VELVETEEN vs. Santa Claus
The sky over Santa’s Village was clear, affording the citizens a beautiful view of the Northern Lights, which painted the air in a hundred shimmering shades of orange, green, pink, and pearlescent blue.
It was a spectacle quite unlike any other in the world, breathtaking in its beauty, shifting from second to second, so that any photographer alive would have killed for the chance to take just one shot. It was magical.
Naturally, the small line of figures now standing at the head of the village’s main street was ignoring it completely.
They were a motley group of archetypes, like something out of a children’s storybook.
The tall, elegant Snow Queen, with her pale skin and her white hair and her gown made out of frost and silence.
The shorter, more robust Jack Frost, blue-skinned and hovering a foot above the ground, his knees bent to tuck his feet up out of the way.
The matronly shape of Mrs. Claus, her hands tucked into her apron—and of course, as always when a threat was encroaching upon the village, the tall, unmistakable form of Santa himself.
He was a big man in every sense of the word.
Broad of shoulder, long of leg, with a stomach that could shake like a bowl full of jelly or provide the world’s toughest natural protection for his internal organs.
Any man looking to stab Santa in the kidney would find themselves facing a daunting barrier—and doubtless facing Santa’s fist not long after.
He was a jolly old elf, yes, but he had been the face of the living Winter for centuries for many reasons, and not all of them had to do with how many toys he could deliver in a night.
“She may not come,” said the Snow Queen. “Lucia left her in the mountain. Many never leave those frozen chambers.”
“Do you forget who we’re waiting for?” asked Santa. There was no trace of laughter in his question, no hint of holiday cheer. He sounded as serious as any of them had ever heard him. “Velveteen always finds a way. She’s too stubborn to lie down and freeze.”
“She would have,” said Jack Frost softly.
It was inappropriate for any of them to question Santa Claus in the open, where the elves or penguins could hear.
Under the circumstances, none of them had the heart to chastise Jack for speaking out of turn.
Instead, they simply stood in their little line of four, the spirits of the living Winter, and watched the horizon, waiting for the newest of their number to arrive.
* * *
Velveteen stalked through the mountain like the unholy offspring of Frosty the Snowman and the final survivor of a horror movie.
Her army of snow creatures walked with her, bears and wolves and rabbits and rough-featured golems, all of them sculpted from the very stuff of the mountain surrounding them.
Every so often she would grab another handful of loose-packed snow from the wall and fling it over her shoulder, where it would solidify into another member of the frozen army.
Snow stags with antlers made of reaching pine boughs.
Snow unicorns with icicle horns. If she had limitations here, in the heart of Winter itself, she had yet to find them, and when she reached whatever was waiting for her at the bottom of this road, she wanted to be prepared.
She wanted to rain down icy death on anyone who stood against her.
It occurred to her that sometimes her responses to conflict were somewhat disproportionate, and fueled by the sort of anger that could keep a therapist in business for years.
“Who the fuck cares?” she muttered, sending echoes dancing through the hall.
Winter, which had always been her safe haven and ally amongst the seasons, had tried to kill her.
It had dropped her into the cold and left her to figure things out from there.
If she was pissed off, who could blame her? They should have played fair.
The candle she had plucked out of the snow when she woke in her frozen cocoon was still burning steadily, sending flickers dancing across the iced-over walls.
It hadn’t burned down in the slightest, even though she felt like she had been walking for hours.
If it was dripping at all, the ice had managed to miraculously miss her so far.
She wanted to stick a finger into the flame, to find out whether it had any heat, but she didn’t quite dare.
What if her flesh melted like the snow she appeared to have been made of?
That might be one thing too many for her to be expected to cope with.
In the end, she just kept walking. She didn’t know what else she could do.
* * *
It is sometimes easy to forget that the Seasonal Lands predate humanity: that human thought may shape them, may influence their landscapes and the personalities who inhabit them, but that they are neither the creation nor the servants of the human race.
When Santa Claus smiles and hands toys to children, when the Snow Queen dances in the air during a Christmas snowfall in Times Square…
it seems so natural, and so artificial at the same time, like they’re too perfect to be real, and hence must be things we have manufactured for our own enjoyment.
We overlook the pieces that don’t fit, the skaters who fall through thin ice, the hikers who freeze, the children who go to bed full of hope and wake to empty stockings.
We overlook them because they don’t fit the narrative we prefer to cultivate about the Seasonal Lands, and because the Seasonal Lands thrive on narrative.
They demand that we tell stories about them.
Stories are what keep us in control, to whatever degree we can be said to control those mercurial and undying countries.
So we speak of jolly men in red coats who hand out gifts to the deserving.
We sing songs about tricksters who can freeze the world with a touch, and we tell fairy tales about beautiful women with cold, unyielding hearts.
We reveal ourselves in the shapes we force upon the seasons, and we never stop to consider that perhaps they are forcing themselves on us in turn.
There are a lot of things we never stop to consider. Maybe we should. Maybe we would lose fewer children to the cold.
* * *
Velveteen walked deeper, and her frozen army walked with her.
Their feet made no sound on the snowy floor of the cave, and neither did hers; she was as much a creature of the snow as they were, something that still made her head spin and her breath catch in her chest when she allowed herself to think about it.
But it didn’t make her heart beat hard. She hadn’t felt her heartbeat since she woke.
She was starting to think that maybe she didn’t have a heart anymore.
She wasn’t sure how to feel about that. Without a heart, she could never wake Tag from his enchanted sleep—giving someone “true love’s kiss” sort of assumed that you were capable of loving them, and the heart was a necessary part of that—but she wouldn’t be as devastated by leaving him there forever, either.
She could finally be as cold and unfeeling as she had always tried to be, back when she was a so-called supervillain on the run from her former allies.
She could honestly say that she didn’t have a care in the world.
But she wasn’t that girl anymore. She was the woman who had defeated Supermodel, who had traded her own freedom to the Seasonal Lands for the sake of a girl she’d never met when she brought Jory back to life.
She was so much better than the heartless runaway she’d been, and it was hard not to feel the motionless void in her chest and view it as a step backward, toward something she’d outgrown.
“I thought Winter was supposed to be where the good guys lived,” she muttered.
“Everyone gets to define ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for themselves,” said a voice.
It was sweet, and female, and unfamiliar, echoing back from the darkness up ahead.
“It’s interesting. Ask ten people and get ten different answers.
That’s how they say it out in the Calendar Country, isn’t it? Everyone has an opinion?”
Velveteen stopped dead. She had passed most of her classes while she was still with The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, and she knew that pleasant voices addressing you out of dark places were traps more often than they were anything else. Sometimes she hated being so cynical.
Most of the time she just appreciated being likely to survive. “Where is the, um, ‘Calendar Country’?” she asked. “Is that near here?”
“No, dear heart, it’s where you come from.
The country that experiences all four seasons, all four temperatures of the soul, and never commits itself to any of them.
You can come closer, you know. I need to see you if I’m to decide what to do with you, and hanging back like this just makes it harder on all of us.
” The voice didn’t sound impatient. It was the voice of a woman with all the time in the world.
She could have waited forever, if that was what it took for Velveteen to start moving again.
“You know, I was taught never to approach hidden oracles in frozen mountains.” The Super Patriots, Inc.
might have been cavalier with their junior heroes, but they had at least made sure that those same junior heroes were prepared for as many of the slings and arrows the world might throw at them as possible.
From haunted houses and alternate timelines to creepy voices that tried to lure you down into the dark, if it was a danger frequently faced by the superheroic community, there was a seminar about it.
Velveteen had passed “Don’t Go In There: Reaching Adulthood Without Learning Your Future” with flying colors.