VELVETEEN vs. Winter
With Jacqueline missing, the direct passage to the Winter Country was cut off.
The Princess could still access the magic mirror she’d placed in Jacqueline’s bedroom, but it was a one-way connection: they couldn’t use it for travel.
That was going to be a problem. For three days, they had been brainstorming methods of accessing the Winter, with suggestions ranging from Yelena’s hesitant “maybe we should hang up our stockings and hope really hard” to Torrey’s “I could build us a plane and we could fly there under our own power.”
Building a plane wasn’t the worst idea anyone had ever suggested, except… “If we flew to the North Pole, we would be at the North Pole,” said Velveteen, sounding distracted. “We need to be at Santa’s Village. Those aren’t the same place.”
“Yes, yes, metaphysical displacement, the idea is not the thing, the thing is not the idea, blah blah blah,” said Torrey, waving her hand in dismissive irritation. “I’m not even sure why we’re doing all this. Is Jacqueline not permitted the simple pleasures of privacy any longer?”
The Princess, who was lounging on the living room loveseat like it was a queen’s throne, looked at Torrey, clearly annoyed.
Of the five people in the room, she was the only one in full costume, and as always when she was in full costume, it was virtually impossible to remember her civilian name, much less think of it as belonging to her.
“Pardon me, sugar, but are you implying Jack doesn’t deserve our help and concern? ” she asked, voice a sweetened drawl.
Torrey had known the Princess long enough to hear the threat in her tone.
She froze where she was sitting before carefully, so very, very carefully replacing her teacup in its saucer and folding her hands primly in her lap.
“Not in the slightest, miss,” she said. “If some terrible calamity has befallen dear Jack, we should absolutely seek to resolve it. I inquired only because we don’t know that some terrible calamity has come to call. ”
“We don’t know because no one’s been able to get ahold of her,” said Vel peevishly. She was curled into a corner of the main couch, twisted so her upper body was propped against Tad, who looked perfectly content to be furniture. “And that’s what worries us. Jack doesn’t do this sort of thing.”
“I can’t say what your friend Jack does or doesn’t do, because she didn’t exist before I died,” said Tad.
“I just want to go to the North Pole to find out what happened to my friend Jackie. Your friend, too, or most of you, anyway. I don’t know if the two of you really got to know each other, Torrey. ”
Torrey sniffed primly. “It seems the burden of friendship has fallen upon us all, then, and we return to the question of how we’re to reach your Father Christmas. This would be so much easier if we were in my world of origin.”
“Why?” asked Yelena.
Torrey shrugged. “The Snowfather could be reached by making offerings to the Lady of the Southern Skies. If you gave her sugar cookies—the sort with the big, chunky sugar that crunches between your teeth when you bite down—in the right flavors, she would come down in her coracle boat and carry you off to his territories.”
The rest of them were quiet for a moment, considering what she had just said. Finally, delicately, Yelena asked, “Sweetheart, do you mean that literally?”
“Of course not,” said Torrey. Before anyone could respond, she continued, “It’s not a true coracle when it’s used to transport people through the air, rather than resting on the water.
But apart from that, yes, absolutely. The Lady is always glad to assist people in reaching the Snowfather, providing they knew how to properly propitiate her. ”
“And if you did it wrong?” asked Tad.
Torrey scoffed. “If you did it wrong, and you were fortunate, you’d only lose a few toes. Not many even made the attempt, given the risks involved.”
“Right,” said Vel, knocking her hands together and standing up. “We are not beseeching a mythological figure from a world that doesn’t exist anymore.”
“Yeah, that sort of thing never works,” said the Princess dolefully.
“We’re going to beseech a mythological figure from a world that I told to go fuck itself.”
Vel turned and walked toward the kitchen, not looking back. Yelena hurried after her. “Vel, sorry, but you understand that this is a worse plan, right? This is a very bad, no good, someone’s going to get hurt plan.”
“Is it?” Vel paused in the act of digging a bag of miniature chocolate bars out of the cupboard, looking back over her shoulder at her roommate. “Can you tell me exactly what the plan is, so that I can understand the bad parts?”
“I—well—no, not in so many words, but it sounds like you’re getting ready to do something absolutely ridiculous and probably really, really dangerous, and that’s never a good thing.”
“Oh, good,” said Vel. “I’m glad it sounds like what it is.”
“What is it, then?”
“Simple: I’m going to call on Halloween, and hope that Hailey still thinks fondly enough of me to answer.”
She dumped her bag of candy into a large plastic bowl and walked away, holding it tightly in her arms, while Yelena gaped after her.
* * *
The Seasonal Lands are never as far from the Calendar Country as people would like to believe.
The average citizen on the street has accepted the existence of superheroes.
It’s not as if they have a choice, given how many of them are operating in most urban areas.
Even someone who lives in the absolute middle of nowhere is likely to see a hero flying overhead, or encounter a plantaepath in someone’s cornfield, protecting the crop against weevils and drought.
Superheroes are a simple fact of life, inescapable, and all too provably real.
Many of those same people, at the same time, will reject any mention of the Seasonal Lands.
They’re bedtime stories and fairy tales for children, and as many of their better-known occupants have arisen from lies told to those same children by parents seeking to “preserve the wonder” of their childhoods, this is perhaps understandable.
A parent who lied about the Easter Bunny is unlikely to take it well when a giant lapine actually breaks into their home to start hiding eggs.
Children have always believed. But while it is often easier for children to access the Seasonal Lands, they are not solely the domain of children; they are, in fact, the domains of their own residents, who live and serve and thrive according to their own rules and laws, which often have little to do with the regulations of the Calendar Country, as they call our less metaphorical version of reality.
Save in rare cases, they prefer to keep their distance, shaping the myths that made them without forcing people to see them for the truths they have become.
Always there are people the Seasonal Lands are caught in courting, people they attempt to lure over to their side of the metaphorical divide.
All you have to do is surrender your humanity, they say, all you have to lose is the mundane press of day-to-day living, and you can be part of something larger than yourself.
Those who have been courted by the Seasonal Lands never forget their experiences—or, as some describe it, their ordeals. To be beloved of something outside of the normal progression of time is to be forever changed, and not always for the better.
* * *
Methodically, Velveteen set the bowl of candy next to the front door and turned on the porch light before stepping outside, adjusting her domino mask with one gloved hand before placing the glowing plastic pumpkin she’d managed to dig out of her bedroom closet next to the welcome mat.
She cleared her throat, standing up straight and tall.
“Sing a song of Halloween, pumpkins everywhere, cats and bats and witches are all flying through the air,” she chanted, voice far more solemn than her words implied.
Stepping forward, she rang the doorbell, holding out the paper sack she’d stolen from the kitchen.
Crude bats were scrawled on the front and sides in Sharpie.
Seconds ticked by. She had no way of knowing whether the bell had rung inside the house at all: if it had, her housemates were under strict instructions not to answer, while if it hadn’t, that implied that it had rung somewhere else instead.
The doorbell worked, under normal circumstances.
But she had spent the last hour making sure that they weren’t dealing with normal circumstances, while her housemates looked on in confusion.
Now was when she’d find out if it had worked.
It didn’t help that she’d never actually needed to call on Halloween before. Halloween had always just shown up, uninvited and eager to crash the party. Any party, from birthday to funeral. Halloween wasn’t picky.
Velveteen was. That was why she’d told Halloween she didn’t want to belong to them, didn’t want to join their endless masquerade, no matter how tempting it might seem, no matter how well she fit into their holiday games.
So calling on them now felt awkward and wrong, like she was doing something forbidden. Like it was, in some way, a trick.
The thought seemed to be the last component needed to bring everything together.
A cold breeze blew across the porch, tickling the back of her neck, making her hands close tighter on the handle of her bag.
The door creaked open with a grating screech of hinges, and the girl on the other side looked at her with dismissive curiosity.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”
“It’s me,” Velveteen agreed. “Can we talk?”
“I guess. It’s a free timeline.” Hailey Ween, the Halloween Princess, folded her arms and eyed Velveteen suspiciously. “What did you want to talk about?”
“Jacqueline Claus.”
Hailey paused, expression turning hard. “Is this some sort of a joke? Are you trying to play a trick on me? Because I promise, you won’t like the results if you try to play trick or treachery with me.”