VELVETEEN vs. Trick and Treat
Time didn’t pass in the Seasonal Lands the way it did in the Calendar Country.
It wasn’t a matter of one day following another in a steady, predictable way.
Sometimes, Velveteen went to bed at sunrise, slept for a full eight hours, and woke to find the sun rising, or the sky set to deepest, darkest, horror movie midnight.
Other times, she’d wake to find Hailey and Scaredy pounding on the door with pillowcases in their hands, screeching “Trick or treat!” and beaming like they hadn’t seen her in weeks.
She’d long since given up any attempts at actually figuring out what day of the week it was, and months didn’t matter here; it was always harvest time, always the ripe and reaching Autumn, where the air tasted like bonfires and drying hay, and the moon was a bloody jack-o’-lantern set against a cloud-strewn sky.
She could have been there for only a few weeks. She could have been there for years.
The worst part was that she was no longer sure she cared which it was.
She didn’t like living in a Halloween world, exactly.
She missed having skin, internal organs, bones—she’d never really thought of bones as something that could be missed, but not having them was surprisingly inconvenient.
She didn’t miss using the bathroom, or menstruation; the fear of spending an eternity as a rag doll was slightly reduced by the thought that she wouldn’t spend four days out of every month bleeding uncontrollably for the rest of time.
Halloween hadn’t turned her into ice and taken away her ability to grieve for the people she’d been forced to leave behind; it hadn’t lied to her, claimed to be her friend, and left her to die of hypothermia in the snow.
Halloween hadn’t severed her connection to her innate power source; it hadn’t asked her to choose between her own happiness and the fate of all the people who could have shared her powers, the ones who’d died before they had a chance to live.
All it had done was put her in costume, which it had been doing since she was a child, and equip her with an ever-growing army of demonic scarecrows.
Odd as it was to consider, of the three seasons she’d been tapped to visit, Autumn—and by extension, Halloween—had been the kindest of all. Sure, that kindness often came with hidden razor blades tucked inside, but at least it was there. At least it was something.
More and more, Velveteen was coming to realize that if she was going to stay in the Seasonal Lands at all, she was probably going to stay in Halloween.
The knowledge sat in her belly like a caramel apple eaten just before bedtime.
She didn’t want to choose Halloween, the holiday that had kidnapped and tormented her as a child.
She didn’t want to be the kind of person who could be happy there.
But she was, and nothing she wanted or didn’t want would change that.
Masks could be put on. Masks could be removed.
The essential nature of the face beneath them wouldn’t change.
No matter how much she wanted it to.
“Fucked-up forever,” she sighed, and picked up the scythe, and waded into the field of cursed wheat to find the Reaper who was ruining her afternoon.
Around her, Autumn continued.
* * *
The line between real and unreal has never been exact where the superhuman community is concerned.
When discussing a group of people including the living embodiment of the idealized fairy tale princess (The Princess), a human rainbow (Polychrome), the spirit of the American West (Jack O’Lope), and the daughter of Santa Claus (Jacqueline Claus), “real” and “unreal” are less immutable laws than guidelines, meant to be respected when possible and politely avoided when not.
Despite this, however, the less plausible factions within the superhuman community have never descended into pure illogic, as might be expected: instead, they’ve set up systems of law and custom to moderate themselves, understanding, on some level, that the world is not equipped to do it for them.
Convincing a magically- or seasonally-powered superhuman to go against their code of ethics is considered close enough to impossible as to not be worth trying if there’s any other alternative.
Some have been known to switch sides in the middle of a battle when the villains proved to be more in alignment with their personal ideals.
A winter-themed hero will always fight for Winter; a fairy tale-themed hero will always follow the most logical narrative path; a trickster hero will always keep their word, no matter how inconvenient or dangerous this choice may prove for them.
Some scholars believe this is because the forces which power and control these heroes are fickle: if denied their full natures, they might choose to desert their current avatars and seek someone more inclined to follow the rules.
When this line of thought is applied to the Seasonal Lands, whose occupants, whatever their origins, have been reduced and remade into something less than human, while also elevated to something more than metaphor, it must be asked what the true consequence would be for going against their natures.
They are, after all, those natures written in flesh, or something similar; they are not individuals as much as they are ideas.
Should Persephone divorce her husband, whose myth shapes and defines her own, what would become of her?
Should Santa Claus, who represents generosity in Winter, refuse a gift to a deserving child, would he be allowed to retain his mantle?
Or his daughter, Jacqueline, whose position is directly tied to acts of kindness and charity—gifts not of the material, but of the insubstantial?
Could either of them survive a moment of true selfishness?
This leads to the question that has vexed scholars since the discovery of the Seasonal Lands.
Are those who are called to the seasons—or other, non-seasonal positions of magical power—innately suited to the roles they assume, or are they shaped by the positions that will one day claim them?
Jacqueline, who was born to Christmas, or Mischief, who was born to Halloween, are easy: both of them represent an aspect of their holiday given human form.
Without their holidays to define them, they would no longer be necessary.
But what of the others? What of the ones like Hailey Ween, or Scream Queen, or the rarely-mentioned but oft-seen Lady Moon?
Each of these “Spirits of the Season” has claimed, at some point, to have mundane origins: to have begun life, not as ideas, but as individuals who later went on to accept the invitation they were offered to transform themselves into something both less and more.
As none of these supposed transformations has occurred within living memory, it’s unclear how the process works, or whether, indeed, the process works at all.
Which brings us to Velma Martinez, code name “Velveteen.” Should she fail to return from the Seasonal Lands, what will we learn? And what, in the end, will we have paid for that knowledge?
* * *
In the end, the Reaper was like all the rest: a paper-thin manifestation of the fears of children from the Calendar Country, who had no idea that sometimes their bad dreams took on physical form and went looking for haunted farmland to bother.
Velveteen emerged from the wheat, dragging the body of this latest foe by the collar of his coat, and tossed it into the nearest ditch.
“Now’s when you stay down,” she said. She paused and added, “Asshole.” The Reaper—which had never really been “alive” in the strictest sense of the word, and was now decidedly not alive—didn’t move. Anyone watching would have agreed that this was the right choice.
Someone applauded. Velveteen turned. Hailey Ween, Halloween Princess, was sitting in the branches of a gnarled old oak, ankles crossed, orange and green crepe skirt smoothed down just so, clapping her heart out. She grinned when she saw Velveteen looking.
“That was awesome,” she said. “You’ve been getting better and better, but using your scarecrows to flush the Reaper out of the wheat, so it wouldn’t have the advantage? That was genius. I have to say, I’m super-impressed. I always knew you’d be good at this job.”
“What do you want, Hailey?” Velveteen folded her arms, watching the other girl.
She’d never been able to find it in herself to forgive the Halloween Princess, or to start trusting her any farther than she could throw her.
Yes, Hailey was devoted to her holiday, and yes, Hailey currently considered Velveteen a part of that holiday, but she was the definition of a fair weather friend.
As soon as the wind changed, Hailey would be an enemy again. And the wind was going to change.
It always did.
“You.” The lithe teenager slipped out of her tree, dropping to the ground. She reached into thin air and pulled out a wand, topped with a pumpkin where a star would ordinarily have been. “Do you know how long you’ve been here?”
“No, but you do, don’t you?” Velveteen frowned. “You’ve never let me near anything that might tell me what time it is back in the real world.”
“That’s because we needed you to commit to being here, to being now, and not keep marking off days like you thought this was some sort of prison sentence.
” Hailey’s face softened in an almost indefinable way.
“This hasn’t been so bad, has it? You’ve been happy here.
I know you didn’t think you were going to be, but you have.
You’ve had tricks and treats and you’ve enjoyed them.
Don’t lie to me. I’ve seen you smiling, when you didn’t think anyone was looking. This has been a good home for you.”
Velveteen slowly unfolded her arms, resisting the urge to grab the other girl and shake her until she started talking faster. “Am I…am I done? Is this the end of my stay?”