, nothing moved. No carols played. Everything was still except for the chest of one velvet-clad anima, which rose and fell with the force of her labored breathing.

“Come out and face me, old man!” she yelled. The anguish in her voice was enough to crack glass, here where the happiest part of the holiday was meant to reside. “You owe me that much! You owe me...you owe me that.”

The door of Santa’s cottage opened. A vast form, clad in red and white fur, belted with a broad black band, stepped onto the porch. Santa’s cheeks were red, as always, but his eyes had lost some of their glisten; instead of merriment, they were filled with sorrow.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose I do. Hello, Velveteen. It’s been a long time.”

“Not for me,” she snarled. “I lost all track of time while I was busy being turned to snow, severed from my own life force, and shoved into a rag doll. So it was a little surprising for me to get home and find out that three years had passed. Three years. You didn’t tell me. You didn’t warn me. You didn’t say anything about what was going to happen.”

“We told you that you would be stepping outside of normal time, out of the reach of the Calendar Country,” said Santa softly. “That should have been warning enough.”

“I trusted you,” she said, and her voice was a moan, her voice was a wail, her voice was an open wound in the world. Overhead, the Northern Lights pulsed in unconscious sympathy. She might have moved past Winter, but she was still an anima in a place that was defined by belief, and she was more powerful than she knew.

“I know,” said Santa, and his voice was nothing more nor less than a broken heart.

Polychrome and Action Dude landed on the snow to either side of Velveteen--farther from her than they would have liked, but there were snow rabbits in the way, and while that was a new and slightly unnerving development, they didn’t want to see what Vel would do if they squashed them.

“Vel?” said Action Dude, uncertainly. “Is everything okay?” He glanced toward the cottage with the open door, cheeks reddening slightly in embarrassment and awe. “Um. Hi, Santa.”

“Hello, Aaron,” said Santa, with a small smile. “I’ve missed you. I’m glad to see that you’ve been able to find your way back.”

“Eyes front, old man,” said Velveteen tightly. “We’re not done yet.”

“No,” he said, turning his attention back to her. “Do you really want to do this here? In the open, in front of your friends? I’m assuming you want something from me. You wouldn’t be so angry otherwise. Most people sit on my lap, or write me letters. They don’t call me out in the village square.”

“Most people trust you more than I do.”

“I suppose that’s fair.” Santa’s eyes went to a point beyond Velveteen, his face softening for a moment before he looked back to her and said, “And I suppose she’s one of the reasons you’ve lost faith in me.”

“Really. You suppose. Like you’re just guessing. Like you thought I was going to be all right with this. She’s not your daughter.”

“She is,” said Santa. His voice was gentle. “I took her in when she was a baby. I gave her my name, and I gave her my heart. I held her until her skin warmed under my hands, and when she fell asleep in my arms, I made the only selfish decision I have allowed myself in centuries. I didn’t give her back.”

The snow wolves began to growl, drawing their lips away from their frozen teeth. “That’s not what happened and you know it,” said Velveteen.

“But it did happen,” said Santa. “Maybe not always. Maybe there was a time when the Snow Queen came to me terrified of motherhood, and I gave her council, I gave her hope, and I gave her the chance to raise her own daughter, always knowing that Mrs. Claus and I would be there if she needed us. Maybe there was a time when my little girl grew up with cold hands and a cold, but earnest heart. Sadly, that time is not this one.”

Velveteen opened her mouth to object. Then she stopped herself, turning to watch Torrey and Jack trudging toward them through the snow. Jack was wading in it, the drifts extending almost to her knees. Jackie would have been walking on top of it, light and effortlessly part of her environment. Even the strongest spell, the strangest form of brainwashing, couldn’t have chased the ice from the marrow of her bones that completely. This girl, whoever she was, had never been Jackie Frost, daughter of the Snow Queen, heir to the heart of winter. It just wasn’t possible.

Santa saw Velveteen’s shoulders sag, and he mourned for her, even as he knew that there was nothing he could do.

Velveteen took a deep breath, visibly pulling herself back together, and squared her shoulders as she turned to face him. “All right,” she said. “We can go inside. Aaron? Lena? Wait for me out here.”

“You mean with the army of angry snow-monsters that you didn’t even have to sculpt?” asked Yelena. She looked at the snow bunnies standing rigidly next to her with obvious wariness. “Are they going to eat us?”

“They’re mine,” said Vel. “They would never hurt you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She walked over to join Santa. He offered her his hand. She didn’t take it, and after a moment, it was withdrawn. Together, side by side, they walked to his house, and they shut the door behind them.

“Hey, Yelena?”

“Yeah?”

“When did Vel get fucking terrifying?”

Yelena smiled, the expression laced with worry. “She always has been. You were always too focused on her boobs to notice.”

“Oh,” said Aaron. “Right.”

*

Inside Santa’s house, the air was warm and chocolate-scented, much like the scent that accompanied Jacqueline’s snow globe transportation. Velveteen noted the similarity and filed it away for later consideration as she turned on Santa and hissed, “You should have told me.”

“I wasn’t allowed to,” he replied calmly. “Aurora still thought there was a chance you might choose to stay with us, and telling you that one of your first and truest friends was gone forever wasn’t going to endear you to our season. I hold sway over Christmas, Vel, but Winter is hers, and when she speaks, the rest of us obey.”

“Did she tell you to...kill isn’t the right word. Did she tell you to delete Jackie?”

“No,” he said. The last of the joyful twinkle faded from his eyes. “She told the Snow Queen to do it. The mirrors are hers; she always knew this was a possibility. It took less to change the world than anyone would have expected.”

“The mirrors,” said Vel, standing a little straighter. “There were other Jackie Frosts. Jackie still exists.”

“Versions of her do, yes. But not yours. Not mine. That girl is gone, and angry as you are with me right now--and with good cause, Vel, please believe me; I understand your anger better than you could possibly know--she isn’t the reason you came here. Please. Even if you’ll never leave out milk and cookies for me again, let me do this much. Let me help you.”

Velveteen was silent for a moment, looking around Santa’s living room, where she had been so happy once, before he’d broken her heart and ruined it for her forever. Finally, she turned back to him and said, “Everything is wrong now. The Super Patriots, Inc. were defeated, but then I walked away. I didn’t stay to make sure everything got put back together again. Bad people took over and twisted everything, and now half my friends are villains just because of who they are.”

“There are a lot of new names on the Naughty List,” Santa agreed gravely. “What do you think I can do about it? Coal in their stockings isn’t going to change their minds. Most of them don’t even bother with stockings anymore.”

“They’re smart enough not to invite you in,” said Vel. She looked him in the eye and said, “I want you to tell me how to fix it, Santa. That’s what I want for Christmas. That’s all I want for Christmas. I want you to tell me what I have to do to fix the mess I allowed them to make. I can’t...I can’t leave things like this. It’s all my fault, and I can’t. Please.” She was mortified to feel herself starting to cry. She pressed on anyway. “I’ve been a very good girl this year.”

“You know, my dear, most people who said that right after calling me out in the village square would be lying through their teeth. But you, ah. You are still the sweet girl you were when my Jack brought you home to us. If I have any regrets, it’s that I was not allowed to decide how you would be wooed to join us. You would have been an incredible toymaker.”

“Can you help me?” Vel looked at him, now crying openly. “Can you fix this?”

Santa sighed. “No.”

Vel made a strangled choking sound.

“But you can, if you’re willing to take the risk.”

It had been so long since she’d been truly hopeful that for a moment, she didn’t know what to do. Tense and wary, she looked at Santa Claus and asked, “What do you mean?”

“I am a Spirit of the Season. Whatever else I may have been, once, this is where I belong now. I’m a part of Winter, and like Jack--like poor, lost Jackie--I cannot act against my nature. My nature says that I should try to give good children what they ask for, and you have fought so long to be among the best of us, Velveteen, Velma, whatever name you want to wear; you’ve done everything you could. So of course I will do my best to give you what you want. But I can’t leave my season.” Santa smiled sadly. “My absences from the North Pole must fit a very narrow set of circumstances. I can show you where to go. I can’t go with you.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” asked Velveteen.

Santa sighed. “You’re never going to trust me again, are you?”

“Not planning on it.”

“I might have felt the same, in your position,” he admitted. “The road you’ll need to walk...it’s been walked before, and it comes with consequences. If you succeed in turning back the hands of time, it will cost you. You’d best be sure that you’re prepared to pay.”

“It can’t be worse than this,” said Velveteen firmly.

Santa Claus, who had lived through more than his share of young idealists who wanted to right great wrongs, to change the world in ways that should have been impossible--would have been impossible, were it not for the urge that builds in any fair universe, the urge that says “give them a way to fix their mistakes,” said nothing for a long moment. He just looked at her, this woman who had been a child in his kitchen, once, her hair in curls and her eyes full of unshed tears. Some of those tears were with her even now. Some of those tears would always be there.

Finally, he said, “Go get your friends. Go to the Hall of Mirrors. The Snow Queen and I will meet you there shortly, and we’ll show you how to find the answers that you’re looking for.”

Velveteen, who had long since learned that sometimes it was better not to ask, nodded once before she turned and walked to the door, letting herself out. Santa watched her go.

When he turned, Mrs. Claus was standing in the kitchen doorway, a dishcloth in her hands. “So you’re going to help her do it,” she said.

“I have to,” he replied. “It’s what she wants for Christmas. You know I can’t refuse someone from the Nice List when they stand in front of me and tell me what they want for Christmas.”

“You can, and you have. When they ask for something that might well break the universe, you are absolutely allowed to tell them ‘no, I’m sorry, have a lollipop instead.’” She glowered at him. “You’re being a sentimental old fool, Nicholas, and for what? Because she’s had a hard life? Lots of them have had hard lives. You haven’t sent them all on this path.”

“I’ve set a few on the right road. It’s not my fault if they don’t all make it there.”

“And if she does? Are you prepared for another century in the shadows, letting other people decide what we’re going to be, before we can be part of our own stories again?”

“Oh, my sweet girl. Admit what you’re really worried about. You’re afraid she’ll find a way to take Jacqueline away from us.”

Mrs. Claus sighed deeply. “I always wanted children. I’ve always been so jealous of the versions of us who got to have her. Jealousy isn’t good for me. I’m not meant to be the jealous type. It hurts.”

“I know, love.” Santa crossed the room to press a kiss to her temple. “It will all work out. I promise you that. However it goes will be how it was meant to happen. Trust them. They’re the ones who have to live in the world they’re making.”

“Do they know that?”

Santa looked toward the door. “I certainly hope so,” he said.

*

The others were waiting on the porch when Velveteen emerged. Aaron was the first to react. “Well?” he asked.

“Santa’s going to help us,” she said. “Jack, he wants you to take us to the Hall of Mirrors.”

“Papa told you to go to the Hall of Mirrors?” Jack frowned. “That’s odd. He normally wants me to stay as far away from there as possible.”

“That’s what he said,” said Vel. “Do you know the way?” Jackie would have. Jackie had been training to become her mother’s heir for years, had walked through every mirror in that frozen Hall. Velveteen looked at the pale and anxious girl in front of her, and thought that if she shook Winter all the way down to its foundations, she wouldn’t have made them suffer enough.

But it wasn’t Jack’s fault. If anyone was blameless here, it was her. Velveteen tried to remember that, and to swallow her anger.

“I do,” said Jack. She looked uncomfortable. “What are we going to do once we get there?”

“Does it matter?” asked Torrey. The others turned to look at her. She shrugged. “When our dear Lady of the Toybox decides to do something, she rarely consults with the rest of us. She spent too much time a soloist, and no longer remembers how to play nicely with the symphony. What’s to come will come, and the rest of us will go along with it, because we are, for whatever misguided reasons, greatly inclined to follow her.”

Yelena frowned and put her arm around Torrey’s shoulders, gathering the smaller woman close. “You’re really uncomfortable here, aren’t you?”

“Ah, Pol.” Torrey smiled up at her, weary and wry. “Everything in this place is based upon the iconography of a world that is not my own. I love your world, I do, but a girl likes to pretend she’s culturally literate, and every part of my surroundings reminds me that I am not.”

“We’re going to fix things,” said Velveteen. The others turned back to her. She was focused on Jack. “That’s what you want to know, right? What we’re going to do? We’re going to fix things. I don’t know how, and I don’t know what the world is going to look like afterward, but we’re going to fix things.”

“Everything?” asked Jack.

Velveteen hesitated before saying, “If there’s any way to make this all have just...not happened, that’s what I’m going to do. That would mean Jackie would never have needed to save me, and if she didn’t need to save me, she didn’t get erased. Will you still help us?”

“Why did you tell me if you thought I wouldn’t?” asked Jack.

Velveteen shrugged. “I figured you should have a choice, if there’s a chance you’re about to be wiped from existence.”

Jack smiled a little. “I wouldn’t be the selfless spirit of Christmas if I tried to tell you ‘no,’ but I’m not just saying ‘yes’ because of my nature,” she said. “I don’t want to take someone else’s life. There will always be Jacquelines. This world is supposed to have a Jackie.”

“Then lead the way,” said Velveteen.

Jack nodded and stepped off the porch, starting deeper into the village. Torrey followed. As before, Yelena hovered above the snow rather than trying to walk through it, but this time she floated next to her girlfriend, lighting up the air around them.

When Vel stepped off the porch, Aaron was by her side, his feet as firmly on the ground as her own.

She took his hand as they walked, and neither one of them said a word, and neither of them needed to.

*

Santa and the Snow Queen were waiting on the steps of the Hall of Mirrors. No one commented on the fact that Santa couldn’t possibly have beaten them there: this was his place, and he was capable of virtually anything.

Looking at the Snow Queen, Velveteen thought she looked even colder than usual. Her aristocratic features were set into a frozen mask of disdain, her chin raised as she looked down her nose at the warm-blooded heroes in front of her. Jack reddened and turned her face away, not meeting the Snow Queen’s eyes.

“Well?” Velveteen held fast to Aaron’s hand as she looked at Santa. “Now what?”

“Now you go inside,” he said. “There is a door. It’s not large, or flashy; it’s not easy to find, when you’re surrounded by so many more interesting things. But it’s there. Find it. Open it. Go through. What you’re looking for is on the other side.”

Velveteen stared. “Seriously? That’s it? ‘Go in there and find a door, and we won’t tell you what’s on the other side, but hey, good luck’? That’s bullshit. What are we looking for?”

“We don’t know,” said the Snow Queen. Her voice was a blizzard, and all of them shivered, even Jack, who was no longer cold enough to withstand her mother’s words. “We are Spirits of the Season, bound to this time, this place, and the door you seek is not available to us. We are not allowed to know such things.”

“What about Jack?” asked Yelena.

“The daughter of the Toymaker is not yet an archetype; she is idea as much as she is flesh, but she exists in your world alongside ours,” said the Snow Queen. “She may go where she will, and the consequences will be upon her.”

Jack laughed unsteadily. “Aren’t they always?” she asked, and looked to Velveteen. “Well? You’re the one leading this parade.”

“So let’s go,” said Velveteen.

The Snow Queen waved her hand. The doors of the Hall of Mirrors swung slowly open, revealing the glittering maze beyond. Aaron bore down harder on Vel’s hand. She paused, realizing that he had never been here before.

“It’s all right,” she murmured. “It’s just the versions of us that we might have been. They can’t hurt you if you don’t touch the mirrors.”

“Because that’s reassuring,” muttered Aaron. He didn’t let go of her hand, and she didn’t try to pull away. They seemed to be taking comfort from each other.

Yelena, watching this, smiled to herself. It had been too long since she’d seen them like this. Some things were always meant to be, even if they only happened at the end of the world.

Velveteen took a deep breath. “All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She walked into the Hall of Mirrors with Aaron by her side. Yelena landed lightly next to Torrey, and they followed their friends through the door. Jack brought up the rear, glancing at her father’s face long enough to see his reassuring nod. She didn’t look at her mother at all.

The doors slammed shut behind her, blocking the group from view. Santa and the Snow Queen stayed where they were, silent, looking at anything but each other, while around them, the wind howled. A blizzard was kicking up. For once, it wasn’t clear which one of them was to blame. For once, it didn’t really matter.

Iron Poet poetry roundup #6.

2016-03-08T03:05:15Z

It's the sixth roundup for the current round of Iron Poet! This round is now closed.

"My Sister" for druidspell. (Pantoum)
"Come Dancing" for wyld_dandelion. (Rhyming verse)
"Castleview" for angel_vixen. (Triolet)
"Your Voice" for muddlewait. (Triolet)
"A Human Heart" for myuki_chan. (Triolet)
"Plain Desires" for geojlc. (Rhyming verse)
"Wedding Plea" for azurelunatic. (Blank verse)
"Time" for tibicina. (Blank verse)
"Gardener" for jocoustic. (Blank verse)
"Monster's Bedtime Pledge" for ravan. (Rhyming verse)
"Holy" for beeker121. (Rhyming verse)
"Trains on the Moon" for kay_gmd. (Rhyming verse)
"Rest" for tigertoy. (Simple rhyme)
"Evening Song" for songcoyote. (Asymmetric sonnet)

More to come.

Iron Poet poetry roundup #5.

2016-02-27T05:20:47Z

It's the fifth roundup for the current round of Iron Poet! This round is now closed.

"For You" for betedanslecoeur. (Rhyming verse)
"Phantom Rose" for kidogirl. (Song form)
"Dreaming Australia" for rose_clover. (Free verse)
"Offerings" for beable. (Free verse)
"If You Let Me" for hsifyppah. (Song form)
"Bleeding" for deire. (Free verse)
"The Restless Dead" for patoadam. (Rondeau)
"Fairy Tale" for archangelbeth. (Rhyming verse)
"All Else Fades" for jadis17. (Blank sonnet)
"Every Cat" for redbird. (Free verse)
"What She Asked For" for shiyiya. (Rhyming verse)
"This Is How" for allisona. (Free verse)

More to come.

Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions.

2016-02-26T00:28:20Z

Title: Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions.
Summary: What happens when a former child superhero returns from her travels in the seasonal lands, only to discover that things have changed, possibly forever? Velveteen is home. Home is not the same.

***

The transition between the real world and the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle was usually smooth and easy, accompanied by rainbows, sparkles, and sometimes a thematic musical number. Not this time. Velveteen tumbled out of the mirror and into a forward roll, barely managing to get her elbows into place to keep herself from landing on her own head. She heard rather than saw Action Dude come through behind her; from the way his grunt cut off, he hadn’t been as good about recognizing the need for a recovery roll as she had. Oh, well. He’d probably be fine, and if he wasn’t, the Princess had an excellent in-house medical team. The fact that they were all rodents was beside the point.

“Oof,” said Action Dude. “Did you get the number of that truck?”

“There was no truck, sugar,” said a sweet Southern voice. There was an edge to it that made Velveteen uncomfortable. The Princess wasn’t supposed to sound like she was inching up on supervillain. The Princess was supposed to be the best of them.

Velveteen raised her head and found herself looking at a pair of polished black leather boots decorated with red filigrees. The stitching formed roses, not apples. That was a relief. The apple motif was absolutely a supervillain thing, and if the Princess ever crossed that line, she wasn’t going to be coming back. Some things couldn’t be forgiven by the children of the world, no matter how much they wanted to.

Slowly, Velveteen tilted her head back, following the boots to a pair of red velvet trousers under a red coat that belled out around the Princess’s legs like the skirt of a ball gown, leaving her with a wider range of motion than her norm, while still keeping her firmly within her fairy tale standards. Her bodice was sweetheart-cut, trimmed with garnets and diamonds, and her buttery blonde hair was piled on her head like she was getting ready for her own wedding. The expression on her face was torn between relief and sorrow. It was such a perfect division that it was painful to look at. That, too, was part of the fairy tale. Only in a story could someone’s expression be such a flawless summation of their story.

“Vel, honey?” said the Princess. “Is that really you?” She knelt, offering Velveteen her hand. It was gloved in velvet, but that couldn’t stop it from trembling.

“I think so.” Velveteen took the Princess’s hand, letting the other woman pull her to her feet. “The holidays bounced me around pretty hard, but I think they--oof!” She squeaked as the Princess abruptly jerked her into a hard hug, knocking the wind out of her. The Princess was always taller than she was, and with the amount of both weight and muscle tone Vel had lost in the Seasonal Lands, there was no contest.

After it became clear that the Princess wasn’t going to let go on her own, she tapped the other woman’s shoulder and wheeze, “Cara. Can’t...breathe...”

“Aw, shit, honey, I’m sorry!” The Princess thrust her out to arms’-length, keeping hold of her shoulders. “I just never thought I was going to see you again.” There were tears forming at the corners of her eyes, and somehow that was the most alarming thing of all.

“What the hell happened?” Velveteen gripped the Princess’s forearms, trying to take some comfort in the contact. There didn’t seem to be much comfort to be found. “Aaron told me some of it, but he--”

“Villain!” The shriek came from the left. Velveteen turned, but not fast enough to get more than an impression of a swiftly-moving blur heading for the spot where Action Dude had fallen.

Velveteen didn’t think. She just reacted. The Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle was constructed from the dreams and beliefs of children everywhere, and children everywhere apparently thought that any fairy tale princess worth her salt would do a hell of a lot of decorating in marble statues and topiary. A dragon made out of thorny hedge lurched into motion, grabbing Victory Anna by the collar and hoisting her into the air before she could pull the trigger. She tried anyway, and her shot went wide, vaporizing a stained glass window.

The Princess sighed. Heavily. “Too damn much, that’s what,” she said, and that was the perfect answer, and it wasn’t an answer at all.

*

In the matter of controlling the world’s superhuman population, many things have been tried. Common power sources have been tracked down, documented, and, when possible, suppressed; civics classes have been expanded to include explanations as to why wishing one’s neighbors into a demonic cornfield is not good citizen behavior; laws have been passed. In the end, however, public opinion has proven to be the best mechanism for exacting this control. Despite the “super,” people with powers are still only human, and like all humans, they seek social contact and approval. Their desire to be liked is their greatest weakness.

Comic books, graphic novels, and popular television shows have been deployed with great success to keep the superhuman population on the effectively “straight and narrow.” No one likes the villain, after all. When the world is rooting for the heroes, who would voluntarily choose the other side? But more insidious, and more effective, is rumor. Gossip and hearsay are slippery weapons, best deployed by the experts--and those with reason to attempt control of the superhuman population have had more than enough time to perfect their craft.

Take, for example, Velveteen. A relatively low-ambition superhuman, she seemed content to disappear from the public consciousness, becoming a footnote in the history of The Super Patriots, Inc. The narrative supported by the corporation, however, did not allow for this quiet exit; if she was not a hero, she needed to be a villain. Years of careful propaganda resulted in her public approval rating entering the negative numbers during a time when no one should even have remembered that she existed. As a consequence, when she did return, the general populace was primed to view her as a threat--something which made it easier for the superhuman registration and recruitment laws to pass.

Had Velveteen been left alone, had The Super Patriots, Inc. been willing to admit that she was a lost cause, would the animus regulation laws have been able to pass? The world had been prepared to see her as the bad guy in any situation she happened to become involved with...and when that situation included publicly defeating the only other person known to have her specific power set, it became easy to see that power set as somehow innately corrupt. It is the possible that, in their handling of the Velveteen matter, The Super Patriots, Inc. sowed the seeds of their own eventual downfall. Rather than entering a period of rebuilding after Supermodel’s defeat, they were thrown straight onto the defensive, and were unable to recover.

And then there is the matter of the magical heroes, of the seasonal heroes, of the ones who manifest ideas, ideals, and most of all, opinions. Jolly Roger, the living human manifestation of the concept of heroic piracy, was very different in our time than he would have been during the time of the East India Company. Fewer throats were slit; more baths were taken. So what, then, happens when the great machine of gossip and public opinion is turned against someone whose powers stem from such a well?

How much can a hero change without “hero” ceasing to be the operative word?

*

The sound of shouting attracted Yelena to the arrival garden. She stepped through the space between two decorative hedges, wearing a black ball gown trimmed with rainbows, and stopped, blinking at the edifying sight of her lover locked in unceasing battle with two topiary dragons and a large plush unicorn. The Princess was standing nearby, arms crossed, looking at the fight in disgust. Action Dude was off to one side, looking baffled. And Velveteen--

Velveteen was there, half-crouched behind the Princess, face screwed up in concentration. Yelena frowned, assessing the fight again. Torrey wasn’t being hurt by the topiary; they were doing their best to restrain her, and she was shooting them over and over again, sending leaves and twigs raining down around her. If they’d wanted to, they could have gripped her arms tight enough to make her bleed; they could have stomped on her and broken her bones. All they were doing was keeping her away from Velveteen. Vel was playing a defensive game, which was why she was going to lose.

Yelena heaved a sigh that seemed to come all the way up from her toes before walking over to stand next to the Princess, her back to Velveteen. “So,” she said. “You’re back.”

“Uh, yeah,” said Velveteen. “I am.” She paused before asking, “Why is Torrey trying to kill me?”

“She’s not trying to kill you.”

“Oh.”

“That’s one of her wounding lasers. It’s set up to cauterize flesh as it cuts. She’s probably just trying to cut off one of your arms. Maybe both of them. I mean, technically, she could use it to cut off your head, but she always says that’s not nice, and I try not to discourage her when she finds a point of morality she actually likes.”

There was an extremely long pause, during which Torrey fired six more times and one of the dragon topiary lost a wing. Finally, Velveteen said, “That’s fucking great, but I still don’t understand.”

“You know what the worst thing about this is? That makes perfect sense to me right now.” Yelena cupped her hands around her mouth and called, “We’ve talked about this, Victoria. Velma’s been in the Seasonal Lands. She had no idea what we were going through. You need to put the laser down.”

“Again she causes you harm, and again you would forgive her?” Torrey stopped firing in order to shoot a withering glare at her girlfriend. “I love you, my Pol, but your blind spots for the bunny are well-established, and no longer to be borne. This ends tonight.”

“Not in my house, it doesn’t,” said the Princess. Her words fell into the space between them like bricks into a wall, cold and implacable and terrifyingly heavy. Yelena winced. Velveteen leaned back, eyes wide, to stare at the woman in front of her. Suddenly, the Princess looked like a stranger. A dangerous one.

“Y’all are guests in my home, and I expect you to comport yourselves accordingly,” continued the Princess. “If I let you kill each other in front of me, you think that’s going to do me one poison apple piece of good? I’m holding on by a thread here, Victoria. They’re trying to make you a villain in word, but they’re not going to stop there with me. You know that. I know that. Now calm the fuck down.”

Torrey opened her mouth to reply. Then she stopped, sagging in the arms of the topiary dragon. “My apologies, Princess.”

“Damn right, your apologies. Vel?” The Princess turned, looking down at the crouching woman. There was something like pity in her eyes. There was also something like disgust. It was jarring, seeing that combination on her face. “Tell the nice hedges to put her down, and put them back where you found them.”

“Right.” Vel straightened up. The dragon holding Victory Anna lowered her to the ground before lurching back into its original position. It was badly damaged, but it still made the effort to curve its neck majestically before it froze. The other topiary followed, all of them going still as the animation left them.

Velveteen sagged, looking unsteady. Action Dude hurried to slip an arm around her waist, holding her up while she got her balance back. She offered him a wan, grateful smile.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m still getting used to having skin again.”

“Charming as that image is, how about you say your hellos, and we move on to the meat of the thing?” The Princess crossed her arms. “We’ve got a lot to talk about, and time’s not as long as it used to be.”

Victory Anna smoothed her skirt with the heels of her hands. She was no longer holding her laser gun. It didn’t appear to be clipped to her belt, either. Sometimes Vel suspected all gadgeteers of having access to some sort of extradimensional pocket. “I don’t want to talk,” she said primly. “I already know what she’s going to say.”

“Oh, really?” Action Dude angled his body slightly, keeping himself between Vel and Victory Anna. “What’s that?”

“She’s going to say it isn’t her fault.” Victory Anna crossed her arms. “She’s going to say she couldn’t possibly have known that this was going to happen, even though she should absolutely have known this was going to happen. The writing was on the wall before she walked through that door. This was inevitable. She did it anyway. She left us behind. She let us take the brunt of everything she didn’t want to deal with. Now we’re villains in name and you’re in the process of becoming one in fact, and nothing is going to take that back. Why should I forgive her? Why should anyone forgive her?”

“Because forgiveness is all we have left.” The voice was weary and almost familiar, just enough to the left of what it should have been that Velveteen straightened, turning to look in confusion at the speaker.

It was a woman. She was wearing a red and white ball gown--the Princess put everyone in ball gowns if given half a chance--and her hair was a shade of white that somehow reflected in blue and pink and purple, like she had worked an aurora into the strands. Her face would have been familiar, if not for the color of her skin: it should have been blue and glittering, like the world’s tallest, bustiest Smurf. Instead, she was pale as winter, with rosy cheeks and naturally red lips. She looked at Velveteen like her heart was breaking.

“Hello, Velveteen,” she said.

Vel blinked. “Who the fuck are you?” she asked.

*

The Princess had stepped in after Jacqueline appeared, sweeping everyone off to her council room. Like everything else in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle, it was opulent to the point of becoming ridiculous: the floor was marble, the walls were mahogany drowning in velvet, and the table where they were all instructed to sit was solid stone, like something stolen from a production of Camelot. The chairs were leather; the chandelier was crystal; the air was cold.

That last was the hardest for Velveteen to ignore. In between stealing glances at Jacqueline and trying to avoid meeting Victory Anna’s eyes, she looked around the room and noted the shadows in the corners. The drapes closest to them were a deep pomegranate red, but the fabric seemed to darken the further it got from the table, until it was a true and unrelenting black.

“All right, sugar, let’s get down to business,” said the Princess, standing at the head of the table and leaning forward so that her weight was resting on the palms of her hands. Everyone else was seated. The difference in their heights was calculated in a way that sent a shiver down Vel’s spine. The Princess she knew liked to be one among equals. This Princess...something was wrong.

The Princess looked at her and said calmly, “I was the last person to see you before you took off. Did you know that? I let you leave from here. If I really think about it, I can remember that it was the right thing to do. But it’s a little harder to see that every day, because see, after you left, after the government finished painting you as public enemy number one, the bogeyman we needed to defeat if normal humans were going to be safe, that’s when they started coming after me. Did I know where you were. Did I know when you were coming back. They even sent this inept supervillain to one of my press conferences, like he could trick me into saying something I didn’t know. I guess that should have been a clue that I was in trouble.”

“It wasn’t just Vel,” said Yelena. She was sitting between Velveteen and Victory Anna, keeping them apart but keeping them close at the same time. This close, it was impossible for Vel not to see how tired she was. The past few years hadn’t been easy on any of them. “We painted a target on you when we took refuge here.”

“Oh believe me, I know, and I have to fight the impulse to wring your scrawny neck every time I look at your moon-eyed face.” The Princess shuddered. It was a bone-deep motion, seeming to originate in her spine and sweep through her entire body. “We’re approaching the point where it won’t be safe for you to stay. I don’t know what’s going to happen then.”

“My father says he can offer succor for the Nice,” said the stranger with the white hair, the one everyone but Vel seemed to think belonged. “I’m so sorry, Carabelle, but...”

“But we both know that if you have to run to get away from me, I’m going to be on the Naughty list,” said the Princess grimly. “There’s no escaping it.”

Velveteen raised her hand. “Okay. I’m exhausted and malnourished and I’m probably going to collapse soon, or start sucking the life out of everything around me like a fucking vampire, but could you please explain what the hell is going on?”

“I am the manifestation of the dreams of children,” said the Princess. Her voice was almost serene. “I was chosen because I was the best vessel in the world for the ideal of the fairy tale princess. I was the little girl that the magic looked at and said ‘yes, her, she’ll do.’ And because I helped you, because I sheltered villains, because I refused to let myself be taken or controlled, there are people out there right now manipulating the narrative. They’re using my own power against me.”

“Movies, books, comics, rumors on the Internet--they’re blanketing the world with the idea that the Princess is a bad guy,” said Yelena. Her voice was hollow. She sounded like someone who’d already lost. “It’s so easy, sometimes, to trick people into thinking the worst of someone they’ve always had questions about.”

“It’s not fair,” snapped Victory Anna. “The divinity which suffuses you should be smarter than this. Less vulnerable to manipulation. Better.”

“Maybe if your world hadn’t popped like a balloon, it would be,” said the Princess. “Too bad the multiverse decided this reality worked better. And here, if people change my story, they change me.”

“There has to be a way out of this,” said Action Dude.

The Princess fixed him with a level gaze. “Honey, I don’t suggest you start trying to tell me you had no idea, because you and I both know it would be a lie, and this ain’t the best time for lying to me. You knew I was having problems. You had problems of your own. That’s fine. When the part of me that doesn’t want to start breaking out the spindles and the shears backs off, I even understand. But that part of me is dwindling, and right now, it’s best that you don’t attempt to deflect blame.”

“That’s not what I meant,” protested Action Dude. “Couldn’t you...I don’t know, couldn’t you let go of your story? I mean, of your powers? We’d still have to go somewhere else, but at least you wouldn’t have to worry that you’d end up hurting someone.”

The Princess went very still. Then, in a strangled voice, she said, “Get out.”

“What?” Action Dude looked at her blankly. “Why do you want me to--”

“Get out!” Her voice was a howl of agony, at war with itself.

Velveteen grabbed his arm, ready to drag him out of there, only to freeze as someone grabbed her shoulder. She twisted around to find that the white-haired stranger was holding onto her. She was holding what looked like a snow globe in one hand.

“Sorry,” she said, and hurled the snow globe at the ground. It shattered. Snow rose up around them, swirling and skirling, and the council room went away, taking the Princess, Yelena, and Victory Anna with it.

*

When the snow settled, Velveteen, Action Dude, and the stranger were standing on one of the castle battlements. The sky was dark, and filled with fireworks. The sky was always dark and filled with fireworks from this particular battlement. They somehow cast enough light for everyone to see clearly. The Princess’s domain might be changing, but its essential laws were, for the moment, still the same.

The white-haired woman let go of Velveteen’s shoulder like it was hot, dancing back, out of easy hitting range. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to touch you without your permission, but after he said that--”

“After I said what?” asked Action Dude blankly.

Velveteen sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand. “The Princess owes too much to her story. She can’t just give her powers up. It doesn’t work that way for her. Maybe you could walk away if you thought it was the right thing to do, but she can’t. She doesn’t have that option.”

Action Dude opened his mouth. Then he paused, and closed it again. After a long, silent moment, he said, “Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t think.”

“I know. And I know you didn’t mean anything by it, and hopefully she does too, because if she’s about to make the switch from Princess to Evil Queen, I’d rather not be her first target.” Velveteen lowered her hand and turned to the white-haired woman. “Next order of business: who the hell are you?”

“You know who I am,” said the white-haired woman. She sounded almost apologetic. Somehow that was worse than the way she wore her face, which looked so wrong cast in pink, when it should have been glittering blue. “I know she took you through the Hall of Mirrors. You saw me there.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Action Dude looked between the two, visibly confused. “Vel, you’re the one who introduced me to Jack. When we were filming our first holiday special, remember? She took us home to meet her parents.”

“That happened,” said the white-haired woman. “But it also didn’t happen.”

“Damn right it didn’t happen,” said Velveteen. “Who are you, and what have you done with Jackie?”

The white-haired woman visibly flinched, closing her eyes for a moment as she composed herself. Finally, she opened them and said, “My name is Jacqueline Claus, and I didn’t do anything with Jackie. Jackie did it to herself. Jackie acted against her nature.”

It was Velveteen’s turn to stop dead. She became a statue, so still that she might as well have been one of the gargoyles that littered the battlements around them. Action Dude took a step backward, suddenly aware of just how sharp the claws on those gargoyles were. Sure, he had super strength, flight, and virtual inevitability, but that didn’t mean he wanted to get his ass kicked by a piece of statuary. It was embarrassing.

“What do you mean, exactly?” asked Velveteen. Her voice was low and tight: a danger sign if there’d ever been one.

“You know what I mean,” said Jacqueline. Her voice was as low as Velveteen’s, but it was far from tight: it was filled, top to bottom, with the deepest sorrow.

“No. I don’t.” Velveteen glared at her, stubborn suspicion written in every line of her too-thin face. “Jackie is my friend. If you’re trying to take her place, you’re in for a shock, lady.”

“You guys are giving me a headache,” said Action Dude. “What are you talking about? We’ve known Jack since we were kids. I mean, hell, when Marketing was trying to convince the world that you were the worst, the fact that you spent half your time with Santa’s daughter was one of the things your allies used to argue. Santa’s daughter wouldn’t have been one of your best friends if you were bad.”

“I’m Santa’s daughter, but I’m not his child,” said Jacqueline. Action Dude frowned, and she continued, “He adopted me when I was just a few days old. When my skin was blue and my hands were freezing. My biological parents--if it’s really biology when they craft you like a living snowman, Frosty taken to a new extreme--are Jack Frost and the Snow Queen.”

“Stop lying,” said Velveteen.

“My mother made me because she wanted an heir, and then she looked at me, my father’s magic turning snow to skin, blizzard to breath, and she realized that she didn’t love me. She was never going to love me. I was less of the living Winter than she was, than her husband was; they both rose from the seasonal subconscious, while I was a choice. I was a handicraft, like a stocking stitched and stuffed with care.” Jacqueline’s voice turned bitter. “She made me because she wanted me, and then she realized I wasn’t perfect by her standards, and she didn’t want me anymore. And in some realities she kept me anyway, because even if I wasn’t perfect, I was hers, and the Snow Queen doesn’t share. In those worlds, the cold never left my hands. I grew up slinging ice and snow and racing through the world, trying to stop the freeze from spreading all the way to my heart.”

“That sounds awful,” said Action Dude, sounding bemused and a little horrified.

Velveteen didn’t say anything at all.

“It was, and it wasn’t,” said Jacqueline. “Some of those versions of me let themselves freeze, either because it was easier, or because they didn’t find any friends worth thawing for. They call themselves ‘Frostbite’ or ‘Glacier,’ and they don’t care that they’re cold, and they’ll all be Jack Frost’s replacement someday. Others thawed too much, and they live in heavy coats and never take off their gloves for fear of the cold, and they’re going to be our mother’s heir, and they hate it. They call themselves ‘Snow Princess,’ usually. They try so hard. That’s probably the worst outcome, because no matter what they do, our mother won’t love them, and they won’t stop trying.”

“And then there’s you,” said Velveteen.

“And then there’s me,” agreed Jacqueline. “My mother--the version of the Snow Queen who made me--realized she was never going to love me, and told my father to get rid of me. She said she couldn’t stand the sight of my face. So he took me to Santa, because he’s not cruel. Jack Frost is the playful side of the season. He’s killed his fair share of people who didn’t come in out of the cold. He’s never done it without a good reason.”

“Santa and his wife adopted you,” said Velveteen. “They thawed you. All the way down to the bone.”

“Hence the snow globes,” said Jacqueline. “I’m still enough Jack Frost that I can travel through a swirl of snow, but I can’t make it for myself. Santa has them made for me, to get me out of trouble.”

Velveteen looked at her steadily for several seconds. Jacqueline didn’t look away. Finally, in a voice gone dead and dull from exhaustion, Velveteen asked, “Where’s Jackie?”

“Everyone who serves a season is an archetype as much as they’re an individual. You know that. You know what each season would have asked you to become. Because I was born there, I had choices. Different ways for me to be. I could be Frostbite, the cruel edge of winter, not caring who I froze, as long as I never had to thaw. I could be the Snow Princess, guiding travelers home, risking myself against an uncaring cold to make sure that there was safety in the storm. I could be Jacqueline Claus, a girl who existed because of kindness, spreading and magnifying that same kindness through the holiday season. Or I could be Jackie Frost, always hungry, always reaching for more. Selfishness without malice. Self-protection without persecution.”

“What happens to a seasonal archetype who acts against their nature?” Memory was starting to slither into the forefront of Velveteen’s mind, slow and implacable and undeniable. A frozen world; a challenge unanswered; a transformative shell of ice and snow that had been somehow warm, like it wanted her to be safe more than it wanted her to be possessed. She hadn’t seen Jackie craft the dome that had kept her from the cold long enough for Winter to remake her, but she hadn’t really needed to see Jackie. She’d known that the other girl had been there.

“It depends on what they did,” said Jacqueline. She looked at Velveteen, and while she didn’t nod, she didn’t have to: her expression of resigned acknowledgment was enough. “For someone who was the selfish side of Christmas, it would seem like acting to save a friend was within their archetype, right? Selfishness endangering the world. Unless that person knew that saving their friend would come with consequences. Unless they put someone else’s good ahead of their own. That would be an act of selflessness. That would be enough to cost.”

“How much?”

“Everything.” Jacqueline shook her head. “It cost her the world, and it cost me my world, and now everyone acts like this is where I’ve always been. Even Papa. He says I’ve always been his daughter, and I want to believe him, because it would be easier, but I can’t.”

“Wait.” Action Dude put up his hand. They both turned to face him. “Are you saying someone revised reality, and rewrote all our memories, because this Jackie person kept Vel from dying?”

“I never said she saved Velma’s life,” said Jacqueline.

“You didn’t have to,” said Action Dude. “I mean, we studied you in class, after it became clear that the holidays weren’t going to leave Vel alone. You’re the charitable spirit of the season. The kid who gives all her presents away, who skips lunch so her classmates can eat. You don’t have a selfish bone in your body. Now you’re telling me that you used to be this Jackie girl?”

“No,” said Jacqueline. “I was never her. I could have been. I wasn’t. And I honestly don’t know if...if I was pulled out of my own reality and into hers, or if I’m her, rewritten. Either way, I don’t remember being her. I just know that I’m not supposed to be here.”

Action Dude looked from Jacqueline to Velveteen and back again before he said conversationally, “You know, I figured that when I ran away from home to join the fight, shit would get weird. I just didn’t think it would happen this fast.”

“It’s happened faster,” said Jacqueline. “Not often, but I mean, it’s possible.”

“You’re joining the fight?” asked Velveteen. There was a tremulous note of hope in her voice, something that would have sounded more natural coming from the girl she’d been back when she’d still believed the world was good, and that a boy named Aaron Frank would always be her hero. “Really?”

“You were always what it took to make him take a stand,” said Yelena. She sounded amused. She sounded tired. These two things were far from contradictory. They were conjoined, entwined like the brambles that surrounded the castle.

Velveteen turned. Yelena was standing on the edge of the castle wall, leaning against one of the gargoyles. She was still wearing the top of her black ball gown, but the skirt was gone, replaced by black leggings.

She smirked at Velveteen’s expression. “Can’t really fly quietly in six layers of satin. Torrey thinks it’s great--this isn’t her era, but at least people aren’t running around half-naked all the time. I think it’s a little confining.”

“When you spend your whole adult life in spandex, I guess it would be,” said Velveteen. “You going to attack me too?”

“Nah.” Yelena’s smirk melted into a weary smile. “I missed you too much for that. You scared the hell out of us, Velma. We didn’t think you were ever coming back. And then the spin machine started up, and by the time we realized what was happening, it was too late.”

“How long have you been standing there?” asked Jacqueline uneasily.

“Long enough to hear you say that this isn’t your world, and that you’re supposed to be some girl that none of us remembers, except for apparently Vel, who was there when she disappeared.” Yelena shook her head. “You should talk to Torrey. She can tell you a few things about living in a world that’s not your own. I just wish you’d said something.”

“The world’s healed up around me. It’s patched the holes where Jackie should have been. Like I told Vel, I honestly don’t know whether I was pulled here from another reflection, or whether I was her and got remade into me. Either way, I know I know I shouldn’t be here because I’m being punished for her sins. I just don’t know if it’s Aurora punishing Jackie by making her me, or the Snow Queen punishing me for not being her.”

“I think this is giving me a headache,” said Action Dude.

“Welcome to the club,” said Yelena. She sounded faintly amused. “See, if you’d just broken your corporate programming sooner, you could have been over the initial culture shock by now, and have joined the rest of us in dull acceptance of the fact that this the way the world works now.”

“Brat,” said Action Dude.

“Privileged jerk,” said Yelena.

“Now it really feels like old home week,” said Velveteen. “Has the Princess calmed down?”

“She’s getting there,” said Yelena. “Torrey’s talking her back to normal. She does fairy tale logic really, really well, when she needs to. But it’s bad, Vel. You got that, right? The Princess is hanging on by a thread, and it’s not up to her. Every time a child decides that she’s the bad guy, she shifts a little further from who she’s always been. Once she passes a certain point, I don’t think she’s going to be able to come back.”

“One friend gone, another going...” Velveteen glanced at Jacqueline. “Nobody told me this could be the cost of going to the Seasonal Lands.”

“Not even Santa can see the future,” said Jacqueline. “If he could, I like to think he would have tried harder to keep things from happening the way that they have.”

“All right.” Velveteen took a deep breath. She was still so damn tired. The Seasonal Lands had all but used her up: she had nothing left to spare. She needed a month of soft beds and hot showers and heavy meals, things that would put the meat back on her bones. Somehow it was no surprise that she wasn’t going to get any of those things. She never did, when she really needed them. “We have to fix this. We’ve come too far, and we’ve fought too hard, for things to end this way.”

“If you’ve got any suggestions, I’m ready to hear them,” said Yelena.

Velveteen looked at her, shrugged, and said calmly, “We need to go see Santa.”

None of them had an answer for that. Overhead, the fireworks continued to explode.

Iron Poet poetry roundup #4.

2016-02-17T00:14:14Z

It's the fourth roundup for the current round of Iron Poet! This round is now closed.

"Mermaid Heart" for flexor. (Modified grabbelton)
"When the Harvest's Done" for debmats. (Free verse)
"Parsonage" for sdelmonte. (Sonnet)
"All Who Speak" for resolute. (Free verse)
"Ownership" for gaaneden. (Free verse)
"Dragons" for k_crow. (Rhyming verse)
"Growing" for emsy. (Sonnet)
"Firefly" for coyotegoth. (Song form)
"Authorial Intent" for sibylle. (Petrarchan sonnet)
"Nothing More" for oneminutemonkey. (Free verse)
"Bride of Broken Bones" for kitanzi. (Rhyming verse)
"Coda" for vincentursus. (Free verse)

More to come.

Velveteen Presents Action Dude vs. Doing the Right Thing.

2015-12-28T13:08:20Z

Title: Velveteen Presents Action Dude vs. Doing the Right Thing.
Summary: And now for something completely different. Velveteen is gone, and Action Dude has found himself in situations his training never prepared him for.

***

Action Dude--who hadn’t been able to stop thinking of himself that way in months; it felt like Aaron Frank had become a luxury in the days since the Claw and Lake Pontchartrain had stepped down from their positions as co-CEOs of The Super Patriots, Inc.--paced in front of the big picture window that made up one wall of his office. He missed the person he’d been before everything went terribly wrong, but when the call had come, he had answered, and now he was paying the price. Technically, he shared the position of CEO of The Super Patriots, Inc. with Dotty Gale and American Dream, a fact that had earned them more than a few snide comments from government pundits. “If they’re going to set up their leadership like it’s a politically correct photoshoot, how can we trust them to regulate themselves?” was one of the nicer things he’d heard, and he was pretty sure that it hadn’t been intended as friendly.

One of the biggest conflicts he’d had with Vel when they were kids had always been over secret identities. She’d wanted to maintain one after she turned eighteen and the government stopped mandating it; he hadn’t. He’d always insisted that a proud superhuman should be able to go out without the mask, and say “Hey, I know that we may have our differences, but let’s leave them at the office when it’s time for the PTA meeting.” She’d never agreed with him, just looked at him sadly and occasionally whacked him with a pillow for being so unthinkably stupid.

Now, years and miles and deaths and resurrections and tragedies and terrors from that level of innocence, he found himself looking out the window at the manicured grounds of the company that had raised him (complete with the deceptive blue serenity of Lake Pontchartrain, who hadn’t returned to her human form in months) and realized that somewhere along the line, he’d started to agree with her. He would have loved a secure secret identity, something he could wear out of the house. He hadn’t been to Shabbat services in months. It wasn’t safe.

Nothing was safe anymore. Not even this room, with its big glass windows and the bloodstains hidden under the carpet. Nothing was sacrosanct. And soon, the new CEOs of The Super Patriots, Inc. were going to need to make a choice. Did they let the government into their records, those careful, terrifying records kept by Supermodel, after she’d gone bad and before she’d died? Or did they refuse, and face the consequences of that refusal?

“You’d know what to do if you were here, Vel,” he said, ceasing his pacing and leaning his forehead against the window. He wished he could go flying. Things were always so much clearer when he flew. “You’d tell me to stop being stupid and do the right thing, and then you’d tell me what the right thing really was. Why couldn’t you stay?”

“Because you don’t go making promises to holidays if you’re going to break them. Holidays have their own rules, and I wouldn’t want to get on their bad side.” The voice was young, female, and utterly guileless. That was part of Dotty Gale’s shtick. She could sound innocent while she was ripping someone’s larynx out.

Action Dude turned. The current avatar of the idea and ideals of Oz was standing in his doorway. There were no red spots on her silver slippers; she hadn’t killed anyone recently. That was a nice change. “Dotty,” he said. “What’s up?”

Her expression sobered, as much as it was capable of doing so. “We just got an anonymous call from someone in Portland. It’s about Velveteen. She’s back.”

Action Dude broke the sound barrier leaving his office.

*

Following the death of Supermodel and the second disappearance of Jolly Roger, The Super Patriots, Inc. entered a period of rebuilding. Their first interim CEOs had been chosen, according to eyewitness accounts, by Velma “Velveteen” Martinez, who had been severely wounded in the fight against Supermodel. They had stepped down following the first round of government legislation against the superhuman community, choosing replacements who were better equipped to deal with bureaucracy...or maybe who failed to run quickly enough.

Aaron “Action Dude” Frank was, at the moment of his coronation as the company’s heir apparent, the last member of Velveteen’s own hero class still standing. This may explain her willingness to single him out, although it is unclear whether she did so out of favoritism or anger. (Their relationship, and the end of same, has been well-documented in the files recording her time with the corporation.) Born the son of Daniel and Melissa Frank of Staten Island, New Jersey, he acquired his powers through exposure to irradiated maple syrup, as did so many others with the basic “flying brick” set. Charming, attractive, and well-positioned to be the all-American superhero, he frustrated his early handlers with his calm refusal to reject his faith, continuing to attend services at the temple he had belonged to since he was a child. This may be the only corporate edict he ever chose to reject. Action Dude’s history is a patchwork of compromises, concessions, and willing agreement to whatever The Super Patriots, Inc. asked of him. Not exactly the sort of thing that sets one up to become CEO.

Dotty Gale first appeared a week after The Wizard of Oz went into wide release, popping out of thin air on Hollywood Boulevard with a basket in her arms and a small, scruffy dog of indeterminate breed at her heels. She has remained essentially the same ever since: physically twelve years old, with golden hair, an angelic smile, and silver slippers which have never been seen to leave her feet. Her recorded powers include teleportation, summoning, controlling, and redirecting wind storms, and disaster recovery. She has been an invaluable help to FEMA over the past several decades, lessening the impact of major storms on human cities and preventing loss of life in the aftermath of the storms which cannot be prevented. Despite her adult attitude and opinions, her legal status has always been questionable, with some claiming that she needs to be placed in a stable home, while others insist that she is an illegal immigrant from a country that doesn’t actually exist.

The American Dream was recruited by The Super Patriots, Inc. as a child, and in their civilian identity has not yet been released, despite repeated requests for this information. The first photos of them in their heroic identity appears to indicate a female child hero, as their uniform is equipped with a skirt, and their hair is longer than the level of their jaw--at the time, a clear indication of gender on the part of the Marketing Department. The next appearances of the American Dream, however, would seem to indicate a male child. While the identity of the individual in the costume remained consistent, no clear cues as to their gender were ever given. It was not until the announcement of the new CEOs that the American Dream finally gave a statement:

“I am genderfluid,” they said, to a watching press conference. “Whether I am male or female right now is irrelevant to how well I do my job and protect the public. Thank you.”

Requests for further comment have been ignored and, in some cases, outright refused. With three individuals whose credentials are unclear at best, and absent at worst, in charge of the largest organization of superhumans in the world, is it any wonder that steps are being taken to guarantee the safety of the public? Humanity must be protected.

Sometimes even from our protectors.

*

Velveteen opened her eyes to find herself staring up at a blindingly white ceiling. She blinked several times, trying to reassure herself that she hadn’t somehow ended up back in Winter, about to go through the whole ordeal all over again.

The blankets were warm and soft and felt like polyester, a sensation she hadn’t realized how much she missed until it was back. The Seasonal Lands weren’t big on synthetic fibers. She could feel her heartbeat speeding up from the stress of not knowing where she was. Even having a heartbeat wasn’t a given anymore. She reached out with the part of her that animated the world, and while she didn’t find any toys in her immediate vicinity, she also didn’t encounter the barriers that Spring had placed on her. She was back in the Calendar Country, back in the real world. It was the only thing that made sense.

She attempted to sit up. The handcuff fastened around her left wrist stopped her. She looked at the cuff. The cuff did not do her the courtesy of disappearing.

“What the fuck?” She tugged on her wrist. The cuff clanked against the metal frame of the bed.

If there had been a master class on “how to take Vel from drowsy wakefulness to fully awake and yes, also really pissed off,” they would have used “handcuff her to a bed” as lesson number one. She jerked on the cuff, rattling it hard against the metal bedframe. Other details were starting to introduce themselves, details like the needle in her arm and the dull, persistent ache in her head. She’d been drugged. Someone had drugged her.

Someone was going to regret that.

The room she was in was not only devoid of toys: it was devoid of anything that might have given her a clue as to where she was. The walls were painted a dull shade of industrial cream, and there were no furnishings apart from the bed she was tethered to. A few machines stood duty nearby, presumably monitoring her, but also reminding her that she was a prisoner here. She couldn’t just disconnect them and go.

Vel narrowed her eyes. Somebody was going to get punched really hard, just as soon as she knew where she was. They couldn’t keep her like this, not without cause, and she hadn’t done anything wrong. She--

The door opened. A woman poked her head inside, looking carefully at the machines before she focused on Vel. “Oh, good, you’re awake,” she said. “I thought the machines were bored and yelling about nothing again.”

“Imagineer!” Vel sat up as far as the cuff would allow. “What the fuck is going on? Why am I chained to this bed? Am I under arrest? Is this The Super Patriots, Inc., or do you have me held in some sort of secret lair? Are you going to hollow me out and turn me into a robot?”

“Huh.” Imagineer blinked. “I guess those are all reasonable questions, or they would be, if you’d paused for breath between them and given me a chance to answer one or two. You are not under arrest. You are chained to the bed for your own protection, and so you don’t break any of my stuff. Yes, you’re at headquarters. I’m not going to hollow you out and turn you into a robot, although that’s an interesting idea. Now it’s my turn. How are you feeling? Any dizziness, nausea, disorientation...?”

“You’re a technopath, not a doctor.”

Imagineer looked at her wearily. Velveteen realized with a start just how tired the other woman looked. “I’m the best you’ve got right now,” she said. “I’ll tell Aaron that you’re awake.”

She closed the door behind her when she left, and Velveteen was alone again.

“Fuck,” she said, and closed her eyes. She was asleep before she knew it.

*

“Aaron?”

“No one calls me that anymore,” said Action Dude, eyes fixed on the surface of his coffee. It was too strong. He needed to be awake when Vel needed him. He’d been awake for three days. He wanted to sleep more than he had wanted anything in years. He was starting to feel like he was developing another super power, if hallucinations could be considered a power. “It’s always ‘Action Dude.’ I don’t get to have a given name. I gave it away.”

“Okay, that’s super interesting and everything, and I’m just thrilled for you, but you asked me to tell you when bunny-girl woke up.” Imagineer folded her arms, leaning up against the doorframe. “She woke up. She went right back to sleep, but she woke up. She’s going to be okay.”

“What?” Action Dude’s head jerked around so fast that he felt something in his neck cramp. He didn’t care. He was busy staring at Imagineer. “She’s awake? Why didn’t you call me?”

“Well, first, because she’s not awake. She woke up, she went right back to sleep. She’s exhausted. You get that, right? According to my machines, she hasn’t slept in years. People aren’t designed to go without sleep for years. I’m not sure how she’s still sane. Honestly, until she spoke to me, I wasn’t certain that she was.” Imagineer remained in the doorway. It made good tactical sense. As long as she was there, Action Dude couldn’t leave the room without either shoving her or punching his way through a wall. Now that he had to pay the insurance bills, he was a lot more careful about his wall-punching. “I don’t know how long it’s going to be before she can talk about what happened to her. I don’t know if she’ll want to.”

“I don’t care,” he said staunchly. “I just need to know that she’s okay.”

“Or maybe you don’t,” said Imagineer. “Aaron, you realize this is about to become a problem, yes? As long as she’s sick, as long as she’s unconscious, we’re not breaking any laws. We’re allowed to tend to the medical needs of our fellow superhumans, due to the presumed limitations of the normal hospital system. We don’t have to tell anyone that we have her. But as soon as she’s better...she’s a wanted felon. We have to turn her in.”

“Her crime was not reporting to register herself as an animus when she wasn’t even in this dimension.”

“I know the law. Funny thing: it doesn’t make any exceptions for people being outside this temporal reality when the registration period was open.” Imagineer raised her right arm, displaying the metal band clasped around her wrist. “I am very intimate with the regulatory structure now in place for the animus power class and associated disciplines.”

Action Dude winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to seem like I didn’t...” He stopped.

“I know.” Imagineer smiled wryly. “I won’t even ask why you wanted to avoid seeming like, because I know you don’t have a damn idea, just like I know that trying to use a machine to keep tabs on me was one of the stupidest things the government could ever have done. I would have run otherwise. I’d be a supervillain now, like Yelena and her little girlfriend.”

That was all it took to wipe the apology from Action Dude’s face, replacing it with steely chill. “We don’t talk about them.”

“Relax, Aaron. This room isn’t bugged. Believe me, I’d know.” Imagineer waved her wristbanded arm in an extravagant arc. “We are as clear and safe here as we’ll ever be anywhere. Although I wouldn’t put it past my handlers to ask me to plant bugs at some point, so I suppose your concern isn’t too misguided. We live in a new world, my friend. Your grade school girlfriend doesn’t get a pass just because she was in a different dimension when the rules changed. Hell, that’s why the rules changed. Maybe I should turn her in myself.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” said Action Dude coldly.

“I might. It’s not like you’re exactly giving us clear and present leadership here, buddy. I know they raised you to be a better leader in a recruitment poster than you were on the ground, but those days are done. You want loyalty, you need to do something more than remind people that you can punch as through walls.” Imagineer showed him her wristband again. This time, there was no levity in it. “This happened on your watch. Supermodel may have been an evil bitch who wanted to turn us all into villains when we weren’t looking, but at least she kept us safe. Just keep that in mind while you’re putting your ex-girlfriend above all the people who didn’t run away. At some point, you have to start rewarding us for staying, or we’re all going to go.”

Imagineer turned and walked out of the room.

Action Dude didn’t stop her.

*

When Action Dude finally got up and walked out of the break room, he found the American Dream waiting for him in the hall. He stopped, and groaned.

“Look, Dreamy, I’m not available for patrol right now,” he said. “I took myself off all the rosters because I’m not available. Can’t you handle it?”

“I’m more super-fast than super-strong, so no, we’re not really interchangeable, but I’m not here about patrol,” said the American Dream. Their voice was calm and level, like they were getting ready to break bad news to a child. “Imagineer called. She says Velveteen woke up.”

“Did she also say that Velveteen went straight back to sleep? Because I think that’s relevant here. Dairy Keen v. the State of Wisconsin means we can keep her as long as she’s too unwell to be released to the relevant authorities.”

“Does it also mean we don’t need to tell the relevant authorities that she’s back? Because I’m not comfortable with this. We’re on shaky legal ground.”

“Dreamy, please.”

“I’m just saying, we’re responsible for a lot of people here. A lot of lives. People are scared of the government coming after us directly, rather than just sniffing around the fringes, and this sort of thing is what opens us to attack. You have to think about The Super Patriots, Inc. before you think about yourself.”

“You think I’m thinking about myself? That this is about me?” Action Dude laughed bitterly. “Oh, man, I wish this were about me. Do you have any idea how good I am at giving up what I want? I gave up the first girl I ever loved. Maybe the only girl I’ve ever loved, since it’s not like I could go falling for somebody for real when I was supposed to be in love with Yelena. I gave up the idea of going to college because my contract required me to do too many hours a week. I’ve given up having a secret identity and going to see my parents and every damn thing I’ve ever wanted. You really think this is about me? This isn’t about me. You can tell by the way I’m actually fighting for it. This is about her.”

“I’m sorry,” said the American Dream. “She was before my time, you know. I don’t even know why she’s so important that you’d want to fight for her.”

Action Dude paused and took a deep breath before he said, “I know you know that she used to be my girlfriend. I want you to understand that that has nothing to do with this.”

“Okay,” said the American Dream, with an expression that implied the exact opposite. Here, in these halls, Velveteen was always going to be the CEO’s ex.

She was going to hate that when she woke up. They just had to get her that far. “Velma Martinez was a child hero. The company bought her, the same way it bought half its recruits. They didn’t even have to pay very much.” That had been a shock, when he’d finally received access to the records. For all that her parents had always been there with their hands out, ready to take whatever they were given, The Super Patriots, Inc. had been able to purchase her for well below market value.

“So? The Super Patriots, Inc. bought a lot of people.”

“Yeah, but they didn’t let most of us down the way they did her. They tried to break her heart, and in the process, they broke her spirit. She walked on her eighteenth birthday. I used to think she had some sort of weird persecution complex. Every time I saw her, she’d have a story about the company not letting her go to school or hold a job or anything normal like that. Turns out she was exactly right. They wanted her to be a supervillain, even if they had to hound her into it.”

The American Dream blinked. “Wait, seriously?”

“Seriously.” Action Dude nodded grimly. “Supermodel had teams harrying her up one side and down the other. Technically, we couldn’t blow her identity, since she’d quit while it was still protected, but that didn’t stop the anonymous complaints about her work, or the evictions, or the revoked financial aid. Everything she ever tried to do, The Super Patriots, Inc. took away from her. Starting with me. Her whole life has been like one long, slow-motion chase sequence, and I’m not going to do that to her anymore. I’m going to let her wake up, and I’m going to let her choose, for once in her life, what she wants to have happen to her next. Maybe it’s turning herself in. Maybe it’s going back to the holidays. I don’t know. I just know that she’s going to decide on her own.”

“What if she decides she wants us to help her fight?”

“Then maybe we need to have a long talk about whether that’s exactly what we ought to be doing. When they said that there was legislature about the animus class coming together, we didn’t fight, because we didn’t want to scare people, and because there are so few animus around that it seemed better not to. Only now it’s also technopaths, and the plant-manipulators, and they’re talking about the psychometrists and the matter-manipulators, and I think we’ve lost.” Action Dude looked at the American Dream, wishing he were a better public speaker. Wishing anything in his training had prepared him for this. “They’re just going to re-categorize us, one by one, until we’re all animus, and we’re all under governmental control.”

“And you think hiding the last real animus in the world is the way to show them that they’re wrong?”

“I think it’s the last thing we can do to show that we did not stand idly by while we watched our children taken, one by one,” said Action Dude. “If you think I’m in the wrong, if you and Dotty want to vote to expel me, that’s cool. I just ask that you give us the courtesy of a day’s head-start before you tell anyone that she was here. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some explaining to do.”

The American Dream stood and watched silently as Action Dude walked down the hall and disappeared around the corner. Then they sighed, shook their head, and walked in the opposite direction. It was time to talk to Dotty.

*

The second time Vel woke, she was not alone. She wasn’t sure how she knew that, considering the buzzing and beeping of the machines; the sound of another person breathing should have been all but inaudible. Somehow, though, she knew as soon as she opened her eyes. She turned toward the sound. The man slumped in the chair next to her bed was dressed in blue and orange, his head lolling to the side, his boyish blond hair in disarray. She blinked.

“Aaron?” she squeaked.

The impact was immediate. He opened his eyes and sat up in the chair, going from sleep to wakefulness in an instant. That had been a part of their training, she remembered: when you were under attack, you couldn’t afford to linger in drowsy dreamland, and as a superhero, there was every chance that anything that woke you up was actually attacking you. (That particular lesson had been one of the ones cited whenever Vel or the other trainees asked about going home to see their parents. No one wanted to see that manslaughter case. Everyone knew that it would be inevitable, if the child heroes were allowed out into the wild.)

“Vel,” he said, and smiled, a big, wide, relieved, camera-ready smile. “You’re awake.”

Velma did not punch him, which she really considered to be the height of restraint on her part. “I am.” She jerked on the handcuff holding her to the bed, jingling it against the frame. “I’m also chained. Want to start explaining yourself before I get pissed?”

“It’s for your own protection,” said Action Dude. He pulled the key out of his pocket, holding it up for her to see. “I need you to not run away while I explain what’s happened while you were gone, okay? If you promise to do that, I can unchain you.”

“And you trust me not to lie to you?”

“I’ve always trusted you not to lie to me. It’s everyone else who breaks their word.” Action Dude held his breath, waiting.

Finally, almost imperceptibly, Vel nodded. At the same time, her posture shifted: he was dealing with Velveteen now, not Velma. The difference was a subtle one. That didn’t make it any less important. He leaned across her and unfastened the cuff, trying not to breathe in the scent of her skin, or pay attention to the heat of her body next to his. He no longer had the right to focus on those things. No matter how much he wanted to.

Velveteen sat up straighter on the bed, rubbing her unchained wrist with the opposing hand. She looked at the IV needle in her arm. Action Dude winced.

“Please don’t take that out,” he said. “You’re a lot better than you were when we found you, but you’re still dehydrated, and I’d really rather you left here back in fighting shape. You need the fluids. You need the nutrients in the fluids. We don’t currently have a healer on staff, so we’re having to do things the old-fashioned way. Imagineer has some nanobots she’d be willing to let you borrow, as long as you promise not to use the fact that they have rudimentary faces to take them away from her.”

“Why didn’t she just dump them on me while I was sleeping?” asked Velveteen, sounding curious despite herself.

He grimaced. “Because she was afraid your powers would wake up before the rest of you, decide your body’s poor health was a sign of danger, and kick off what she called a ‘gray goo apocalypse.’ I’m not big on apocalypses under, you know, the best of circumstances, and that sounded sort of like the worst.”

“That’s fair,” said Velveteen grudgingly. “So what’s wrong with me?”

“Dehydration, malnutrition, exhaustion. Imagineer said it was like you hadn’t slept in years. People aren’t supposed to do that.”

“I wasn’t always a people when I was in the Seasonal Lands,” said Velveteen. Then she stopped, going perfectly still, one hand remaining wrapped around the opposing wrist. It was her fingers that moved first. They tightened, virtually spasming, before she forced her hands down to her lap, and asked, “Aaron, how long have I been gone?”

Action Dude took a deep breath before reaching over and putting his hands over hers. It was a more intimate gesture than he normally allowed himself to even consider. It was necessary. He was going to hold her down if he had to. “You defeated Supermodel and kept your word to the Seasonal Lands three years ago, Vel. That’s how long it’s been since you disappeared.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending, for several seconds before she shook her head and said, “You’re lying. This is a trick. It’s a mean trick, and I don’t understand why you’d do this, but it’s still a trick.”

“It’s not a trick,” said Action Dude. “Three years, Vel. We didn’t even know if you were alive or dead. We couldn’t find anyone who could give us updates on Spring or Autumn--no one’s seen Trick or Treat since you disappeared--and when we asked Jacqueline, she said she wasn’t allowed to comment on holiday matters. We hoped the fact that she’s your friend would mean she’d break the rules enough to tell us if you’d died, but we didn’t know.”

“Jackie?” said Vel, bemused.

“Things have changed a lot while you’ve been gone, Vel. You’re here for your own protection. I’m sorry about the handcuffs, and I’m sorry I couldn’t be here when you woke up, but we had to know that you wouldn’t run away. We had to know that you’d be safe.”

“Safe from who?”

Out of everything, this was the part he’d been dreading: this was the part that felt the most like failure. Action Dude let go of her hands. “After Supermodel died, with Tag out of the picture and you off in the Seasonal Lands, the government went looking for someone to blame for what had happened. You know how ordinary people are about superhumans. You took the same classes I did.”

“I remember,” she whispered. A World That Hates and Fears You 101; Great Responsibility 201; Everyone Wants to Be Special 301. Class after class explaining that people without powers would always be afraid of the people who had them, and that nothing would change this, and that the only way to cope would always be to pretend that it didn’t hurt. Even though it did.

“I guess the government’s been waiting for a long time for the chance to start regulating things. We have lawyers--they sort of run themselves, all we have to do is sign the checks--but all the old fights about keeping the law from impinging on the freedom of the superhuman community had been based on the idea that we were self-regulating. Only now it turns out Supermodel was sort of evil, and we weren’t self-regulating as well as we’d always wanted people to think we were.”

Velveteen was quiet for a moment before she asked, “What did they do?”

“They decided that the problem was the power set. All animus-type heroes are required to register with the government, and either agree to power suppression or to a certain amount of community service. For the greater good.”

Velveteen frowned. “But I’m the only one.”

“That’s how they got the law passed in the first place. It didn’t actually effect any real people. Only once it was there, they started changing what it meant. Technopaths are considered part of the animus class now. So are plant-manipulators. Polychrome and Victory Anna went rogue, rather than allow Torrey to be registered. They’ve been officially considered villains for over a year now. There’s going to be a hearing next month, about the psychometrists and the matter-manipulators, and Uncertainty says the probability manipulators and the psychics are next.”

“We’ve lost,” said Velveteen. She sounded faintly amazed. Looking at the IV in her arm, she asked, “Is that why you didn’t wake me up to tell me what was going on? You’re invoking Dairy Keen v. Wisconsin?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I’m awake now.”

“I know.” He took a deep breath. “What comes next is up to you, Vel. It’s your play. If you want to hide here, you can. If you want to turn yourself in, I’ll let you. And if you want to run, I’ll unlock all the doors.”

“I don’t want to run, but I need some time to understand.” Velveteen looked at her folded hands for a moment before looking back to Action Dude. “Can you get me a mirror?”

“Yeah.” He nodded before he rose, walked to the small attached bathroom, and wrenched the medicine cabinet off the wall above the sink. The action came with a ripping, splintering sound. Velveteen put a hand over her mouth to hide her smile. Some things never changed.

“I own the building now, or at least a third of it,” he said, coming back and propping his pilfered medicine cabinet against the foot of her bed. “I figure I can break stuff if I want.”

Velveteen didn’t say anything. She was busy staring at her own reflection. When she’d seen herself in Halloween, she had been so overcome by the fact that she had skin again that she hadn’t really looked at her reflection. Or maybe she had, and Halloween had still been throwing masks, keeping her from losing her focus on the task at hand. Regardless, she looked at the woman in the mirror, who was thin to the point of seeming skeletal, with dark circles around her fever-glazed eyes, and barely knew her.

She swallowed her dismay. This wasn’t the time. “Mirror, mirror, from the wall,” she said. “Please will you connect my call? I need to talk to the Princess, in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle.”

Her reflection exploded into cartoon fireworks. Action Dude sat back down.

“Do those words actually go in a specific order, or do you guys always just make it up as you’re going along?” he asked. His tone was light: he was trying to distract her. Part of her remembered why she’d loved him, all those years ago. “I always wondered, but the Princess doesn’t really talk to us corporate heroes.”

“She’s a smart girl,” said Velveteen. She reached over, putting her hand on his, and waited.

The fireworks cleared, resolving into the face of a beautiful blonde woman in a high-necked red gown. Her hair was pulled back in a style that was more severe than Velveteen was used to, and there was a certain promise to the cut of her dress, like it was whispering of an Evil Queen yet to come. Velveteen blinked. The Princess blinked back.

“Vel?” she asked, in a voice that quivered and shook. “Honey, is that really you?”

“I think so,” said Velveteen. “It’s been sort of hard to tell lately. Princess, what’s going on? Why are you dressed like that?”

“That’s a story that’s going to take some time telling, and maybe isn’t for all ears.” The Princess’s eyes darted toward Action Dude, making her meaning perfectly clear. She focused back on Velveteen. “Sugar, we need to get you out of there, and back here to the Cloud Castle, where you can recuperate. You look like twenty miles of bad road, and you’re about to drive it with a broken carriage axel.”

“That’s why I called,” said Velveteen. “Can I get a ride? I don’t think I can exactly take a commercial flight home, given that I’m apparently illegal.”

“Honey, you only ever have to ask.” The Princess raised her hand, fingers poised to snap.

“Wait!” Action Dude reached for the mirror with his free hand, like he could somehow physically change the reflection. It worked, in a sense: the Princess stopped what she was doing in order to turn and look at him, visibly bemused. He pulled his hand back, cheeks flushing. “Um,” he said.

“Did you have something to contribute, honey, or can I get back to getting Vel out of there before somebody decides to collect the ransom on her pretty little head?”

This was it: this was his last chance to back out. He’d spent his entire life taking the path of least resistance, doing what other people wanted him to do. He’d done it because it was easy, and because it was safe, and because he didn’t know what other options he had.

He knew now.

“Take me too,” he said.

“Aaron--” said Vel.

He shook his head. “No. I’m done sitting back and letting things fall apart. I want to help. Take me too.”

The Princess smiled.

When Imagineer came to check the room some ten minutes later, it was empty, save for the beeping machines and the medicine cabinet lying on the bed. She looked at it and sighed.

“Good luck, Aaron,” she said, and closed the door.

Sponsorship: Velveteen vs. Trick or Treat.

2015-10-27T16:15:36Z

Title: Velveteen vs. Trick or Treat.
Summary: The trials of a formerly retired superheroine are destined never to be done, especially when the heroine in question was foolish enough to agree to serve the seasonal lands...

***

Time didn’t pass in the Seasonal Lands the way it did in the Calendar Country. It wasn’t a matter of one day following another in a steady, predictable way. Sometimes, Velveteen went to bed at sunrise, slept for a full eight hours, and woke to find the sun rising, or the sky set to deepest, darkest, horror movie midnight. Other times, she’d wake to find Hailey and Scaredy pounding on the door with pillowcases in their hands, screeching “Trick or treat!” and beaming like they hadn’t seen her in weeks. She’d long since given up any attempts at actually figuring out what day of the week it was, and months didn’t matter here; it was always harvest time, always the ripe and reaching autumn, where the air tasted like bonfires and drying hay, and the moon was a bloody jack-o-lantern set against a cloud-strewn sky. She could have been there for only a few weeks. She could have been there for years.

The worst part was that she was no longer sure she cared which it was. She didn’t like living in a Halloween world, exactly. She missed having skin, internal organs, bones--she’d never really thought of bones as something that could be missed, but not having them was surprisingly inconvenient. She didn’t miss using the bathroom, or menstruation; the fear of spending an eternity as a rag doll was slightly reduced by the thought that she wouldn’t spend four days out of every month bleeding uncontrollably for the rest of time.

Halloween hadn’t turned her into ice and taken away her ability to grieve for the people she’d been forced to leave behind; it hadn’t lied to her, claimed to be her friend, and left her to die of hypothermia in the snow. Halloween hadn’t severed her connection to her innate power source; it hadn’t asked her to choose between her own happiness and the fate of all the people who could have shared her powers, the ones who’d died before they had a chance to live. All it had done was put her in costume, which it had been doing since she was a child, and equip her with an ever-growing army of demonic scarecrows.

Odd as it was to consider, of the three seasons she’d been tapped to visit, Autumn--and by extension, Halloween--had been the kindest of all. Sure, that kindness often came with hidden razor blades tucked inside, but at least it was there. At least it was something.

More and more, Velveteen was coming to realize that if she was going to stay in the Seasonal Lands at all, she was probably going to stay in Halloween.

The knowledge sat in her belly like a caramel apple eaten just before bedtime. She didn’t want to choose Halloween, the holiday that had kidnapped and tormented her as a child. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who could be happy there. But she was, and nothing she wanted or didn’t want would change that. Masks could be put on. Masks could be removed. The essential nature of the face beneath them wouldn’t change.

No matter how much she wanted it to.

“Fucked-up forever,” she sighed, and picked up the scythe, and waded into the field of cursed wheat to find the Reaper who was ruining her afternoon.

Around her, Autumn continued.

*

The line between real and unreal has never been exact where the superhuman community is concerned. When discussing a group of people including the living embodiment of the idealized fairy tale princess (The Princess), a human rainbow (Polychrome), the Spirit of the American West (Jack O’Lope), and the daughter of Santa Claus (Jacqueline Claus), “real” and “unreal” are less immutable laws than guidelines, meant to be respected when possible and politely avoided when not. Despite this, however, the less plausible factions within the superhuman community have never descended into pure illogic, as might be expected: instead, they’ve set up systems of law and custom to moderate themselves, understanding, on some level, that the world is not equipped to do it for them.

Convincing a magically- or seasonally-powered superhuman to go against their code of ethics is considered close enough to impossible as to not be worth trying if there’s any other alternative. Some have been known to switch sides in the middle of a battle when the villains proved to be more in alignment with their personal ideals. A winter-themed hero will always fight for winter; a fairy tale-themed hero will always follow the most logical narrative path; a trickster hero will always keep their word, no matter how inconvenient or dangerous this choice may prove for them. Some scholars believe this is because the forces which power and control these heroes are fickle: if denied their full natures, they might choose to desert their current avatars and seek someone more inclined to follow the rules.

When this line of thought is applied to the Seasonal Lands, whose occupants, whatever their origins, have been reduced and remade into something less than human, while also elevated to something more than metaphor, it must be asked what the true consequence would be for going against their natures. They are, after all, those natures written in flesh, or something similar; they are not individuals as much as they are ideas. Should Persephone divorce her husband, whose myth shapes and defines her own, what would become of her? Should Santa Claus, who represents generosity in Winter, refuse a gift to a deserving child, would he be allowed to retain his mantle? Or his daughter, Jacqueline, whose position is directly tied to acts of kindness and charity--gifts not of the material, but of the insubstantial? Could either of them survive a moment of true selfishness?

This leads to the question that has vexed scholars since the discovery of the Seasonal Lands. Are those who are called to the seasons--or other, non-seasonal positions of magical power--innately suited to the roles they assume, or are they shaped by the positions that will one day claim them? Jacqueline, who was born to Christmas, or Mischief, who was born to Halloween, are easy: both of them represent an aspect of their holiday given human form. Without their holidays to define them, they would no longer be necessary. But what of the others? What of the ones like Hailey Ween, or Scream Queen, or the rarely-mentioned but oft seen Lady Moon?

Each of these “Spirits of the Season” has claimed, at some point, to have mundane origins: to have begun life, not as ideas, but as individuals who later went on to accept the invitation they were offered to transform themselves into something both less and more. As none of these supposed transformations has occurred within living memory, it’s unclear how the process works, or whether, indeed, the process works at all.

Which brings us to Velma Martinez, codename “Velveteen.” Should she fail to return from the Seasonal Lands, what will we learn? And what, in the end, will we have paid for that knowledge?

*

In the end, the Reaper was like all the rest: a paper-thin manifestation of the fears of children from the Calendar Country, who had no idea that sometimes their bad dreams took on physical form and went looking for haunted farmland to bother. Velveteen emerged from the wheat, dragging the body of this latest foe by the collar of his coat, and tossed it into the nearest ditch.

“Now’s when you stay down,” she said. She paused and added, “Asshole.” The Reaper--which had never really been “alive” in the strictest sense of the word, and was now decidedly not alive--didn’t move. Anyone watching would have agreed that this was the right choice.

Someone applauded. Velveteen turned. Hailey Ween, Halloween Princess, was sitting in the branches of a gnarled old oak, ankles crossed, orange and green crepe skirt smoothed down just so, clapping her heart out. She grinned when she saw Velveteen looking.

“That was awesome,” she said. “You’ve been getting better and better, but using your scarecrows to flush the Reaper out of the wheat, so it wouldn’t have the advantage? That was genius. I have to say, I’m super-impressed. I always knew you’d be good at this job.”

“What do you want, Hailey?” Velveteen folded her arms, watching the other girl. She’d never been able to find it in herself to forgive the Halloween Princess, or to start trusting her any farther than she could throw her. Yes, Hailey was devoted to her holiday, and yes, Hailey currently considered Velveteen a part of that holiday, but she was the definition of a fair weather friend. As soon as the wind changed, Hailey would be an enemy again. And the wind was going to change.

It always did.

“You.” The lithe teenager slipped out of her tree, dropping to the ground. She reached into thin air and pulled out a wand, topped with a pumpkin where a star would ordinarily have been. “Do you know how long you’ve been here?”

“No, but you do, don’t you?” Velveteen frowned. “You’ve never let me near anything that might tell me what time it is back in the real world.”

“That’s because we needed you to commit to being here, to being now, and not keep marking off days like you thought this was some sort of prison sentence.” Hailey’s face softened in an almost indefinable way. “This hasn’t been so bad, has it? You’ve been happy here. I know you didn’t think you were going to be, but you have. You’ve had tricks and treats and you’ve enjoyed them. Don’t lie to me. I’ve seen you smiling, when you didn’t think anyone was looking. This has been a good home for you.”

Velveteen slowly unfolded her arms, resisting the urge to grab the other girl and shake her until she started talking faster. “Am I...am I done? Is this the end of my stay?”

“Not quite. But you’re close. It’s time for the masks to come off.” Hailey took a step toward her, reaching out with a hand that was shaking slightly like she was fighting to keep her composure. “May I?”

The urge to say “no” was strong. Velveteen had been beaten, frozen, transformed, and starved by the Seasonal Lands. She sometimes felt like she was living in a series of worlds that had never heard of the concept of bodily autonomy, and wouldn’t see the sense in respecting it if they had. This was a small thing, but it felt strangely intimate, invasive in a way all the bigger things had not been.

“Yes,” she said, and Hailey leaned up, questing fingers finding the sides of Velveteen’s face, and pulled.

There was no pain. There was only the sense of something being lifted away, something so light it was almost weightless, which still somehow managed to be so heavy that when it was removed, Velveteen stood straighter, breathed easier, like a filter had been removed. The air was a welter of new scents and flavors, apples and candy corn and bonfire smoke like ashes on her tongue. Her skin felt too loose. Barely daring to breathe, she looked down at her hands. The fabric covering them suddenly looked like gloves, instead of a casing intended to keep her insides from spilling out.

Gingerly, she grasped her left hand with her right, and pulled. The fabric came off as easily as it always did in her dreams, and then she was looking at her skin, her own skin, brown and smooth and hers. Those were her fingers, long and slim, like they were meant to play the piano or, or, or make great art, not punch evil-doers and fight for justice. Laughter bubbled in her throat. She swallowed it down, ripping the glove from her other hand and shoving them both into her pocket before staring, disbelieving, at the reminder that once upon a time, she had been a human woman; she had been free.

She could feel her body inside the heavy velvet costume she was wearing, and it took every ounce of self-control she had not to start scrabbling at herself, looking for the zipper she knew had to be there. She was herself again, she was herself for the first time in who even knew how long. No snow, no rags, no flowers bursting from her skin. Just her, Velma Martinez.

Even thinking of herself as an ordinary woman, instead of a superhero--which was a sort of metaphor even before the Seasonal Lands got involved--was enough to make her eyes fill with tears. She blinked them away, taking a moment to make sure she wasn’t about to break down sobbing in the road, and looked toward Hailey. The teen was holding a simple velvet domino mask, very much like the one Vel herself had always chosen to wear with her official costumes.

“There you are,” she said, and smiled, a little wistfully. Vel realized with a start that while Hailey had chosen the life she had, had chosen the unending Halloween, the graveyard dances, the hollow trees, the company of owls, the act of choosing had meant giving up some other things she might have wanted, once upon a time and very far away. Hailey would never grow up. She would never have the chance to decide whether or not she wanted to have children of her own, to hold their hands as she led them through the ancient rituals of trick-or-treat and ghost-in-the-graveyard. She’d given her future to the holiday that loved her, and while she might not have had any real regrets, the ghosts of what she’d never have still lingered around the edges of her smile.

“Here I am,” Vel agreed. She looked at her hands one more time before asking, “Does this mean I’m not a tourist anymore?”

“It means the trial period is over,” said Hailey. “You can choose us, or you can leave us, but you can’t stay for long without the season starting to digest and transform you. I just want you to know that I didn’t have to tell you that. I could have taken your mask and not said a word.”

“So why didn’t you? You were perfectly willing to trick me into staying here when I was a kid.”

Hailey grimaced. “Yeah. When you were a kid. It’s different, for kids. Maybe you would have taken my job, and been a little girl for a hundred years, until everything you’d ever known was gone. Or maybe you would have grown up over the span of a season and become something terrible and new. Either way, you wouldn’t have had as much to mourn for. Adults are...adults are different. They have things to mourn for. They have things to miss. You can’t steal an adult and expect them to adapt, not the way you can a child. You have to come willingly now, if you’re going to come at all.”

Vel was quiet for a moment. Then, carefully, she said, “I think where I always get it wrong with you is expecting you to react to things like a human being. You’re not a human being anymore. None of you are.”

“Haven’t been for a long time,” said Hailey, almost cheerfully. “Come on. You’re a visitor now, and that means the rules are different for you. We need to get you in and out before the clock strikes twelve.”

“When will that be?”

Hailey’s face darkened. “Whenever Scream Queen decides it’s time. So come on.” She started walking down the endless Ray Bradbury road toward the forest. After a moment’s hesitation, Vel followed.

*

Somehow, it wasn’t a surprise when they took two steps into the forest and were walking out of it, onto the dark, gothic street of the nameless city where Trick and Treat lived. Streetlights glowed every ten feet, orange as jack-o-lanterns, and the sidewalks were thick with children ranging from toddlers to teens, all clutching their pillowcases or plastic pails, faces concealed behind rubber masks.

At least, Vel thought they were masks. After watching a goblin trade a popcorn ball to a witch for what looked like a rock, and then pop the rock directly into his mouth, she realized she couldn’t be sure any of these kids were wearing masks. Maybe they were just wearing fancy clothes and looking for free candy. Maybe the ones that looked human were the ones hiding their faces. It was impossible to say, so she decided to stop trying. The magic was in the laughter, not in the species of the child doing the laughing.

Most of the kids waved or smiled at Hailey when they saw her. She waved and smiled back, bright as a button. She was glowing slightly: the perfect babysitter, always visible, never in danger of being hit by a car. “Aren’t they the sweetest?” she asked, glancing at Vel. “About half of them are kids from the Calendar Country who think they’re dreaming. The rest live here. They’ll grow up to be incredible monsters someday.”

“How many people have you been an imaginary friend to?”

“Never enough, and so many that if I let myself remember their names and where their bones are buried, I’d never stop crying.” Hailey rolled her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. I’ve never killed a trick-or-treater. Time and your world take care of that. The ones who don’t die of old age get hit by cars or crushed by falling masonry or whatever, and they never come to see me again. Not even in their dreams.”

Vel was quiet for a moment before she said, “I’m sorry.”

“So am I. But sorrow doesn’t belong here. It’s a beautiful Halloween night, and we have places to go and people to see before the clock strikes twelve. Come on.” She started up the walkway to the nearest house. It was a whitewashed colonial, trimmed with gingerbread swirls. The roof was remarkably purple.

Lacking anything better to do, Vel followed her to the porch. Hailey rang the bell and rocked back onto her heels, waiting.

The girl who answered the door was slightly younger than Hailey. Her hair was deep purple, save for the orange skunk streak that ran from her temple to the back of her head. She was wearing a tattered black dress and a green apron, and her eyes widened when she saw the pair, shoulders stiffening.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.

“We’re not here for you, Mischief,” said Hailey. There was nothing gentle in her voice now. She sounded older, somehow, and disapproving all the way down to her bones. “Go get your parents.”

Mischief turned and fled.

“You didn’t have to scare her,” said Vel.

“Yes, I did,” said Hailey. “She lives here. She’s not like you. She doesn’t get to leave. The Calendar Country nearly killed her parents, and they had each other. She grew up there, and it never made sense, and it never wanted her. So now she’s here, and she gets to live with the fact that half of Halloween thinks of Trick and Treat as trick-or-traitors, who turned their backs on us when we needed them. They’ll never be full guardians again. They’ll live here, until their daughter is old enough to try to prove herself to the holiday, and then they’ll decide whether they want to stay in an empty house haunted by the ghosts of all the times they failed her, or whether they want to pass their mantles and let someone else take up their roles. I’ll be honest. I’m hoping they choose the latter. This holiday needs the roles they’re no longer fit to play.”

“What would happen to them if they did that?”

“We’d die,” said Trick, stepping up to the door. She was an older version of her daughter, dressed in black slacks and an orange sweatshirt. She carried a plastic cauldron filled with candy, and paused to offer it ceremonially to her visitors.

Hailey took a huge and greedy handful before elbowing the motionless Vel in the side. “You have to take at least a piece,” she said. “If you don’t, you’re shaming the hospitality of the household, and that can open them up to all kinds of nastiness later on. There are rules. Even here, there are rules.”

Vel reached out and cautiously took a single piece of candy. The wrapper crinkled under her fingers like dead leaves. She slipped the candy into her pocket.

“This isn’t a social visit,” said Hailey, as Trick lowered the bowl. “Your husband home?”

“He’s with Mischief, trying to calm her down,” said Trick. “She’s terrified you’re here because it’s time for one of us to go.”

Hailey sighed. “I told you we’re not going to start trying to replace you until she’s come of age. You have years yet. If she’d grown up here, she’d know that I don’t lie about things like that.”

“I know,” said Trick, stepping to the side to let them into the house. “But she didn’t grow up here, and we have to live with that. Enter as you will, there is no danger here.”

“There is now,” said Hailey, and stepped inside.

Trick waited for Vel to enter before shutting the door and putting her bowl of candy on a nearby table. Then she turned, looking at the velvet-clad superheroine frankly. Finally, she beamed, offering her hands.

“Velveteen,” she said, and there was a warmth in her voice that Vel had never heard there before. “It’s so good to see you. Oh, don’t look so surprised. I know we were never friends, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t followed your career with interest. You had to be something special, if you were being courted by three out of the four Seasons.”

“This is her last night,” said Hailey. “She chooses a holiday home by midnight, or she’s back to the Calendar Country, and she may never darken our door again.”

“So soon?” Trick’s eyes widened. She gave Velveteen another look before smiling, this time sympathetically. “You must be awfully warm in all those rags. Would you like a place to change?”

“As long as all I’m changing is my clothes, please,” said Velveteen.

“The bathroom’s right through there,” said Trick, indicating the hall. Velveteen--Vel, she was still undecided; she could still be Vel--nodded understanding and appreciation before heading quickly out of the living room, leaving Hailey and Trick behind.

The bathroom was surprisingly ordinary. The fixtures were shaped like bones, and the wallpaper was a cheery mix of candy corn and skulls, but the light was bright, and there were no cobwebs. Vel smirked to herself as she removed her frilly doll dress and began unzipping the sack that had been her Halloween skin. Trick and Treat might be home for good. That didn’t change the years they’d spent in the Calendar Country, or the impact those years had had on them.

Then the false skin dropped away, and Vel stopped thinking about wallpaper or regional traditions. All she could do was stare at her reflection, and blink back the tears that were threatening to overwhelm her.

She was still wearing her costume. Even after everything she’d been through, everything she’d become, once it was stripped away, she was still wearing her costume. The burgundy velvet was torn in places, tattered, bloodstained. Not all the blood was hers. The bandages that had been intended to keep her from bleeding to death were gone, and when she poked her fingers through the hole in the side of her leotard, she found smooth, fully healed skin. There didn’t even seem to be any scarring. She choked back something that was neither sob nor laughter. How about that for a medical plan: be snow, be flowers, be a rag doll, and you, too, can survive a life-threatening injury without any unsightly reminders.

“Vel?” Hailey’s voice was accompanied by a knock at the bathroom door. Vel jumped, whipping around to face the noise. “Hey, I know you’re probably all excited by having, like, internal organs and a vagina and stuff again, but we don’t have much time. Come out as soon as you can, okay? We need to get this done.”

Vel took one last look at herself in the mirror, took a steadying breath, and gathered her discarded Halloween husk in her arms before opening the bathroom door. Hailey was gone. Vel walked down the hallway to the living room where Hailey was waiting, seated on the couch between an uncomfortable-looking Trick and Treat. The Halloween Princess smiled wistfully at the sight of her.

“Look at you,” she said. “All bright and battered and half-starved. We’ve ridden you hard, haven’t we? But don’t worry. This is the last sales pitch, and then the last trial, and then, boom.” She hooked a finger in her mouth and pulled it out again, making a popping sound. “It’s off to the Hall of Mirrors to tell the big guns what you’ve decided. Whether you’re going to stay with us, or leave forever.”

“What do you think?” asked Vel.

“Me? I think you should listen to these two.” Hailey indicated Trick and Treat with a sweep of her hand. “They’re our final testimonial.”

“You’re the last animus in the world,” said Treat. His voice was low and earnest. “That’s never going to be easy. After what Supermodel did...there are always going to be people who’ll see you as a monster. People who’re just waiting for you to turn rabid and bite. That wouldn’t happen here.”

“You’ve been training or fighting or running away for your entire life,” said Trick. She sounded sorry; she sounded the way Vel had always imagined a mother would sound, genuinely regretful for the pain that hadn’t been avoided. “That’s not going to change. People are always going to want something from you, or think you have to be something that you’re not. They’re never going to leave you alone. They’d leave you alone here.”

Vel snorted. “Oh, because Halloween has been so peaceful and kind to me.”

“It can be,” said Trick. “Time is what we want it to be. For every night we spend patrolling this city and protecting tourists, we get a week with our daughter. We’ve had more time since we came here than we’d had in her entire childhood. She’s growing up slowly because she wants to, because she wants this time as much as we do. If you stayed here, you could have a hundred lazy nights for every one you spent working.”

“What happens when I want to stop?” Vel asked. “Before you said that if you quit, you’d die.”

Trick and Treat exchanged a look. This time, it was Treat who spoke. “We weren’t born in the Calendar Country,” he said. “We started here as children and grew up because we wanted to, and our roles didn’t forbid it. If we stop being Trick and Treat, the holiday guardians, we aren’t anything. We’ll just fade away. You, though. You were born. You have flesh and blood and a family. You might not be able to go back the same as you were, but you wouldn’t necessarily die.”

“If you were me, if you had to make this choice...what would you do?”

Trick smiled wistfully. “I’d be a human girl. I’d live in a complicated, confusing world that doesn’t follow narrative rules, and I would never look back.”

Treat didn’t say anything. Hailey stood.

“There you go,” she said. “You’ve heard from me, the human who chose Halloween, and you’ve heard from the holidays who chose to be human for a while. Now it’s time for you to go and give your answer.”

“Go where?” asked Vel.

Hailey pointed to the door.

It was too easy. After everything she’d been through, everything she’d done, it was too easy. It was almost a relief, in a strange way, when she opened the door and the street was gone, replaced by an endless, fog-shrouded forest. She looked back, and the living room was also gone. There was only the forest, and the doorframe in which she stood.

“Here we go,” she said, almost cheerfully, and stepped into the fog.

*

She hadn’t gone three feet before a snarl split the darkness. It was something like a roar and something like a growl and something like the sort of thing nobody wants to share a dark, creepy forest with. Vel stopped dead, feeling suddenly small and exposed.

They’d forced her to freeze her way out of Winter and fight her way out of Spring. Why had she expected Autumn to be any kinder?

Then the beast came pacing out of the gray, and she no longer had time for questions. She only had time to turn and run like hell.

It was a mixed-up thing, much like its roar: it was werewolf and bogeyman and bat and rat and most of all, great black Halloween cat. Vel knew what it was even before it opened its mouth and laughed at her, calling mockingly, “Told you you hadn’t seen anything yet. Told you I still had some tricks up my sleeve. Fight me, or die, doll-girl.”

Scaredy Cat’s taunts did have one effect: Vel ran faster, still clutching her husked-off Halloween skin. She had no desire to fight the former Halloween guardian, not here, not ever. He would chew her up and spit her out. He had claws, weapons, natural advantages. All she had was an old costume and a bunch of...dead...leaves...

Velveteen stopped running. The answer to everything had been in front of her the entire time. All she’d needed to do was acknowledge it.

Scaredy Cat reached the place where she’d stopped less than a minute later. He dug his terrible claws into the ground and bared his terrible teeth, swinging his head in a low arc, nose testing the ground. He could smell her. She hadn’t run. So where was she?

The rock hit him in the top of the head. He looked up, and there she was, crouched in the branches of the nearest tree. He snarled.

“Don’t growl at me,” she said. “Hailey does this shit all the time. She’d make a great superhero. We’re all about the dramatic entrances. Tell Scream Queen I’m done fucking around and being tested. I have a solution that works for us both.”

The great beast dwindled, drawing back into itself, until the little boy in the homemade cat costume was standing in its place, watching her through narrowed eyes. “You were supposed to be a hunt and a chase and a kill,” he said accusingly.

“And now I’m not,” she said. “Sorry. Not my problem. Tell Scream Queen it’s time.”

“Tell me yourself,” said Scream Queen, stepping out of the trees. Her arms were full of dead roses, and her eyes were full of shadows. She looked to Scaredy. “Run along, little boy. This isn’t your place and it isn’t your problem, and if you didn’t get your moment in the sun, well, that’s too damn bad.”

Scaredy Cat glared, but he was smart enough not to argue with the woman who controlled his season. Sullen, he turned and walked away into the wood. Scream Queen looked back to Velveteen.

“Well?” she said. “I warn you, I don’t have much patience for grandstanding. There’s only room for one prom queen in this wood, and it’s me until someone bigger and badder comes along.”

“I’m not grandstanding,” said Velveteen. She sat down on the branch before easing herself down to the ground. Human flesh and blood broke a lot more easily than ragdoll floppiness. “I just didn’t want to come down until the big bad whatever the fuck Scaredy actually is was gone. What is he?”

“The thing children fear when they walk in the woods. Fewer woods, less fear, less reason to have something that dangerous running free. It’s almost midnight, little girl. What do you have to say to me?”

“I want to go home.” The words seemed somehow fragile, small, like they belonged in a different sort of story. A rabbit-eared headband wasn’t so different from a red hood, not really, and there were wolves in this wood. Velveteen squared her shoulders, refusing to shrink in on herself, and looked Scream Queen in the eye. “I want to be able to be Velma Martinez, not just Velveteen. I want friends, and a bed, and a chance to live my life on my own terms, not because the story says so. I want to be myself again.”

“I see. You realize that by saying this, you’re denying me my treat, and I’m within my rights to trick you.” Scream Queen’s smile was toothier than it should have been. Whoever handled Halloween’s orthodontia must have been making a fortune. “What’s to stop me keeping you past midnight, and making your choice a foregone conclusion?”

“Did I say I wasn’t giving you a treat?” Velveteen snapped her fingers. Something else dropped from the tree and moved to stand beside her.

It wasn’t a woman, although it was shaped like one: it had two legs, two arms, a torso, and a smiling muslin mask of a face. It crinkled when it moved, like dead leaves crunching together. It wore a frilled dress, like all good dolls did, and as it turned its blank button eyes toward Scream Queen, it was impossible to avoid the sensation of being watched.

“See, I was in Halloween when I learned that if I animate something that’s supposed to be a superhero, it gets their powers. Dolly here is supposed to be me.” Velveteen looked at her creation. “Dolly?”

The rag doll waved her hand. A corn jenny scurried out of the woods on cornhusk legs, pressing herself against Dolly’s ankle. Velveteen turned back to Scream Queen.

“She can watch the corn for you,” she said. “You don’t need me.”

“And when you stop animating her?” Scream Queen asked.

Velveteen shook her head. “I already did. This is Halloween. She’s a living doll. Your narrative says she won’t die until she’s done her job, and it’s her job to protect the corn. You can let me go.”

“I suppose that’s true,” said Scream Queen, and stepped closer. “Last chance, hero. Stay or go?”

Velveteen looked at the doll she’d made from her own shed skin. Looked at the haunted wood around her. And finally, reluctantly, looked back to Scream Queen. “I want to go home,” she said again.

“Very well,” said Scream Queen. She snapped her fingers.

Velveteen collapsed. The rag doll remained standing.

Scream Queen raised an eyebrow. “She was telling the truth, huh? Well, then. Let’s take care of this, shall we?”

She waved her hand. A door formed from the branches of the nearby trees. Together, Scream Queen and the doll hoisted Velveteen’s body and tossed it through, into the void beyond. Then, still together, they walked into the trees, and Halloween, went on around them, eternal as only a holiday can be.

*

First there was no door and then there was a door, a paradox of a thing, standing unsupported in the middle of a suburban lawn. The door opened against the wind--a wind that was too cold, a wind that smelled like blood. There was a long pause, like the world was waiting for something, before the body of a woman tumbled out of thin air and collapsed on the grass. She lay there, motionless, unaware of the world around her.

For better or for worse, Velveteen had come home.

Sponsorship: Velveteen vs. A Disturbing Number of Crows.

2015-09-27T15:40:05Z

Title: Velveteen vs. A Disturbing Number of Crows.
Summary: The trials of a formerly retired superheroine are destined never to be done, especially when the heroine in question was foolish enough to agree to serve the seasonal lands...

Today's story was brought to you by nolly. Happy birthday nolly!

***

Once again, Velveteen woke to find herself staring at the rotting rafters of a decaying house. There was a bat sleeping there, suspended upside-down like a little velvet sachet. As she watched, it woke, yawned, stretched out its bony wings, and launched itself into the air, flying silently out the open window. Velveteen sat up, and looked down at herself, more out of habit than anything else. Her skin was still a patchwork landscape of brown velvet and patterned swaths of whatever fabric had been handy when she needed to be repaired; looking at the patches carefully, she could see that they corresponded to every serious injury she’d ever sustained in the course of her heroic duties. The body had remembered, even when there had been no scars, and those old battle wounds had translated themselves onto the thing she was now. She still wasn’t wearing any clothes. As a living doll, she supposed she didn’t really need them. That didn’t stop her from feeling naked.

No sooner had the thought formed than the closet door swung open, revealing a lacy, tattered black dress hanging on the inside. Like her skin, it was patched in places, with bat-patterned orange cotton, green-and-purple muslin, and even a few swaths of brown velvet, rescued from the rag bag that had never really existed after her injuries had seen it trimmed away. Like Spring, Autumn was spinning a whole past for her, making it like she’d always been here.

“Hailey said I would get to choose for myself what I wanted to be, assuming I decided to stay here,” she said. Scream Queen wasn’t in the room--not unless the matriarch of Halloween could turn herself invisible, which was a thought Velveteen didn’t exactly feel like dwelling on--but the odds were good that she knew everything that happened in her season. Persephone and Aurora both had. So Velveteen glared at the ceiling for a moment, hoping it would get her point across. Then she got off the bed, and walked to the closet, and took the dress.

It fit like it had been made for her, which made sense: it had been made for her, called out of the substance of the season as soon as she realized that she wanted clothes. It was more childish than anything she would have worn at home, but that made sense too, because it was a dress for the body she currently inhabited, and the body she currently inhabited was human only in the vaguest of senses. What would have seemed awkward and wrong on her normal figure was...well, still wrong, but more creepy than awkward.

“I never wanted to be a terrifying murder doll, you know,” she said. The room did nothing to indicate, one way or another, whether it did, in fact, know. Velveteen sighed. “And by the time I get out of here, I’m going to be talking to myself constantly. This just gets better and better.”

With the bat gone, she was alone in the room. Velveteen glared one last time at the mirror on the wall, and turned to head for the door. Time to find Hailey again, and find out what, exactly, her last period of service was going to entail. One way or another, this was coming to an end.

*

Since the connection between our world and the Seasonal Lands became clear, steps have been taken to try to match those individuals known to dwell in the individual seasons with the people who they may have been prior to their choosing a life of metaphor and symbol over one lived in the normal manner, one day after another, leading inevitably to death.

In some cases, the origins of these figures are shrouded by both the time since they were first encountered, and by the distinct possibility that they are titles as much as individuals. Take the man we now know as “Santa Claus.” It was a shock when he first appeared at the 1953 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, descending from the sky in his reindeer-driven sleigh, distributing presents to all the individuals who had come to watch the floats go by. He was accompanied during that first appearance by a slender, blue-skinned man who we would all come to know as “Jack Frost,” and by a beautiful, icy woman who answered only to the title “Snow Queen.” All three represented figures from folklore and myth, although Santa seemed uncannily similar to the images commissioned by the Coca Cola company in the 1930s. While no earlier images exist of his companions, there are sketches and paintings of “Santa Claus” going back centuries. Comparison of these images seems to suggest the existence of at least three individuals using the name “Santa Claus,” following each other sequentially.

What happened to these earlier Santas? How were their replacements chosen, and how were they groomed for their jobs? What of Mrs. Claus? If new Santas are chosen following the death or retirement of the old, it would stand to reason that those new holders of the holiday office might well want to bring their own wives, their own families, into the Seasonal Lands. Or is theirs a marriage of mythology, something which cares nothing for the individuals involved, but only for their place in the story? The daughter of the current Santa Claus, Jacqueline, is rumored to have been adopted, which would fit well with her role in the holiday, but does not clarify the nature of his wife’s connection to either him or to the season itself.

If there are this many mysteries about Santa Claus, whose own child has been a frequent visitor to our world since she began her association with the heroes code named “Velveteen” and “The Princess,” then it must be acknowledged that the mysteries surrounding the other denizens of the Seasonal Lands are even deeper and more difficult to untangle. Take, for example, the rumored ruler of Halloween, the never-seen, rarely spoken-of “Scream Queen.”

According to those individuals who have traveled into the holiday and returned with skins and sanity intact, Scream Queen is the one who chooses the treats, decides the tricks, and sets the traps. It is her word that keeps the terrifying mechanisms of her holiday in motion. But who is she? Some of the earliest accounts of Halloween as a place, dismissed at the time as flights of fancy and outright lies, mention a woman who stood shielded by the corn and watched over all. The name given for her, however, is “Halloween Princess,” a role which we now know to be held by Hailey Ween (a girl whose origins are, as of this writing, still unclear). The physical descriptions for this Halloween Princess do not match the descriptions given of Hailey Ween: Hailey is Caucasian, blonde, sixteen. The Halloween Princess in the older tales is African-American, black haired, somewhere in her twenties. Her given name has never been recorded.

It seems reasonable to assume that whoever the Scream Queen is, she is not Hailey Ween, and while she may have been the Halloween Princess once, she has long since moved past that role. What she is now, we have no reasonable way of knowing.

*

As before, the stairs creaked but did not give way as Velveteen descended; as before, the bannister squished under her fingers, like she was gripping a rotten, slippery rat’s tail rather than a piece of curving wood. There were fewer cobwebs this time, probably because she had already walked through so many of the damn things that the spiders were working overtime to get them back in place. She kept her head held high and tried not to focus on the distant feeling that the house was breathing all around her, that if she opened enough doors she would eventually find the one that concealed a broken, beating heart.

“You’re supposed to be mine, you know,” she said, addressing the air. Halloween was definitely going to be the season of talking to herself. “That’s why you have a face: so you can be mine. So it would be awesome if you’d stop working quite so hard to creep me the fuck out, okay? Okay. Glad we had this talk.”

It might have been her imagination, but it felt like the air lightened after that. She smiled to herself as she finished her descent, and stopped at the bottom, smile fading. She was feeling triumph because...what, exactly? Because she’d managed to convince a haunted house to be a little bit less haunted, at least in her direction?

Her powers fit best in Spring. She had been cultivated by Winter. Autumn had always done its best to push her away in the process of pulling her closer, but at the end of the day, she fit best in the season of dead leaves and jack-o-lanterns. Maybe she could have grown up to be a perfect Spirit of some other Season, but those were the versions of herself that had never been allowed to exist. She was who she was, and who she was was the sort of girl who was better equipped to yell at haunted houses than she was to hide eggs or fill stockings.

The thought was unsettling enough that she finished her walk to the front door in silence, opening it to reveal the graveyard outside, and Hailey and Scaredy once again having a picnic on a fallen tomb door. They both raised their heads and looked around at the sound of her footsteps on the porch. Hailey offered a brief salute with a piece of pumpkin bread. Scaredy wrinkled his nose into something between a snarl and a sneer, and went back to shoving gummi worms into his mouth.

At least Velveteen thought they were gummi worms. All things considered, she didn’t want to ask. “Do you people not have homes?” she asked instead, crossing her arms and glowering in their general direction. “I’m not running a flophouse here.”

“Sure you’re running a flophouse,” said Hailey cheerily. “You have no bones; you live here for right now; you’re floppy; ergo, this is a flophouse.”

Velveteen stared at her. “That’s...that’s not how words work,” she said finally. “The language police are going to come and take you away, and I’m not going to say a damn thing in your defense.”

“Au contraire, my ragdoll fair: you’re in Halloween now, and this is exactly how words work on this side of the graveyard gate.” Hailey slid nimbly down from her tombstone perch, pausing to smooth her green and orange tulle skirt with the heels of her hands before trotting across the yard to where Velveteen waited. She stopped at the base of the porch steps, offering a shy smile upward.

For the first time, Velveteen--who had first met Hailey Ween when sixteen was a foreign country, far away, exotic, and filled with promises she hoped puberty was intending to keep--was struck by how young she was. Hailey had been sixteen, or maybe even younger, when she had climbed out of her bedroom window and followed an avatar of Halloween into metaphor, and further onward, into eternity. She had never grown all the way up, never loved someone enough to hold their hands under a harvest moon, never known what she was giving away. Or maybe she had, and she just hadn’t seen it as important enough to mourn for.

“What?” demanded Velveteen, more harshly than she intended. She didn’t want to be feeling sorry for Hailey. She couldn’t afford to start feeling sorry for Hailey. This was her last Season, and she. Was going. Home.

“Trick or treat,” said Hailey, voice sweet as Halloween candy and twice as likely to conceal a razor blade.

“What do you think I am, stupid?” asked Velveteen. “Treat.”

“Wonderful,” said Hailey, smiling that too-white, too-sharp smile of hers before spinning on her heel and striking out across the graveyard, beckoning for Velveteen to follow. “Hurry, hurry! There’s much to do before the sun goes down, and you don’t want to make Scream Queen angry!”

Velveteen didn’t remember much about her brief encounter with Halloween’s guardian Spirit, but what little she did remember made her certain that Hailey was telling nothing but the truth. Repressing the urge to swear, she jumped down from the porch, her fabric knees absorbing the impact with ease, and ran after the Halloween Princess, into the cornfield beyond the yard.

Scaredy stayed where he was, and reached for another fistful of candy. His part would come soon enough. No point in wasting a good picnic on something that he didn’t need to do.

*

On the other side of the graveyard was a crumbling country road, the sort of thing that’s made an appearance in a hundred horror movies and a few thousand American gothic novels. It was a Stephen King road, a Ray Bradbury road, and the second Velveteen saw it, she knew that she was not going to enjoy what came next. She stopped at the edge of the road. Hailey continued on, to the ditch on the other side, where she began unearthing a bicycle from the weeds. She looked back when she realized that Vel was no longer following her.

“Well?” she asked. “Come on.”

“No, thanks,” said Velveteen. “I’m good here.”

Hailey sighed and rolled her eyes, the very picture of a Halloween babysitter trying to cajole her charges into going on a fun adventure. Everything she’d said about being the cool kid who still went out into the graveyards was starting to make sense. “You’re here to serve the Season, Velveteen, or do you need Scream Queen to give you a little reminder? Just come with me. I’m not going to hurt you. We’re on the same team this time.”

“You’ve tried to trap me in Halloween before,” said Velveteen, finally taking a cautious step out onto the road. It held her weight. Roads usually did, but after three Seasons in a row, she wasn’t feeling very trustful about that sort of thing.

“Well, sure,” said Hailey. She pulled the bike out of the ditch and brushed the last of the grass off of it. The frame was rusty and the handlebars looked like a tetanus shot waiting to happen, but the tires were sound and fully inflated. “I wanted to keep you, you didn’t want to stay. But this time, the rules are different. This time, you might choose us. So I’ve been ordered to play nicely, and I’m your best friend until the clock strikes twelve and you have to pick a side.”

“What happens if I don’t pick you?” Velveteen peered into the ditch, and was unsurprised to find a second bike there, caught in the weeds. She leaned over and began excavating it, grimacing as the briars snagged in the fabric of her hands.

“No clue,” said Hailey. “Hopefully, we’re not going to find out.”

She was smiling that toothy, too-white smile when Velveteen looked over at her. Vel shuddered and went back to digging out her bike.

Once she had it free, and reasonably denuded of weeds, she propped it up and slung her leg over the seat. Hailey nodded approvingly and pushed off; Vel did the same, and together they rode down the long, pothole-spotted country road, with fields of wheat and corn waving gently at them from either side. The landscape of Halloween changed to suit its current needs, from the Gothic to the pastoral and back again. It was not the sort of place that could be accused of being static, or boring. It was just itself, whatever that entailed at the time.

They road until the shadows stretched long around them. Velveteen was pleased to discover that the changes to her body--and her current lack of a skeletal system--didn’t interfere with her riding a bike. Some skills, it seemed, just crossed over.

Hailey pulled off to the side of the road and stopped her bike, prompting Velveteen to do the same. Then Hailey waved a hand grandly at the large cornfield in front of them. “Ta-da,” she said.

Velveteen frowned. “Congratulations,” she said, after a moment. “You’ve found corn. I don’t think that’s hard around here. Halloween seems to have a weird corn fetish, and to be honest, I find it all a little bit disturbing. Which hell, may be what you were going for in the first place. Who am I to judge?”

“We like corn because corn is a symbol, and also because corn is fucking delicious,” said Hailey. “Corn is awesome. But cornfields...there’s power in cornfields. They’re a whole different sort of symbol. Every cornfield we have means something else. There are cornfields people get wished into and cornfields that people run away in. There are cornfields haunted by slasher killers, and cornfields with bad infestations of children with hair like silk and eyes like a crime scene. This cornfield is one of the symbolic ones. Every ear of corn that grows here represents a good Halloween experience a child had the last time our holiday actually rolled around.”

“Huh,” said Velveteen. She gave the cornfield another, longer look. “That’s a lot of corn.”

“Halloween is important to a lot of people. Good adult experiences go into one of our apple orchards. They make the sweetest cider that you’ve ever tasted. But see, harvest happens after a year’s growth, regardless of age. Can’t have the really good memories of a holiday until that holiday comes around again. And we’ve got a problem.” Hailey’s expression hardened. “There are crows in the corn.”

“Crows.”

“Yes.”

“Crows in the corn.”

“Yes.”

“So you brought me, a woman made of fabric, to scare the crows that are eating your good memory corn. Wow. It’s like I’m some sort of...huh. There must be a word for something shaped like a human that you use to scare the crows.” Velveteen folded her arms and glared at Hailey.

Hailey rolled her eyes. “Oh no, you came to a world that flat-out refers to itself as a metaphor and somehow things have gotten all symbolic. How did that happen? I do not know. Look, I can be as sarcastic as you. Doesn’t change what we’re here to do, so maybe let’s stop, okay? I have shit to do. So do you.”

“Because you need me to fight the crows that are in your corn,” said Velveteen.

“Yup,” said Hailey. “See, bad Halloween memories have wings. They’re here to eat what they can’t become, and the more they eat, the more people forget what they love about Halloween. We need kids to keep loving Halloween when they’re young, because that’s what powers the less likely to murder everybody on sight aspects of our holiday. You’re really doing a public service.”

“By fighting the crows that are in your corn.”

“Precisely.” Hailey’s expression turned grave. “This is part of how the servants of this Season work to protect us all. I’d like to stay here and enjoy more of your pathetic attempts to make me feel bad about our metaphors, but I need to go chase the owls out of the orchard. The crows are your concern, at least for tonight.”

“But I don’t know how to fight crows,” said Velveteen helplessly. “What do you want me to do, shout ‘boo’ and hope they’ll scatter?”

“No,” said Hailey. “I want you to kill them.”

*

Velveteen looked at the corn. She had the distinct feeling that the corn was looking back, taking her measure even as she was taking its. Hailey was gone, off to protect the orchards: her parting words had been a muttered warning about being back on the road by midnight, since the corn had “other defenses” once the moon was high enough. Velveteen had no real idea of what those “other defenses” might be, and more importantly, she had no desire to learn. Being an animus had taught her that everything had teeth. Sometimes those teeth were hidden, but that didn’t change their reality. She had absolute faith that the cornfield was dangerous, and not to be trifled with.

She also hadn’t seen a single crow, standing on the road as she was, which made her suspect that the only way to protect the corn was to go into the corn.

“I hate this holiday,” she announced, to no one in particular, and stepped into the green.

The change was immediate. There was no way the road should have dropped behind her so quickly, but it did: with a single step, she was lost in a sea of cornstalks, surrounded on all sides. They were all tall, stretching two to four feet above her head, but that was where the similarity ended. Some of the stalks were fresh and green, barely putting forth ears. Others were golden and dry, already harvested. Still more were fully mature, heavy with corn, ready for the picking.

“Okay, this is weird,” said Velveteen, turning slowly. Cornhusks crunched underfoot. Everything smelled like chlorophyll. And then, in the middle of her turn, she found her first crow.

She froze. So did the bird. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, exactly, but it wasn’t this...this thing, which bore a resemblance to the glossy black birds she sometimes saw back home in Portland only in the sense that it was large, black, and covered with feathers. Apart from that...

It had a jagged, tooth-filled beak, more like a small dinosaur than a normal bird. Its talons were abnormally long, almost tiny, scaled hands, and looked perfectly capable of husking an ear of corn without trouble. And it had a single red eye with a snake-slit pupil in the middle of its skull, which looked at her with an eerie intelligence.

“Um,” said Velveteen.

“Caw,” said the crow, and launched itself into the air, talons angled toward her face. Velveteen had time to see that it had a long, scaly tail, like some sort of lizard, before self-preservation took over and she hit the ground. When she lifted her face out of the corn husks, she saw the crow flying off with an ear of corn clutched in its talons, crowing triumphantly. Before that moment, she wouldn’t have said that a bird could sound smug. This one did. Smug, and nasty, and maybe a little bit malicious. Maybe a lot malicious.

Then the sky turned black with beating wings, and the harsh caws of the crows drowned out everything else, and Velveteen realized that this job was considerably larger than she had expected.

“Fuck. Me,” she said, and turned and fled into the corn, looking for a place where she could hunker down and come up with a plan. Waving her arms and screaming wasn’t going to cut it, she could tell that for damn sure; these were not crows that gave a single fuck about being yelled at. They were out for blood, or at least for corn, and if she got in their way, they were going to rip her to pieces. Serving the Season was one thing--she had signed up for that--but dying for it? Oh, that was something else altogether, and if that was what Halloween wanted from her, Halloween was going to be deeply disappointed.

The direction she was running should have brought her back to the road. It didn’t. instead, it brought her more corn, until she ran into a clear patch that had already been harvested. The stalks here were crushed flat, and the sky overhead was mostly empty, since there was nothing here for the crows to steal. She stopped, wheezing and trying not to think about how a rag doll that walked like a woman could be short of breath. Everything here was a metaphor. Pick at it too much and it would come apart at the seams.

“Okay, fuck, crows,” she said, putting her hand against a convenient pole as she wheezed. Then she stopped, looking up, and met the eyes of the disemboweled scarecrow that dangled there. It was impossible to tell whether it had originally been an animated doll, like she was; it didn’t matter much, since the thing was clearly not animated now. It was a dead thing, and looking at it made her shudder.

But it was a dead thing with a face, and while she had never become Roadkill in her timeline, she knew full well that she was capable of animating dead things.

Getting the scarecrow down from its post was harder than she had expected, and several times she had to swallow the urge to just wake it up and tell it to get down on its own. Without knowing how it was suspended, that could easily have ended in the scarecrow ripping itself limb from limb as it tried to follow her orders. That wouldn’t have been helpful, especially not when she needed it relatively intact to fight for her. So she climbed and she slid and she struggled and she unhooked, until finally the scarecrow fell to the ground, leaving her hanging from the crossbar that had held its arms in position.

“This was a brilliant plan and I am a genius for having it,” she said, deadpan. Narrowing her eyes, she focused on the scarecrow. She hadn’t actually tried to use her powers since arriving in Autumn this time, and after her experiences in Spring and Winter, she was a little worried about what would happen. Indeed, it felt like the “reach” that always accompanied an animation came easier than it ever had before, accompanied by the tiny sensation of loss that she now recognized as the expenditure of her own energy. The deep wellspring of power that had always been her own was back now; she didn’t have to be a vampire. The relief that accompanied that realization was so intense that she nearly lost her grip on the crossbar.

Only nearly. She held on, and the scarecrow staggered to its feet, possessing none of her grace, moving with the uneasy bend of straw and canvas and severely damaged fabric. It tilted its painted face blindly toward her, its one remaining button eye glinting in the light. There wasn’t that much of a difference between snowmen and scarecrows, when you got right down to it. Both of them were inanimate, humanoid, and hers.

“Catch me,” she said, and let go of the crossbar before she could change her mind. If the scarecrow didn’t move fast enough, well. She was made of cloth at the moment. She would probably be fine. Probably.

The scarecrow caught her. Velveteen beamed.

“You are the most useful person I’ve met since I got here,” she said. “Put me down.”

The scarecrow put her down. It took a shambling step back, giving her some space. Velveteen wasn’t sure whether it had done that on its own or because she wanted room to breathe, and it didn’t really matter. Her toys had always been better at controlling their own actions than anyone expected them to be. As long as they still did as she asked, she didn’t mind.

“We’re going to fight the army of crows that tore you open,” she said. The scarecrow tilted its head, seeming obscurely disappointed. She swallowed the urge to apologize. “Anyway, we need more of an army if we want to take them out without winding up in a million pieces. Have you ever made a cornhusk doll?”

The scarecrow had not. The scarecrow was, however, willing to learn. Velveteen couldn’t have said how she knew this; she just did. She grinned.

“Great,” she said. “Let’s get cracking.”

*

Gathering cornhusks was easy, even with the crows glutting themselves in the field. The clearing had plenty, and when those started running low, Velveteen ducked into the nearby green and grabbed great fistfuls of leaves and husks from the ground and from the already-denuded cornstalks. A few crow sentries spotted her and cawed loudly, summoning reinforcements, but Velveteen kept low and moved fast, and none of the flocks managed to descend on her before she could retreat to a safe distance again.

“I would kill for someone with animal-control powers right now,” she said, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the clearing and beginning to twist cornhusks together, forming the shape of a crude doll. The scarecrow sat beside her, mimicking her motions as well as it could. Its hands were twigs, skeletal and clumsy, but they bent like fingers, thanks to the power she was pumping through its body, and while it wasn’t fast, it was better by far than nothing. “I mean, get Cinder or Monstrosity or Jack Daw out here and we could clear this problem up in no time flat. Halloween needs to network better.”

The scarecrow didn’t say anything. The scarecrow just kept making corn dolls. Velveteen gave it a sidelong look.

“You were a scarecrow when you started, right?” she asked. “I mean, you were always a scarecrow, you’re not somebody who got turned into a scarecrow? Because I’m not really in the business of animating corpses, when I can help it. It never ends well.” Her mind helpfully supplied her with an image of Tag, sleeping in his glass coffin back in The Princess’s castle. Velveteen resisted the urge to punch her own brain in the face.

The scarecrow’s face was paint and a button on canvas; it didn’t have expressions, as such. Somehow, it still managed to give her an amused look before it shook its head. It had always been a scarecrow, said the motion; it had never wanted to be anything else. It hadn’t wanted to be abandoned and torn apart by crows, either, but what could you do? Sometimes the story went to uncomfortable places.

“Oh, good,” said Velveteen, and reached for another handful of corn husks. The two of them worked in silence for a while, with her producing three cornhusk dollies for every one the scarecrow completed. Those slow additions added up, and when her questing hand found that their pile of cornhusks had been utterly depleted, there were piles of dollies around them, heaped high.

Velveteen stood. “Okay,” she said, looking at the scarecrow. “If I fall down, you catch me. Get me out of the corn if you can. I’ll try to keep animating you until I can’t anymore. Got it?”

The scarecrow nodded.

“Awesome. Here we go.” She turned to the piled-up dollies. They were humanoid in only the barest of senses: they had cornhusk legs, cornhusk arms, and smiling little faces poked into their heads with nails Vel had pried from the base of the scarecrow’s perch. They were humanoid enough. Velveteen reached and they responded, sitting up, looking around, and finally helping one another to their cornhusk feet. A hundred or more silently smiling faces looked at her, waiting.

It was like something out of a horror movie. Velveteen resisted the urge to shudder. She was like something out of a horror movie, at least right now. This was where she belonged, until it was all over. Until she could go home.

“There are crows in the corn,” she said. “I know you grew here: this is your home. I know that once, you sheltered the good Halloween memories of children. And I know that many of you fell because of those same crows. They stole the memories you were supposed to protect. This is your chance to get revenge. This is your chance to do for someone else what no one was willing to do for you. Are you with me?”

They were. Every last one of them. They grabbed nails and sticks from the ground, arming themselves for the fight that was to come. Then, silent, they swarmed into the corn with Velveteen and the scarecrow close behind. It was time to fight, and win, or lose, as the season decreed.

*

The crows were not expecting an assault. That was clear from the way Velveteen and her makeshift army found them, perched on the cornstalks, glutting themselves sick on the memories that grew, golden and sweet, around them. What’s more, the crows were not expecting an assault that came on like a wave, silent, swift, and terrible. The corn dollies were light enough that they could swarm straight up the corn, attacking whatever they found there. They were merciless with their borrowed weapons. They were fearless in their fury. What did it matter if one of them fell, when three more would be closing in right behind?

The crows shrieked and cawed, ripping corn dollies from themselves, beating them away with their wings. The corn dollies kept coming, driving their sticks into crow eyes, stabbing their nails into crow flesh. Whenever one of the dollies was caught it would come apart in a shower of husks and silk. Velveteen raced between the stalks, filling her hands with fresh husks and shaping more dollies, waking them and sending them into the fray. Every “death” hurt her a little, but it returned that doll’s energy to the well she was using to power them; as long as their numbers stayed roughly constant, she would have the strength to keep rebuilding her army.

Crows shrieked. Dolls disintegrated. It was a holding action: there were always more dolls, but there were always more crows as well, reinforcements summoned by the dismay of their fellows. Midnight was coming, and Hailey’s warning was beginning to echo in her ears: she didn’t want to be there when Halloween’s defenses kicked in.

But there was still something she could do, even if she didn’t want to. Something that would turn the tide. Velveteen sunk to her knees in the green, green ground, closed her eyes, and reached.

The crows that had fallen twitched. They twisted. And they rose on black-feathered wings, taking back the sky, silent now, flying for someone else. On the ground, Velveteen slumped forward, hands digging into the soil, head bowed. She was pouring everything she had into the crows, into the dolls, into the sky. This was too much for her. She knew that it was too much for her, and still she kept pushing, driving her reanimated crows higher, chasing the living vermin from the skies she had been tasked with protecting.

The scarecrow moved to stand behind her, unbidden by any conscious thought. The dollies struck down more crows, only for their corpses to rise and join the fight against their fellows. Velveteen’s nose began to bleed. She might have been relieved to see that, if she’d been more aware. Something that could bleed wasn’t entirely made of cloth and rags; something that could bleed still had a heart. But all her attention was reserved for other matters.

The surviving crows turned and fled, leaving the cornfield for something safer, someplace less filled with their silent dead.

Velveteen collapsed, and corn dollies and dead crows fell around her like rain.

*

Hailey was waiting when the scarecrow carried Velveteen out of the corn, cradled gently against its chest. She looked at it. It looked at her. Then, slowly, she smiled.

“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” she asked. “Cool. Just get her home.”

The teenage spirit of Halloween slung her leg over her bike and rode away down the endless country road, lit from above by a midnight harvest moon. Behind her walked the scarecrow, Velveteen sleeping peacefully in its arms.

Sponsorship: Velveteen vs. The Melancholy of Autumn.

2015-07-21T15:57:43Z

Title: Velveteen vs. The Melancholy of Autumn.
Summary: The trials of a formerly retired superheroine are destined never to be done, especially when the heroine in question was foolish enough to agree to serve the seasonal lands...

Today's story was sponsored by phantomdancer! Happy birthday!

***

Velveteen opened her eyes to find herself staring up into the rafters of a house that should probably have been condemned five minutes after it was built, just to prevent this inevitable future. The wood was dark with water damage and mold, rotted cleanly through in spots. Thick, filthy cobwebs covered the entire edifice. Velveteen was more than reasonably sure that they were holding the whole place up. Clean the house, watch it fall down around your ears.

This was the autumn country. There was no place else that it could be. The slant of the roof and the single small, round window, like a ship’s porthole, told her that she was probably in the attic of this particular haunted house, which made sense; attics were where the broken toys went. She had visited the autumn before, usually in the custody of Halloween, which was the season’s dominant holiday. She knew their sense of humor.

Breathing slowly and evenly, so as to keep herself from freaking out, Velveteen lifted her hand off the bed and raised it to the level of her eyes. As she had expected, she no longer had skin in the human sense; instead, she had threadbare brown velvet, patched with swaths of brighter fabric. One of her fingers was gone. Not missing: gone, leaving her with a four-fingered hand that would have been easier for a seamstress to stitch together. Her arm was more of the same.

Despite the apparent lack of bones, she didn’t feel floppy or formless as she sat up and examined herself further. Her tail was attached to her ass, naturally, a tuft of cotton fluff that she couldn’t see, but presumed would be distressingly white. Speaking of her ass it, like the rest of her, was sewn out of the same material as her hand, and arm, and costume. She was, for all intents and purposes, anatomically incorrect.

“Even fucking Santa Claus left me with a goddamn vagina, you autumnal pervs,” she muttered, and stood, casting around until she found a cloth-shrouded shape that could be taken for a full-length mirror, if she cocked her head and squinted. Walking was more difficult than it normally was, but easier than it should have been, considering that she was now an ungodly combination of a scarecrow and a life-sized creepy doll. After being made of ice and rooted to the earth, it was getting easier to roll with the punches.

The mirror showed her what she was expecting to see: her own face, somehow rendered perfectly in cloth and canvas, crowned with a pair of brown velvet ears lined in pink satin. They had wire inside to keep them upright. When she bent them, it didn’t hurt. When she pulled them, it did. There were rules to being a living doll, apparently, and she was going to need to learn them as she went. Halloween would never be kind enough to supply her with an instruction manual.

Velveteen sighed, lowering her hands. “Fucked-up times way too many to count,” she said bleakly, looking at her reflection. Last season. Last temptation. She could do this. She had to do this.

If she could survive one more season, she could go home.

*

The exact relationship between the Seasonal Lands and what they call the “calendar country” is a matter of some debate in academic circles, where it is believed that a better understanding of the Seasonal Lands will lead to a better understanding of the world in which we live. If the Seasonal Lands were created by the needs of the calendar country, what created the calendar country? Are the worlds symbiotic, or are the Seasonal Lands magical parasites, drawing sustenance from the flesh of a universe they have no business intruding upon? The conversation has been going for years, but became both louder and more vicious after the fall of The Super Patriots, Inc., which had previously controlled much of the dialog surrounding the origins and impacts of superhuman abilities.

If the Seasonal Lands are symbiotic, runs one argument, then it stands to reason that it is within the public interest to keep them healthy and well-supplied with the heroes they require to remain stable. The records of Velveteen’s childhood encounters with the residents of Halloween, combined with the documented powers and careers of Trick and Treat, both known to have originated in the Autumn, makes a compelling argument for this position. Without a strong connection between the Seasonal Lands and the calendar country, it seems likely that both worlds would suffer.

According to the other school of thought, which holds that the Seasonal Lands are parasitic, and do not give anything the calendar country cannot survive without, the suffering that would follow a severing of that bond would actually be the process of our reality healing, recovering a measure of its equilibrium and beginning to return to normal. Yes, it would hurt, and yes, people would probably pay the price for cutting that tether, but in the end, our world would be healthier for it. All that they need is someone willing to wield the knife.

Thus far, neither school of thought has been in a position to put their theories to the test, something which may well have prevented their academic disagreements from escalating to outright warfare. “When you have someone using a mechanical breathing device, and someone else swearing that it’s killing the patient, what do you do?” asked one scholar, who elected not to be named. “You can leave them connected, and maybe it’s making them sick and maybe it’s not, but at least you know they’re going to live. Or you can unplug the whole thing, and pray that the person who says they’ll be better off is right. If they’re not, and the patient dies, it’s not like you can bring them back to life by plugging them back in.”

More interesting is the theory that the Seasonal Lands, by tying mankind to a world where myth and reality are indistinguishable, are fully responsible for the existence of magical heroes, even those whose powers do not manifest in any clearly time-related way. The Princess, Dame Fortuna, and Jolly Roger are all unique in their manifestations, but they are all, in some way, metaphor made flesh. Without the Seasonal Lands to continually remind mankind that metaphor is sometimes another way of saying “the thing that’s about to kick your teeth in,” would these heroes be able to exist at all? Would breaking the tether strip them of their powers? Would it strip all superhumans of their powers? Perhaps these abilities are a byproduct of the connection between our universe and these smaller ones, whether they be symbiotic or parasitic.

And more, would the loss of all superhuman abilities truly be as bad a thing as it might initially appear? By reducing the human population to a single power level--none to speak of--we might finally create a level playing field, and stop the fighting once and for all.

Until the connection between the Seasonal Lands and the calendar country is broken, there is no way to say for sure. Still, people wonder; the discussion continues.

*

The room where Velveteen had awakened was empty of anything that could have better prepared her for whatever was going to come next. The closet door creaked ominously, but there were no weapons inside. There were claw marks in the wood under the bed. No monster, though. Finally, Velveteen was forced to admit that she needed to leave the room if she wanted to find out what was going on.

“Look at it this way,” she muttered to herself, turning toward the door. “This is Halloween. Halloween has always been the land of assholes. It’s not like they can break your heart the way Christmas did.” Somehow, when she said it like that, it didn’t feel as encouraging as she had hoped. Halloween couldn’t break her heart, but that didn’t mean it was going to be kind to her. None of the seasons had been. Why should this one start?

The door moaned like a thing possessed when she opened it, revealing a second-floor hallway cordoned off from the empty air by a rotten-looking bannister. A flight of stairs descended from the hall’s far end, the distance between her and them choked with cobwebs. Velveteen wrinkled her nose and started walking.

By the time she reached the stairs, the fabric of her skin was gray with grime and she was beginning to consider the virtues of taking a ride in the nearest washing machine. At least her feet hadn’t punched through the floor at any of the many rotten spots. She placed her hand on the bannister, only grimacing a little at the feeling of the wood squishing under her fingers, and descended into the foyer.

There was no one there. That wasn’t really a surprise. The furniture seemed to be aesthetically inspired by a combination of the Addams Family and A Nightmare on Elm Street. That wasn’t a surprise either. Some of the dark patches on the floor looked like they could have started out in somebody’s veins. Velveteen wrinkled her nose and stepped around them, trying to get a feeling for the layout of the house. It was dark and oppressive. It didn’t feel like the sort of place where anybody actually lived.

Probably because nobody did. Normally when she awoke in one of the many haunted houses that studded the Halloween portion of Autumn, either Hailey Ween--the current spirit of Halloween--or her sidekick, Scaredy Cat--the prior, somewhat more dangerous spirit of Halloween--would be waiting to tell her why she had been kidnapped this time. That hadn’t happened. Why?

Because she hadn’t been kidnapped. She had come voluntarily. This was a test.

“Fuck all you people and the horses you rode in on,” muttered Velveteen, and started for the front door. It was locked. The doorknob was shaped like a grinning jack-o-lantern. Velveteen narrowed her eyes and reached out with her mind, ordering the object to do her bidding. Its smile widened. The lock clicked; the knob turned; the door swung open.

Velveteen stepped out onto the porch, and was wearily unsurprised to see that the house opened onto a graveyard filled with listing, moss-encrusted tombstones. Hailey and Scaredy were there, using a fallen tomb door as a picnic table. Their meal seemed to consist entirely of candy, Halloween-frosted cupcakes, and apple cider.

Hailey was the first to notice her. The Halloween teen turned and grinned, showing teeth that were too white for someone on an all-candy diet and too sharp for someone who didn’t mean any harm. “There you are,” she said, voice smug. “I knew you’d find your way out.”

“Pardon my French, but what the fuck are you talking about?” Velveteen folded her arms. “It’s not a maze in there.”

“Because someone didn’t want it to be,” said Scaredy. He looked like a little boy in a one-piece cat costume, the sort of kid who would swarm down the sidewalks on October thirty-first, pillowcase in hand and sugar on his mind. Only looking closer would reveal that the costume didn’t come off, and that his eyes were cat-slit and calculating. “Look behind you.”

Velveteen didn’t move. “What are you playing at?”

“We’re not playing at anything,” said Hailey. “You’re here voluntarily this time, remember? We don’t have to play games with you. We can just show you what we’ve got, and trust that you’ll see us for the superior season. Now take a look behind you.”

Velveteen turned.

The house was, as expected, towering and terrible, painted in peeling black paint and studded with cracked and broken windows, like blind eyes staring out on the uncaring world. But...when Velveteen squinted, she could see how all those attributes came together to form a single scowling face. The house had a face. And that meant...

“It’s mine,” breathed Velveteen.

“It is,” said Hailey. “It has a face. So does everything inside it, from the furniture on down. If you’ve ever wanted to play out some demented Beauty and the Beast enchanted castle fantasy, this is the place to do it. Everything here will do what you say. So when you wanted the house to let you out, it made itself simpler to make you happy.”

“Wow.” Velveteen turned to face the pair. “I’m not that easy to buy, you know. A house of faces isn’t enough to get you on my good side.”

“Maybe not, but I’m sure it can’t hurt,” said Hailey. “We want you to be happy and comfortable. We’re not going to turn you into snow or make you sleep in a meadow, or any of that bullshit. We’re going to show you that you’re part of the team.”

Velveteen raised an eyebrow. She gestured to herself with one hand before saying, in the slow and careful tone of someone who was fighting very fucking hard not to lose her temper, “You turned me into a possessed Raggedy Ann doll from hell. That doesn’t say ‘part of the team.’ That says ‘still your plaything.’”

“That says ‘trying to protect you,’” corrected Hailey. There was an odd tone in her voice. It took Velveteen a moment to realize what it was: kindness. The normally sarcastic, frequently cruel teen was trying her very best to sound kind. “That says ‘Halloween transforms everyone who enters one way or another.’ Didn’t anyone bother to tell you why you kept changing?”

“No,” said Velveteen.

“The Seasonal Lands are alive,” said Hailey. “Not in the ‘treat the Earth like a living thing’ animist nonsense sense--”

“It’s not nonsense,” said Velveteen, stung.

“--but in the literal, factual, no-bullshit ‘this is a living organism’ sense,” continued Hailey, as if Vel hadn’t spoken. “You are standing in the gut of one of the biggest creatures in existence. People like me and Scaredy, and maybe you if you take the job, we’re the immune system. We’re what keeps bad shit from getting in here and wreaking havoc. That’s why the Seasonal Lands call and claim people. Because they need to be protected, or they’ll die.”

“That’s not what Santa said. Or Persephone.” Velveteen struggled to keep her voice level. She was so tired. No matter what she did, no matter how far she went, it felt like there was always one more contradictory story to listen to, one more impossible mountain to climb. “Nobody’s mentioned this but you.”

“Because whatever’s true for them isn’t necessarily true for me; not in the details,” said Hailey. “You’re standing in the middle of a metaphor. It’s going to be self-contradictory from time to time, because that’s how symbols work. Think of the Seasonal Lands as monsters or memories or whatever. The fact remains that everything that enters here has to change.”

“You didn’t,” snapped Velveteen.

Hailey’s face fell. “I am the teen witch guardian protector of the season, because I haven’t been able to find anyone to take my place,” she said, voice going low and tight, throbbing like the beat of a tell-tale heart. “I am the cool kid who still likes trick-or-treat, the one who tempts you to leave the sidewalk and come on an adventure through the graveyards and the alleyways. I am safe scares in the shadow of the Halloween tree. Do you really think I didn’t have to change? Do you really think I didn’t have to pay?”

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” said Scaredy, selecting another cupcake from the pile and turning it over in his gloved paw like it was the most interesting thing in the world. “I hope you have a strong stomach.”

“What?” asked Velveteen. Her attention flickered to him. Only for a moment.

More than long enough for Hailey to undo the ties on her blouse, and pick up the knife.

“Well?” she snapped, bringing Velveteen’s head whipping around. The Halloween girl was standing there with black bra and pale skin exposed, holding the point of a wicked-looking carving knife against her stomach. She gave Velveteen a challenging look. “You really think I didn’t have to change?”

Velveteen’s eyes widened. “Hailey, put down the knife,” she said.

“You know, I could have done what Santa did,” said Hailey. “I could have found some sweet little thing with candy corn teeth and hair like corn silk and ordered them to become your best friend. I could have wooed you with all the sweetest, brightest parts of the holiday, and hid the things I knew you wouldn’t want to see until it was too late. Because there is a point of no return, bunny-girl. There’s a point past which it doesn’t matter if you accept the holiday, because the holiday will have fully accepted you. You’ll be digested and remade, and your own mother wouldn’t recognize you.”

She didn’t pause long enough for Velveteen to say anything. She just rammed the knife into her stomach, sliding it home until the handle formed a seal against the skin of her stomach. She grimaced.

“Fuck, that stings,” she said, and pulled the knife out, opening a gaping tear in her abdomen. Leaves poured out. Autumn leaves, in gold and red and orange; all the colors of harvest, all the colors of the flame. They were mixed with corn husks and fresh green pumpkin vines, like intestines. They fell at her feet as she looked defiantly at Velveteen, expression challenging the other woman to say a single word.

Velveteen blinked. Velveteen didn’t say a damn thing.

“I didn’t realize at first what was happening, because Halloween took me as I was: flesh and blood and ambition like a flame,” said Hailey. “I still bled when I skinned my knees or bumped my nose--until the day I didn’t. Until the day there was just a sweet trickle of maple sap. My skin still feels like skin, because every pretty lure has to fool the fishes, but my bones? My flesh? That’s all long gone to dust, replaced by whatever pretty bits of the season were lying around. Everything changes. You change so dramatically because right now, you’re a tourist. Transforming you like this protects you.”

Velveteen opened her mouth, intending to protest. What came out was, “Didn’t it hurt?”

“It would have, if I hadn’t come willingly,” said Hailey. “I wanted this. The big difference between vampire stories and zombie stories is whether the person wanted to be bitten. I wanted the bite. I wanted to live forever in the space between seasons, and never get old, and never go back. I made my choice. But it would have happened either way. Willing victim or kidnapped hostage, the change would have come.”

“I didn’t change,” said Scaredy. He looked calmly at Velveteen, and his eyes were a sea of silent screams. “I was born here, like Trick and Treat. Like your friend Jacqueline. What the seasons make, they don’t have to transform, because we’re already suited to living in a place that isn’t real. Hailey, though, she was a human girl when she came to Halloween. She had something she could lose, and so she lost it.”

“You had something you could lose too,” snapped Hailey. “Don’t forget that.”

To Velveteen’s surprise, Scaredy Cat laughed. “I lost it the second the season started shopping for my replacement,” he said. “I was already half-dwindled by the time you got here. You never saw me at my best. I was the monster in every closet and the nightmare under every bed. You were the face of a kinder, gentler Halloween, and now the season’s trying to bring in something even kinder and gentler than you. It’s all rolling with the times. My day will come again, and then I’ll devour each and every sorry one of you.”

“You don’t have many friends, do you?” asked Velveteen.

Hailey chuckled grimly. She ran her hand across the skin of her stomach and the tear disappeared, sealed up by the touch of her fingers. “Of all the seasons, autumn is the one that tells the fewest lies about ‘friendship,’” she said. “Winter says ‘oh, things will get better, come warm yourself by our fire,’ and ignores all the children freezing to death in the snow. Spring says ‘we’re the kind one,’ and pretends nature isn’t red in tooth and claw. Summer says ‘frolic in our fields,’ and turns your eyes away from the men who break their backs to bring about the harvest. Autumn says ‘try and survive me.’ At least we don’t dress ourselves up for your funeral.”

“And again, not many friends,” said Velveteen. “Look. It sucks that your guts are made of dried leaves and whatever. It sucks and it’s creepy and it’s not my fault. You keep saying that the seasons transform everyone, but I visited Winter dozens of time before they decided to turn me into Frosty the Snowman. You people turned me into a rag doll the first time I came here.”

“Because unlike your precious Winter, we were never interested in winning you by lying to you,” said Hailey. “You didn’t transform because you were a tourist. You weren’t property. If you ever said ‘you know what, this is where I live now, here, forever,’ you would have changed in an instant, and you would have had no warning or way to influence what you became. Here, we may have forced you into a starting position, but Halloween is all about the masks we wear. We don’t care what you become, as long as you’re willing to take up the role you were meant for.”

Velveteen was silent for a long moment, taking this in. Part of her wanted to call Hailey a liar, and maybe demonstrate why giving an animus a house with a face that could be used to hit things was a bad idea. The rest of her, though...

The rest of her was thinking about how many times she’d gone to the Winter without being introduced to Aurora, or to Lucy, or to the dark things that lurked in the snow-swept woods. They had shown her the theme park version of the holiday, and she had been willing to accept it, because she had loved them, and she had wanted them to be telling her the truth. She had wanted someplace where she could belong, even if that place was straight out of a children’s storybook. They had lied to her, sure. And she had let them.

“Be a haunted doll, ready to show children the way out of the darkness, if they’re good, or deeper down, if they’re bad.” Hailey’s tone turned cajoling, trying to lure Velveteen down her own kind of rabbit hole. “Be a scarecrow, with birds on your shoulders and husks in your hands. You could even take my place, be a pretty, smiling teen who knows all the best places to go for candy, as long as no one minds that you won’t have a heartbeat anymore. You could chose, Vel. That’s what we’re offering you. That’s the thing no one else would let you have.”

“Persephone said that I was the last animus in the world.” Velveteen looked at Hailey, trying not to show how much the other woman’s words had shaken her. “She said that if I chose Spring, there wouldn’t be any more animus for a long, long time. Forever, maybe. Because absence is a kind of balance. Is that what happens if I stay here?”

“Fuck if I know,” said Hailey. “That’s not my department. I’ll take you to see Scream Queen, if you think you’re ready to have a conversation with someone who won’t put up with you insulting them constantly. See? We’re the buffer. We’re here for your protection.” Her smile was quick and almost shy, affording a glimpse of the teenage girl she’d been, once, before she’d traded her mortal life for a Halloween night that would never end. “Without us, you’d already be a sweet treat in somebody else’s pillowcase.”

“You know, this is the third season in a row where a woman has been in charge.”

Hailey shrugged. “That’s because here, they can be. The calendar country has been run by men for a long, long time. Why would any woman with superpowers and ambitions to match ever choose to stay there, when here, she can write her own ticket? If I’d been a boy, I might have decided not to go with Halloween. I would have had options. But that was a hundred years ago, and things were different then.”

“I guess so,” said Velveteen. She looked down at her patchwork hands, and sighed. “All right. Let’s get this over with. Take me to your leader.”

Scaredy and Hailey both smiled, and both their smiles contained too many teeth.

“Oh, goodie,” said Hailey. “I thought you’d never ask.”

*

They walked through an endless autumnal forest, leaves crunching underfoot and occasionally drifting down from the branches above them, even though those branches seemed, to the casual eye, to be completely skeletal. Strings of carved turnips and tiny jack-o-lanterns were twined throughout the wood, each containing a tiny candle. Their light was small individually, but was collectively enough to brighten the night, turning into something akin to a dusky, twilit day.

“Scream Queen was Halloween Princess for about three hundred years before I came along and took over the job,” said Hailey, stepping around a muddy hole that bubbled and rippled with unnatural life. “She was more than ready to pass the pointy hat. It was a good role for her when she was younger, but as she aged, she wanted something with a little more gravitas.”

“Wait,” said Velveteen, glancing over her shoulder at Scaredy. He was swatting at the falling leaves, more feline than boy, and more monster than either. “I thought Scaredy was the guardian here before you came.”

“He was,” said Hailey. “Back then, the Halloween Princess was the big candy apple, and Scaredy Cat was the guardian. Things had been shifting away from him for a while, and he’d been losing power. That was how Scream Queen knew that things were about to change. She needed to take on more darkness, to keep things balanced, and she needed to pass her name to someone who had a little bit more light.”

The thought of Hailey as someone with “a little bit more light” was unsettling enough that Velveteen walked in silence for several minutes, thinking about it. It didn’t get less disturbing. “Where do Trick and Treat fit into all this? Where are they?”

“Around.” Hailey flapped her hand vaguely, indicating the forest to the left. “There’s a whole Halloween city here, did you know? How could you, we’ve never taken you there. Anyway, it’s a nice little suburb full of nice suburban monsters, and it’s where most of the people who stumble into Autumn these days wind up. Trick and Treat have a lot of good press from their time gallivanting around in your world, and that daughter of theirs, yeesh. She’s like the poster child for why raising your kids with no sense of their heritage can backfire. They’re living out there until Mischief can be properly socialized into the holiday, and while they’re at it, they’re serving as sort of PR for the people who pass through. ‘Look, Halloween cares so much about your safety that we have real superheroes patrolling our streets,’ that sort of thing. Besides, the season developed a couple of thematic supervillains after the jerks went off and got themselves identified as heroic. They need to mop up their own short-sighted mess.”

“How many people do you have just stumbling in?”

Hailey shrugged. “More than Spring or Summer, not as many as Winter. Halloween and Christmas are the big draws--naturally--and have their own dangers.”

“People who wind up in Winter when Santa’s not prepared for them are likely to freeze to death.” If they were lucky. There were wolves, and worse, out there in those endless evergreen forests.

“And people who wind up here when no one’s prepared could find themselves at the mercy of an awful lot of monsters.” Hailey glanced at Scaredy. “Some of them are supposedly the good guys. So we set up buffer zones to try to catch the ones who shouldn’t be there. We give them a good, enjoyable scare and we send them home with a story to tell. It’s better than the alternative, where they wouldn’t be making it home at all.”

“That’s a lot more compassionate than I expected from Halloween.”

Hailey shrugged. “Halloween has always been compassionate. You just haven’t been in a position to see it.”

“And you kept lying to me.”

“We did,” said Hailey unrepentantly. “We’ll do it again. But I’m not lying to you right now. Come on.” She stepped off the path and into the trees with Scaredy at her heels, leaving Velveteen no choice but to follow or be left behind in the dark Halloween wood.

“Fuck everything,” she said philosophically, and followed.

There was no path through the trees that she could see: she had to follow the trail of crushed leaves and broken branches, hoping that she was tailing Hailey and Scaredy, and not, say, the local equivalent of the grizzly bear, which would probably have chainsaws for paws or something equally unnecessary. If there was one thing she had learnt from her time in the Seasonal Lands so far, it was that any time something seemed like it was just too damn much, someone in charge was going to think it was a great idea. The best idea. Let’s do that.

“This is Halloween,” she muttered. “They’re probably a-okay with murdering people, as long as you throw some candy around when you’re done. I bet I can find some candy. I’m good at finding candy.”

She stepped out of the trees and into a broad clearing. Hailey and Scaredy were standing on the other side of it, flanking a throne that appeared to have grown straight out of the ground, all twisted roots and tangled branches. There were bats roosting there. There were bones held captive in the knotty snarl of twig and thorn and rotting trunk. And on the throne, there was a woman.

She was beautiful: there was no denying that. Her skin was deep brown, never quite shading into full blackness, although her African-American roots were apparent in everything from her bearing to the cornrow perfection of her hair. She wore a dress that would have been perfectly at home at a 1970s prom, layer upon layer of pink taffeta. Somehow, it wasn’t anything the Princess would have worn; it wasn’t a fairy tale dress. It was a horror movie dress, stolen from the seconds before the blood started flying. No: not quite. There were little red dots on the hem of her dress, some dried to a deep brown, others arterial-fresh and almost unnatural-looking. The sash across her chest read PROM QUEEN.

She was terrible: there was no denying that. She smiled like the moon coming out from behind the clouds on Halloween night, and in her eyes lingered an eternity of screaming. Her nails were bloody red and filed to stiletto points, and the bouquet she nestled in the crook of one arm was corn stalks and dead roses, ringed with tiny waxy orange berries, like dollhouse pumpkins.

“Hello, Velveteen,” she said, and her voice was a mug of hot apple cider at the end of a long night’s trick-or-treating; it was a poisoned caramel apple on an oleander stick. There was no contradiction in those things. They were simply and entirely what she was, no omissions, no lies. “I was pleased when you chose to come to us last of all. It means we still might have a chance to make you stay.”

“Scream Queen, I presume,” said Velveteen. Aurora had been cold, which suited the heart of Winter; Persephone had been welcoming and warm. Scream Queen was somewhere in the middle, a bonfire of a woman, blazing bright and burning.

“In the flesh, such as it is,” said Scream Queen. She smiled, and her teeth were white and even and very, very sharp. “I’ve been waiting for such a long time to meet you.”

“You could have come to say ‘hello’ the first time your minions decided to kidnap me.”

“I couldn’t and you know it. Please, don’t be foolish, Velveteen. I have been looking forward to meeting you, and I would very much like it if you chose to stay here with us, in Halloween forever. That doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate disrespect. I’m still the Queen here. The one and only Scream Queen. Although I suppose you might be able to depose me, if you chose to stay. It would take a hundred years or more. It would be a glorious battle. The calendar country would ring like a bell from the force of our fight. You’re welcome to stay if that’s your intent. But until you’re strong enough to take me on, don’t disrespect me.”

“Sorry,” said Velveteen. It was clear from her tone and her posture that she didn’t mean it, but that had never been the important part: it was the apology that mattered, not the reason it was given. “May I ask a question?”

“I don’t think I could stop you, could I?” Scream Queen smiled again, settling back in her throne.

“Are you an anima?”

“No,” said Scream Queen. “I never was, not even when there were so many of you that people knew how to talk about them. I’m an empath. What I feel, you feel. What you feel, I feel. What I want you to feel, you feel. People used to call it a plaything power, something for nursemaids and women of the evening and other folks as didn’t matter. There’s nothing toy-like about the way I use my skills.”

“I guess there wouldn’t be. Especially not here.” In the Seasonal Lands, the emotional landscape mattered as much if not more than the physical one. Scream Queen would be able to rule forever, if she felt it strongly enough. “What do you want from me?”

“Oh, my darling girl.” Scream Queen looked at Velveteen, and the sadness of the season swept over her, dead and dying leaves, rain and cold and the rot at the heart of the late apples on the trees. Velveteen swayed. Velveteen staggered. Velveteen dropped to her knees.

Scream Queen rose. She walked to where the young animus lay, and knelt, running a hand over the rough yarn of her hair.

“I only want what the others got,” she said softly. “I want everything you have to give, and when you run out, I want just a little bit more. I’ll keep you if you let me, but if I can’t, well. I’ve lost out on better. I’ll lose out on worse. Right now, I just need you to serve me. Understand?”

Velveteen moaned. Scream Queen straightened, turning to look back at Hailey and Scaredy.

“Well?” she said. “Get her up and get her home. When she wakes up, we’ll get started.” Her smile was a dead moon at midnight, unforgiving and eternal, as her subjects hurried to do her bidding.

“There’s so much for her to do,” she said, and no one in the season argued, and the night that never ends went on.

Velveteen Presents Polychrome vs. The Court of Public Opinion and Not Punching Anyone.

2015-06-15T23:04:57Z

Title: Velveteen Presents Polychrome vs. The Court of Public Opinion and Not Punching Anyone.
Summary: And now for something completely different. Velveteen is gone, and Polychrome is still putting her life back together, one heroic escapade at a time.

***

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 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 wanted 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 own 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.

Polychrome managed to pull up before she overshot the window, trading her semi-controlled descent for a much less stressful hover. The air around her sparkled with sprays of pink and gold, the colors brought on by her exhaustion. She wiped the moisture from her eyes before focusing on the window.

The shutters were open wide enough to allow the mechanical bats to pass through; no wider. Whoever had calibrated the little machines had been making them to an exacting standard. Carefully, she reached out and tested the shutter. It swung toward her when she tugged. Good. People who couldn’t fly often didn’t consider the need to actually lock their windows, considering them secure by sheer virtue of height above the ground.

Moving slow and easy, Polychrome worked the shutters open wide enough for her to slip through, and slid into the darkness beyond.

The room on the other side of the shutters was small and empty, the sort of featureless expanse of real estate that she had encountered in a hundred urban lairs, the sort where you didn’t expect to get your security deposit back, but you couldn’t afford anything nicer. She had looked at a few extremely similar apartments during her brief spate of house-hunting after leaving The Super Patriots, Inc., before Torrey had told her to stop being a bloody fool and just move in.

Maybe they had rushed things a bit. Maybe they had gone from “first kiss” to “living together” too fast. Maybe there were moments they should have savored, things they could have lingered over and enjoyed more if they had taken them slow. But in the end, they’d both been willing to sacrifice a little maybe for a whole lot of definitely. She was definitely waking up each morning with the woman she loved; she was definitely happy. That was all that mattered.

One nice thing about being able to fly: if there were pressure plates or tripwires are floor level, she didn’t need to worry about them. Polychrome hovered across the room to the open door, peeking out into the hallway on the other side. The lights were out, which made her faint natural glow a disadvantage: she dimmed it down as much as she could without losing the light that lifted her, and moved into the hall.

There was one source of light that wasn’t her, seeping around the base of a closed door. Polychrome floated closer, pressing her ear against the wood. Someone was typing on the other side, their keystrokes loud enough to indicate that they were using outdated equipment. She clenched her left hand into a fist, summoning as much solid light as she could, and turned the knob, pushing the door gently inward.

A slim silhouette appeared, black against the glow of a computer monitor the size of a wide-screen TV. The person sitting in front of the computer was typing madly, hands flashing back and forth across three keyboards. Wires extended from the person’s temples into the guts of the machine. Polychrome hung where she was, trying to decide on her next course of action. Punching, she was good at. Punching, she had been prepared for all her life. Stealth and secrecy weren’t things the company had ever wanted from her--while black light was essentially shadow, allowing her to move unseen through any dark environment, she had been their showpiece girl, always dressed in white, symbolizing their bright future for mankind. Put into a position where she needed to choose between hitting and keeping quiet, all her training said to start swinging. Somehow, in this situation, it seemed...wrong.

“You can come in,” said the typist. They had a light, high voice. A teenager’s voice. Polychrome still wasn’t sure whether she was talking to a boy or a girl, but she was sure that whoever it was, they were under eighteen. “I knew you’d show up eventually. Which one are you, anyway? The Princess? Jack O’Lope? Uncertainty?”

“Polychrome,” said Poly, finally letting her feet touch the ground. She allowed her natural glow to brighten at the same time, until it filled the room. “You’re going to have to come with me.”

“Did you know that they actually let superhumans join the police force in Hong Kong?” The typist kept typing. “It’s probably way easier on everybody when the heroes can just say ‘you’re under arrest’ without worrying about getting sued later for acting under false pretenses. You’re not the cops. You have no actual civic authority. Technically, I think you’re trespassing right now.”

“Portland has an exception for registered heroes in pursuit of criminal activity,” said Polychrome, her cheeks flushing blue with embarrassment. She hated this part of the job. Where were the defiant shouts and exploding light fixtures when she needed them? “I can’t be trespassing. You used robot bats to rob the city.”

“It’s amazing what they’ll use to take our rights away, isn’t it?” The typist kept typing.

Polychrome frowned. “Stop that,” she said. “You’re being detained because you committed a crime. Stop doing whatever it is you’re doing.”

“I’m updating all my social media feeds so that nobody worries about me,” said the typist. “If I don’t post at least once an hour, people tend to freak out. And no, my friends don’t know that I’m an extra-legal superhuman. I’m telling them that one of my cousins had a medical emergency, so I need to go offline for a few days. Internet people are like cats. They can be super-needy sometimes, but mostly, if you go away long enough, they’ll get on with their lives. And they’ll be happy to see you when you get back. In my case I figure that’ll be what, five to ten? Unless the government decides to draft me. Have you read some of the bills they’ve been passing lately?”

“I’ve been busy,” said Polychrome. That wasn’t entirely true. She’d read most of the superhuman control legislation, the things proposed by frightened senators who wanted to protect their larger “normal” constituencies; the somehow more terrifying things proposed by politicians who were virtually salivating at the idea of living weapons who carried no development cost, who would do as they were told and make “friendly fire” a thing of the past. She just didn’t like to think about the picture those people were painting of the future--a future she would have to live with.

“Maybe you should be a little less busy, before you’re a lot more drafted,” said the typist, taking their hands away from the keyboard and removing the wires from their temples before turning the chair around, revealing themself as a skinny, flannel-clad teenager whose gender was no more clear--and no more relevant--than it had been a moment before. “They’re only leaving you alone because you’re a symbol of the old way of doing things, and because your girlfriend is loco. You know that, right? Ditch the crazy girl and see how fast they snap you up.”

“Victory Anna is from a different timeline; she’s perfectly sane, for the world where she originated.”

“Oh, I know,” said the typist. “She’s also smart, funny, easy on the eyes, and a talented technopath. I was honestly hoping she’d be the one who followed my bats. I figured there was a good chance she would listen to me. You’re just a corporate shill who got out. You’ll go crawling back.” The teen stood, holding out their hands, wrists together. “Cuff me. I’m bored.”

“I’m not a corporate shill,” protested Polychrome, even as she sketched a figure eight in the air with one finger. A loop of light appeared around the typist’s wrists, binding them together. “I have a job to do and I do it. That’s all.”

“You’ll have to pick a side sooner or later,” said the typist. “Do yourself a favor. Tonight, when you get home, look up a bill called ‘Animus Regulation and Control.’ I think you might be surprised.”

“What are you talking about?”

The typist didn’t answer. The typist didn’t say another word as Polychrome called the police and waited for them to show up. When she handed the typist over, the teen was still silent. There was something unnerving about that. Polychrome couldn’t put her finger on exactly what...but the job was done, the crime was thwarted, and it was time to go home.

*

“Pol?” Torrey sounded sleepy. No wonder: it was almost three o’clock in the morning, long past time for all but the most passionately nocturnal supervillains to be in bed. She stood in the doorway of the office--once Velma’s room, before she’d gone and run off to frolic in the Seasonal Lands, leaving her friends holding the bag--holding her dressing gown closed with one hand. No matter how much Victoria Cogsworth adapted to the modern age, there were some areas where she would always be an old-fashioned girl. Nightclothes fell into one of those areas, the one labeled “modesty” and outlined with little silver stars and copper hearts. “What are you still doing up? I’m cold. Come to bed.”

“In a second.” Yelena’s eyes were glued to her computer monitor. She’d been reading for the past two hours, pulling up site after site, all funneled through Imagineer’s cunning anonymizer software. She hadn’t seen the technopath since they’d both left The Super Patriots, Inc. God, was Imagineer all right? They hadn’t been friends, but they had been teammates. How could she have allowed things to go this far?

“That’s not a good tone,” said Torrey. She stepped into the office, walking barefoot across the carpet to place her hands on Yelena’s shoulders. “What are you reading?”

“A piece of proposed legislation that would formally and fully define the ‘animus’ power set on a national level.” Yelena turned in her seat so that she was looking back at Torrey. “I like it here in Portland. The last two years have been a dream. You know that, right? I wouldn’t trade what we’ve had for anything in the world.”

“All right, now you’re starting to frighten me,” said Torrey. “What does it say? You people, with your laws and rules about the gifts we get from the very gods themselves. Can any law of man bind what Vulcan grants to me? I say no, but the barristers and the judges contradict me whenever they may.”

Yelena smiled a little, despite herself. “I love how you get all old-fashioned when you’re worried about me.” Her smile died. “I wish your gods existed in this world. We could really use the help.”

“Pol...” Torrey frowned slowly. “Now you’re really starting to frighten me. What does it say that’s so terrible you’d wish to fill the heavens with gods your world rejected centuries ago? Because I truly don’t feel like being caught up in a holy war just because you would rather not put labels on things.”

Yelena was quiet for a moment, gathering her thoughts. Finally, she said, “I wish Vel hadn’t gone to the Seasonal Lands when she did.”

“From what I understand, she had no choice; her bargain had been made before the final battle, and she had to honor it.”

“Yeah. I know. Jacqueline has explained it often enough. And Vel was tired, and it must have seemed pretty tempting, to have a little time to think. There was no way she could have known that Supermodel was still alive, or that they shared a power set--or how many terrible things Supermodel had used that power set to do.” The atrocities committed by the CEO of The Super Patriots, Inc. seemed to be without number. Supermodel had been a starving woman, and the world had been her banquet. “But with Supermodel dead, and Tag...whatever Tag is right now, Vel was the only animus we had. She was the only one who would have put a face on the power. And she’s gone. There’s nobody good for people to point to when they talk about a power that’s weird and scary and seems almost limitless.”

“When I was a girl, there were some who wanted to use those of us who had been blessed with strange abilities in the formation of an empire,” said Torrey carefully. “They said that if we truly loved Britannia, if we truly wanted to serve our lady of the white horses, we would give ourselves over to the crown, and allow ourselves to be reforged into swords for our nation’s service.”

“What did you say?”

“I? Why, I said nothing, for I was scarce but nine years old, and none outside our walls knew what I could do with a hammer and a bit of wire. My father, on the other hand, marched in the city streets with others of our kind, shouting that it was unfair to conscript for no reason save the accident of birth. We had banned slavery within our borders. Were we to allow it again, all for the sake of calling lightning from the summer sky?”

“Well, nobody’s marching for us now.” Yelena resisted the urge to turn back to her computer. The words on her screen wouldn’t have changed. “They passed the law requiring that all animuses register with the federal government last year. They presented it as a safety measure. Said ‘well, we only know of one, and she’s off playing around with Santa Claus, so it’s not like we’re inconveniencing a bunch of people.’ It was just a precaution.”

“Yes, I know,” said Torrey. She began stroking Yelena’s hair, unsure of what else to do. “Registration, and then government service or submission to power blockers. I hope Jacqueline has informed Velma. I hope she can make an informed decision before she comes back--if she comes back. I wouldn’t.”

It was suddenly difficult for Yelena to swallow. It felt like a vast knot had formed in her throat, blocking everything. Finally, she managed to say, “You know that broad power sets are defined by pieces of paper, and not by people.”

“Well, yes. To do it any other way would be to admit that no two people have the exact same gifts. Even those who have what you term the ‘flying brick’ capabilities show variance.”

“So those pieces of paper, they can move things. Like when they shifted water-control into elementalism, instead of weather-control.” There were still heroes who blurred that line. Lake Pontchartrain, for example, who created not only lakes, but the weather patterns associated with them. “They can change what a power is called with the stroke of a pen.”

Torrey went still. She was a smart girl: she was a genius. Sometimes people forgot that, looking at the way she carried herself, the way she dressed, and assuming that she was completely divorced from reality. That wasn’t true. She was separated from reality, sure, but she had visitation, and she was never going to leave it completely. Reality was where she kept all her things.

“Ah,” she said, finally. “I see. Well, is it a done deal? Have the papers been signed, and the ink dried?”

“They vote next week.”

“What of the telepaths, the mind-readers, the empaths? Are they to be re-categorized as well, or is this pleasure to be reserved solely for those such as I?” Torrey’s voice was stiff and cold, the formal cadence of a daughter of the Eponean Empire. “When will they come for me?”

“The psychic power sets are still classed that way, although there’s apparently some discussion of whether psychometry should be considered a psychic-animus hybrid, since it works mostly on the inanimate.” And wouldn’t all those psychometrists make wonderful government investigators? They could uncover terrorist plots with a touch of their bare fingers. Who wouldn’t want that kind of power? Who wouldn’t think that a little overreach was justified, when it might save lives? “Right now, it’s just the plant-manipulators and the technopaths.”

“Just,” said Torrey bitterly. She removed her hand from Yelena’s shoulder. “I notice you failed to answer my second question, Pol. When shall they come for me? Should I already have started running?”

“Once this goes into effect, all power classes under the ‘animus’ umbrella will have forty-eight hours to report to their nearest police station for intake and processing.” Yelena shoved her chair back, almost knocking it over as she stood and pulled Torrey into a hug. The shorter woman squeaked but didn’t process. Instead, she melted into her lover’s embrace. She was shaking. That, alone, made Yelena want to burn down the world.

“They won’t come for you, because we won’t be here,” she whispered, and her voice was ice and diamonds and glittering light. She had started to glow brighter in her anger and her fear: now she was strobing through all the colors of visible light, unable to express her fury in anything short of a rainbow. These people, these people. How dare they? They had no right. They had no right to make these choices for other people, for people who had never done anything wrong, apart from being born.

Torrey pulled back, looking at her uncertainly. “Do you understand what you’re saying, Yelena? Even when you left The Super Patriots, you were still fighting on the side of good. They’ve never called you a supervillain before. They’ve never besmirched your name that way, not in this world. I know you don’t like to be reminded about...before...”

“You mean how you fell in love with another version of me, and I’m just your rebound girl?” asked Yelena. She made the question as light as she could, to cover the fact that it was completely serious. The unusual nature of their first meeting was an unavoidable part of their relationship. Sometimes she caught Torrey looking at her and frowning, puzzled, because she had done something that the other Yelena would never have done. Sometimes Torrey cried for no reason that she could understand, and Yelena knew that she had just reminded her of the other world, the other woman who called herself “Polychrome” and kissed those lips, ran her fingers through that hair. They were haunted, and while Yelena didn’t mind sharing her lover with another version of herself, sometimes their bed felt dismayingly crowded.

“Yes,” said Torrey, with quiet candor. “My first Yelena hated being called a supervillain. She flinched every time a headline talked about how wicked she was, or presented her as a danger to herself and others. I never minded much. The distinctions you people use are very odd to me, and I don’t see why I should give them that sort of power. But it tore her up inside.”

“I’m not her,” said Yelena.

“No, you’re not, and I’m glad of it, because I wouldn’t have come to love you for you if you’d been identical. I would have had to leave if you’d been exactly the same as she was. It would have been the only way to be fair. But you’re close enough, Yelena--my Pol. You’re close enough, and I know that if we run, if we go underground, it will hurt you the way that it always hurt her. It will tear you up inside. I can’t do that to you.”

“You’re not doing anything to me,” said Yelena. She took Torrey’s hands and squeezed them, firmly. “I’m doing it to myself. If you have to run to avoid being taken, then I am going to run with you. I love you. You matter more to me than what they want to call me in the papers. And if staying a superhero would mean letting them take you, fuck heroism. I’ll be a villain any day.”

Torrey bit her lip, a tear escaping to run down her cheek before she pulled back, turning her face away. “I know,” she said, in a careful voice, “I know that you have never been reluctant to love me because of my origins. I’ve always considered myself doubly blessed, to have found and lost a version of you, only to find another who could see fit not to be jealous of herself. You are my miracle. But please, consider what you’re offering me. A reputation, once besmirched, can never be truly clean again.”

“Oh, I know. Believe me, I know.” The Super Patriots, Inc. had run a decades-long smear campaign against Velveteen. They had painted her as a drop-out and a waste and finally as a dangerous supervillain. They had been doing it to protect themselves, and in their process, they had lain the groundwork that was now being used to justify every abuse of power in the book. If there were only two animuses in the world at the time of Supermodel’s defeat, and they were both bad, how could it be wrong to put more controls in place to keep things like that from happening? If Vel hadn’t been treated the way she had been, more people might have seen her for the hero that she was, and this might not have been happening.

But it was happening. All the regret in the world wasn’t going to change that. Carefully, Yelena said, “My girl and my best friend have both been supervillains. I can handle a few stains on my reputation if it means I get to stay with you.”

Torrey turned back to her, searching her face for a moment before she asked, very seriously, “Do we have time to make one last use of our bedchamber before we flee into the unending night?”

“Yeah, we do,” said Yelena, and reached for her. “And then, I have the perfect first act of villainy.”

“What’s that?”

Yelena told her.

Torrey smiled.

*

Sunrise chased the shadows from the front of the police station. Sleepy-eyed cops lingered on the steps, some heading home after a long night’s work, others preparing for a long day of protecting and serving. None of them batted an eye when Polychrome and Victory Anna walked by. The two women made no effort to hide themselves. They were familiar here, part of the extended family of Portland law enforcement. It was better if they came in openly, and didn’t make a fuss. Less chance of someone getting in their way and getting hurt.

The cells designed to hold superpowered prisoners were protected by a special door, thick enough for a bank vault, meant to be proof against all attempts at access. Polychrome and Victory Anna stopped when they reached it.

“This is it,” said Victory Anna. “This is your last chance to back out.”

“No, it’s not,” said Polychrome. She produced a slim phone from under the sash that circled her waist, breaking up her outline and concealing the lumps of her pockets. “My last chance came and went a long time ago. Get to work.”

Victory Anna smiled, and pulled out her lock picks.

*

Governor Celia Morgan was at breakfast in her home, eating a waffle and watching her sister read the paper, when her phone rang. She checked the caller ID, then picked up. “Polychrome. I wondered when I’d be hearing from you. I want you to know that it wasn’t my idea.”

Jennifer looked up, suddenly alert. Governor Morgan waved for her to be still.

“I understand,” she said finally. “No, really, I do. It’s the same choice I might have made, if our situations were reversed. Was anyone hurt?” A pause. “That’s good. Thank you for being so careful. And thank you for letting me know. I genuinely do appreciate it. I’m sorry you’ve been forced into this situation. I won’t try to call you back.” She hung up and looked at her phone for a long moment before holding it out toward Jennifer.

“Celia?” said Jennifer, warily.

“It seems I’ve had an accident and destroyed my phone,” said Celia calmly. “I can’t imagine how it happened.”

“What a pity,” said Jennifer. She took the phone, looking at it quizzically for a moment. All the dust and dirt that had collected on the keys flowed together into a thin stream of particles that wormed under the edge of the screen. The phone threw off some surprisingly bright sparks and went dead. “I don’t think it can be fixed.”

“Good,” said Celia fiercely. “That was Polychrome. She wanted to let me know that she and Victory Anna had broken the young technopath they caught yesterday out of prison, and that the three of them were now officially on the run. I’ll need to report them as supervillains. By now, I’d be surprised if they hadn’t crossed state lines.” Her hand was shaking as she reached for her coffee. She forced herself to complete the gesture. She was going to need the caffeine.

“I see,” said Jennifer. “It’s really too bad I was off on a training exercise when you heard about this. I might have been able to stop them if they hadn’t been given such a good head start.”

“Yes,” said Celia, before taking a sip of her coffee. It was too hot; it scalded her lips. “It’s too bad.”

“I thought...” Jennifer stopped, gathering her thoughts, and tried again: “I thought things were supposed to get better after we got rid of The Super Patriots, Inc. I thought we were going to have a world where people were allowed to just be people, and no one had to fight, and no one had to die. Where we could be happy.”

“Sometimes I forget that you’re the idealistic one,” said Celia. She took another sip of her coffee, staring off into space. “Do you think an hour will be long enough to wait?”

“The phone’s dead,” said Jennifer. “No one will ever know when the call came in.”

“That’s good. Thank you, dear. Well.” Celia stood, still holding her mug in one hand. “I suppose I should get dressed. It’s going to be a very long day.”

Sponsorship: Velveteen vs. Spring Cleaning.

2015-03-23T16:51:44Z

Title: Velveteen vs. Spring Cleaning.
Summary: The trials of a formerly retired superheroine are destined never to be done, especially when the heroine in question was foolish enough to agree to serve the seasonal lands...

Today's installment is brought to you by Lost Violet, wishing a slightly belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Scotchy! (The belatedness is entirely on me. She's awesome.)

***

Velveteen walked through the green world and the green world moved through Velveteen. She hadn’t quite mastered Persephone’s trick of pulling the ambient life out of mites and chiggers and other small, biting creatures and channeling it into flowers that would burst into bloom under her feet, but she’d managed to figure out how to snack on mosquitoes. When she heard them droning nearby, she reached out with the silent, deadly hands of her power and yanked the life right out of the itchy little fuckers. They fell to fertilize the soil, and she walked on, a little more fed, a little less inclined to accidentally injure people in the search for a good meal.

Sometimes she felt bad about what she did to stay alive. It was hard not to, when she was vampiring her way through the world. But when she really thought about it, she could remember smashing a thousand mosquitoes during her lifetime. None of them had kept her fed, or served any real purpose, since they’d been wiped away with tissues and not dropped to the ground. The way she fed now might be strange and hard to adjust to, but that didn’t make it wrong. And besides, it wasn’t like she was eating squirrels.

Yet. That was the operative word: that was what made this season so terrifying, under its veil of flowers and its promise of balance. The more adept she became at turning her appetite into an arrow and aiming it at the world, the more her hunger grew. It was starting to scare her, all the more because she was a living thing, and eating came so easily to the living. One day, she would think she was reaching for mosquitoes, and she’d find herself with a mouth--or a soul, technically--full of squirrels. Or kittens. Or people.

That was the big fear. People. She could kill people to feed herself, the opposite of what she’d done with Tad, where she’d nearly killed herself in the process of feeding him. Becoming Marionette had never seemed so plausible to her before, especially since what Persephone had done to her by blocking access to her body’s natural reservoirs was exactly what had happened in the timelines where she was Marionette: dead bodies had no life to draw upon. Right now, neither did she.

“Getting good and tired of this bullshit,” she murmured, as she drained the life from a passing wasp and allowed it to fall into the loam at her feet. Back in Winter, the living heart of the season had felt justified in twisting her into a statue of ice and snow and frozen heartlessness, leaving her unable to cope with the reality of her situation, or the fact that her boyfriend--who she loved, she was almost sure of it--was currently technically deceased. When she’d arrived in Spring, with frostbite of the soul and hands that didn’t feel like hers anymore, she’d been transformed again, this time into an open channel with no reservoir of its own. People kept changing her, and they never thought to ask permission first.

“Change never does ask permission, sweetheart,” said a voice like vermouth, filled with sweet bitterness and broken glass glittering in bead-choked gutters. Like most things in Spring, it was a metaphor given flesh and unyielding reality. “Change is like the tide. It does what it wants, and screw you if you don’t feel like going along with it.”

Velveteen stopped and turned. Lady Moon was sitting on a mossy old rock in the middle of the field, filing her nails with a jeweled emery board. Her gown was made of peacock feathers and bright butterfly wings, matching the mask that covered half her face. It curved upward at an angle, forming the crescent shape of her namesake. As always, her neckline was low enough to make Velveteen feel faintly uncomfortable, like she was supposed to start flinging Mardi Gras beads to pay for the view. It wasn’t prudishness: she’d been a superheroine for most of her life, she’d seen a lot of cleavage. It was the angle, the way everything about Lady Moon seemed to combine to say “look at my tits.”

“Could you maybe not read my mind without permission?” asked Velveteen. “I ask not because I think you’ll actually stop, but because this way I’m justified in hitting you with a brick if you don’t cut it out.”

“You’re always justified,” said Lady Moon. “It’s just that you’ll have to live with the consequences of whatever it is you choose to do.”

Velveteen looked at her flatly. Lady Moon laughed.

“You are a constant delight, and I am going to miss you sorely now that you’re on your way to whatever lies beyond the merry month of May,” said Lady Moon. She stood, her stiletto heels sinking into the ground. “Walk with me.”

“Um,” said Velveteen, who had had no idea that she might be leaving soon, or what the spirit of spring celebration might have to do with it. But if there was one thing she had learnt from her time in the Seasonal Lands, it was that when things made no sense at all, that was when you just had to roll with it. “Sure.”

Lady Moon--who had been a living lightshow, once, a rainbow dancing in the springtime sky, when the fireworks show of her hands had set New Orleans ablaze, a century gone and a hundred quiet bargains past--walked, and Velveteen followed, and the Spring went on.

*

Records of superhumans prior to the modern age have always been sketchy. We know that they existed: that while some origin stories may be uniquely modern, others are uniquely archaic, children somehow gaining powers from poisons, flight powered by alchemy and mixed solutions of hensbane and lead, superstrength granted by glowing rocks that fell from the sky and gradually eroded the heart. Superhumans have always walked among us, although it took a very long time for them to come out of the shadows and take to the skies.

Many of the older superhumans were canonized as gods or as metaphorical forces of nature, which may explain why so many of the reports of the Seasonal Lands read like attempts at romantic poetry. When an avatar of Spring walks in beauty like the night, it is meant literally, and sometimes terrifyingly. As there was no way to live among their original communities after they had been labeled gods, these early superhumans took refuge in whatever sub-realities or parallel realms they could find. Many took on the mantles of Spirits of the Season, and faded from the normal human world forever.

It is interesting to consider the fact that some Spirits of the Season--Trick and Treat, from Autumn; the Snow Queen and Jack Frost, from Winter--have not only performed that most human of acts, reproduction, but have passed their seasonal affiliations on to their children. Perhaps they are in the long, slow process of becoming something other than mere superhumans. Given another few generations, perhaps we will have to contend with the fact that metaphors are literal truth.

*

“Where are we going, exactly?” asked Velveteen, after they had walked long enough in silence that she was starting to wish she’d brought shoes. She went barefoot most of the time these days, enjoying the feeling of moss beneath her feet, but even she had her limits. There were jagged rocks even in the Spring, and she was getting tired of stepping on them. “I was supposed to have another flying lesson with Peter today.”

“How you’ve frustrated that poor boy,” said Lady Moon, shaking her head and clucking her tongue at the same time, like an irritated peahen. “He’s so sure that you could fly if you were just willing to put in the effort. Don’t worry about him pushing you off of a cliff. He’s hardly ever chosen to do that, and on the rare occasions where he’s been moved to get physical, it’s been reasonably easy to distract him.”

“...no one ever taught you people what the word ‘reassuring’ actually means, did they?” asked Velveteen, after a moment of staring at Lady Moon. “Here’s a tip for the future: usually it means ‘don’t talk about people getting shoved off of cliffs like it’s something totally reasonable and cool and fun to do at parties.’”

“Don’t be silly. No one ever gets shoved off of a cliff at one of my parties. Not anymore, anyway. It was all the rage for a little while, back when the mode was Gothic and the manors were always perched precariously atop the tallest cliffs.” Lady Moon’s smile turned wistful and reflective. “The gowns were thin as moonlight, and the men were strong and terrible. It was a lovely era to be nostalgic for, and a difficult one to survive.”

“You know, I have absolutely no idea how I’m supposed to respond to that, so I’m going to go with attempting to change the subject,” said Velveteen. “How old are you?”

“There are three things wrong with your question, little anima,” said Lady Moon. Her tone was suddenly cool, like that of a debutante refusing a dance with her rival’s brother. “Firstly, you should never ask a lady her age. It’s insulting to her and degrading to you. Secondly, you shouldn’t be so blunt when you redirect a conversation. Be the reed that casts its ripples through the stream, not the rock that distorts everything it touches.”

She went silent after that, still walking. Velveteen frowned and waited for her to continue. When she didn’t, Velveteen cleared her throat and said, “And...?”

“And what?” Lady Moon sounded annoyed.

It would have been smart to back off and leave it alone. Irritating a Spirit of the Season on home ground was never a good idea. Velveteen wasn’t sure she was allowed to call herself “smart” after willingly slaving herself to the seasons for her audition period, and after the last...however long it had been...she was no longer inclined to play nicely with social conventions. “You said there were three things wrong with my question. What was the third?”

“Ah. The third thing...thirdly, I suppose, for the sake of symmetry, so: thirdly, you’re assuming that I’ve always been Lady Moon. I’m as much mask as maiden.” Lady Moon reached up and tapped her own mask, as if for emphasis. “Some of us, we got to keep our names and our histories, and all the things we’d been in the calendar country. Others have roles to fill. Everyone’s Cinderella at the ball, little rabbit, and no one’s an ugly stepsister, no matter what face they wear beneath their pancake makeup and painted lips.”

“Wow,” said Velveteen, after a horrified pause. “That is the most pretentious depressing thing anyone has ever said in my presence. You should get some sort of award for being able to spread that much shit with a straight face.”

Lady Moon laughed. “I am going to miss you, little rabbit. One way or another, I’m going to miss you. Yes, I’m a bit pretentious. I’m allowed to be. It fits within the purpose I serve, and every little freedom is precious when you’ve given up so many of them. I come from a time when women were expected to be seen and not heard, and when they had names for girls like me, who liked to dance until dawn and didn’t fancy any of their suitors. But I had a secret, you see. I could scatter light through the air like a prism; I could make the stars dance.”

“You were like Yelena,” said Velveteen.

“Exactly so, in some respects, and not at all, in others. I had no secret love to hide; everyone knew that the only thing I loved was the dance.” Lady Moon shrugged. “When Spring came calling, I was happy to follow. What I gave up was well worth what I gained. I talk a good game, but never let me make you think that I feel differently. I lost a name and was granted a party that’s going to last forever. It was a fair trade.”

There was something oddly wistful in Lady Moon’s tone, like she was trying desperately to convince her audience that she was telling the truth. Velveteen nodded slowly. “Okay. But you still didn’t answer the question.”

“I’m as old as the human desire for celebration and release, and as young as Cecile Warden, late of New Orleans, who vanished from the calendar country on her sixteenth birthday, back in 1882,” said Lady Moon. “I don’t really celebrate my birthday anymore.”

“Um,” said Velveteen. “No, I, uh, guess you probably wouldn’t. That’s like, a quantum number of candles on your cake.”

“Not enough paraffin in the world,” agreed Lady Moon. They were approaching a grove of willow trees, their long, fronded branches dangling down like a curtain. The foliage was thick enough to completely block whatever was on the other side. Lady Moon stopped, looking seriously at Velveteen--or at least, Velveteen thought it was a serious expression. The mask made it so hard to tell. That was generally the idea, with masks.

“None of this is personal,” said Lady Moon. “There are certain steps that must be taken, if you want to call your dance a waltz; there are certain forms that must be observed, if you want your poem to be a sonnet, and not a sestina, or a crude, arrhythmic insult to the lady you’re attempting to woo. The poet does not hate the terminal rhyme, nor the drinker detest the twist of lime.”

“Just so you know, if you don’t stop talking like Dr. Seuss, I’m leaving,” said Velveteen.

“Yes, you are,” said Lady Moon, and pulled the veil of willow branches aside with a sweep of her arm, revealing the clearing beyond. The rest of the denizens of Spring were gathered there, save for Geb, who was represented as always by a smattering of snake-necked, beady-eyed geese. “We’ll miss you.”

Velveteen stood where she was, rooted to the spot, as Lady Moon walked past her and took her seat in the circle. The rock she sat on looked like all the rocks around it, but the moment she sat down, it seemed more thronelike than the others, suited for placement atop a parade float. The rocks the others perched upon had undergone similar transformations. Jack’s rock looked like a shipwreck, wracked with moss and clinging vines. The Easter Bunny’s rock was softer, rounded, like a balloon structure masquerading as a boulder for some reason. The geese had covered their rock in geese poop, as was only right.

Persephone stood. She held a knife in each hand, one black, one green. She threw the green knife to the ground between them; there was no kindness in her eyes, only a deep, abiding sorrow, as long and ancient as the rites of spring. “Pick it up,” she said.

“Uh, why?” asked Velveteen warily. Years of experience had taught her that when people started throwing knives at her, it was time to dig in her heels and get more information. Preferably before someone got stabbed. Especially her.

“Because never it’ll be said in fair England that she slew an unarmed man,” said Jack, and burst into laughter. Lady Moon hit him with her fan. He stopped laughing and pouted at her, with the petulance of someone much younger than he appeared to be.

Persephone ignored them both. Her eyes remained on Velveteen. “Pick it up,” she said again.

“You have to,” said the Easter Bunny. He sounded apologetic, like this was the last thing he’d been planning to do with his day. “It’s the only way you get to leave.”

“You guys are starting to creep me out, so how about you just stop, okay?” Velveteen looked nervously around the circle. “I don’t want to pick up the knife. Leave the knife alone.”

“Beware the Ides of March,” said Persephone. “I really am sorry, but this is genuinely the only way.”

“What is genuinely the only way? I thought I was here to learn balance and all that tree-hugging, world-saving crap, not to have knife fights in the middle of a weird willow forest,” said Velveteen. A butterfly fluttered past. She reached out, unthinkingly, and snatched the life away from it, leaving it to fall motionless to the ground. “Come on. If it’s time for me to leave Spring for Autumn, can’t you just say so?” Was it time for her to go already? It didn’t feel like she’d been in the Spring that long, especially when compared to the endless, frozen days of Winter--but wasn’t that always the way? Spring was always too short. Winter was always too long. Even when they were exactly the same length.

“We are saying so,” said Persephone. “I’ve taught you how to reach into the world for what you need. Once you leave here, if you leave here, you won’t have to do that anymore, but because you’ll understand it, you’ll be better prepared to resist the temptation. I’ve made you stronger through adversity. Now there’s just one more obstacle to overcome.”

“What’s that?” asked Velveteen, who was direly afraid that she already knew.

“Me,” said Persephone, and lunged.

*

It was easy to forget, with the Easter Bunny as the pervading symbol of the season in the calendar country--where symbols were more important than reality, most of the time--that Spring was a land as blood-drenched and brutal as any other. The season brought with it vicious rains and the slaughter of the lambs, floods and mudslides and similar quiet disasters, as the world shook itself alive again after its long hibernation. Spring was the season of rebirth. It was also the season of mothers eating their own young, of eggs that didn’t hatch and hunters in the wood.

Persephone swung the knife she held in a practiced arc toward Velveteen’s throat. Velveteen yelped and fell backward, dodging as much through luck as through skill.

“What the fucking fuck is fucking wrong with you?!” she demanded. The geese honked and flapped their wings in punctuation.

“Pick up the knife!” shouted Persephone. “Don’t let me do this!” She swung again, this time in a downward swipe that should have impaled Velveteen where she lay.

Velveteen rolled away, barely getting out of the way in time. “If you don’t want to do this, don’t do it!”

“I don’t have a choice!”

The green knife was right next to Velveteen’s hand. She grabbed it without really thinking the action through, scrambling to her feet and backing away. “There’s always a choice. You--you have to have a choice, or that whole ‘balance’ thing is bullshit. Nothing that doesn’t choose can serve the balance.”

“But you want to leave,” said Lady Moon.

“What?” Velveteen looked over her shoulder at the flawlessly coiffed spirit, who was studying her nails, rather than watching the fight. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Cesare didn’t mean to chart the path out of Spring when he was killed, but he did; beware the Ides of March.” Lady Moon’s eyes flicked upward, away from her nails, to the spot right behind Velveteen. “They’ll cut you dead.”

The warning wasn’t enough. Velveteen dodged; not fast enough. Persephone’s black knife caught her in the shoulder, and she screamed, first with surprise as much as pain, and then with genuine agony as swirls of blackened decay began appearing on her own blade--

(Nine years old, and her powers are still largely quiescent, beginning to stir in her dreams without gaining traction in the waking world. It’s Easter Sunday, and the kids at school have been talking about painted eggs and chocolate rabbits for weeks. She’ll have none of those things, she knows. Those things cost money; those things are the sort of luxuries that no one brings to the food pantry or puts on discounts deep enough to tempt her mother to waste part of the food budget. Still, she yearns. That’s why she’s up so early, hoping to catch the Easter Bunny in the act. Maybe he’s susceptible to blackmail. And even with that thought in mind, it’s a shock when she opens the door and there he is, hopping across her yard, basket clutched in vast white paws--)

Velveteen wrenched herself back into the present and fell forward, the knife leaving her shoulder. The black swirls on her own blade remained, and when she turned, it wasn’t a surprise that Persephone’s knife now had swirls of green.

“What did you do?” she demanded.

“There were so many, many times you could have come to us,” said Persephone, advancing on Velveteen like an invading army advancing on an unguarded shore. Still off-balance, Velveteen continued to retreat. “By the time you finally came, I was the only one who wanted you, but that didn’t always have to be the case. You could have been Jack’s, or the Bunny’s, or even Lady Moon’s. If I cut away enough of your past, you will be.”

“Wait-wait-wait,” chittered Velveteen. She took another hop backward. It came horribly naturally, and she realized what was going on. She was being sliced into the Easter Bunny’s apprentice, someone who had grown up here, from the age of nine. “Are you changing the world? Or just changing me?”

“Is there a difference?” asked Persephone. She feinted right. Velveteen dodged straight into Persephone’s blade. It sliced a long cut along her ribs, and she felt time bleed--

(Nine years old, and there’s the Easter Bunny, he’s standing right there in front of her, with his nose twitching and his whiskers bristling in surprise. There’s something almost dreamlike about the scene, like a voice she can’t quite hear is shouting at her that no, this isn’t how it happened, but that doesn’t matter, because he’s really here, he’s really real, and he really came for her, Velma Martinez, the girl nobody ever comes for. She starts to reach out. She just wants to touch that soft brown fur--)

It was harder, this time, to wrench herself away; Velveteen was breathing hard, and not just from shock and pain. She took her eyes off of Persephone long enough to glance down at her hands, which were no longer bare; brown velvet half-gloves covered them, like the gloves she’d worn with the earliest incarnations of her costume, back when they’d still believed that manual dexterity was somehow connected to her powers. She looked back up. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?” asked Persephone. “How long have you lived in Spring, Velveteen?”

“Most of my life,” she replied automatically. Then she snarled, lips pulling back from enlarged front teeth, and charged toward Persephone with her knife held low and ready to cut. It felt like something inside of her had snapped. None of this made sense. Persephone was her friend--all her memories agreed on that, both the ones she was reasonably sure were true and the ones that insisted she had first come here when she was nine years old, student of the Easter Bunny, and grown up in Spring’s loving embrace--but friends didn’t try to kill each other. Not without good reason.

Persephone danced to the side, but not quickly enough; Velveteen’s knife caught the side of her arm. The green vanished from her blade in an instant. Velveteen glanced down at her own knife as she kept running. The black swirls were gone. So were the brown gloves. Velveteen ran her tongue quickly over her front teeth. They were back to normal.

“That’s a start,” said Persephone, and attacked.

*

They had been fighting for what felt like years. Sometimes Velveteen found herself with abnormally strong legs, and had to resist the urge to look down and see if her feet had been replaced by paws. Other times she stumbled, hampered by her dancing slippers and swirling skirts. None of the transformations had gone far enough to become the bulk of what she was; so far, she had always been able to claw her way back into the frustrated twenty-something who had grown up in the calendar country, tormented by Autumn, befriended by Winter, and passively coddled by Spring. But it was getting harder to resist, and tracks of black were starting to remain in her blade, even after she struck back.

“Why are you doing this?” she wailed. It hurt, everything hurt, every cut and bruise and new memory that overwrote the woman she’d always been, like she was just a character in someone else’s story, being inexorably revised. If it went too far, if the balance shifted...she might not understand what was happening, or why, but she understood the ways of metaphors, and the sort of stories that were told about the Spring. She understood that to grow, you had to bleed. If the balance shifted in favor of one of the women she’d never been, then the woman she was now would become the fiction, and they would become the reality.

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.

Sponsorship: Happy birthday, Josh!

2015-02-23T13:37:27Z

Today belongs to Josh. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOSH!

Josh has been to basically every book event I've ever been involved with at Borderlands Books. His parents started bringing him when he was still a potato in a baby sling and earmuffs, and now he's grown into this awesome micro-human who runs around and is enthusiastically part of everything that's going on around him. It's so super-great. Josh is best.

Sometimes it scares me that I've been doing the "author" thing for long enough to have had a baby turn into a whatever-comes-after-toddler (kid? IDK) while I watched, but other times, I remember how amazing it all is.

Happy birthday, kiddo.

I hope we celebrate many more together.

Sponsorship: Velveteen vs. Balance.

2015-01-21T17:11:14Z

Title: Velveteen vs. Balance.
Summary: The trials of a formerly retired superheroine are destined never to be done, especially when the heroine in question was foolish enough to agree to serve the seasonal lands...

Today's story was sponsored by Rob and Larissa. Thanks, Rob and Larissa!

***

Though she had only been in Spring for a short time, it had already been long enough for Velveteen to learn two simple truths: that everything around her was alive, and that she hungered for that life the way a small child raised on an all-organic, all-nutritious diet yearns for sugar. Sometimes the wanting of it consumed her, filling her from her head to her toes with the need to reach out and snatch the life from everything around her, stuffing herself until she was too bloated with power to move. Her fingers itched. She stretched them out and then curled them back against her palms, forming fists that said less about violence than they did about resistance. She was better than her own instincts. She was a good person, and she was a good hero, and she was not going to give in.

And maybe if she told herself that enough times, she would start believing it, and she would stop thinking of the man--boy--whatever he was in front of her as a three-course meal with an open sundae bar to follow.

Jack floated an easy foot off the ground, one foot pointed toward the earth, the other kicked carelessly back and angled toward the sky. He was wearing a tunic made entirely of green leaves stitched together with cobwebs, and he would have been remarkably beautiful, if not for the way his features kept flickering, now those of a grown man, now those of a child. His body changed with them, but Velveteen had learned that it was best to watch his eyes, which were always a pale, cool green, and stayed stable when the rest of him did not.

“I think you could, if you wanted to,” said Jack. “You’re so much stronger than you’re supposed to be. You should have been a dandelion, brief and beautiful, and instead you’re an oak tree, all knots and gnarls and big roots like fingers clutching the ground. Dandelions can fly.”

“Uh, no, dude,” said Velveteen slowly. “Dandelion seeds can fly, because they’re trying to spread themselves and make more dandelions. You know when you get dandelion seeds? When the dandelions are dead.”

Jack’s smile was a storm in summer and a poem to the rain and a whole bunch of other metaphors that occurred to Velveteen in a terrible cascade. Spring was horrifically fond of metaphors. She pressed a hand against her temple, willing her incipient headache to retreat. It did not oblige her.

“There, you see? You’re figuring things out already.” He did a somersault in midair, flipping gravity the bird for the fifteenth time since the beginning of their conversation. “Just let me cut your heart out, and you should have no trouble at all getting your feet off the ground, your head in the clouds, and all those other fun things that the kids enjoy these days.”

Velveteen stared at him for a long moment before she took a step backward, feeling the spongy moss reshape itself to cradle her bare feet. Spring did not believe in shoes. (Most of Spring, anyway. Lady Moon had like, a million pairs of boots and stiletto heels and dancing slippers. Which she refused to share.)

“Uh, that’s great,” she said. “Sounds super-fun. So I’m really sorry that I have to go, but I think I hear Persephone calling.” Then she turned, and fled, before Jack--who was sometimes called “Peter,” as in “Pan,” as in “the scary little boy who wouldn’t grow up”--could reach for his knife.

Jack watched her go, smiling lazily. “You’ll come around,” he said. “They always do.” Crowing, he launched himself skyward. It was time for a dance among the clouds. It wouldn’t do to spend too much time being serious.

*

Spring is not the most elusive of the Seasonal Lands--that honor is reserved for Summer, which communicates little and manifests even less--but it is still considered terra incognito for most purposes. Unlike Autumn, which has interacted frequently with the last several decades, even sending two of its spiritual guardians out into what they term “the Calendar Country” to serve as members of The Super Patriots, Inc., or Winter, which plays host to Santa Claus and his well-known group of associates, Spring keeps mostly to itself. Spring is warm, and welcoming, and wild, and mercurial, and cruel. Spring plays host to Persephone, who fills the role served by Santa Claus in Winter and Scream Queen in Autumn. Spring rarely recruits from the heroes of the world, or forces itself into the consciousness of humanity. Spring simply...endures.

(It should be noted that while we know who is in charge in Spring, Autumn, and Winter, there is no record of who controls the Summer, or what the system of governance is there. Spring is controlled by a council. Autumn is a monarchy, and Winter a meritocracy. Summer is anyone’s guess, as are the identities of the Spirits of the Season who endure there.)

Which makes Spring interesting, even for a concrete manifestation of the interaction between the human psyche and the underpinnings of the universe, is the way it changes from interpretation to interpretation. What one person views as healing and rebirth, another may view as the end of everything. Spring is often held up as the season of balance, a concept embodied in its patron goddess, Persephone, whose commitment to the concept was the stuff of legends. Part of being in balance is in accepting that a thing is not for everyone. That for some people, balance was cruelty, or a lack of commitment.

The avatars of Spring have always been, for the most part, thin idols when compared to Autumn or Winter. This, too, groups Spring more firmly with Summer. Some scholars say this is because Spring and Summer, as the kinder, more temperate seasons, have never had as much need for holidays; they are accepted as they are, and do not need to put a pretty face on things. Others say this is because the things those seasons hold are older, darker, and hence harder to reduce to a greeting card icon. In the end, it doesn’t matter. The seasons endure as they always have, independent and fundamentally defined by what we think of them.

Spring will do as Spring will do. A tautology, yes, but an essential one, describing the great mystery at the heart of the year--and hence the great mystery at the center of the human experience. To grow, we have to shrink. To live, we have to acknowledge that we will one day cease to be. It is a difficult balance to strike for one who is not a goddess of the harvest. For some, it may well prove to be impossible.

*

Velveteen found Persephone sitting by a small, mirror-reflective pond, braiding a chain of asphodel flowers. It was already more than ten feet long, curling into a wide circle around the goddess. Several of Geb’s geese were roosting nearby, their black legs tucked up under their feathery bodies and their necks twisted around so that their beaks rested against their backs. None of them were sleeping; they all had their eyes open and fixed on Persephone, watching her with unblinking avian disdain.

“This ‘learn from the avatars of Spring’ routine would work a lot better if you told me what I was supposed to be learning from them,” Velveteen announced, plopping herself down next to Persephone without waiting to be invited. “I’m pretty sure Jack just told me to kill myself.”

“If he did that, he wasn’t Jack,” said Persephone. “Only Peter advocates suicide as a learning experience, because Peter doesn’t really understand what it means to die. Jack understands. Jack has died and been reborn more times than there are stars in the sky, and as a consequence, Jack never tells anyone that they should die for wisdom. He assumes someone will come along and slit your throat when you least expect it. Pass me another flower, won’t you, dear?”

“That sort of brings me to my next question: if I’m not willing to die for the sake of learning whatever it is Jack-sometimes-Peter wants to teach me, is he going to murder me? To death, I mean? Because I’m still alive, which means I can be killed.” Velveteen dutifully handed Persephone an asphodel flower.

“It’s highly unlikely,” said Persephone. “He’s much more inclined to be disappointed in you, but let you make your own decisions. Peter has very poor impulse control, so you’re right to worry about him. Jack is still in control, most of the time, and gets the deciding vote on things like murder.”

“There is so much wrong with that statement that I don’t even know where to begin.” Velveteen leaned back on her hands, looking flatly at Persephone. “What am I even doing?”

“At the moment? Sucking all the life out of the grass.” Persephone looked pointedly at Velveteen’s hands. The grass around them was turning brown and drying up, withering like it had never been watered. “Have you eaten?”

Velveteen yelped, snatching her hands away from the ground like it had suddenly become hot to the touch. “Oh my God oh fuck oh my God I am so sorry I didn’t do that on purpose you know I didn’t do it on purpose I didn’t--”

“Velveteen. Breathe.” Persephone put her flower chain down before leaning over and clasping Velveteen’s hands firmly in her own. “You’ve been starving yourself again. You know you can’t do that. You have to eat.”

Persephone’s skin was soft and warm and barely thick enough to contain the hot wellspring of life at her core. She pulsed under Velveteen’s hands. It was like clasping a sun, and promised to be twice as nourishing, if she would just reach out and take what she needed...

Velveteen snatched her hands away, already breathing hard. “No, I’m good,” she said, forcing her fingers into fists and shoving them down into her lap. Maybe if she just didn’t touch anything, she wouldn’t need to suck the life out of anything. She’d never been big on dieting, but wasn’t fasting supposed to be good for like, the soul? Spiritually, she was probably in dire need of losing a few pounds. So she’d just keep her hands to herself until this was over, and she moved on to Autumn.

Nobody in Autumn cared about her the way Persephone did. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. In her experience, it was always the people who cared about you the most who hurt you the most. The two things seemed to go hand in hand. And if she cared about Persephone, even in a slightly awed, slightly terrified way, that put her in an excellent position to hurt the older anima.

Persephone sighed. “You have to eat,” she said. “I didn’t stop up your access to your own life force so you could starve to death. If you’re worried about the damage you might do in the process of sustaining yourself, consider this: you’ve been to the Hall of Mirrors. The Snow Queen showed you what might have been. You’ve seen the worlds where you became Marionette. If you let yourself die because you can’t bear the thought of remaining in balance, what happens when your eyes open anyway? You’ll rise, and there won’t be any mercy to your hunger when that happens. You’ll be just like Peter. Innocent and heartless and starving.”

“I thought you said Jack was the one who died,” said Velveteen.

“I said Jack was the sacrifice,” said Persephone. “Jack died a thousand times to set the stars in their places. Peter only died once. Once was enough. They weren’t always the same person. Even here, we have our ways of downsizing, and they balance one another. If you became Marionette, there would be nothing to balance you. We’d have to cast you out of Spring.”

Velveteen’s eyes widened. “You wouldn’t.”

“I would. I would weep for you, and for the damage that you would do to the world, but Spring cannot shelter someone who has no balance,” Persephone reached for another asphodel. “You have to eat. You have to live, and you have to learn to live with yourself when your existence comes at the expense of more than just your health.”

“Are you secretly evil?” asked Velveteen. “Just as a data point. I mean, it won’t change anything, really, since I’m sort of at your mercy here. I just want to know.”

Persephone’s smile was fleeting enough that Velveteen might have missed it, had she not been watching so intently. “You know, since Christianity became the big thing on the block, people really enjoy casting my husband as the bad guy. ‘He’s basically the devil,’ they say, and then Hades is responsible for all the world’s ills. Never mind that my Uncle Zeus and his raging infidelity caused more problems than Hades doing his accounting ever did.” She set her asphodel chains aside. “They reduce the story of our courtship and marriage to one of abduction, enslavement, and rape, and they forget that the Greeks we far, far more afraid of me than they were of him. My husband is a gentle man, and a gentleman, which aren’t always the same thing. I was, and am, his Iron Queen. So no, dear, I’m not evil, but I’m not here purely to be kind. I’m here for balance. Balance hurts.”

“I don’t want to hurt people,” said Velveteen.

“But you do, Velveteen, you do. Come with me.” Persephone put her asphodel aside and stood, beckoning for Velveteen to follow. Several of the geese also rose, honking and ruffling their feathers as they waddled after the pair.

“I am not a fan of geese,” said Velveteen, as she hurried to keep up with the taller goddess.

Persephone looked faintly, distractedly amused. “No one likes geese. I think that’s a large part of why Geb chooses them as his symbol. He appreciates the fact that he’s the God of Earth and Harvest--same job as my mother, actually, which makes me feel like I dodged a bullet when she decided to go hang out in Summer--but has avatars that everyone hates. Just ignore them. That’s what the rest of us do.”

“I’m barefoot, and geese crap everywhere.”

“Ignore them, watch your step, and be ready to wash your feet frequently,” amended Persephone. “Come on.” She waved her hand. A portal opened in the air, ringed by green vines and trumpet flowers. Persephone stepped through. Lacking any other options, Velveteen followed, and the portal closed again behind them.

*

They emerged in the middle of a field of briars. They grew in tangled hillocks, so wound around and through themselves that they created fantastic shapes, like natural, unspeakable topiary. There were no flowers, no fruits; only the thorns, stretching out as far as the eye could see, turning the landscape dark and dangerous.

“Look.” Persephone waved her hand, indicating the thorn briars. “They serve no purpose here. They’re not guarding a sleeping princess or providing homes for rabbits. They’re just choking out everything else. They have so much life that they’ve left none for the rest of the field. This place is out of balance. So are you, Velveteen: you’re starving, and if you don’t eat soon, you’re going to become like these thorns, running riot, because you won’t have the strength left to contain yourself.”

“You know, I really, really wish I wasn’t spending all my time in the Kingdom of We’ve Got a Metaphor for That,” said Velveteen. She shivered. Her gown of rose petals and clinging vines was thin, intended for warmer places than this. “Thorns bad, comparison pointy. Okay?”

“No, not okay,” said Persephone. “I swear, you’re trying so hard to be one of the good guys that you’ve forgotten how to listen. Do you eat meat when you’re at home?”

“Yeah,” said Velveteen. Her mouth watered, involuntarily, at the thought of a juicy hamburger, or better, a steak. She hadn’t taken a mouthful of solid food since she arrived in Spring. Hunger, constant companion that it had become, was more metaphysical than real: her stomach never ached, but her soul seemed to. “The Marketing Department tried to convince me to become a vegetarian when I was a kid--they said it would fit well with my overall rabbit theme--but I just couldn’t stomach it. Literally.”

“Do you think the cow somehow survives the removal of your meal? Or that the carrot regenerates after you taste its flesh? Everything that lives kills. Maybe you only kill plants, or maybe you eat your way up the food chain, but there’s no such thing as a life lived without causing pain.” Persephone knelt, wrapped her hand around one of the briars, and pulled. The thorns broke through her skin, blood trickling from between her fingers and dripping down to the ground, but she didn’t let go. She just kept pulling. “Everything hurts.”

“And now you’re an album by a bad Goth band,” said Velveteen. “I don’t understand what you want me to do.”

“I want you to stop being so focused on being good that you forget that sometimes a refusal to be selfish is the most selfish thing of all,” said Persephone. “You’re hurting yourself. If someone were doing this to one of your friends, you would strike them down to make them stop, but because you’re the only one being hurt, you think it’s somehow right. That it’s somehow fair. You haven’t earned this suffering. Admit that you’re a living thing like every other living thing, and take what you need.” She waved her unpunctured hand at the thorn field. “I brought you here to make it easier for you to begin.”

“You brought me where, exactly?” Velveteen looked around the thorn field. “This is messy, but it has a right to exist.”

“Does it?” Persephone shook her head. “I wish you could have seen the Spring as it was when there was balance, before Supermodel did what she did to you. She made you the arbiter of right and wrong for all the anima in the world, because you are all the anima in the world. There were two, for a time--and we’ve all wondered, some aloud, some more privately, why she let the boy live; she can’t have intended to breed the two of you, even though like calls to like, and you found each other. Maybe she remembered that balance mattered, on some deep level, and wanted to be defeated.”

“What do you mean, ‘remembered’?” demanded Velveteen. The idea that she and Tag had been drawn to each other because of their powers was almost offensive. Sure, it was the fact that he was an animus that had caused Jackie to set them up on a blind date, and sure, it had given them something in common, something that they could talk about, but it wasn’t the reason they had fallen in love. Was it?

No, it couldn’t be. She had dated Action Dude first, after all, and Aaron was about as far from being an animus as you could get while still being in the realm of “is a superhero.” His powers were purely physical and purely his own, and her love for him had been just as pure and true as her love for Tag, before Aaron had gone and spoilt it all by being himself. His selfish, stupid, shallow self.

“You will persist in thinking that you’re the only one ever to be courted by a season, won’t you?” Persephone shook her head. “We tried to woo Supermodel when she was still Heather York of Beaverton, Oregon. She was a beautiful little girl, and when she raised her hands, flowers danced. I would have made her a demigoddess, if she’d allowed me to do it. Lady Moon would have taken her dancing every night. But she wanted more than we could give her. She wanted the world. I told her that if she took it, she would be no friend of ours, and she laughed at me. She asked why she should settle for a season when she could have the entire calendar, and she walked away from us.”

“That’s...seriously? She just walked away?”

“She woke up the next morning thinking this had all been a dream, and we never spoke to her again,” said Persephone. “But we had touched her, and what’s been touched can’t help being changed, in some small way. I like to think that your survival was her trying to answer to the balance she’d broken. This place,” she indicated the thorns again, more sharply this time, like she was tired of explaining herself, “used to belong to all your kin and kind, because Spring is our country, as Summer is the country of the physical, and Winter the country of the elemental. She took it from you. She took it from all of you. I’m offering you the chance to feed yourself and take it back at the same time.”

“What would I have to do?” Velveteen’s voice was small.

Persephone smiled. “Just feed yourself. The rest will come naturally.”

Velveteen looked down at her hands and sighed. “Some days I really miss beating the crap out of petty thugs,” she said. Kneeling, she pressed her palms to the ground, between the thorns, and breathed in deep.

Nothing happened.

“You have to actually let it happen,” said Persephone. “Trust yourself not to go too far. You’re allowed to exist. You’re allowed to eat. Let that permission sink in.”

“Lady, you sure do talk a lot for somebody who wants me to find inner peace or whatever,” said Velveteen. She took a deep breath, and pulled--

*

For most people, eating is a physical thing. It involves the mouth, the teeth, the tongue; the acts of swallowing and digestion. For most people, nutrition comes from the food they ingest, calories entering their bodies and being transformed into potential.

For an anima who can’t access her own life force to sustain herself, things are slightly different.

Velveteen’s hands sunk into the soil and her mind sunk into the thorns, instincts she was barely aware of having seeking out and ripping away the things that sustained their roots and fed their questing tendrils. She was an anima: she was the perfect predator, needing nothing but the barest of contacts to allow her to feed. Her mind raced, moving independent of her intellect, which was slow and steady and burdened with unnecessary morality. The body was hungry. The soul was starving. The power she was host to had the ability to fix both these things, and so fix them it would, regardless of what the mind wanted.

Persephone watched, a strange, sad smile on her face, as the thorn briars withered and withdrew. They dried up from the inside out, collapsing in on themselves, before turning to dust and crumbling where they twined. It was a swift, unnatural process, a denuding of everything, and when it was done--when not a single briar rose from the blackened, blasted ground--they had revealed a wasteland. Tombstones and stone angels dotted the earth. Cobweb-encrusted tombs loomed in the distance.

Velveteen opened her eyes and blanched, the new color running from her face as she beheld what she had unveiled. “Holy crap I conjured a graveyard.”

“It was always here,” said Persephone. “Look.” She raised her hands, and the waste exploded into growth. Green grass blanketed the graves, and wildflowers ran riot. Roses bloomed in glorious abandon, climbing the stone angels and softening the tombs. Trees shot up out of nothing, breaking first into flower, and then into full fruit as they reached their maturity in a matter of seconds.

When Persephone lowered her hand again, the field of briars had become a pastoral graveyard. Still a place of mourning, yes, but one where the beloved dead could rest easily, and where those who missed and mourned them could walk without fear of the thorns. Natural paths had formed amidst the green grass and the riotous wildflowers. Persephone started down the nearest of them. Velveteen, lacking any better idea of what to do, followed her.

“How do you feel?” asked the goddess.

“Good.” It was an understatement, but that didn’t make it any less true. She felt like someone who had recovered in one miraculous moment from a long and debilitating illness, surging back to health and then to some glorious point beyond simple recovery. The small aches and pains that had begun to haunt her were gone, replaced by a feeling of absolute, unquestionable wellness. She could run a marathon. She could lift a mountain. She had never felt so completely, utterly whole in her life, and it terrified her. If she could feel this good by drinking the life of the world around her, what was to stop her from taking it all?

This is how Supermodel felt, she thought, and the idea sickened her, both with its reality and with its accuracy. Supermodel had been obsessed with her own beauty, and with the life she gained from the adoration of those around her. She had wanted to become a goddess. All she had succeeded in doing was destroying herself. She was an icon now, an idol to be worshipped and feared, not a person. “No one ever calls her Heather,” she said softly. “I didn’t even know that was her name.”

“She was a beautiful child,” said Persephone, following the change of topics without missing a beat. “So sweet. So kind. She was always a little self-centered. I blame her parents. They made their love dependent on her accomplishments. ‘Shine bright and we’ll adore you, glow quietly and we’ll ignore you.’ They taught her that the only way to be valued for anything was to be the best at everything, and she did her best to please them, until the day she realized that there were easier hearts to win.”

The path wound gently between the graves, now circling a group of them, now bending away from a copse of trees. Persephone stepped off it, looking down at a headstone. Velveteen moved to stand next to her.

HEATHER YORK, it read. STILL BELOVED.

“She’s buried here?” The words escaped before Velveteen could stop them. She decided that she hadn’t wanted to. Some questions needed to be asked. “How can she be buried here, after what she did?”

“She’s buried here because of what she did, and what she was,” said Persephone. “Don’t you understand yet? Balance.”

“I understand that I am not Anakin Skywalker, and I am not going to bring Balance to the Force.”

Persephone looked at her blankly. Velveteen sighed.

“You know, there is popular culture more recent than that whole thing with the Argonauts,” she said. “Maybe you should check it out sometime.”

“If you say so,” said Persephone politely. A goose waddled past, honking about whatever it was that kept geese occupied when they weren’t biting ankles and stealing bread from small children. “Balance isn’t about bringing something. It’s about taking what you already have and making it self-sustaining. Making it last. Heather threw the balance off when she started killing the people she believed would be her rivals. She was so hungry. She wanted the world to be her banquet. All the strength that should have belonged to them went to you, and they came here. To rest.”

Velveteen stared at her, eyes going wide with horror as she realized what Persephone was saying. “So when you said this place belonged to people like me...”

“I meant that this was where their spirits were lain to rest. All of them. Come with me.” Persephone struck out across the grass, leaving Velveteen no choice but to follow as the living goddess of Spring stalked between the graves, pointing. “Michael Wittenberg. He brought clay figures to life. There was a gas leak when he was three years old, less than a month after he started tapping into his powers. Fawn Clarkson. She was a resurrectionist. Given time to learn her own strength, she could have called anyone back from the verge of death. She brought back her pet goldfish. Her apartment building burned down the next day.”

The litany of names went on and on, each accompanied by a snapshot of their powers: what they had been, what they might have become. It made Velveteen want to cover her ears and scream. She had never asked to be the one to carry the gifts and burdens of an entire generation; she had just wanted to be a good member of her team, to take care of the people she loved, and maybe to be left alone to be happy for a little while. That was all. When had it become so unreasonably much?

They reached the last grave, at the edge of the meadow. The land continued from there, but it seemed somehow hazy, unreal, like it didn’t really count as part of the scene. Velveteen knew without being told that it was because Spring didn’t care enough, as a season, to bring that place into focus. If she kept walking, it would be forced to decide what lay beyond the thin veil of disregard. It might resent her for that. She stayed where she was, joining Persephone in looking at the blank tombstone.

“Let me guess,” she said. “This is where I’m going to be, when I finally die, unless I decide that I want to stay here in the Spring, in which case the grave will go away and I’ll live forever, frolicking in meadows and not worrying about supervillains or grocery bills or turning evil and sucking the life out of all my friends in the middle of the night.”

“Yes,” said Persephone serenely. “That’s putting it a bit more...viscerally than I would have chosen, but yes. You don’t have to die. You don’t have to change. You can be young and strong and healthy forever, if you stay here with us. And there will be no more anima in the world, and things will be in balance.”

Velveteen didn’t say anything. She couldn’t think of anything to say. She would have been lying if she had claimed she wasn’t tempted. Yes, Spring was strange, and its customs were still difficult for her to understand, but so what? Everything was unfamiliar at first. If she stayed, she could learn whatever she needed to know. She could even learn to be happy, and her friends would finally be freed from the need to worry about her all the time. She could be free. She could be...

“Wait,” she said, frowning as she turned to Persephone. “No more anima. You said no more anima. What do you mean?”

“Supermodel killed all the anima and animus of her generation, and all but two of your generation, and now only you remain,” said Persephone. “If you stay here, there will be none. Absence is an innate balance. The world will adjust.”

Slowly, Velveteen frowned, puzzling her way through all the things that statement could mean. Then--cautiously, more than half afraid of the answer, but needing to hear it all the same--she asked, “What about Tag?”

“He sleeps the sleep of the lost,” said Persephone. “If you stay here, if you don’t go back for him, no one will ever wake him. Don’t mourn for him. He died well, and he lived a long, healthy, fruitful life. His balance has been served.”

“Um, what?” Velveteen turned to stare at Persephone. “He’s my boyfriend. I love him. It’s not his fault that he got hurt, and I’m not going to stop mourning him, or loving him, just because you say his ‘balance’ has been ‘served.’ What does that even mean, anyway? He died. He misjudged a situation, and he died. There’s no balance in that. It was a senseless tragedy.”

“All death is balance, for the life that came before it.” Persephone waved a hand. “This is balance. The only thing that stops it from being perfect is you, little anima, who still walks in the world and doesn’t lie down in fields of flowers. Stay here with us and there will be balance.”

“And if I don’t? If I say ‘golly, this has been a lot of fun, except for the part where it really hasn’t been, I’ll be going now’? Are you going to stop me for the sake of your balance?”

“No,” said Persephone. “I already told you, if you leave here with a better grasp of what you’re capable of, that’s going to be enough for me. I want balance. I want the world to be better than it is. That doesn’t mean forcing people to do things they don’t want to do.”

“Oh.” Velveteen looked back to the blank tombstone for a long moment before she asked, “If I stay here, there won’t be anyone else with my power set? Like, ever?”

“For a generation. Maybe more. Eventually, I’m sure, someone will find their way to Spring, and eat the fruit of these trees.” Persephone reached out her hand. A nearby branch bent, and a pomegranate smacked into the curve of her fingers. The skin had already split, revealing the ruby seeds inside. She turned to offer it to Velveteen. “That person will have children one day. Twins, most likely. And they’ll be born with the ability to animate the inanimate, or to heal flesh, or to summon pictures from the page. They’ll bring it all back with them. Anima and animus will be born again.”

“You know, I think the thing that sucks most about this is that it’s actually sort of tempting,” said Velveteen. She took the pomegranate, turning it over in her hands. “I don’t like it here. I don’t like what you’ve done to me, no matter how necessary you think it is. But I don’t like being--what was it you called me? I don’t like being a ‘weapon that walks like a woman,’ either. I don’t want to be Supermodel.” And it was Spring that had opened that door, wasn’t it? She had never known why anyone would choose to drain the life from the world until Persephone had stopped her ability to feed herself. Sometimes efforts to help could hurt, even when they weren’t trying to.

“I don’t think there’s any risk of that,” said Persephone. “You care too much about people to ever go her route. It’s just that without finesse, you can...break things.”

Velveteen--who had once resurrected her boyfriend unintentionally, and was all too aware of her ability to “break things”--nodded. She shook a few seeds out of the pomegranate, popped them into her mouth, and swallowed, before she said, “I’m going back.”

“I thought you might say that,” said Persephone, and smiled. “Well, then, it looks like we need to speed up your lessons, don’t you think?”

“Bring it,” said Velveteen, and oh, the Spring was warm.

Sponsorship: Velveteen vs. The Thaw.

2014-11-20T15:54:59Z

Title: Velveteen vs. The Thaw.
Summary: The trials of a formerly retired superheroine are destined never to be done, especially when the heroine in question was foolish enough to agree to serve the seasonal lands...

Today's story was sponsored by Rob and Larissa. Thanks, Rob and Larissa!

***

Cradled in a bed of moss and new spring leaves, draped in a blanket of flower petals and thistledown, Velveteen slept. Her skin was back to a healthy brown, and her hair had grown six inches since the last of the cold had bled out of her and her body had remembered what it was to be a living thing. That was the only sign of how much time had passed while she was in Winter, and while there had been some discussion of cutting it before she woke, Persephone had pointed out that Velveteen was likely to have better things to worry about, and wouldn’t realize the significance of the change anyway. So the sleeping heroine’s hair had gone untouched as she slept on.

She had been asleep for six days as the ice passed out of her heart and her dreams came creeping back to her, their hats clutched in their hands and their eyes cast toward the distant idea of the ground. Snow did not dream, after all, and she had been frozen for so very long. So much longer than she knew.

On the seventh day Velveteen gasped and opened her eyes, staring at the tangled ceiling of vines and intertwined branches. A few squirrels and brightly-colored songbirds were perching there, staring down at her with cartoonish curiosity. Velveteen blinked.

“Oh, good,” said a voice. It wasn’t familiar--she was quite sure she’d never heard it before--but she knew it all the same. It was the voice she sometimes heard in her dreams, when she had been beaten badly on a patrol and was trying to sleep despite the pain in her ribs and knuckles. It was the voice of slow growth and swift decay, and she knew it loved her, even as she knew that it wouldn’t hesitate to sacrifice her if it saw the need. “You’re awake. I was starting to think you were going to sleep straight through to Summer, and since they’re the only season that doesn’t have a claim on you, that would have been awkward for all of us.”

Velveteen attempted to speak. Her mouth barely moved, and the sound that escaped it was no louder than a butterfly’s sneeze. Her eyes didn’t widen, exactly, but the muscles around them tensed, her pupils constricting in temporary panic.

“It’s all right,” said the voice. “Please, try to stay calm; don’t get yourself worked up. Winter had twined itself into your bones. That’s what Winter does. It chills you until you think you’ll never be warm again. We’ve been pulling the cold out of you, a little bit at a time, like churning the earth in the garden before planting. It was necessary, you see, but it would have been extremely painful if we hadn’t numbed you first.”

Velveteen managed, with an extreme effort, to blink. The motion seemed to knock a little bit of feeling loose from the numbness: she felt threads anchoring her to the ground, rooted deep in her flesh and feeding on whatever substance she possessed.

Velma “Velveteen” Martinez was not prone to overreaction. A lifetime spent defending her community and working minimum wage jobs to make ends meet had left her tough, determined, and capable of rolling with almost anything. This was a step too far. Closing her eyes, she allowed unconsciousness to take her back.

Persephone, seated next to Velveteen’s bier, smiled and continued knitting. Patience was a virtue, and she had always been a virtuous woman.

Besides. She wasn’t going to need to wait much longer.

*

The Seasonal Lands are interesting from a scholarly perspective, mainly due to the contradiction which they represent. They are living mirrors of the human subconscious, painting humanity’s ideas about faith and death and the wheel of the year across metaphysical space. They are primal manifestations of the forces of the universe, immutable and malleable at the same time, constant only in that they will always, always change. Changes to the real world will echo in the Seasonal Lands. Changes in the Seasonal Lands will do the same in the real world.

This phenomenon has been well documented but remains notoriously difficult to prove, as it requires both access to the Seasonal Lands and a means of implementing and measuring change. The anecdotal data is strong. The proof is not. Regardless, it seems certain that what impacts one will impact the other, keeping the two realities inexorably connected, regardless of the desires of their respective occupants.

Spring has historically been the most mercurial of the seasons. It is the time of rebirth and new growth, of the world coming back to life after the long, slow days of winter. It is also the time of heavy rains and fierce winds, of destructive recovery. Everything has a price, in the spring as well as in Spring itself, and nowhere is this more perfectly embodied than in the patron goddess of the country, Persephone, who watches over both life and death. No one has ever called her cruel. No one has ever called her particularly nice, either; she is not the place to turn for succor without judgment.

But she is kind. On that, most everyone agrees. Persephone holds life in one hand and death in the other, and while she is too rarely merciful--mercy is not a strong suit of her season--she is almost always kind. It seems like a small thing. To those who have come before her, helpless and hurting, it is everything in the world. She is not the only member of the Greek pantheon to have endured into the modern day. Her husband, Hades, remains an active part of Winter, although he has long since turned all management of the season over to his jolly successor. Aphrodite can often be seen in Summer, and Demeter has been known to meet with her daughter in the golden fields of Autumn, bringing the Harvest in. So Persephone is not unique. She is simply the only goddess of her line to still take an active interest in humanity.

Where Persephone walks, new growth follows. This does not always endear her to people, as growth can be a very difficult, very painful thing. But she tries her best, and she keeps her season growing green, despite the changing ideas of humanity about what the spring should represent. She has learned to share her space with fertility icons and talking rabbits, and still she has managed to remain essentially, at her core, a good person.

May such high praise one day be heaped upon us all.

*

When Velveteen woke for the second time, she was no longer numb. She gasped and sat up, flailing at the small roots that dangled from her arms like cobwebs. They withered and broke off at her touch, falling to the ground, where they dissolved into so much dust.

That was the last straw. “Ew ew ew!” Velveteen wailed, leaping to her feet and running her hands down her legs, wiping still more roots away. Part of her noted the color of her skin and how warm it was, how wonderfully, realistically warm. That part of her was content. The rest of her was a little busy freaking out over the fact that she was still covered in tiny dangling roots, implying that whatever strange fruit they had sprouted was now embedded in her body.

Eventually, all the roots she could reach had been wiped away, and she was panting from the effort. Slowly, Velveteen calmed and took a deep breath, feeling the sweet, warm air feel her lungs. There was that word again: warm. She was warm, because she was no longer frozen.

She was also naked, surrounded by trampled greenery, and alone.

“Oh, this is good,” she muttered, turning to take a slower, more careful look around herself. She was standing in a grotto that seemed to have been crafted entirely out of living vegetation. It was sort of like being back in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle, except for the part where if she’d been there, the Princess or one of her kangaroo butlers would have appeared by now to scold her for stomping on the flowers. No. This was not familiar ground, and any similarities they shared would only serve to lower her guard.

This was the Spring, and in a very real sense, this was a foreign country. There were three seasons with a claim on her. This was the only one where she had never really spent any time.

“Look at it this way,” she said, speaking in part to hear her voice. It sounded different when it was supported by actual breath, and not just by air. In the Winter, she had breathed only to speak. Here, she was doing it to survive. That mattered. That mattered so much more than she ever could have guessed before it had been taken away. “You thought Santa was your friend, and he let the Aurora Bitch-e-alis turn you into a snow bunny. Spring thawed you out first thing. Maybe this won’t be so bad.”

She had a lifetime’s practice in the fine art of lying to herself. Even so, she couldn’t quite make her words sound believable, not even to her own ears. Yes, Santa had allowed Aurora to transform her into a snow creature, but he hadn’t been happy about it: she could see that now, with her emotions waking up and quietly recoloring her memories of her time in Winter, like Turnerization of the heart. He had always looked so sad when he’d seen her walking, frozen, through his winter wonderland. Given his druthers, he would have kept her as she was, patchwork and damaged and alive, and allowed her to serve the season as a friend, and not as a captive.

And none of that changed the fact that when she had arrived, she had been dropped into the storm; none of that could give her back the days she’d spent frozen to her core, transformed by whatever strange magic dwelt in Aurora’s mountain. Maybe he’d been her friend once, and maybe he still thought of himself in that manner, but when she had needed him most, he had allowed someone else to step in and hurt her direly. That was the sort of treatment she had received from her friends here on the shivering side of the calendar. What kind of courtesy could she expect from her enemies?

Spring wasn’t her enemy. Not like Autumn sometimes was. So she couldn’t trust them the way her sudden warmth made her want to, but she didn’t need to fear them either.

What she needed was a way out of this room, and maybe something to cover her ass. A sudden wave of fear hit her, and she clapped both hands over her tailbone, feeling for the cotton ball plume of a rabbit’s tail. Sometimes the seasons and their associated holidays could be a little too literal. Halloween, especially, had a tendency to turn her into an anthropomorphic rabbit just for the hell of it.

Her fingers found some more roots that needed to be brushed away, but they didn’t find a tail. A similar check of her ears revealed a lack of other lapine features. She was still, for better or for worse, shaped essentially like a human--but that had been the case in Winter, too, at the beginning. She vaguely remembered a voice telling her that she’d been asleep for a week. So was this the beginning, then, or had she already been here long enough to be absorbed? It was impossible to tell.

“Hello?” She lowered her hands and raised her voice, looking around the small green space. “I’m here. I’m awake. I’m ready to talk about whatever it is this season wants from me, and PS, I’ll be a lot more friendly and reasonable if you give me some pants first. I’m not down with the casual nudity.”

The green walls did not reply. Velveteen sighed. “See, apart from making me talk to myself, which is a little cruel, you’re putting me in a position where I have to choose between property damage or being trapped in a weird room made out of plants. I’d really rather not start out by pissing you off, so if you could just come here and tell me what you want me to do, that would be awesome. Super awesome. Seriously.”

The green walls still did not reply. Velveteen, who was starting to feel rather foolish, crossed her arms and scowled at them. “Do you really want to see me force my way out of here?” she asked. “I just finished spending I don’t know how long in Winter, and we were not friendly terms for most of my stay. Let’s not make this any harder than it has to be.”

Silence from the greenery. It didn’t even have the decency to look nervous. Velveteen sighed.

“All right, you asked for it,” she said, and lowered her arms, and reached out with the part of herself that knew how to stir a teddy bear to strange and temporary life, the part of herself that had, in Winter, crafted an army out of snow and set it against her enemies. Her power had always been there, as calm and constant as the air she breathed, even when she hadn’t wanted it. Even when she’d tried to bury it. Too many of the anima of her generation had died for Supermodel’s vanity, and she was stronger than she should have been. So she reached--

--and screamed, hitting the mossy ground on her knees as pain, immediate and intense, washed over her. It felt like she was the one being ripped out by the root, and not whatever strange flowers had been planted in her flesh. She gasped, trying to stop reaching, but she had started the process; she couldn’t stop it, even now that it was out of her control and hurting her. She had to keep reaching until she found something, anything, to take the pain away.

Her questing mental fingers touched something bright and pulsing with hot, eager life. They shrank back for a moment, aware that this was wrong; this wasn’t what they were for. But the pain was so great, and the reach had been so far, that they couldn’t help themselves. Like snapped closed like a trap around the bright, pulsing thing, and pulled it into themselves. From there, it spread to Velveteen. The pain stopped, like a switch had been flipped somewhere. As the flowers that Persephone had planted in Velvteen’s flesh burst through the skin of her back and bloomed into riotous color, the anima herself wobbled, trembled, and collapsed.

Everything was still.

*

“That went well.” The speaker was a six-foot-tall anthropomorphic rabbit. Somehow, this didn’t make him the strangest member of the little assemblage that looked down on the sleeping superheroine. The standards were slightly different, in Spring. “I mean, she didn’t throw up or explode or anything.”

“Most people don’t explode,” said the woman next to him. She was dressed in a sequined ball gown, a feathered mask over her eyes and a dozen strands of brightly colored beads around her neck. She sounded bored, and sat like she would rather be at a party, drinking champagne and dancing the night away in the arms of a stranger. Lady Moon had that sort of air about her, regardless of the hour. “It’s a thing that people are, in fact, not terribly inclined to do.”

Geb was not present, being notoriously reclusive in these modern times, and much more inclined to hole up in his palatial palace near the fields of eternal harvest and write long, passionate letters to his wife, the sky goddess Nut. Several geese were attending the convocation in his stead. They hissed at Lady Moon in what might have been agreement, or might have just been avian cussedness. Even being the chosen avatars of the Egyptian god of Earth and Harvest couldn’t make geese good-tempered.

Lady Moon shied away from the open mouths of the birds. “I do not like these things,” she announced. “Geese should be fried, and not heard.”

“They understand you, you know,” said the lithe young man who was perching in the nearest tree. He had vines tying back his hair, and eyes the color of new spring leaves. Pixies buzzed in the branches around him. He was known by many names outside of the season, but here he was only ever called by his first name: “Jack,” which suited him ever so much better than “Peter.” He looked at Lady Moon with absolutely no sympathy, and continued, “When they peck your eyes out, it’s going to be because of moments like this one.”

“She didn’t explode because she’s an anima,” said Persephone patiently. She had learned to be patient, with this group. Spring was a mercurial country: it was only natural that the spirits of the season would be equally variable in nature. “She can harness and process life. I fed her a very nice star-blossom, just to see what she would do.”

“What did she do before you planted her?” asked Jack.

Persephone’s patient smile became strained. “Don’ t you remember when I told you who she was and why we needed her to come here? You’ve met her before, outside the season. Think, Jack.”

Jack frowned. “I don’t want to think. Thinking is what you’re for.”

“Mmm.” Persephone paused to take a deep breath. She knew better than to waste time in arguing with Jack, who rarely, if ever, bothered to remember anything he didn’t want to. “Before I planted her, she was an anima, just like she is now. She was simply a little more...self-sustaining.”

“Meaning what?” asked the Easter Bunny.

“Meaning she spent her own life force to do the things she did. She had a small internal pool of the stuff, and she exhausted that before she reached for anything ambient. She can’t do that right now. I’ve dammed the access points. If she wants to use her skills, she has to find life elsewhere to fuel them--and since she can’t reach her own stores, she’ll have to use them if she wants to live.” Persephone crouched down and smoothed a lock of Velveteen’s hair away from her face. “Life cannot exist without death and rebirth. They’re connected for a reason. I need her to understand that if she’s going to choose to stay here, with us.”

“Um, not to be a party-pooper, since that’s not really in my nature, but we’re the most alive things in Spring,” said Lady Moon, taking a step backward. “What’s to stop her seizing onto us and pulling all the goodness out?”

“Nothing, really,” said Persephone. “She could turn sour, give in to the rot that sleeps at the heart of every living thing. I’ve walked the Primrose Path, where all the cultivars of other worlds are grown, and I’ve seen versions of her that sprout in darker soil. Most of them go by ‘Marionette’ or ‘Roadkill,’ and they’re not suitable for Spring anymore. If she chooses that life, we can’t stop her. I don’t see it happening, though. She loves life too much to hurt anyone on purpose. There are fruits and flowers and bright streams to sacrifice for the things she needs to do for us. She’ll be stronger if she learns to be a river, and not a reservoir.”

“There used to be more like her,” said Jack suddenly. The others turned to look at him. He was frowning at Velveteen, seeming older and more present than he had only a few moments before. It wouldn’t last. It never did. “Anima put the sun in the sky and the soil under our feet. They were everywhere. Where did they all go? They were supposed to be here. They were never supposed to be this strong, but they were supposed to be here.”

“They went to the ground,” said Persephone, who had been an anima herself once, centuries ago, before the earth had split open below her feet and the God of Death had offered her a place in the seasonal lands, where she would never need to grow old, or tire, or die. She would have other duties, and be cut off--as all anima who chose to serve a season were--from the life of the world. It had seemed like the greatest gift she would ever be offered, and she had taken it, and never looked back. She still wasn’t sorry. “She’ll go to the ground too, one day, unless she chooses us. Now go, all of you. She’ll wake soon. I need to explain what’s been done to her.”

“I don’t envy you that, sugar,” said Lady Moon, and sauntered off, the green vine wall opening to let her pass. Jack and the Easter Bunny followed her, leaving Persephone alone with the sleeping Velveteen. And with the geese, of course.

Persephone looked at the geese. The geese looked at Persephone. Persephone sighed. The largest and meanest-looking of the geese honked at her.

“Look, I don’t care if you feel like you should supervise, you’re not going to,” she said. “No one likes geese. You’re basically giant, evil ducks, and if you’re here when she wakes up, she’s going to be understandably distressed. Go back to whatever it is you do when you’re not being a pain in my ass, and I’ll make sure someone tells you when she’s awake.”

The geese honked again. Persephone made a small shooing gesture with her hands, and was relieved when the large waterfowl turned and waddled away. She was a goddess of life and death and springtime. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like anything when geese attacked her calves.

With a wave of her hand she closed the opening in the wall, and settled down on the moss, watching Velveteen as she slept. Soon, it would be time to start explaining herself. She wasn’t looking forward to that part, but some things couldn’t be helped.

If you wanted to win the prize, you had to be willing to at least attempt to play the game.

*

Velveteen opened her eyes and found herself looking at the face of a goddess. Persephone’s skin was several shades darker than Velveteen’s own, and her hair was a purple-black riot of curls, shot through with veins of white and pink and red, like she was her own field of flowers on the verge of bursting into bloom. Her eyes were green, until she blinked; then they were brown, and when she blinked again, they were blue, ever-changing as the season she stood for. Velveteen thought that Persephone might just be the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

Persephone smiled. “Hello, Velveteen,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“Naked,” said Velveteen, without thinking. Then she froze, her cheeks darkening to a deep, cherry red. “Oh fuck I’m naked in front of a goddess. Oh fuck, I just said fuck in front of a goddess. Uh. Please don’t smite me, or whatever it is you people do here in the springtime. I’m much happier when I’m not getting smote. Smited? What the hell is the past tense of ‘smite’?”

Persephone blinked at her for a moment before she threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, I am going to enjoy having you here. My name is Persephone. I’m a goddess, yes, but that doesn’t mean much in a world where men can fly and women can shoot rainbows from their hands. I was just a superheroine a few centuries before it was fashionable, so I got a better title and more worshippers than most people do these days. I got tired of it, eventually, and I moved into the seasonal lands. There’s less outright worship here. More geese, but less worship.”

“Geese?” said Velveteen blankly. She sat up, trying to cover herself with her hands. “I really appreciate the warm welcome, and I’m sure I’ll get over the part where I used to read about you in books soon, but right now, still naked, still not really thrilled about that. Help?”

“Help yourself,” said Persephone, rising and taking a step back. “Everything you need is here.”

For a moment, Velveteen could only gape at her. Then she groaned. “Oh, seriously? This is a test? Look, your, uh, goddess-ship, I don’t know if you know this, but I have spent the last however long being treated like a dancing bear by people I thought were my friends. I am done with tests. I’ll sweep your floors, I’ll do your dishes, whatever, I don’t give a shit. All my shits have been given. What I won’t do is take any more pointless, painful tests just to show that I deserve a job I never asked for in the first place.”

“Spring doesn’t want you,” said Persephone.

Velveteen blinked. “Uh, hate to break it to you, lady, but if Spring didn’t want me, I’d be in Autumn right now. I’m sort of glad not to be--those people are assholes--and at the same time, I can’t really believe you when you say that I’m not wanted.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t wanted, Velveteen,” said Persephone. “Spring doesn’t want you. I want you.”

Velveteen blinked again, more slowly this time. Then she narrowed her eyes, squinting at Persephone for a moment before she said, almost accusingly, “You’re an anima.”

“Yes, I am,” said Persephone. “That’s why I was called to Spring. I don’t share your specialization. I don’t animate things that aren’t alive. I channel small amounts of ambient life force into the world around me. So mosquitoes die while flowers bloom--or sometimes, vice versa. Everything has to balance, after all. We’re not meant to be swords, cleaving reality from itself. We’re meant to be scalpels, nudging things to where they’re intended to be. What Supermodel did when she killed all the other anima of your generation...it wasn’t fair.”

“Oddly enough, I’m pretty sure they’d agree with you,” said Velveteen. The fact that she was having this conversation while bare-ass naked was becoming less pressing as the urge to slap a goddess rose. “You know, what with them winding up dead and everything.”

“Death is a transition, not an ending,” said Persephone. “I can’t sorrow for them embarking on a new adventure. I can be angry at the woman who set them on that path too soon. I can be angrier still at what their passing did to you. The power you wield should never have been yours to bear.”

“Yeah, poor me,” said Velveteen. “It’s all fucked up and awful. You know what would make it better? If I had some pants on. Pants improve my quality of life amazingly.”

The corner of Persephone’s mouth quirked upward. “Is that so? I was unaware of the restorative qualities of trousers before you mentioned them.”

“Give me a pair and find out.”

“I’m afraid I can’t. If you want to be clothed here, you must clothe yourself. If you want to be fed, you must convince the season to feed you. This is part of how you earn your place.” Persephone shrugged. “I had to undergo the same trials, if it helps at all.”

“Not really sure it does,” said Velveteen. She started to spread her hands and stopped, the memory of pain haunting her. “When I tried to use my powers before...it hurt.”

“Of course it did,” said Persephone. “In the calendar country people like you and I walk in flesh, not in flower. We are the living, and as such, we have a small pool of life to draw upon. Enough for simple tasks, like waking a teddy bear or growing a sapling. Here, we have to use other methods of getting things done. It hurt because you were empty. You filled yourself, and the pain stopped.”

Velveteen stared at her. Then, in a slow, careful tone, she asked, “Are you telling me that I sucked the life out of something to make myself feel better?”

“A large bromeliad, of a type which blossoms once every twenty years. They store up a remarkable amount of potency as they grow. You found the nearest of them and you drank it dry. Don’t look so appalled, Velveteen; this is what I plant them for.” Persephone shook her head. “I told you Spring didn’t want you and that I did; that wasn’t a lie. I want you because there’s been no one to teach you, and you’re too strong. The threat of you echoes across realities and into worlds that should never have been born. It’s not normal, for two seasons to compete over a single soul, while a third stands willingly by. It’s not normal for reality to dance at an anima’s command. You have to be taught, Velveteen, because Supermodel did you no favors when she made you the conduit for the powers of a generation. You’re more of a danger than you know. Now clothe yourself, and come to me. You need me more than I need you. Believe that, if you believe nothing else I say.”

Persephone rose, leaving Velveteen gaping after her, and calmly walked toward the wall of green vines and leaves. It opened at her approach, allowing her to step through, and slid closed again behind her. The leaves rustled as they slid back into position. Silence followed.

“Okay, wow,” said Velveteen, after a minute had ticked past with no sign that Persephone was planning to return. “I mean, wow. I was not expecting Spring to be even more fucked-up than Winter, you know. Brava to you for exceeding all previous standards.”

Persephone didn’t return. Velveteen lowered her hands, realizing that there was no point in covering herself if there was no one there to see her.

“Fucked-up times five million,” she said, almost philosophically. Then she closed her eyes, and reached.

If anyone had been there to watch her--a living incarnation of the Carnival season, for example, or a flock of peevish, god-touched geese--they would have seen the moss that Velveteen was sitting on flow up her body like a green shroud, wrapping itself around her until it had formed the outline of a dress. Then it burst into flower, growing white and pink and yellow blossoms that covered her as completely as any gown. Vines reached up to twine in her hair, pulling it back from her face and twisting it upward until it looked like it had been styled, and not simply given over to the whims of nature.

Panting slightly, Velveteen opened her eyes and looked down at herself. A lone wildflower was poking out of the skin at the inside of her elbow. She looked at it. The flower remained.

“So this is how it’s going to be here, huh? First I get to be snow, and now I’m made of flowers? You people never know when to leave well enough alone.” But at least her hands were the color of skin, and she could feel the steady beating of her heart inside her chest. That wasn’t much. It was so much more than she’d had in so long.

Barefoot and shaky, Velveteen stood. There was something different about moving now that she was made of soft, bendable things, and not unyielding snow. When she was sure that she wasn’t going to fall she walked to the green wall and raised her hand. The vines parted, revealing Persephone standing on the other side, waiting. She smiled when she saw Velveteen.

“You look lovely,” she said. “That dress suits you.”

“Flowers are growing out of my body and it feels like someone hollowed me out when I wasn’t looking,” said Velveteen. She walked toward Persephone. “What did you do to me?”

“Winter cut you off from yourself because it wanted you to be all power and no pain. You missed out on a lot of life in that time. I’ve connected you to everything in this season, and walled off the access to what little of your original self you have left. You’ll need to learn how to use your powers if you want to survive your time here without doing any major damage. I’ll teach you how.”

Velveteen scowled at her. “Why? So I’ll choose Spring and stay here and, I don’t fucking know, bring all the baby bunnies back from the dead?”

“We believe in rebirth, not starting the zombie apocalypse for Easter,” said Persephone. “I would love it if you chose Spring. Believe it or not, I get tired, and it would be nice to go home to Hades and tell him that I didn’t have to leave for a few hundred years. We could catch up on our reading. Maybe finally take a vacation. But if you leave here with a better grasp of what you’re capable of, that’s going to be enough for me. You’re a weapon that walks like a woman right now, Velveteen, and I need that to stop. For the sake of the world, you need to be brought under control.”

“We’re going to need to agree on a few ground rules if I’m going to do this,” said Velveteen. “First is no lying to me. If you lie to me, even once, even through omission, I’m gone. You got that? I may not be able to get out of your season without you unlocking the door, but that doesn’t mean I have to go along with any of your wacky schemes or do you any favors.”

“Understood,” said Persephone. “Continue.”

“Second, if I ask you a question, you actually answer it. No looking mysterious and walking away. I don’t care if you’re a goddess, that’s no excuse to be rude.”

Persephone smiled. “Again, understood. I’m honestly not here to hurt you.”

“Then why didn’t you tell me?” Velveteen sounded suddenly lost. “I mean, I’ve known for years that Spring had a claim on me. I’ve met the Easter Bunny before. I always figured my tenure here would be about dancing eggs and fake grass, not...not harvest goddesses and the need for renewal. You knew about Supermodel. You knew she was killing all the other animuses. You could have said something. You could have stopped her.”

“No, I couldn’t have,” said Persephone gently. “My reach is limited in the modern world. There’s only so much I’m allowed to do, so much I’m allowed to interfere. Spring had no claim on Supermodel once she turned her back on the cycle of things, and so Spring wasn’t permitted to get in her way when she started doing wrong. I couldn’t warn you. All I can do is help you now, if you’ll let me.”

Velveteen was silent for a long while. Finally, she nodded. “All right,” she said. “What do we first?”

“Come,” said Persephone. “I’ll take you to meet the others.” She held out her hand. Velveteen took it, and they walked away together, into the springtime that never ends.

Sponsorship: Lost Violet is awesome.

2014-11-18T00:59:24Z

I cry indulgence, for I was on a plane: this sponsorship is actually for November 16th, and was purchased by the lovely and endearing Lost Violet, whose praises we sing.

Lost Violet is smart, funny, savvy, quick to adapt and to engage, and in all ways makes the world better. I am proud to call her my friend. If she is your friend, you should be too. If not, I hope you have a friend just like her.

She makes life good.

Sponsorship: Velveteen Presents The Princess vs. Public Relations.

2014-11-01T23:39:25Z

Title: Velveteen Presents The Princess vs. Public Relations.
Summary: And now for something completely different. Velveteen is gone, and the Princess still has a job to do. No matter how much she doesn’t want to do it. Today's story is brought to you by Rob and Larissa. Thanks, Rob and Larissa!

***

The Princess scowled at her reflection. Her reflection scowled back. The brightly colored birds that were in the process of arranging her hair in a complicated chignon--she thought they might be lorikeets, which made sense; lorikeets were the best at really elaborate braids--didn’t scowl. Their beaks weren’t made for it, and besides, they had other things on their minds, like making her presentable before she had to face her public.

“I know y’all have only my best interests at heart, and I know you’d never do anything that I wasn’t comfortable with, which is how I know that those are rhinestones you’re tucking into my curls, and not actual diamonds,” she said, her voice as sweet and deadly as rhododendron honey. “I have to look humble and like I appreciate my station, and that means not accessorizing with more money than some families see in a year.”

One of the birds stopped braiding long enough to chirp something apologetic, before it returned to hairdressing. The Princess sighed.

“I know rhinestones never look as good in the photographs; that isn’t the point,” she said. But she didn’t tell the birds to stop, because really, looking good in the photographs was the point. Even if it meant wearing so many jewels that she felt like she was about to be the target of a complicated heist. Even if it meant putting on the sort of undergarments that pushed her boobs up until they became a virtual shelf.

Even if it meant spending a perfectly good afternoon--one that could have been spent on visiting children who needed a moment of her attention, or fighting crime, or hell, just watching television away from the public eye--answering questions for a bunch of vultures who wanted nothing more than to see her fail. The media conglomerate that paid for her insurance and kept her away from organizations like The Super Patriots, Inc. was generally happy to let her do whatever she liked with her time, especially since her powers came with their very own innate morality clause. But occasionally they asked her to step up and face the press, and when that happened, she didn’t really have any other options.

A raccoon slunk shyly forward, holding a tube of lipstick in each paw. The Princess looked thoughtfully between them before picking the slightly darker shade. It was still more “rose petals at dawn” than “blood of my enemies,” but every little bit helped.

“All right, darlings: thank you for all your efforts. I’m as pretty as I’m going to get.” Pretty enough to stop a heart, if she used it right. The Princess gave her reflection one last lingering look before she stood and turned away from her mirror. This was the life she had always wanted, the life she had dreamed about and wished for on every star. If she had to pay the piper every once in a while, well.

There were worse prices to be paid. Carabelle Miller took a deep breath, squared her shoulders, and marched off to face her public.

*

Since its founding, The Super Patriots, Inc. has managed to control a dominant share of the world’s superhumans, largely through control of the legislature and active recruitment of individuals too young to be licensed heroes without a corporate sponsor. Those individuals not under the control of The Super Patriots, Inc. have traditionally been branded as supervillains, save in the rare cases where doing so would have been too difficult to be profitable.

Consider the case of Michael “Flying Good Guy Man” Ward of Columbus, Ohio. Exposed at a young age to the same radioactive maple syrup as was responsible for such heroes as Majesty and Action Dude, and such committed villains as Property Damage and Boom Boom Pow, Michael was exactly the same sort of individual who was usually sought out by the company as an asset. Michael had also been born with Down’s syndrome. The company neither extended an offer of support for his parents, or an offer of employment for Michael, who went on to become a beloved hero in his local community, receiving his license directly from the state at the age of sixteen. He flew, fought, and served the public good, all without The Super Patriots, Inc. guiding his steps. While the company never admitted their mistake, they did become more flexible regarding disability among their recruits.

Consider also the case of Sandy “Maid on the Shore” O’Neil, whose powers activated while she was sailing off the coast of Florida with the rest of her graduating class. There were no fatalities, but the entire vessel was swamped, and Sandy herself was marooned on a small island of her own creation. Such powerful local area manipulation should have made her a perfect candidate for recruitment, had it not been for the fact that Sandy’s powers had been discovered when she saw the boy who had assaulted her the week before prom come up onto the deck. He had been allowed on the trip by teachers who thought he deserved to enjoy graduation as much as anyone else--as much as the girl he had hurt. The Super Patriots, Inc. looked at Sandy’s case and decided that she was too “controversial.” She has been on that island ever since. Any boat which comes too close is gently nudged away. She seems happy enough; there is really no way for us to know.

And finally, there is the Princess.

Born Scott Miller, the child who would become the Princess showed no signs of super powers until the day when the Miller family visited a popular theme park designed around a series of beloved fairy tales. The afternoon parade began as normal before transforming into the greatest spectacle of magic, wonder, and glitter the world had ever known. Scott--who had been going by the name “Carrabelle” since her eighth birthday, when she had finally gathered the courage to explain her true gender to her parents--was lifted by birds onto a float that had materialized out of confetti and pieces of the neighboring gardens. There was a large song and dance routine, which everyone in the park seemed to instinctively know by heart. Several animatronics came briefly to life and explained their positions on topics ranging from climate change to the state of social media today. It was an eye-catching spectacle.

It was understandable when The Super Patriots, Inc. showed up at the Miller house the next morning, offering a contract, offering pleasant threats coached as promises. It was perhaps even more understandable that young Carrabelle was already gone, taking refuge in the safe castles and safer lawyers of the corporation that owned the park where she had awakened. She understood fairy tales well enough to become their living embodiment: she had been watching for an evil queen or a wicked vizier since the first bird said her name.

Most of those who were not acquired by The Super Patriots, Inc. were passed over, for whatever reason. Carrabelle Miller was the one who had the sense to run away.

*

The doorway appeared first. Vines grew out of the seemingly solid floor, climbing up the wall until they formed an arch and burst into large, bell-shaped flowers in every color of the rainbow. The flowers began to trumpet, and more vines burst forth, lacing quickly together until the arch contained a door. For a crowning touch, a red-capped mushroom sprouted where the doorknob should have been. The flowers stopped trumpeting. The mushroom turned, and the Princess stepped through into the courtyard that had been reserved for the press corp.

For a moment, no one spoke. That was understandable. The Princess would have been a beautiful woman in jeans and a sweatshirt--in fact, she frequently was a beautiful woman in jeans and a sweatshirt, since she didn’t see any point in dressing up for the birds. But this was one of her contractually obligated press conferences, and she had pulled out all the stops. She liked her corporate sponsors, she genuinely did. That didn’t mean she wanted to be summoned to a meeting about how she was disappointing them by not keeping up her side of the bargain.

When you make a wish, you pay the price. Carrabelle Miller had known that at a far younger age than most children. She was happy to keep paying all her life, as long as she never had to give her wish away.

Her dress was platinum and dark blue, technically, with a scattering of what looked like diamonds but were probably rhinestones, no really, across the bodice and the long, sheer cape that descended from her shoulders to trail behind her. And that was all well and good; that was what would come through in the pictures. It was a beautiful dress. A smaller version was probably already in production for the company’s official Superheroine Princess doll line. But in person, it was nothing so simple. It was the color of midnight and moonlight, the color of running down the palace steps barefoot, with all the weight of the story crashing down behind you. It was the color of wishes made from high towers, and of wishing stars glittering in a cloudless sky. It was perfect, and as she walked across the small courtyard to the podium, it genuinely stole the breath from the assembled reporters.

The Princess rested her gloved hands gently atop the podium, turning her head so that the sunlight filtering down through the evergreens planted around the courtyard would glitter off the diamonds in her hair. Her tiara didn’t need the help: it always caught the light, no matter where she was standing. Some of the reporters remembered that they had jobs to do and began snapping pictures. The Princess held her position. She knew what she looked like. This courtyard was mostly used for perfect “fairy tale weddings,” surrounded as it was by trees and elegant hotel architecture. In the distance, the spires of the park’s central castle rose, centered behind her, like a reminder of who she was and what she could do.

Finally, the Princess judged that they had been taking her picture long enough. She smiled, leaning very slightly forward so that the podium’s in-built microphone would pick her up, and asked, in a conversational tone, “How y’all doing? I haven’t seen most of you since the last time we had this little get-together.”

A few of the reporters replied with “fine,” or with inquiries about her own health. Most just shouted for her attention, already getting down to the meat of the thing.

The Princess swallowed the urge to sigh. This was what she liked the least about this little ritual. No one wanted to talk to her: they just wanted to get her to slip up and admit to something titillating, something that would sell their papers and tarnish her image. As if she didn’t understand that for her, image was everything; as if she would risk it all for a drunken tryst or a stolen cigarette. She didn’t care what the reporters thought of her. Most of them were sure that she had a whole secret second life that they could profit from, if they could just uncover it. It was what the children thought that mattered. She was never going to do anything to endanger what those children thought.

“Yes, in the front row,” she said, pointing to a reporter who had at least been polite enough to raise his hand, rather than just shouting.

“Miss Miller, what do you have to say about the recent directorial changes at The Super Patriots, Inc.? The corporation has tried repeatedly to recruit you. Do you feel that the new leadership may change your answer?”

“Not in the slightest.” It was a softball question: he had probably been planted, or at least encouraged by management, and she was grateful for that. It was best if she could start with something that didn’t hurt to answer. “I believe that the Claw and Lake Pontchartrain will make excellent CEOs for The Super Patriots. They have a good vision for the team, and they understand how to work with others. At the same time, I am very happy where I am. I’m in a team with the children of the world, and they don’t need me taking on another boss.”

“Miss Miller, do you feel as if the independent heroes of the world have a responsibility to come together to monitor the new Super Patriots, to avoid further abuses of their power?”

The question had come from one of the newer reporters. She hadn’t called on him. The Princess turned in his direction and smiled sweetly. There was nothing about her expression that could be called anything but pleasant, and yet it still somehow managed to be full of knives. “What paper are you with, sugar?”

“I’m with The Powers Gazette,” said the reporter. He was starting to look nervous. Good. A little nervousness would serve him well.

“New to the beat?” The Princess kept smiling. “I guess you haven’t been to one of these press conferences before. I’ll answer anything I’m asked, but manners are important here. You raise your hand if you want to ask me a question. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the reporter, shrinking down in his seat.

“Thank you. Now, as to your question, no, I don’t believe the independent heroes should be providing oversight for The Super Patriots, Inc. They’re a good company that got led astray. They have government watchdogs keeping that from happening again. As to the rest of us, we all have cities or states or theme parks,” she paused to allow for laughter, “that we’re tasked to protect. If we spent all our time watching our peers to be sure that they wouldn’t do anything wrong, we’d be neglecting the people who count on us.”

The reporter raised his hand. The Princess’s heart sank. She did her best not to let it show on her face. Follow-up questions about things other than her wardrobe were almost always bad. Still, she nodded, giving him permission to continue. Anything else would have been taken as cowardice, and she couldn’t have that. Fairy tale princesses weren’t cowards. Neither were superheroes.

“Go ahead,” she said.

“You mentioned the new government regulations controlling superhumans and their powers,” said the reporter. “What do you think of the restrictions that are being placed on the animus power class? Do you feel as if this is a proportionate response to the situation with Supermodel?”

The Princess took a sharp breath, feeling her smile die. She didn’t try to summon it back. It would have been inappropriate, under the circumstances, and she was glad of that. Sometimes, smiling was the worst part. “You know, there’s been a lot of focus on Supermodel. How she went bad, how she dragged the company down with her, and I don’t think it’s wrong to look there for answers. She was a good woman once, and if she lost sight of that, it was at least in part because there was no one to teach her about her own powers. I’m not seeing that much focus on Velveteen. She was an animus too, and she brought Supermodel down. No power is inherently good or bad. It’s all in how people choose to use it.”

“It’s interesting that you should mention Velveteen,” said the reporter. He didn’t raise his hand this time. This was what he had been angling toward all along. “No one has seen her since the battle at The Super Patriots, Inc. We have only your word, and the word of the other heroes involved, as to what happened. She has never come forth to give a statement. It’s been a year. Do you know the whereabouts of Velma ‘Velveteen’ Martinez, and are you concealing her from the authorities?”

Damn you, thought the Princess. Aloud, she said, “I do not. She came to the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle after the fight, to recover from her injuries and rest. Then she left. I don’t know where she went, and I haven’t heard from her. I wish I would. She is a very good friend of mine, and I love her dearly. I worry about her.”

“Miss Miller--” began the reporter.

The Princess held up her hand, stopping him. “No more,” she said. “I told you we raised our hands here, and you ignored it, because you wanted to use me to score points against my friend. Velveteen never did anything wrong. She gave up her childhood because people she thought were on her side weren’t, and then they harried her through her adulthood, until she finally became the hero they’d never really wanted her to be. Now she’s gone, and I’m worried about her, and you want to use me to hurt her more. It’s not going to happen, and I’ll thank you to leave her alone. She deserves better than the treatment she’s received.”

It was rare for the Princess to lose her temper during one of these sessions, although it wasn’t entirely unheard of. Everyone was quiet for a moment, scribbling notes or simply staring. Finally, cautiously, another hand went up.

“Yes?” said the Princess.

“Princess, who made the dress you’re wearing today?”

“Do you like it?” The Princess stepped out from behind the podium and did a little twirl, winding her train around her legs, before returning to her original position. “The dress was made by my usual tailors, which is to say, several skilled raccoons, pine martins, and squirrel monkeys. They’ve been paid for their labor, before you ask, although none of them wanted money. Most woodland creatures operate on what’s considered an alternate revenue stream. The base design was by Grace Yant of Southern California, who submitted it through our spring portal for my wardrobe. She won annual passes to the park for herself and her family, and a dinner with me at the Castle. She’s a very talented little girl.” Her original drawing had been more scribble and less sketch, but it had been clear enough for the raccoons, who were accustomed to working from less.

The next several questions were in the same vein, softballs about her wardrobe, her work in the parks, and her volunteer duties. The Princess answered them with dutiful enthusiasm, trying not to sound like she was utterly bored and would rather have been virtually anywhere else on the planet. The hour was winding down when the new reporter, the one who’d asked about Velveteen, put his hand up again.

The Princess gritted her teeth. She wanted to tell the man where he could shove his questions, and suggest that he follow them with his notebook and recorder. But she knew better. This little display was to prove that she was still the sweet Southern girl she’d been since she went to work for the company. It made the shareholders happy, and it kept things going smoothly. If she wanted the world to stay the way it was, she had to play along. No matter how much she hated it.

“Yes, sugar?” she said, through gritted teeth.

“Mr. Miller, can you please explain to our readers how it is that you feel comfortable taking up the role of ‘fairy tale princess’ when you’re biologically more suited to the role of fairy tale prince? Do you feel as if lying to the children of the world is justified by the bottom line of the corporation you work for? Have they forced you into this role against your will?” The reporter leaned forward, expression suddenly predatory. He thought he had found a weak spot, and he was going in for the kill. “My readers are very interested in your answer.”

“Not that interested, if they couldn’t be bothered to look up every other interview that’s ever asked me the same question,” said the Princess coolly. There had been a time, when she was still young and terrified of having her new life taken away, when she had tried to forget where she’d come from. The corporation had been happy to let her hide. They liked their new superheroine uncomplicated and uncontroversial, and since no one who’d been there for her coronation had spoken out against her, they were going to keep their mouths shut for as long as they could.

But time had moved on, one day at a time. Carrabelle had grown older, and eventually grown up, and realized that her silence wasn’t helping anyone--not even herself. There were little girls out there who were just like she’d been, trapped in the wrong bodies and trying to convince their parents that they knew themselves all the way down to the bone. There were little boys being forced into parts they’d never asked to play, raging at the center of their shells of false femininity. She was supposed to be the princess of all the children in the world, not just the ones who’d been lucky enough to be born with an outside that already matched their inside.

“If you’d done your research before you came in here looking for some juicy gossip, you’d have found the interview I gave on my eighteenth birthday, the one where I brought pictures of myself from before I convinced my family to allow me to live as a girl,” said the Princess. Her voice was tight, and the more observant reporters noted how many birds had appeared, roosting on the trees all around them. If she lost control, Hitchcock was going to be proud. “You’d have been able to read what I said then, which was, I think, about as well-thought out as any discussion of the topic is ever going to be. I’ve never lied to anyone. I was born a girl. I will die a girl. The fact that the hopes and dreams of the children of the world pointed to me and said ‘her, she’s the best princess we can find, she’ll take the best care of the story’ should tell you more than anything else that I have never deceived anyone. It’s not my fault that the doctors put a label on me before I was old enough to choose one for myself.”

“So you admit that you were born male,” said the reporter. He didn’t raise his hand this time: the pretense of civility was gone. The Princess was almost glad. If he wasn’t playing nicely, she didn’t have to do it either.

“I admit that I was assigned male at birth, by people who were not telepaths, who did not have the ability to look into my mind and heart and see that I was already a little girl. I was a girl when I took my first breath. I’ll be a girl when I take my last. You want to sit there, secure in the gender that they gave you when you were born, and judge me? I am a princess. The story chose me, because it knew what I was, just like I knew. And you know what? All those little girls who idolize me, all those little boys who ask me if I’ve got a prince out there, none of them care what the doctors said when I popped out of my mama. They look at me and they see a woman. Children are the magic mirrors of the human race. They see the truth when it’s in front of them.” The Princess shook her head. “You can try to paint me whatever way you want, sir. If you’ve got a bigot’s brush to use, well, I suppose that’s your problem and not mine. I think it’s time for you to go. The adults would like to have a press conference now.”

She turned pointedly back to the other reporters. Some of them had their hands up. Others were looking at the newcomer with expressions of mingled horror and pity on their faces, like they couldn’t believe he had come to the press conference without doing his research first. Many of them had discussed trans issues with the Princess, sometimes in this very forum. She was always happy to talk. She just wasn’t happy about being accused of intentional falsehood, and most of them couldn’t blame her. No one liked to be called a liar.

“I will not be ignored,” snarled the new reporter, rising from his seat.

The Princess snapped her fingers. The large bear that had been waiting by the entrance, looking like nothing so much as a rustic armchair, pulled itself to its full height and lumbered toward the reporter. “No, sweetie, you won’t,” said the Princess. “Bruno’s not going to ignore you. He’s just going to show you the way out.”

The bear reached for the reporter. The reporter pulled a pen from inside his jacket and blasted the bear across the courtyard with a deluge of red ink. The rest of the reporters, who had been working the superhero beat long enough to recognize trouble when they saw it, began scrambling away. Some of them even left their notebooks behind.

“You will not suppress this story!” shouted the reporter. Red ink ran down his hand and arm, swirling and spreading until it covered his entire body in a thin film. He lowered his arm. The film popped, revealing a black bodysuit with the letters FD on the chest in red. “The people will have Full Disclosure!”

The Princess stared at him. “Did you seriously just name drop at me?” she asked incredulously. “Did you stand there, in my place, during my press conference, and drop your name like it was something I was going to want to pick up? Honey, that’s not just crass, that’s downright unprofessional. Who taught you how to be a supervillain? Did they have credentials?”

“I ask the questions here!” shouted Full Disclosure. He turned his pen on her, shooting out a huge gout of red ink. For a moment, the Princess disappeared, wiped from view by the gory editorial curtain.

Silence fell across the courtyard, broken only by the sound of the birds ruffling their feathers in the trees. It was a silence so profound that when the Princess snapped her fingers again, it sounded like a gunshot. The red ink fell away, revealing her in her still-pristine dress the color of midnight and moonlight, covered in diamonds that glittered like stars in the night sky. She looked at Full Disclosure pityingly.

“A princess never gets her best gown dirty,” she said.

He shrieked something about ethical journalism and blasted her again. This time, a curtain of glitter appeared in front of her, absorbing and deflecting the ink. The Princess started to look annoyed.

“I don’t think you quite understand what you’re doing,” she said. “You’re attacking me on my turf, with thousands of children who believe in me so close that I can feel them. You really think you’re going to get anywhere? There are times and places when I’m vulnerable. This isn’t one of them. Now pack your pin and get out, before I have to do something unladylike.”

“I am not one of your lapdogs, here to be misled with facts!” shouted Full Disclosure. He turned his pen on her for the third--and, as it happened, final--time. The glitter absorbed the ink again, and when the deluge stopped, the Princess sighed.

“I really wish you hadn’t done that,” she said. She clapped her hands once, twice, three times, and the birds that had been roosting so peacefully in the trees took to the wing. Some of them were sweet little things, bluebirds and sparrows and starlings, as befitted the living incarnation of the dreams of children everywhere. Far more were hawks and eagles and snowy owls, crows and ravens and turkey vultures, as befitted Carrabelle Miller, who wore her gowns proudly, but never forgot where she had come from, or who she was, or how hard she was willing to fight to stay exactly where she was.

The birds descended on the screaming supervillain, who blasted them with gouts of ink, and swatted at them with his frantically flailing hands, and did everything within his power to hold their talons at bay. In the end, he even turned to run. It was far too late by then, of course; he had been lost the moment he chose to turn his red pen on the Princess after she had asked him nicely to stop.

The other reporters watched silently as the birds carried him, kicking and screaming, off into the blue storybook sky. Finally, one of them raised his hand.

“Yes?” said the Princess. “You can all come back to your seats now, by the way. Unless one of you is also a supervillain in disguise, I think the major excitement’s over for the day.”

The reporters returned to their seats. The one who had raised her hand asked, “Where are the birds taking him?”

“Oh, corporate security.” The Princess smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. “They’ll make sure he understands that while becoming a supervillain is a personal choice, it is a choice that comes with consequences. And sometimes those consequences will include being blacklisted from all the products and services provided by a large, multi-national corporation that doesn’t appreciate people being disruptive during their official press conferences. He didn’t technically break any laws, since the use of superpowers is approved in this courtyard and no one was hurt, so we don’t need to involve the authorities. I just hope he doesn’t have any children.”

Nervous laughter followed her last statement. Many of the reports did have children, and were all too aware of how miserable their lives would be if they were suddenly cut off from the Princess’s parent corporation. She looked expectantly around the group.

“All right,” she said. “Who’s next?”

*

The press conference had devolved into predictable blandness after that. Anyone who might have been considering a question that was a little bit daring or boundary-pushing or, God forbid, interesting had decided to hold it back after seeing their supervillainous colleague carted off by the birds. And dull as it was, it had still managed to drag on for another two hours before her handlers had come in and rescued her for the afternoon parade.

Finally, another two hours after that, the Princess sat at her vanity and stared at her reflection, willing herself to find the energy to start removing her mascara. If she didn’t, she was going to fall asleep with it still on, and no amount of childhood faith and trust could keep her face from sticking to the pillow while she slept. It just couldn’t be done.

“You survived,” she informed herself sternly. “You don’t have to do this for another six months. Now be a big girl, and wash your makeup off while you still have a chance.”

It didn’t help. She was still exhausted, and her face was still a sea of cosmetics.

She could have called the raccoons to come and wipe it off, she knew, but they always used too much makeup remover, and they weren’t good about keeping it out of her eyes. It was almost better to risk sticking to the pillow.

Someone knocked on the doorframe. The Princess brightened immediately, turning her chair around and leveling an accusing finger at the figure standing there. “You are late,” she said, sounding almost triumphant about it. “The press conference ended ages ago. You missed an honest-to-goodness supervillain. The birds carried him off. Now what do you have to say for yourself?”

“I got hung up at the North Pole,” said the woman in the doorway. She was slim, with pale skin that glittered slightly when she moved, like all that glitter that the Princess had been slinging around earlier had somehow become a part of her. Her hair was white, but not just white, no: it held all the hidden colors of the aurora, sprinkled through it like secrets. Her cheeks were rosy, and her lips were faintly pursed, like she was fighting not to smile. She looked tired. “I’m sorry. I would have been here sooner if I could have.” She stopped then, looking at the Princess hopefully, like she was expecting something.

“Aw, honey, I’m sorry,” said the Princess, rising from her stool and pulling her robe a little tighter around her waist. “I shouldn’t pick at you, I know that. I just was really hoping you’d make it. What with Vel gone and everything, I feel like you and me should stick together as tight as we can. Do you need some cocoa? I know mirror travel takes a lot out of you, I don’t understand why your daddy doesn’t set you up with some flying reindeer of your own...”

Jacqueline’s face fell. “Santa Claus is a very busy man,” she said, in the sort of tone that managed to imply problems at home and beg for understanding at the same time. It was a nice trick. She’d clearly had a great deal of practice. “I’m fine with using the Snow Queen’s mirror if that’s what’s easiest for everyone.” She looked at the Princess carefully. “Is that...is that all you wanted to ask me about?”

The Princess frowned. “I don’t know what else I could have needed, sugar. I wanted you to be here, but it’s all right that you weren’t. I’ll tell you what. Help me get this makeup off, and we can go spend the afternoon slumming around the park, playing tourist. You know you get to skip lines when you’re with me.”

Jacqueline Claus, daughter of Santa Claus, heir to the North Pole, did her best to force herself to smile. It felt weak and insincere to her, but the other woman didn’t seem to notice. The Princess was already digging for makeup remover and a clean washcloth, chattering a mile a minute about the press conference and all the fun that they were going to have at the park. It should have been reassuring. It should have felt like normalcy, and home.

But this wasn’t normal, and this place wasn’t her home, and no one seemed to notice that anything had changed. The world had been sliced open and had healed around her, substituting her for another girl, one with skin like a winter sky and hair like a blizzard in the process of forming. She didn’t belong here. She had no idea how she was going to find the way home.

“Jack? Honey, you still with me?”

Jacqueline turned toward the Princess, forcing herself to smile. It was easier than it should have been. This woman looked so like her own Carrabelle, and she was so lonely. “Sorry. I was just thinking. Come over here, and let me get that makeup off of you.”

The two women sat together, the one helping the other to restore her sense of normalcy, even though her own normal was something far away and half-forbidden, and everything was peaceful, for a time.

cadhla @ 2014-09-05T20:20:00

2014-09-05T19:20:29Z

We walked through the mud to the sound of the cows,
Their thundering footsteps, their wondering loughs,
Under the roof of the rain as it fell
As we slipped into ballad to find Tam Lin's well.

With fairy fruit sweetness still coating our lips,
The roses and elderflower swallowed in sips,
We entered the green, with its bitter-bright smell,
As we slipped into ballad to find Tam Lin's well.

And the blackberry briars were a veil to be worn,
Though they rendered our fingers all tattered and torn.
We followed the road as it cut through the dell
As we slipped into ballad to find Tam Lin's well.

We sang to the sky and we sang to the stone,
As we stood on a bridge never seen, so long known,
And the count of the crows was a tale we can't tell
As we slipped into ballad to find Tam Lin's well.

The bridge bore us back to the right and road,
Where we walked well aware of the debt that we owed,
And the world was an egg, with the sky for a shell,
As we slipped into ballad to find Tam Lin's well.

We were seeking a stanza, a chorus, a phrase
In the song that had shaped us for years and for days...
And what we found's a treasure we never could sell.
We have walked out of ballad. We saw Tam Lin's well.

Sponsorship: Velveteen vs. Global Warming.

2014-06-30T17:06:43Z

Title: Velveteen vs. Global Warming.
Summary: The trials of a formerly retired superheroine are destined never to be done, especially when the heroine in question was foolish enough to agree to serve the seasonal lands... Today's adventure is brought to you by Rob and Larissa! Thanks, Rob and Larissa!

***

Time ran differently in the Winter. At least, Velveteen thought time ran differently: it was hard to say, because she no longer had anything to compare it to. Unlike Jack Frost and the Snow Queen (and Jackie, missing Jackie, deserter Jackie, where are you), Velveteen was still considered a trainee by the season: she never got to go back into the Calendar Country, where days followed each other in a linear progression from now to then, and didn’t look back. She had to stay in Winter until her term was over and she moved on to Spring.

Winter, where the days and nights melted together, sometimes interrupting each other in the middle of what should have been an afternoon or an evening. Winter, where Santa’s Village was always buzzing with preparations for Christmas, even when it should have been the middle of July. Winter, where it was sometimes mild and sometimes fierce, but never really warm. Maybe that was for the best. Velveteen hadn’t started melting yet—not even when she was summoned to Santa’s cottage and forced to stand near his ever-burning hearth—but she didn’t trust that to mean she would never melt at all. Being made of snow was weird.

Velveteen trudged toward the center of the Village, two snow reindeer following her, dragging a sled loaded down with logs cut from the heart of the deepest forest in the season. Everything smelled like pitch and pine. She had raised an army of snow beavers to chew through the trees, calling them out of the substance of the snowdrifts around her. That was one thing about the way Winter had twisted her powers: she no longer needed to make the things she animated. As long as she was surrounded by snow, she could convince it that it really wanted to belong to her. It would reshape itself from there, answering her command as eagerly as any doll or teddy bear.

Not that the dolls and teddy bears of the North Pole were very eager to answer when she called. She had snuck into the Workshop more than once, waving her hands and begging the toys to come to her. None of them had so much as twitched. Winter had given her new strengths, but it had stolen the old ones, and it was impossible for her not to resent that.

There was a lot to resent, here in the cold.

Frozen through, more snow than skin, Velveteen walked through Santa’s Village, and the creatures she had created followed close behind her. Elves and penguins peeked out the windows of their homes, but none of them moved to greet her, or did anything that might attract her attention. They had already learned, some of them the hard way, that the newest Spirit of the Season was not inclined to thaw.

Santa was more hopeful, or maybe he was just more powerful; sometimes the two were essentially one and the same. He was waiting outside his cottage with his hands on his hips, waiting for her to return. When she came around the curve, her reindeer behind her, he smiled, mustache twitching upward, and let loose a volley of his classic “Ho, ho, ho” laughter.

Velveteen scowled at him. Santa sighed.

“If you’re not careful, your face is going to freeze that way,” he said, letting his hands fall away from his hips. “Did you have any trouble?”

“My face already froze this way,” said Velveteen. “No trouble. There were some big scary wolves in the forest, but I made bigger, scarier ones, and they backed off. Where do you want the lumber?”

“Vel—”

“I can leave it here, or I can deliver it straight to the Workshop. Whatever works best for you.” Velveteen went still and simply looked at Santa Claus, waiting for him to tell her where to go. One advantage of her new, frozen form: she no longer seemed to need to breathe when she didn’t want to. As a consequence, she could stand motionless for hours at a time. It was like being stared at by a particularly unfriendly statue, and no one—not even Santa—found that comfortable.

The snow reindeer were just as motionless as their mistress. After bearing up under their icy stares for almost a minute, Santa sighed again, and said, “Take them to the back of the Workshop. The elves will know what to do with them.”

“As you like,” said Velveteen. She turned and began walking away. Her reindeer followed her. Santa watched them go, and said nothing.

There was nothing left for him to say. He knew she wouldn’t listen.

*

As we explore the nature and protean origins of the Seasonal Lands, it is perhaps most important that we consider their relationship to human belief—and more, to superhuman belief. Save in the cases of aliens or super-powered animals or heroes who were born in the Seasonal Lands themselves, superhumans are still humans. Their beliefs, their hopes and dreams and fantasies, all still feed into the great wellspring that shapes reality. Why are the keepers of the Seasonal Lands essentially superheroes? Maybe because everyone, even those who are responsible for protecting mankind, dreams of being protected.

But because of the nature of the Seasonal Lands, they lack a certain...flexibility in their heroes. Truth has often been called stranger than fiction: well, reality is stranger than the holidays it dreams of. Heroes affiliated with the Summer will have powers related to sunshine and green, growing things. Thanks to the placement of the 4th of July and other such independence-related holidays, the trappings of American patriotism have also become connected with the Summer heroes, who may shoot fireworks from their hands, or be able to run a perfect barbeque.

Spring heroes celebrate Easter and newly-sprouting flowers and the healing of the world. Autumn heroes celebrate harvest and the turning of the leaves and Halloween, which spreads its skeleton fingers over all. Winter...

Winter celebrates the freeze, in all its forms. There is generosity in Winter, but only for Santa Claus. Everything else is about the cold.

*

Velveteen stopped outside the Workshop and waited. Waiting came easy to her now, even though it never had before; she rather thought that she could patrol forever in her current state, sitting on rooftops for hours or even days as she waited for a crime to be committed, without ever getting restless or bored. Of course, that was never going to happen, since Santa was never going to let her leave the Winter: she was going to be captive to the cold until her term of service was up. The small part of her that was still warm enough to worry wondered whether she would be given back her flesh and blood when her service ended, or whether he would send her to the Spring still frozen through.

When she had agreed to serve the seasons, she had promised to give each of them a fair chance at winning her over. She was starting to realize that they had never promised the same to each other. If Winter wanted to make her constitutionally incapable of giving her allegiance to someone else, she couldn’t stop it. She wouldn’t know where to begin.

She had expected this to be easier. She had expected it to be brutally hard, but she had still expected it to be easier. She had expected to be among friends, in a body that had a heartbeat, not frozen through and alone.

The Workshop door creaked open, and an elf appeared. He had the pointed green hat of a senior plaything engineer, and the anxious expression of a man who had drawn the short straw and was now being forced to walk straight into a lion’s den.

“Good afternoon, Miss Velveteen,” he said, eyeing first the woman and then the logs. “You got the wood we needed? That was very kind of you.”

“True Christmas pine, harvested from the forest of the dire wolves,” said Velveteen. “They didn’t like me being there. I don’t think they appreciate having their trees taken.”

“No, they never have,” said the elf. He searched her face for signs of amusement, or at least interest, before he added, “There are parts of Winter that can’t be tamed. It’s counter to the idea of the season. It can’t all be toys and hot cocoa and skating with your friends, now can it?”

“I suppose not,” said Velveteen, who was none of those things. “Why do we need to take their trees, though? Why can’t we just leave them in peace? There’s plenty of pine near here, without wolves protecting it.”

“True enough, true enough, but it’s not the real pine if you don’t at least risk bleeding for it. We’ll use this to make things that need spirit, to go to the places where they’ll do the most good. Getting these trees was an act of heroism, even if it wasn’t heroic as you might understand the word.”

Velveteen turned to look at the trees, trying to imagine them becoming building blocks and rocking horses and given to children like she’d been, before her powers manifested and got her “rescued” by The Super Patriots, Inc. There had always been anonymous gifts through church groups and kindly strangers. Maybe some of them had been stranger than she could have dreamt at the time. She wanted to be happy to be helping those children. She wanted to be delighted to have made their lives a little brighter.

All she felt was cold.

“Do you need me to help you get the logs inside?” she asked. The elf shook his head, expression losing the slow ease that it had been acquiring. He was remembering what she was. He was remembering that here, in Winter, she was more weather than woman. “Good,” she said, and snapped her fingers.

The snow reindeer dissolved where they stood, creating shallow snowbanks that would soon blow away. The logs, and the sled, remained.

“Thank you again,” said the elf.

“I do what Santa commands,” said Velveteen, and turned to walk away. Her feet left no dents in the fresh-fallen snow. She might as well never have walked there at all.

Behind the elf, the door opened again, and another elf stuck her head outside. She had a red hat, and bells on her braids. “Is she gone?”

“She’s gone,” confirmed the first elf, turning to face his colleague. “I know we’re not supposed to think ill of Santa’s choices, but I hope she doesn’t stay. She’s too cold for this Winter.”

The second elf, who had been there longer, and had lived through more Spirits of the Season than she cared to think, nodded. “She belongs to an earlier time. Now come on. Let’s get these logs inside.”

There was always work to be done, in Winter. It helped to prevent dwelling on things that weren’t as pleasant as the process of building toys.

*

Velveteen had no other chores to do: no trees to fell or snow monsters to fight. She made her way back to her little house on the outskirts of the Village, which would never feel like home, but at least felt like a place where she wouldn’t have to endure the stares of the elves or the cold regard of the Snow Queen, whose mild dislike of the anima seemed to have blossomed into full-blown hatred somewhere between Velveteen’s arrival in Winter and her attempts to serve the season properly. It would have been easier to endure if Jackie had been around, but Vel’s so-called friend was still absent, and her parents wouldn’t talk about her.

At least she still slept. She might not have a heart, and she might not be alive in the classical sense, but she still got tired, and she was still capable of sleeping. If she hadn’t been capable of sleeping, she wasn’t sure she would still have been sane. Not that she was entirely sure about it anyway. She was a woman made of snow, living in a world that bowed and danced at her command. If that wasn’t the definition of some sort of breakdown, she wasn’t sure what was.

She waved her hand over the cutting board on her table. Carrots and parsnips and turnips appeared, all of them made out of snow. She sighed as she picked up the ice-bladed vegetable knife that rested next to the board. She hated root vegetable night. The snow roots would taste the way she thought they should, but they would still be nothing more than frozen water, melting on her tongue. She missed chewing. Out of all the things she’d ever expected to miss in her life, she had never thought she would have to miss chewing.

She was dicing the snow carrots when a voice at her elbow said, “You should really cut away from yourself. Cutting toward yourself makes it more likely that you’re going to get hurt.”

Velveteen yelped, dropping the knife, and whirled to see a pale, dark haired girl in a white dress standing behind her. The girl was wearing a wreath of candles around the top of her head, and their warm, golden light filled the room with dancing shadows. She was lovely, in a fragile, porcelain angel sort of way.

Velveteen scowled at her.

“Lucy,” she said, trying to pack as much irritation and disdain as possible into that single syllable. Years of practice had made her an excellent packer. “What are you doing here? I got Santa his Christmas pine, just like he asked, and I told Mrs. Claus I wouldn’t show up for another community skating night. Once was enough.” Snubbing she could have handled. The running and screaming had been a bit much.

“Oh, no, it’s not about the trees, you did a great job with the trees,” protested Lucy. “It’s not about the skating, either, even if I do think you should give them another chance. They just didn’t expect the big snow grizzly bear, that’s all.”

“It’s not my fault that they’re short-sighted.” Velveteen knew, distantly, that she should have felt bad about frightening the elves. But regret and shame both lived in the heart, and she didn’t have one of those anymore. If Winter didn’t want her terrifying its permanent residents, then Winter shouldn’t—in its manifestation as Aurora—have taken her heart away.

“I guess,” said Lucy. Then she sobered, looking at Velveteen with eyes that were older than the face around them, and asked, “Vel, do you know what time it is?”

“Sorry, I left my watch with my other body,” said Velveteen.

“It’s about the be the Spring Equinox in the Calendar Country,” said Lucy. “Persephone is going to walk from Winter into Spring, and since you’re supposed to go there next, we figured you could go with her. It’ll be a little easier for you to grow back into yourself if you’re in the company of a harvest goddess. They tend to simplify things.”

Velveteen’s unnecessary breath caught in her throat as she went perfectly still, trying to make herself believe what the girl was saying. “I could...you mean I get to leave? I get to move on?” I get to have skin again, real skin, the color of worn brown velvet, and not this snowy bullshit? I get to have a heart, and a heartbeat? I get to be real?

“Yes, you get to be real, just like the rabbit you were named after,” said Lucy, and for once Velveteen was so overcome with joy and terror and delight than she couldn’t even get angry about her mind possibly being read. All the feelings were muted, but they were stronger than anything she had felt since the Winter had stolen her heart away. “You just have one more task to accomplish, and then you get to go. We’ll wait here for your word, and hope that you’ll choose us.”

“What do you need me to do?” Velveteen asked.

Lucy told her.

Velveteen stared. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, you have got to be kidding,” she said.

Lucy just smiled.

*

The edges of Winter were abrupt. One minute, she was walking over frozen tundra, with an army of snow creatures behind her: the next, there was nothing but blackness, and the soft sound of melting ice dripping down into the nothingness on the other side. Santa flicked the reins of his sleigh, bringing his team of reindeer to a halt. Next to him, Mrs. Claus fidgeted with her knitting and tried not to look at the pale, silent girl who was standing so close to the edge. She wanted to call her back, to beg her to step away from the abyss. She didn’t say anything. Everything they had given up, everything they had risked, had been for this moment. She wasn’t going to ruin things now.

Jack Frost drifted down from above as Lucy stepped out of the trees. The Snow Queen did not walk, or float, or anything so common; she simply appeared, forming herself out of the elements as easily as one of Velveteen’s snow bunnies. Velveteen glanced at her, a calculating expression on her face, and then looked away.

If she could control the creatures she called out of the snow, and the Snow Queen was made out of snow, maybe she could control the Snow Queen. But only if she had to: only if the Winter refused to let her go. Some part of her still remembered what it was to have a heart, and that part of her urged caution. If she crossed that line, it said, she might not be able to find the way back.

There was a glimmer of light in the sky overhead. It intensified, and Aurora appeared, shining at the center of it all like a star. Velveteen turned her impassive gaze on the living soul of Winter. Any capacity she might have had for being impressed was long since gone; all she had now was waiting.

Velveteen waited.

“Hello, Velveteen,” said Aurora, and smiled with a thousand shifting faces, so that it was impossible to say what she had looked like when the smile ended, only that she had been beautiful in her delight. “Have you enjoyed your time with us?”

“Oh, it’s been a real treat,” said Velveteen. “Lucy says I get to move on to Spring soon.”

“Lucy is correct,” said Aurora. “You’ve been an excellent servant of the season, Velveteen. I hope you will consider that we have been kind to you, when the time comes to make your final decision about where you belong.”

Silence would have been the wiser course of action, especially here, where the world dropped away, where her term in service to the Winter was almost at an end. Velveteen struggled to keep her lips pressed together, willing them to meld like two sheets of ice. But she couldn’t. Waiting had become a skill of hers, now that she was frozen solid; silence was never going to be that easy.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” she demanded. Her voice was too big and too loud for the silence at the edge of the world. It echoed, knocking snow off the trees and sending birds scattering into the air. “You froze my heart. You turned me into snow. You refused to let me have any contact with the one person in this season who’s actually my friend, maybe because oh, hey, this is a shitty way to treat someone who came to you in good faith. Now you hope that I’ll consider coming back to work for you forever? Why the hell would I want to do that?”

“I know you’ve been tired since you came here,” said Aurora. “I know you’ve been angry, and frustrated, and thwarted in the things you wanted to accomplish. But you haven’t cried, have you? You came here wounded and heartsick from the things you witnessed, and none of those wounds have pained you, because they belonged to another world. Did we freeze you? Yes. We took your pain away. We took your weeping away.”

“Tag needs me,” said Velveteen, voice unsteady. She didn’t want to believe what Aurora was saying. Sadly, even though she didn’t have a heart anymore, she remembered having one. She remembered how much pain she’d been in when she stepped through the wall between the worlds and landed in Winter’s eternal cold. She remembered funerals, and tears, and believing that nothing would ever be all right again.

She hadn’t had a single nightmare since she’d walked through the heart of Winter. There was something to be said for a life lived under a sheet of ice. It was a cold, cruel something, but still. It was there. She couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t.

“You would have woken him before you came here if you’d be certain that you had it in you,” said Aurora calmly. “The fact that you didn’t tells me that you were unsure of your own heart, even before we had to take it away. All that uncertainty will return, when you step into Spring. All that pain. All that grief. It was never destroyed, you know. It was only deferred.”

Velveteen was silent for a moment, considering Aurora’s words. Then she shook her head, and said, “Damn. I mean, I knew you were manipulative and willing to do whatever you needed to do in order to protect your season, and maybe I even respected that a little bit, but damn. You literally blocked off my ability to process grief, and now you’re going to dump me on Spring? Are you warning them? Do they at least get some sort of ‘how to handle your emotionally damaged superheroine’ pamphlet?”

“You chose who you would come to first,” said Aurora calmly. “It’s not Winter’s fault that we needed you to be capable of doing your job.”

“Right,” said Velveteen. “The part where it makes you emotional heroin is just a fun side effect. Let’s get down to it, okay? I don’t feel like listening to you anymore. Lucy said you had one last job for me to do. You want to tell me what you think I’m going to do for you?”

“You’re going to do what you were made to do, Velveteen, anima, most powerful life-bender of her generation, even if you never choose to embrace it the way you could. You’re going to save us all.”

“Swell,” said Velveteen. “That’s just what I always wanted to do.”

“No, it’s not,” said Aurora. “Isn’t it lucky for us that you don’t have a choice in the matter?”

*

Aurora led her to the very edge of the world, the place where the snowy landscape crumbled down into nothingness. The footing there was uncertain: Velveteen could feel the ground shifting and sinking beneath her feet, threatening to dump her into the abyss. Unlike Aurora, she couldn’t fly—she sometimes felt as if hers was the only power set in the world that hadn’t come up with some crappy excuse to let her take to the skies. She watched the snow falling into nothing with a wary eye, and wondered whether the last thing she was supposed to do for Winter was die.

“People used to think of Winter as an endless palace of snow, where the black mountains broke against the twilight sky, and the sun never fully rose,” said Aurora, as calmly as if they weren’t standing at the edge of everything. “They dreamt snowmen and ice bridges and cold. The Snow Queen and I both come from that era, you know. We’re older than anything else that remains in this world.”

“Uh, congratulations?” said Velveteen. “I’d really rather not plummet, if it’s all the same to you. Gravity and I have a sort of tumultuous relationship. I think it sucks.”

“Isn’t it convenient for you that the anthropomorphic ideas about emotions and the heart didn’t put sarcasm there?” asked Aurora. She was starting to look annoyed. Velveteen could only see that as a good thing. She found the living incarnation of Winter to be plenty annoying, and it was finally time to return the favor. “Winter has changed. Everything changes.”

“And now you’re a Hallmark card,” said Velveteen.

Aurora, who had not maintained her position as the living incarnation of Winter by being easily thrown off track, ground her perfect, ever-changing teeth together before she said, “Jack Frost came before your beloved Santa Claus. He was the beginning of a sea change, of people learning to love the cold, to see it as something other than an excuse for blood on the snow. The Industrial Revolution didn’t put an end to people freezing to death, but it certainly slowed it down. ‘Wintering in Hawaii’ became something people talked about doing.”

“I get that you’re being all mystic and ‘this is the folk process of reality’ here, but I’m pretty sure the people who lived in Hawaii had always wintered in Hawaii. Colonialism and having better boats doesn’t rewrite the world.”

“No, but it changes the stories people tell about the world—and while there were always Hawaiians, there were fewer of them than there were people who lived where the Winter had always been frozen to the core,” said Aurora. “The more people tell a story, the more sincerely true that story will become. So when the people who had previously lived in the cold began viewing snow as optional, the story changed.”

“Uh-huh,” said Velveteen.

“Winter began to get smaller. The country, not the season itself: we lost land as the concept of our eternal snowfall lost minds,” said Aurora. “More people were being born all the time, of course, so there were more people to believe in us, which kept us from melting away completely. It’s been a delicate balance for quite some time.”

“Uh-huh,” said Velveteen.

“Global climate change, on the other hand, has been an unanticipated problem.”

Velveteen blinked. “Wait, what? Global climate change? You mean the thing the scientists argue about, and then the weather manipulators roll their eyes and go fix the latest drought because who the hell lets people go without fresh water just because it stopped raining?”

“How often do your weather manipulators change the weather to start a blizzard?” asked Aurora. “No one complains when the sleet stops falling, or when the rain is one warm shower intended to kick start a harvest. No one objects to the snow going away a little sooner. Maybe if we lived in a world without superheroes people would take it more seriously, and stop counting on some savior swooping in at the last moment to set the weather right again. But we don’t live in that world, and the system gets a little more broken every day.”

“Pretty sure that if we lived in a world without superheroes, there would be no Winter to complain about not getting as many snow days,” said Velveteen. “What are you intending to do about it? I mean, what is my part in all this supposed to be?”

“You’re the most powerful anima of your generation. You heard me say that before, didn’t you? There’s no one currently living who can hold a candle to what you do with the beating heart of the world. You’re the strongest life-bender there is.”

“I don’t know if you caught this, or if you were too busy chilling in your mountain and fucking with people who thought they were among friends and hence would not be transformed into living snow golems while they weren’t looking, but if I’m the most powerful, it’s because Supermodel spent decades having animuses killed as soon as they started to manifest,” said Velveteen. “I only got away with existing because I had that whole ‘must have a face’ limitation going for me, and she thought it would be interesting to see what I turned into.”

“Have you ever heard the theory that energy is neither created nor destroyed, merely transmuted into something new? She killed uncounted anima and animus, striking them down before they could mature into their powers. All that energy had to go somewhere. If she’d left them alone, you would have been the pretty little puppeteer they tried to convince you to become. But she didn’t do that. She killed them, and some of their strength flowed to you, as the next loch on the line. You’re not the only one to benefit from her wholesale slaughter of your kind. You’re the strongest we currently have.”

Velveteen stared at her, too sickened and surprised to speak. When she finally found her voice, it was to demand, “Does it work that way for all the power sets? Does everyone get stronger through killing children?” I have to kill her if she says yes. I have to kill her and then I have to kill myself, because no one can know this, ever. No one can ever, ever know. Most supervillains were good about leaving children out of their schemes. If they found out that killing child heroes might make their creations and clones stronger, that would change.

Everything would change.

“No, just for you,” said Aurora. “Most of the energy goes where it will. But life likes to cleave to life, which means it passes one to the other, for as long as it possibly can. Right now, you are the strongest. More, right now, the world knows your story: the brave, maligned heroine who rose from retirement to topple a corrupt regime before vanishing from the face of the world. You’re still a tragic figure to tell stories about. That won’t last much longer. The narrative is changing, and you’ll be a villain again soon enough. So we need to act now, while the story is on your side.”

“Wait, what?” asked Velveteen. “How long have I been here?” Time ran differently in the Winter. She knew that, she knew that, but she hadn’t really been thinking about it being longer than the span of a season.

“Long enough,” said Aurora. “Longer than you think. So here is the thing you need to do for Winter, before we can allow you to leave. There’s snow in your veins. There’s ice in your heart. They were put there with the very best intentions, and you’ve nurtured them all this time, feeding them on your own freeze. Now I want you to let them out.”

“I don’t—”

“Winter has given you life. Now give it back, and give us another hundred years of cold.” Aurora looked at Velveteen, and there was no love in her eyes: not now. The time for kindness and making nice had passed. Velveteen thought she preferred it this way. At least they weren’t pretending anymore. “Freeze the sky, and I will hand you to Persephone myself.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Yes, you do,” said Aurora. She stepped back, leaving Velveteen on the unsteady ground alone. “You always do.”

Velveteen looked over her shoulder to where the heroes of Winter waited. Jackie wasn’t with them. It would have been nice to have at least one person she could trust to catch her if she fell. Then, slowly, she turned back to the nothingness.

She knew from meeting Marionette, and from her own experiences with Tag and Supermodel, that the animating force she used to control her toys was less limited than she wanted it to be. It was too big. She needed to draw borders around it and clamp them down, lest she start breaking things she didn’t want to break. She also knew that here, in Winter, the snow was hers to command—at least while it was running through her veins. So she gathered her strength, pulling it in until it felt like her entire body had become one thrumming nerve, vibrating with the effort of keeping it all inside.

She closed her eyes, and stopped trying to hold on.

The cold burst out of her like a door slamming open, the snow that had been gathering in her veins for a full year—as the Calendar Country measured time—breaking free and swirling into the nothingness. Still, she kept forcing it out, and still, it kept flowing, filling up the world. Velveteen dropped to her knees, and for the first time in all those long and lonely months, the cold bit into her knees, chilling the flesh beneath her tights. And the cold kept coming.

The assembled heroes of Winter watched as the explosion of ice and snow and infinite cold splashed itself across the void, recreating, inch by inch and mile by snowcapped mile, the landscape that had been erased by time and the slow march of human narratives. All she was putting forth was cold, but that was all that was required for mountains, glaciers, even evergreen forests to unspool.

“She’s doing it,” whispered the Snow Queen, voice heavy with awe and wonder.

“Yes,” said Santa Claus, as he wondered—and not for the first time—whether Aurora’s insistence that they follow the old, painful ways had been born partially out of fear. She had insisted from the start that she wanted Velveteen for Winter, but sometimes what a person said and what they meant were two very different things. With that much cold inside her, the girl could have challenged Aurora for her position eventually...and she could have won. “Yes, she is.”

I am going to miss her, thought Santa, as Velveteen drove her hands down into the snow and held on for dear life. She was gasping now, and the white was bleeding out of her skin into the ground, replaced by a healthy brown. But even that was paler than it should have been, like she was pouring more than just the cold into the Winter.

“Aurora, maybe that’s enough,” said Jack Frost. “She’s rebuilt half a sky.”

“She can give us more,” said Aurora. “She has it in her, and I want it.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” whispered Velveteen, and she pushed as hard as she could.

The last thing she heard, before she slipped into unconsciousness, was the beating of her own heart.

*

Persephone came from out the forest, and her footsteps left trails of snowdrops and crocuses behind her. The snow would cover them quickly, but their mere presence showed how close she was to the tipping point. Spring was calling her, and she had to answer, whether she wanted to or not.

“Is she ready?” she asked, when she was close enough to the group to speak without raising her voice. Persephone had never been one for shouting, outside of her own home.

“Here,” said Santa Claus, gesturing toward the sleigh where Velveteen, exhausted and human, lay curled in a bed of furs. The reindeer attached to the sleigh’s reins pawed at the ground and snorted, sending warm clouds of breath into the air. “We wore her out, I’m afraid.”

“Spring will be kinder,” said Persephone. She climbed onto the driver’s seat, flicked the reins once, and was away.

Velveteen never woke.

Iron Poet poetry roundup #3.

2014-05-29T23:58:55Z

It's the third roundup for the current round of Iron Poet! This round is now closed.

"Ace of Shadows" for kassrachel. (Sestina)
"Owl, Fox, Cat" for ladymondegreen. (Rhyming verse)
"Enough" for janetmiles. (Free verse)
"Picnic" for herefox. (Rhyming verse)
"Penguin" for mneme. (Free verse)
"The Fox" for roadnotes. (Triolets)
"Geek Love" for notalwaysweak. (Sonnet)
"Goodnight" for sabine791110. (Rhyming verse)
"Right the Train" for groblek. (Train song)

More to come.