VELVETEEN vs. Global Warming #2
“I do what Santa commands,” said Velveteen, and turned to walk away. Her feet left no dents in the fresh-fallen snow. She might as well never have walked there at all.
Behind the elf, the door opened again, and another elf stuck her head outside. She had a red hat, and bells on her braids. “Is she gone?”
“She’s gone,” confirmed the first elf, turning to face his colleague. “I know we’re not supposed to think ill of Santa’s choices, but I hope she doesn’t stay. She’s too cold for this Winter.”
The second elf, who had been there longer, and had lived through more Spirits of the Season than she cared to think, nodded. “She belongs to an earlier time. Now come on. Let’s get these logs inside.”
There was always work to be done, in Winter. It helped to prevent dwelling on things that weren’t as pleasant as the process of building toys.
* * *
Velveteen had no other chores to do: no trees to fell or snow monsters to fight.
She made her way back to her little house on the outskirts of the Village, which would never feel like home, but at least felt like a place where she wouldn’t have to endure the stares of the elves or the cold regard of the Snow Queen, whose mild dislike of the animus seemed to have blossomed into full-blown hatred somewhere between Velveteen’s arrival in Winter and her attempts to serve the season properly.
It would have been easier to endure if Jackie had been around, but Vel’s so-called friend was still absent, and her parents wouldn’t talk about her.
At least she still slept. She might not have a heart, and she might not be alive in the classical sense, but she still got tired, and she was still capable of sleeping.
If she hadn’t been capable of sleeping, she wasn’t sure she would still have been sane.
Not that she was entirely sure about it anyway.
She was a woman made of snow, living in a world that bowed and danced at her command.
If that wasn’t the definition of some sort of breakdown, she wasn’t sure what was.
She waved her hand over the cutting board on her table.
Carrots and parsnips and turnips appeared, all of them made out of snow.
She sighed as she picked up the ice-bladed vegetable knife that rested next to the board.
She hated root vegetable night. The snow roots would taste the way she thought they should, but they would still be nothing more than frozen water, melting on her tongue.
She missed chewing. Out of all the things she’d ever expected to miss in her life, she had never thought she would have to miss chewing.
She was dicing the snow carrots when a voice at her elbow said, “You should really cut away from yourself. Cutting toward yourself makes it more likely that you’re going to get hurt.”
Velveteen yelped, dropping the knife, and whirled to see a pale, dark-haired girl in a white dress standing behind her.
The girl was wearing a wreath of candles around the top of her head, and their warm, golden light filled the room with dancing shadows.
She was lovely, in a fragile, porcelain angel sort of way.
Velveteen scowled at her.
“Lucy,” she said, trying to pack as much irritation and disdain as possible into that single syllable.
Years of practice had made her an excellent packer.
“What are you doing here? I got Santa his Christmas pine, just like he asked, and I told Mrs. Claus I wouldn’t show up for another community skating night.
Once was enough.” Snubbing she could have handled.
The running and screaming had been a bit much.
“Oh, no, it’s not about the trees, you did a great job with the trees,” protested Lucy. “It’s not about the skating, either, even if I do think you should give them another chance. They just didn’t expect the big snow grizzly bear, that’s all.”
“It’s not my fault that they’re short-sighted.
” Velveteen knew, distantly, that she should have felt bad about frightening the elves.
But regret and shame both lived in the heart, and she didn’t have one of those anymore.
If Winter didn’t want her terrifying its permanent residents, then Winter shouldn’t—in its manifestation as Aurora—have taken her heart away.
“I guess,” said Lucy. Then she sobered, looking at Velveteen with eyes that were older than the face around them, and asked, “Vel, do you know what time it is?”
“Sorry, I left my watch with my other body,” said Velveteen.
“It’s about to be the Spring Equinox in the Calendar Country,” said Lucy.
“Persephone is going to walk from Winter into Spring, and since you’re supposed to go there next, we figured you could go with her.
It’ll be a little easier for you to grow back into yourself if you’re in the company of a harvest goddess. They tend to simplify things.”
Velveteen’s unnecessary breath caught in her throat as she went perfectly still, trying to make herself believe what the girl was saying.
“I could…you mean I get to leave? I get to move on?” I get to have skin again, real skin, the color of worn brown velvet, and not this snowy bullshit?
I get to have a heart, and a heartbeat? I get to be real?
“Yes, you get to be real, just like the rabbit you were named after,” said Lucy, and for once Velveteen was so overcome with joy and terror and delight than she couldn’t even get angry about her mind possibly being read.
All the feelings were muted, but they were stronger than anything she had felt since the Winter had stolen her heart away.
“You just have one more task to accomplish, and then you get to go. We’ll wait here for your word, and hope that you’ll choose us. ”
“What do you need me to do?” Velveteen asked. Lucy told her.
Velveteen stared. “Oh, for fuck’s sake, you have got to be kidding,” she said. Lucy just smiled.
* * *
The edges of Winter were abrupt. One minute she was walking over frozen tundra, with an army of snow creatures behind her; the next, there was nothing but blackness, and the soft sound of melting ice dripping down into the nothingness on the other side.
Santa flicked the reins of his sleigh, bringing his team of reindeer to a halt.
Next to him, Mrs. Claus fidgeted with her knitting and tried not to look at the pale, silent girl who was standing so close to the edge.
She wanted to call her back, to beg her to step away from the abyss.
She didn’t say anything. Everything they had given up, everything they had risked, had been for this moment. She wasn’t going to ruin things now.
Jack Frost drifted down from above as Lucy stepped out of the trees.
The Snow Queen did not walk, or float, or anything so common; she simply appeared, forming herself out of the elements as easily as one of Velveteen’s snow bunnies.
Velveteen glanced at her, a calculating expression on her face, and then looked away.
If she could control the creatures she called out of the snow, and the Snow Queen was made out of snow, maybe she could control the Snow Queen.
But only if she had to: only if the Winter refused to let her go.
Some part of her still remembered what it was to have a heart, and that part of her urged caution.
If she crossed that line, it said, she might not be able to find the way back.
There was a glimmer of light in the sky overhead. It intensified, and Aurora appeared, shining at the center of it all like a star. Velveteen turned her impassive gaze on the living soul of Winter. Any capacity she might have had for being impressed was long since gone; all she had now was waiting.
Velveteen waited.
“Hello, Velveteen,” said Aurora, and smiled with a thousand shifting faces, so that it was impossible to say what she had looked like when the smile ended, only that she had been beautiful in her delight. “Have you enjoyed your time with us?”
“Oh, it’s been a real treat,” said Velveteen. “Lucy says I get to move on to Spring soon.”
“Lucy is correct,” said Aurora. “You’ve been an excellent servant of the season, Velveteen. I hope you will consider that we have been kind to you, when the time comes to make your final decision about where you belong.”
Silence would have been the wiser course of action, especially here, where the world dropped away, where her term in service to the Winter was almost at an end.
Velveteen struggled to keep her lips pressed together, willing them to meld like two sheets of ice.
But she couldn’t. Waiting had become a skill of hers, now that she was frozen solid; silence was never going to be that easy.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” she demanded.
Her voice was too big and too loud for the silence at the edge of the world.
It echoed, knocking snow off the trees and sending birds scattering into the air.
“You froze my heart. You turned me into snow. You refused to let me have any contact with the one person in this season who’s actually my friend, maybe because oh, hey, this is a shitty way to treat someone who came to you in good faith.
Now you hope that I’ll consider coming back to work for you forever? Why the hell would I want to do that?”
“I know you’ve been tired since you came here,” said Aurora.
“I know you’ve been angry, and frustrated, and thwarted in the things you wanted to accomplish.
But you haven’t cried, have you? You came here wounded and heartsick from the things you witnessed, and none of those wounds have pained you, because they belonged to another world.
Did we freeze you? Yes. We took your pain away. We took your weeping away.”