VELVETEEN vs. Going Home Again #3
“They’re mine,” said Vel. “They would never hurt you. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” She walked over to join Santa. He offered her his hand. She didn’t take it, and after a moment, it was withdrawn. Together, side by side, they walked to his house, and they shut the door behind them.
“Hey, Yelena?”
“Yeah?”
“When did Vel get fucking terrifying?”
Yelena smiled, the expression laced with worry. “She always has been. You were always too focused on her boobs to notice.”
“Oh,” said Aaron. “Right.”
* * *
Inside Santa’s house, the air was warm and chocolate-scented, much like the scent that accompanied Jacqueline’s snow globe transportation. Velveteen noted the similarity and filed it away for later consideration as she turned on Santa and hissed, “You should have told me.”
“I wasn’t allowed to,” he replied calmly.
“Aurora still thought there was a chance you might choose to stay with us, and telling you that one of your first and truest friends was gone forever wasn’t going to endear you to our season.
I hold sway over Christmas, Vel, but Winter is hers, and when she speaks, the rest of us obey. ”
“Did she tell you to…kill isn’t the right word. Did she tell you to delete Jackie?”
“No,” he said. The last of the joyful twinkle faded from his eyes. “She told the Snow Queen to do it. The mirrors are hers; she always knew this was a possibility. It took less to change the world than anyone would have expected.”
“The mirrors,” said Vel, standing a little straighter. “There were other Jackie Frosts. Jackie still exists.”
“Versions of her do, yes. But not yours. Not mine. That girl is gone, and angry as you are with me right now—and with good cause, Vel, please believe me; I understand your anger better than you could possibly know—she isn’t the reason you came here.
Please. Even if you’ll never leave out milk and cookies for me again, let me do this much. Let me help you.”
Velveteen was silent for a moment, looking around Santa’s living room, where she had been so happy once, before he’d broken her heart and ruined it for her forever.
Finally, she turned back to him and said, “Everything is wrong now. The Super Patriots, Inc. were defeated, but then I walked away. I didn’t stay to make sure everything got put back together again.
Bad people took over and twisted everything, and now half my friends are villains just because of who they are. ”
“There are a lot of new names on the Naughty List,” Santa agreed gravely. “What do you think I can do about it? Coal in their stockings isn’t going to change their minds. Most of them don’t even bother with stockings anymore.”
“They’re smart enough not to invite you in,” said Vel.
She looked him in the eye and said, “I want you to tell me how to fix it, Santa. That’s what I want for Christmas.
That’s all I want for Christmas. I want you to tell me what I have to do to fix the mess I allowed them to make.
I can’t… I can’t leave things like this.
It’s all my fault, and I can’t. Please.” She was mortified to feel herself starting to cry.
She pressed on anyway. “I’ve been a very good girl this year. ”
“You know, my dear, most people who said that right after calling me out in the village square would be lying through their teeth. But you, ah. You are still the sweet girl you were when my Jack brought you home to us. If I have any regrets, it’s that I was not allowed to decide how you would be wooed to join us.
You would have been an incredible toymaker. ”
“Can you help me?” Vel looked at him, now crying openly. “Can you fix this?”
Santa sighed. “No.”
Vel made a strangled choking sound.
“But you can, if you’re willing to take the risk.”
It had been so long since she’d been truly hopeful that for a moment, she didn’t know what to do. Tense and wary, she looked at Santa Claus and asked, “What do you mean?”
“I am a Spirit of the Season. Whatever else I may have been, once, this is where I belong now. I’m a part of Winter, and like Jack—like poor, lost Jackie—I cannot act against my nature.
My nature says that I should try to give good children what they ask for, and you have fought so long to be among the best of us, Velveteen, Velma, whatever name you want to wear; you’ve done everything you could.
So of course I will do my best to give you what you want.
But I can’t leave my season.” Santa smiled sadly.
“My absences from the North Pole must fit a very narrow set of circumstances. I can show you where to go. I can’t go with you. ”
“What aren’t you telling me?” asked Velveteen.
Santa sighed. “You’re never going to trust me again, are you?”
“Not planning on it.”
“I might have felt the same, in your position,” he admitted. “The road you’ll need to walk…it’s been walked before, and it comes with consequences. If you succeed in turning back the hands of time, it will cost you. You’d best be sure that you’re prepared to pay.”
“It can’t be worse than this,” said Velveteen firmly.
Santa Claus, who had lived through more than his share of young idealists who wanted to right great wrongs, to change the world in ways that should have been impossible—would have been impossible, were it not for the urge that builds in any fair universe, the urge that says “give them a way to fix their mistakes,” said nothing for a long moment.
He just looked at her, this woman who had been a child in his kitchen, once, her hair in curls and her eyes full of unshed tears.
Some of those tears were with her even now.
Some of those tears would always be there.
Finally, he said, “Go get your friends. Go to the Hall of Mirrors. The Snow Queen and I will meet you there shortly, and we’ll show you how to find the answers that you’re looking for.”
Velveteen, who had long since learned that sometimes it was better not to ask, nodded once before she turned and walked to the door, letting herself out. Santa watched her go.
When he turned, Mrs. Claus was standing in the kitchen doorway, a dishcloth in her hands. “So you’re going to help her do it,” she said.
“I have to,” he replied. “It’s what she wants for Christmas. You know I can’t refuse someone from the Nice List when they stand in front of me and tell me what they want for Christmas.”
“You can, and you have. When they ask for something that might well break the universe, you are absolutely allowed to tell them ‘no, I’m sorry, have a lollipop instead.’” She glowered at him.
“You’re being a sentimental old fool, Nicholas, and for what?
Because she’s had a hard life? Lots of them have had hard lives.
You haven’t sent them all on this path.”
“I’ve set a few on the right road. It’s not my fault if they don’t all make it there.”
“And if she does? Are you prepared for another century in the shadows, letting other people decide what we’re going to be, before we can be part of our own stories again?”
“Oh, my sweet girl. Admit what you’re really worried about. You’re afraid she’ll find a way to take Jacqueline away from us.”
Mrs. Claus sighed deeply. “I always wanted children. I’ve always been so jealous of the versions of us who got to have her. Jealousy isn’t good for me. I’m not meant to be the jealous type. It hurts.”
“I know, love.” Santa crossed the room to press a kiss to her temple. “It will all work out. I promise you that. However it goes will be how it was meant to happen. Trust them. They’re the ones who have to live in the world they’re making.”
“Do they know that?”
Santa looked toward the door. “I certainly hope so,” he said.
* * *
The others were waiting on the porch when Velveteen emerged. Aaron was the first to react. “Well?” he asked.
“Santa’s going to help us,” she said. “Jack, he wants you to take us to the Hall of Mirrors.”
“Papa told you to go to the Hall of Mirrors?” Jack frowned. “That’s odd. He normally wants me to stay as far away from there as possible.”
“That’s what he said,” said Vel. “Do you know the way?” Jackie would have.
Jackie had been training to become her mother’s heir for years, had walked through every mirror in that frozen Hall.
Velveteen looked at the pale and anxious girl in front of her, and thought that if she shook Winter all the way down to its foundations, she wouldn’t have made them suffer enough.
But it wasn’t Jack’s fault. If anyone was blameless here, it was her. Velveteen tried to remember that, and to swallow her anger.
“I do,” said Jack. She looked uncomfortable. “What are we going to do once we get there?”
“Does it matter?” asked Torrey. The others turned to look at her.
She shrugged. “When our dear Lady of the Toybox decides to do something, she rarely consults with the rest of us. She spent too much time a soloist, and no longer remembers how to play nicely with the symphony. What’s to come will come, and the rest of us will go along with it, because we are, for whatever misguided reasons, greatly inclined to follow her. ”
Yelena frowned and put her arm around Torrey’s shoulders, gathering the smaller woman close. “You’re really uncomfortable here, aren’t you?”