Santa stepped forward. He was their emissary, after all, and had been for centuries, ever since he had stepped up and taken the mantle of Winter as his own.
“Hello, my dear,” he said. “You’re looking well. I’m glad to see you made it through the Winter unscathed, and can now begin your term of service.”
“I’m made of snow, you asshole,” Velveteen replied. “If this is what you consider ‘unscathed,’ I’m glad as fuck you never had kids. What the fuck?”
“Language, please,” chided Mrs. Claus. She fell back a step when Velveteen turned her icy glare on the older woman. Voice smaller now, she said, “We have to think of the children. They look on Winter as a place of wonder and delight.”
“Your ‘place of wonder and delight’ just tried to freeze me to death,” said Velveteen. She stood. Two of her snowmen hurried to help her down from the sleigh. When she stepped onto the surface of the snow, her feet left no impressions; it was as if she weighed as little as the wind. She stalked forward, and although she was stomping, she left no tracks behind her. Pointing her index finger at Santa Claus, she snarled, “I said I’d serve you. I didn’t say I’d die for you. You cheated.”
“No, my dear, I didn’t,” said Santa. There was genuine regret in his voice. Velveteen was just too upset to hear it. “You never asked me what service would entail.”
“Would you have told me if I’d asked?”
Santa said nothing. His silence was more than answer enough.
Velveteen shook her head, disgusted. “Great. Swell. Swell and great and dandy. Where’s Jackie?” She turned to Jack Frost and the Snow Queen. “Shouldn’t she be here to celebrate finally getting me all the way into the Winter? Maybe she can explain why I shouldn’t call the whole thing off right now.”
“Jackie isn’t here,” said Jack Frost. “She would distract you from fulfilling your duties to the season. You’re too close, and we want you to make your choice fairly. You don’t have friends in Spring or Autumn, after all.”
“So you sent away the only person I’m not seriously pissed off at, because you thought it would make the choice more fair? Wow. You’re not just assholes, you’re stupid assholes. When you talk to Jackie next, tell her it’s your fault I’m probably not going to choose you.” Velveteen turned back to Santa Claus, still glaring. “All right. I’m here. I’ve met your precious Aurora, and she’s told me that the only way out is forward. So tell me what to do. I am in your service. Put me to work.”
“I had hoped that you might resent us less for asking you to keep your word,” said Santa, slowly.
“If you wanted me to resent you less, you should have warned me,” Velveteen replied. “What do you want me to do?”
Santa sighed. “Is this how things are going to be between us?”
“Let me check and see if I’m still made of snow,” said Velveteen. She looked down at one dead white arm, and then back up at Santa Claus. “Yup. This is how things are going to be.”
“Very well then,” he said. “Follow me.” Santa turned to walk deeper into the village. Velveteen started after him, as behind her, the army of winter creatures crumbled back into the landscape, leaving nothing but branches and churned-up snow.
The Snow Queen waited until the pair was out of earshot before she said, “The girl is strong. She’ll be an asset, if she chooses to stay.”
“She’ll be a problem until she chooses to go,” said Mrs. Claus. She shook her head. “I’ve always liked that child, but I have a bad feeling about this. She isn’t choosing Winter the right way. She’s forcing Winter to choose her. That doesn’t sit well with me.”
“We’ve already paid enough,” said Jack, and there was a bleak viciousness in his voice that spoke to all the winds of all the world. “She had best choose us.”
Silence fell after that. It seemed that there was nothing else to say.
*
Santa and Velveteen stalked through the village without exchanging a word. His feet left tracks; hers did not. Otherwise, there might as well have been no difference between them. The elves and penguins who peeked out of their little houses to watch them pass made no effort to show themselves. They had lived in Winter long enough to recognize a blizzard when they saw one coming.
At the edge of the village was a little house that hadn’t been there the day before. It was made of pine branches and snow, and seemed rough-hewn, despite the smoothness of the walls and the way it fit into the landscape. It looked old. Old as mountains; old as snowfall. Santa stopped just outside the fence, which was made of piled-up stones held together by vines of frost.
“This is yours,” he said, looking to Velveteen. “Winter will keep it here for as long as you need it. Whatever you require will be found inside. We take care of our own.”
“And when I’m done here?” she asked.
“Then it goes back to the snow that made it, and is forgotten before the next turning of the Northern Lights.” He reached out and touched the fence. “There have been other houses here, before yours. Jack Frost had a similar one when he first took his post. It’s a little isolated, true, but it should serve you well, if you allow it.”
“It’s not my home.”
“It could be.” Santa looked at Velveteen, making no effort to conceal the pleading in his eyes. She glared back, defiant and cold, until he sighed, and shook his head, and said, “I’m sorry. This is how it’s always been done. I didn’t think that it would be so hard for you to face the trials.”
“I’ve been here a hundred times. You’ve never dumped me in the middle of a blizzard or allowed monsters to come out of the walls and try to kill me before.” Velveteen held up one gleaming white hand. “You’ve never turned me into snow. Of course this has been hard on me. There’d have to be something seriously wrong with me if it had been easy.”
“You were our friend before you became a supplicant here. I should have considered how that would impact you.”
“Would you have done things any differently if you had?”
“Yes,” said Santa Claus. He looked at her solemnly, all traces of his usual jolliness gone, and said, “I would have forbidden Jackie to befriend you. It was always going to be like this. Winter is not a tame country. It doesn’t exist solely for the joy of children, and that isn’t the role that you’re best suited to. You were always going to find yourself alone in the cold. The only thing I did wrong was allow you to see that Winter could be warm. If I had managed your expectations better, we wouldn’t be standing here now.”
Velveteen stared at him. “You’re not serious. You can’t be…you said I was always welcome here. You said you loved me.”
“I do love you, my dear; I do. It’s simply that I love Winter more. I’m sorry.” Santa offered her a small bow. “You’re one of us now, at least for a time. Try to rest up. Your service will begin in the morning.”
Then he turned and walked away, leaving Velveteen standing, staring, in front of her little pine bough house.
*
There was no furniture, but there was snow. Velveteen waved a hand, and the snow formed itself into a bed, a chair, a table, even a knife and cutting board. Did snow women eat? She didn’t know. She supposed she was going to find out sooner or later. She had to still be alive: she wouldn’t have done the Winter any good as a dead thing like Marionette, who had never intended to become a villain, but who had killed a lot of people in her reality anyway, because an animus with no life force of their own couldn’t help it. So she probably ate something.
She found that she wasn’t looking forward to the idea of finding out what it was, exactly, that she ate, or how it was that her new body dealt with things like going to the bathroom. There was probably some messed-up Winter magic involved. “If I shit frost, I’m going to kill everyone in this stinking excuse for a metaphor,” she grumbled, and threw herself onto the bed, sending a soft powder of snow drifting up into the air.
She didn’t mean to fall asleep. She didn’t want to fall asleep. Slee
ping felt too much like accepting the idea of her new reality, admitting that this was the way things were now, and that she couldn’t change them. But she was tired, and her eyelids were heavy, and she found herself closing them for just a moment.
Everything went away. Maybe it was better that way.
*
Santa Claus walked through the village, shoulders slumped, eyes trained toward the dancing lights overhead. Those lights had always seemed endless to him before, an invitation to a thousand nights of wonder, a thousand days of endless, childlike joy. Now they looked like bleached streaks across a bitter sky, and he wondered if he had done things poorly. Perhaps sending Jackie to recruit Velveteen had been a poor move, manipulative, unworthy of him—but he had been thinking of Winter. The Snow Queen and Jack Frost would want to stand aside eventually, and while the Snow Queen had had her heir, Jack had never had his own. Velveteen had been intended to stand for him. And now…
Now even if they won, the victory would be ashes and coal dust in his mouth. Nothing ever came without a price. He, who was the generosity of the world, should have known that better than anyone. But somehow, he had allowed himself to forget, to fall prey to the lie of his own omniscience, and now Winter was going to pay the price. Velveteen hated him. Whether she could come back from that, could learn to love him again, was anyone’s guess. As for the rest, well. All choices have consequences. Even the ones that were forced upon the people who made them.
He just hoped that one day, all of those who followed him could find it in themselves to forgive him.
*
Lucy stepped nimbly out of the trees, following the tracks of Velveteen’s snow army—and hadn’t that been clever of the little animus, to turn the flesh of Winter itself to her cause! Why, Lucy had seen supplicants come and go, each of them bending their powers toward the cold, but she’d never seen anyone try that little trick before. No matter how short Velveteen’s stay turned out to be, it was certainly going to be interesting.
The Northern Lights were splashed wildly across the sky, blue and green and gold and purple. Lucy tilted her head to the side, watching them dance for a moment before she said, “All right: everything’s in place. If there’s any chance she’ll stay, she’ll stay because she’s grown too cold to dream of leaving. Not sure that’s how I would have chosen to recruit a powerful animus, but it’s not my problem. What do you want me to do next?”
“She feels she has no friends here,” said a voice from the trees behind her. Lucy turned to find Aurora standing there, in her gown of ever-shifting light. “Don’t encourage her to thaw, but encourage her to trust you. Be the friend she needs in Winter.”
“But also the friend that Winter wants me to be,” said Lucy. She had been with the season longer than almost anyone: longer even than the current incarnation of Santa Claus. She had seen Snow Queens and spirits of plenty come and go, and while she did her best not to be jaded, she knew what was expected of her. Lucy had been able to thrive in Winter for as long as she had because she did not fight it.
“Yes,” said Aurora. “Even if she doesn’t choose to stay, we’ll benefit from having her for the time we have. It should be long enough to shore up a few walls, repair a few defenses. But mark me: I want her. I want her strength, and I want her anger. If you love me, do what you can to acquire them.”
Lucy nodded. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, and watched as Aurora dissolved into light. Then, smiling, she turned and started down the hill into Santa’s Village. She had work to do.
*
The Snow Queen walked in the House of Mirrors, and she walked there all alone.
Frost followed her footsteps—not her husband, but the cold that shared his name. It drew delicate designs across the floor, filigree and ferns and beautiful patterns that dissolved unseen. The Snow Queen never looked back. Her eyes were all for the mirrors around her, filled with pictures of lives she had never lived, choices she had never made. In some of them, another woman wore the mantle of Snow Queen, a woman who had taken the position when she had melted, or made the choice to thaw. In others, she walked with her son at her side, a son who had never been born in this reality. In most, as in the present moment, she walked alone.
She stopped in front of a dead mirror, its surface clouded over so that it cast no reflection. Placing her fingertips gently against the surface of the glass (which immediately began to freeze, for she was the Snow Queen, after all), she bowed her head, and wept until her tears were done. Then she straightened, turned, and walked away.
She never looked back. There was nothing there for her to see.
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…