VELVETEEN vs. Going Home Again #2
“Oh, how delightful,” said Torrey dryly. “The poor man’s snapped under the strain. Well, I never liked him anyway, and our time here is inherently short, due to the strain I place upon our environs. I say we leave him for the wolves.”
“That’s not kind to the wolves,” said Yelena. Her own costume was still skin-tight, but was no longer midnight black: instead, auroras climbed from her ankles to her knees, and from her elbows to her wrists, while her normally rainbow sash was an ever-changing strip of winter sky.
“No one is getting left to the wolves,” snapped Vel, and knelt next to Aaron, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Hey. You okay?”
“I’m here,” he said, and beamed at her. “You look great. I love it when you have holly in your hair.”
Velveteen resisted the urge to reach up and feel what Winter had done to her this time.
She had skin, not snow; she could feel her heart beating.
That was good enough for her. “Yes, good, you know where you are. We sort of rode a magic snow globe to get here, and that sounds weird even to me. But are you okay?”
“I haven’t been here since I let them drive you away,” he said, and grabbed her, hauling her down into the snowbank with him.
It was a child’s embrace, giddy and joyous and utterly platonic.
Velveteen squeaked before she was sprawling in the snow.
He didn’t let her go. “Santa didn’t let any of us come to visit after Marketing drove you away. We were all on the Naughty List.”
“What in the world is a ‘Naughty List’?” demanded Torrey.
“Papa keeps watch over all the children in the world, and makes records of whether they’ve been naughty or nice,” said Jack serenely.
“Nice kids get a genuine collectable North Pole toy on the winter holiday most closely aligned with their personal belief systems. A lot of them wind up getting sold on eBay. There was a Jacqueline Frost doll one year. She goes for about six hundred dollars mint in box.” All four of her companions were staring at her by the time she finished speaking. She blinked. “What?”
“I do not even know where to begin,” said Torrey slowly.
“Shall we begin with a Snowfather who would spy upon the world’s children, watching them at their most vulnerable?
Or with the concept of tracking one’s own collectable action figures via Internet auction sites?
Truly, I’m not sure which is the more disturbing. ”
“How have you been living in this world for three years without at least getting the basics behind Christmas?” Vel sat up in the snowbank. Snow clung to the rabbit ears attached to her headband, giving her a comically jaunty air. “Honestly, Lena, I thought you’d have her singing carols by now.”
“We’ve been busy.” Yelena offered her hands to Vel and Aaron.
“Besides, Santa is the secular side of the holiday, and I really didn’t feel like enduring another of her rants on the evils of monotheism just so she’d understand why Jack traveled by snow globe.
This is Winter, Santa fills the same role as the Snowfather, and that was good enough. ”
“I’m finally back at the North Pole,” said Aaron, smiling beatifically as he allowed Yelena to pull him out of the snow bank. “I’m finally back on the Nice List.”
“Yeah, well, that makes one of us,” said Vel, getting her own feet back under herself before she let go of Yelena.
She dusted the snow off of her skirt. “The rest of you might want to stay here. I’m about to get myself permanently filed under ‘Naughty.’” With that, she went stalking off across the frozen field, heading for the distant lights of Santa’s Village.
The others watched her go in silence for a long moment before Yelena sighed, said, “She’s going to get her ass kicked,” and launched herself into the air. She soared after the angry animus, leaving a trail of rainbows behind her.
“On it,” said Aaron, and took off, flying after Yelena. Jack and Torrey exchanged a look.
“Some people need more gravity,” said Jack. Torrey laughed, and the pair followed their friends, on foot, through the snow.
* * *
Velveteen waved her hands as she walked, almost without thinking about it.
Snow animals formed out of the drifts around her, shaking themselves to life and running after her.
By the time she reached the edge of the village, she was accompanied by a menagerie of frozen beasts.
They ranged out behind her in ascending order of size: bunnies and squirrels at the front, wolves and bobcats in the next rank, and at the back, snow lions and snow yeti and great bears with icicles for teeth.
The elves and penguins saw her coming and scattered, running for their cheerful little houses and slamming the doors behind them.
Silence fell. In Santa’s Village, normally the cheeriest place in the Seasonal Lands, nothing moved. No carols played. Everything was still except for the chest of one velvet-clad animus, which rose and fell with the force of her labored breathing.
“Come out and face me, old man!” she yelled. The anguish in her voice was enough to crack glass, here where the happiest part of the holiday was meant to reside. “You owe me that much! You owe me…you owe me that.”
The door of Santa’s cottage opened. A vast form, clad in red and white fur, belted with a broad black band, stepped onto the porch. Santa’s cheeks were red, as always, but his eyes had lost some of their glisten; instead of merriment, they were filled with sorrow.
“Yes,” he said. “I suppose I do. Hello, Velveteen. It’s been a long time.”
“Not for me,” she snarled. “I lost all track of time while I was busy being turned to snow, severed from my own life force, and shoved into a rag doll. So it was a little surprising for me to get home and find out that three years had passed. Three years. You didn’t tell me.
You didn’t warn me. You didn’t say anything about what was going to happen. ”
“We told you that you would be stepping outside of normal time, out of the reach of the Calendar Country,” said Santa softly. “That should have been warning enough.”
“I trusted you,” she said, and her voice was a moan, her voice was a wail, her voice was an open wound in the world.
Overhead, the Northern Lights pulsed in unconscious sympathy.
She might have moved past Winter, but she was still an animus in a place that was defined by belief, and she was more powerful than she knew.
“I know,” said Santa, and his voice was nothing more nor less than a broken heart.
Polychrome and Action Dude landed on the snow to either side of Velveteen—farther from her than they would have liked, but there were snow rabbits in the way, and while that was a new and slightly unnerving development, they didn’t want to see what Vel would do if they squashed them.
“Vel?” said Action Dude, uncertainly. “Is everything okay?” He glanced toward the cottage with the open door, cheeks reddening slightly in embarrassment and awe. “Um. Hi, Santa.”
“Hello, Aaron,” said Santa, with a small smile. “I’ve missed you. I’m glad to see that you’ve been able to find your way back.”
“Eyes front, old man,” said Velveteen tightly. “We’re not done yet.”
“No,” he said, turning his attention back to her. “Do you really want to do this here? In the open, in front of your friends? I’m assuming you want something from me. You wouldn’t be so angry otherwise. Most people sit on my lap, or write me letters. They don’t call me out in the village square.”
“Most people trust you more than I do.”
“I suppose that’s fair.” Santa’s eyes went to a point beyond Velveteen, his face softening for a moment before he looked back to her and said, “And I suppose she’s one of the reasons you’ve lost faith in me.”
“Really. You suppose. Like you’re just guessing. Like you thought I was going to be all right with this. She’s not your daughter.”
“She is,” said Santa. His voice was gentle.
“I took her in when she was a baby. I gave her my name, and I gave her my heart. I held her until her skin warmed under my hands, and when she fell asleep in my arms, I made the only selfish decision I have allowed myself in centuries. I didn’t give her back. ”
The snow wolves began to growl, drawing their lips away from their frozen teeth. “That’s not what happened and you know it,” said Velveteen.
“But it did happen,” said Santa. “Maybe not always. Maybe there was a time when the Snow Queen came to me terrified of motherhood, and I gave her council, I gave her hope, and I gave her the chance to raise her own daughter, always knowing that Mrs. Claus and I would be there if she needed us. Maybe there was a time when my little girl grew up with cold hands and a cold, but earnest heart. Sadly, that time is not this one.”
Velveteen opened her mouth to object. Then she stopped herself, turning to watch Torrey and Jack trudging toward them through the snow.
Jack was wading in it, the drifts extending almost to her knees.
Jackie would have been walking on top of it, light and effortlessly part of her environment.
Even the strongest spell, the strangest form of brainwashing, couldn’t have chased the ice from the marrow of her bones that completely.
This girl, whoever she was, had never been Jackie Frost, daughter of the Snow Queen, heir to the heart of Winter. It just wasn’t possible.
Santa saw Velveteen’s shoulders sag, and he mourned for her, even as he knew there was nothing he could do.
Velveteen took a deep breath, visibly pulling herself back together, and squared her shoulders as she turned to face him. “All right,” she said. “We can go inside. Aaron? Lena? Wait for me out here.”
“You mean with the army of angry snow-monsters that you didn’t even have to sculpt?” asked Yelena. She looked at the snow bunnies standing rigidly next to her with obvious wariness. “Are they going to eat us?”