VELVETEEN vs. Hypothermia #3
The fire was gone, as was the fireplace, although the flickering, color-changing bricks remained.
They had simply stretched up into a high arch, filigreed with frost and crowned with snowflakes.
There was a tunnel on the other side, winding deep into the glacier.
Flickers of light danced here and there in the darkness, clearly marking the way she was expected to go.
“Got it,” said Velveteen grudgingly. She beckoned to the snowman, which stepped away from the wall and moved to stand beside her. “Come on, Frosty. Let’s go where the light tells us to go. Maybe we’ll be lucky, and there’ll be something we can hit.”
Together, girl and snowman walked through the archway into the dark. Outside the cavern, the snow stopped falling. It wasn’t needed anymore.
* * *
“Santa, please.” Jackie looked pleadingly at the red-suited man who was currently the most powerful figure in the Winter, thanks to his dominion over Christmas, and the holiday’s dominion over the season as a whole.
“No one warned her. We let her choose to come here first because she thought that we were her friends. She didn’t know. ”
“All of us went through this, Jackie,” said the big man, a sorrowful expression on his normally jolly face. “We had to be tried before we could be transformed. Not many people are born to thrive in this kind of cold. Velveteen’s a strong girl. She’ll come through the Winter’s heart.”
“And if she doesn’t?” demanded Jackie. “What happens then? We spent years trying to convince her to come to us. This is just…this is wasteful. We need her.”
“We need someone,” Santa corrected gently. “It doesn’t have to be her, and it doesn’t have to be today. If it takes a hundred years, we’ll still be just fine, as long as we find the right person in the end. Patience is a virtue, my dear. Once you get to my age, you’ll understand.”
Jackie stared at him. Finally, in a very small voice, she said, “I thought I was supposed to be the selfish one here.”
“And you are, my darling, you are,” said Santa, in what was probably meant to be a reassuring tone.
“You’re worried about your friend. You want her to live because she matters to you.
You’re not the only one who loves her, but you’re the only one willing to endanger us all for her sake.
That’s selfishness wearing its Sunday clothes, all dressed up and ready to win.
I will grieve for decades if she dies out there.
I will carry her body to the graveyard in my own arms, and I will never forgive myself.
But I won’t save her. Because I am not selfish enough to risk us all for the sake of a single girl, just because I love her. ”
Jackie stared at him, not sure of what to say, or how to say it, or what good words could do. At last, she whispered, “All I want for Christmas is for my friend to live.”
“I’m sorry, Jackie,” said Santa. “There are some things it is beyond my power to give.”
* * *
The tunnel wound deeper and deeper into the glacier’s heart, twisting and bending until it seemed like they were walking in a circle, at least until Velveteen’s feet slipped on the gently sloping floor and she realized that the situation was both simpler and more complicated than that: they were following a spiral, winding slowly down into the dark.
Velveteen swallowed hard and clutched her candle tighter.
At least it didn’t seem to be burning down.
Whatever purpose that Lucy girl served in the Winter, she was good with candles.
A flashlight might have been better, given that Velveteen’s only backup was made of snow, but hey.
Beggars can’t be choosers, and in that moment, Velveteen would have happily begged if it meant getting out of her current situation.
The Super Patriots, Inc. hadn’t provided any training courses on what to do if a previously friendly holiday starts trying to kill you; even for their highly specialized schooling program, that may have seemed a little overly specific.
All she knew to do was keep on walking, down into the dark, and hoping for the best.
Something ahead of her growled. Velveteen stopped, the snowman shuffling to a halt behind her. The growl came again. She took a step backward. Something else growled, this time from behind her. Velveteen groaned.
“Of course there’s an ambush,” she said. “Of course something down here in the dark creepy ice cave wants to kill me. Because that is just the kind of goddamn day I’m having. Well? If you’re going to attack me, get out here and fucking do it already! I don’t have forever!”
Unfortunately for Velveteen, the creatures in the walls decided to listen.
They were something like wolves, and something like bears, and something like nothing she had ever seen before, with their thick white fur, and their taloned paws, and their mouths bristling with icicle teeth long and sharp enough to seem like frozen daggers.
They poured out of the walls from all sides, growling and snarling, and Velveteen suddenly found herself missing the blizzard.
At least it had been impersonal, a force of nature.
These things felt very, very personal—and as the first of them drew close enough to slash at her thigh with one daggered paw, she learned that they also felt very, very sharp.
Velveteen flailed about with her candle, singeing the creatures as she kicked and shoved them away.
Her snowman punched and grappled, reforming whenever one of them ripped off a chunk of his snow.
Velveteen, who hadn’t realized he could do that, resolved to make a dozen more of him at the first opportunity.
Then one of the white-furred creatures landed a blow solidly across her stomach, ripping through the skin and fat and revealing the layer of muscle underneath. Velveteen screamed, rage and pain and misery all blending together into a single agonized cry.
The creatures stopped attacking. Instantly: there was no moment of transition.
One second they were trying to kill her, and the next they were frozen, looking to her for whatever she wanted to command.
Velveteen pressed her hand flat against her stomach, trying to hold back the gush of warm blood, and slowly looked around at the pack.
There were a dozen of the things. None of them were moving.
“You’re not alive, are you?” she asked dully. “You’re made of snow. Everything here is made of snow.” Everything but her, as the red seeping through her fingers would attest. “That means you belong to me now. You have to do as I say.”
The snow beasts made no sound, but continued to watch her. She would have to choose her next words carefully. The blood was coming faster all the time, and she didn’t know how long she could keep it contained. She also didn’t know what resources were available to her.
But the snow beasts had been animate before she claimed them. They had to know at least a little bit about their surroundings. Velveteen leaned back, trusting her snowman to be there to catch her, and he was; of course he was, he was an extension of her will.
“I think I’m bleeding to death,” she said, clearly and calmly. “I need help. I need you to go and find something that can help me. Go as quickly as you can. Don’t come back unless you have something that can help.”
Still silent, the snow beasts backed away from her, melding with the walls, and disappeared. Velveteen watched them go. Then she looked at the candle flickering in her free hand, and shook her head.
“What good is a light in the darkness if you die there anyway?” she asked. “Can you tell me that?”
Lucy didn’t answer, if she even heard. Velveteen closed her eyes and let her head loll back against the snowman. Eventually, her hand fell away from her middle, and the blood flowed a little freer, although it was sluggish now, like it knew how much she needed it.
Eventually, the candle fell from her numb fingers, landing in the blood pooling on the floor around her feet. It guttered, but did not go out.
Lucy did her work well. The candle wouldn’t die until its keeper did.
* * *
The Snow Queen wouldn’t help her. Jack Frost wouldn’t help her. Even Santa wouldn’t help her. There was no point in asking Mrs. Claus; she never agreed to anything Santa wouldn’t do. That wasn’t her place in the story.
Somewhere out there in the cold, Velveteen was freezing and frightened and alone, and all Jackie could do about it was prowl in her safe, warm halls, forbidden to help her, forbidden to save her, forbidden to do anything but be the spoiled, useless brat she’d always been.
She’d only befriended Velveteen (and the other members of The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, but they were irrelevant, weren’t they?
They were necessary burdens from the start, because it was the animus that Winter wanted) because she’d been told to.
She’d only been a heroine because she was bored.
Now Tag was dead and Velveteen was dying, and Jackie was still useless. Just like always.
Jackie looked down at her pale blue hands and wished, not for the first time, that she was braver.
Someone braver would have already defied her parents and gone to do what was right—but did she really know what that was?
Santa said she was being selfish. He was the spirit of generosity, and she was…
well, she wasn’t that. Maybe he was right.
Maybe the right thing to do was allow Velveteen to freeze, if that was what the Winter intended for her, rather than risk an entire season just because little Jackie Frost didn’t want to lose a friend.