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 t
o 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 do 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.
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.