VELVETEEN vs. Temptation
“No comment.” The person on the other end of the phone kept talking.
The Princess listened with increasingly visible irritation, her lip curling upward until she was actively sneering.
Finally, she snorted hard, and snapped, “I told you once, I told you twice, and now I’m telling you for a third time, if you want an interview, you go through my publicist. You certainly do not call me up in the middle of the damn night to ask questions you haven’t earned the answers to.
Lose my number, and have a magical night. ”
Cellphones lacked the heft for satisfying slamming down—not unless she wanted to risk cracking the screen—but since the other option was using the magic mirror, she had to settle for viciously swiping her thumb across the screen, as if to punish the person on the other end.
They would be punished, she knew: people who were told to lose her number generally did, and they had an awfully hard time finding it again, assuming they ever managed.
Even if somebody felt bad enough for them to give them a reminder, it would just get lost as soon as they took their eyes off of it.
It would take a sincere apology, delivered in person, to get this caller back into her good graces.
Somehow, that didn’t make her feel any better.
The Princess rose, her comfortable sweat pants and slogan tee (“Not Looking For A Prince, Just Here For the Shoes”) melting into a gold and rose ball gown much more suitable for sweeping along the castle halls.
The weight was a reassurance as much as it was a burden.
This was who she was, who she had to be any time she wanted to walk in the world.
It wasn’t going to change. Not for her, and not for any of them.
That was really the crux of the problem.
Who she was inside could change, and did, all the time, because that was being human.
Something she’d said or done or believed a decade ago might be as false now as the lashes on a theme park dancer, molded by experience and opinion.
Trouble was, people didn’t like to let things go.
They’d dig out an interview she’d given when she first started speaking to the public (still a child, all crinoline and curls and wide-eyed, earnest determination to never disappoint anyone, to never let anyone down, because if she did, the magic might go away and leave her back as she’d been, back in the wrong life), and say “But Princess, we thought you believed…”
It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. It ignored the human capacity to change, and more, it ignored the fact that language shaped opinion, and many of those interviews and articles had been written by folks working from their own set of biases.
There were more than a few nasty, snippy little articles about her, ones that claimed she was a liberal conspiracy to corrupt the children of the world.
As if fairy tale magic and wonder gave a damn about what small-minded people believed?
As long as the magic stayed with her, she knew she was doing right by those kids. But Vel…
Sometimes the Princess wished they weren’t the same age, because if there had ever been a little girl who needed a fairy godmother, it was Velma Martinez, better known to the world as “Velveteen.” If there had ever been a child who could have benefitted from having an adult mentor who actually gave a damn, who would actually teach, and not just endlessly train, it was her.
But that ship had sailed, much like Jolly Roger’s Phantom Doll, and it was never coming back.
Velveteen had never done anything really wrong; had never had the opportunity.
She’d been snatched up by The Super Patriots, Inc.
when she was too young to have started down the road to supervillainy, and even though she’d walked away as soon as it was legal for her to do so, the habits of heroism they had beaten into her thick little skull had stuck more than anyone could have hoped.
She’d hung up her mask and headband, sure, and she hadn’t been doing anything to protect the cities where she’d lived, trying to eke out an existence on her own terms, but she hadn’t gone the other way.
She’d never robbed banks or taken hostages or played the black hat in the endless superhuman game of capture the flag.
But as far as the Marketing Department of The Super Patriots, Inc.
had been concerned, Velveteen had committed the ultimate act of villainy when she had chosen to tear up her contract and walk away.
She had stolen an irreplaceable corporate asset: herself.
And so they had, with cruel indifference, done everything they could to destroy her without violating the terms of their interactions with legally retired superhumans.
They had made calls to employers, implying her separation from the team had been less voluntary than she would like to admit.
They had contacted landlords, and when that hadn’t worked, they had purchased buildings through shell companies, evicting her for any offense the law would allow.
They had pushed the boundaries of legality until they broke, and all the while, they had been delicately massaging the past, changing the documentation, updating the old films, until she was clearly painted as the team fuck-up and an inevitable villain in training.
They had been planning to make her a villain, and they might well have succeeded, if Velveteen hadn’t been smart about who her friends were, and lucky about where she’d landed when she finally took the risk and ran. Now…
Velveteen had changed the world when she had gone up against her former employers and won. That sort of thing didn’t just blow over. Most of the story as it had been written so far painted her as the bad guy. Now, with the press sniffing around, their window for changing the narrative was closing.
The Princess just hoped she could make Velveteen understand that sometimes, the true superpower was in knowing how hard to spin.
* * *
Envy, jealousy, and covetousness, with their gently divergent definitions and their functionally identical roots, have been a part of the human psyche since the beginning of recorded history and, presumably, before.
Even animals can express the desire to own that which does not belong to them, whether it be the best territory, the most plentiful food, or the most fertile mate.
Wars have been fought and nations have been divided by the many flavors of greed, both subtle and direct.
When the first superhumans appeared, the natural human response was awe.
Here were men who could fly, women who could summon storms with a wave of their hand, people who could talk to animals or teleport or recover in the blink of an eye from what should have been fatal wounds.
Here was the future, walking up to the door and ringing the bell, asking politely to be let inside.
The first news reports of superhumans have an air of jovial futurism to them, implying if not outright stating that sooner rather than later, humanity would enter a new golden age of possibility.
Then more superhumans appeared, and more, and more, and it became increasingly clear that this new golden age was not going to be available to everyone, or to anyone outside of the chosen few—and those choices so often seemed to be wrong!
Villains and n’er-do-wells and the obviously undeserving were granted the gift of superpowers while those who would have made better use of those same gifts were left standing idly by, unable to compete, unable to even start playing the game.
Was it any wonder when those “more worthy” onlookers seized control of the narrative? When the story of the superhuman who fell, rather than flew, became infinitely more compelling? Envy has always found a home in the human heart.
Envy, which rejoices when the mighty are brought low.
* * *
An instance of Night Shift was in the banquet hall when the Princess arrived, coaxing another cup of coffee out of an urn so covered with glittering crystals that it looked almost like a bedazzled beehive.
(Corporate would never admit it, but the Princess’s need for coffee before she could face the morning was the reason they had finally allowed a major chain to open outlets in their theme parks.
Seeing the coffee shops in conjunction with the fairy tale flourishes of it all had reinforced the idea that princesses liked espresso in the minds of children the world over, and had made it possible for the Princess to keep a steady supply of the stuff flowing in the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle.)
“How’s our patient today?” she asked, walking up to Night Shift and stopping a respectful distance away.
“Cranky,” said Night Shift. She took a swig of coffee.
“Belligerent. Making me think it may be time to up my rates again. But she’s healing.
Her bruises are almost gone, that one bad break has managed to set, and she’s up ten pounds.
You could probably dismiss me, as long as you’re willing to sit on her and make her take things easy for another week or two. ”
“You really think we can keep that girl quiet for another week?”
“I think you’ve got three days before she starts climbing the walls and animating your garden statues out of sheer nervous boredom,” said Night Shift.
“I’m removing toys from around her bed constantly.
She’s not calling them on purpose, or she says she isn’t, and I’m inclined to believe her, because she looks unnerved every time I find another one.
She’s anxious and she’s bored and it’s got her leaking energy in every direction.
The sooner we can put her back on steady patrol, the better off she’ll be. ”
“Now hold on,” objected the Princess. “You’re the one who tore strips out of my hide for letting her go on patrol in the first place.”