VELVETEEN vs. Global Warming
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.