VELVETEEN PRESENTS JACQUELINE CLAUS vs. Existence #3
“The Seasonal Lands are supposed to exist parallel to the Calendar Country, not interfere,” said Velveteen.
“There has to be contact between them, because the Seasonal Lands need to gather animus heroes in order to function. They can have more charismatic and well-known heroes as their figureheads, but there’s an animus at the root of every season. ”
“You don’t know that!”
“I know it about the three seasons that tried to claim me. Winter, spring, and autumn all depend on an animus at their foundations. I’m assuming summer is the same.
It explains why the Seasonal Lands would touch on the Calendar Country at all: if they only ever existed as a receptacle for our stories about seasonal things, they wouldn’t need that strong of a connection.
But they need more than that. They need the occasional animus or they don’t function. ”
“How does this translate to the Lady of the Northern Skies being in any way at fault for what’s transpired?
” asked Victory Anna. Velveteen looked at her, and saw the longing plain and blatant in her eyes.
No matter how much Santa tried to remind her that Aurora wasn’t one of the winter figures she knew and loved, she wanted her to be. Maybe even needed her to be.
If this came to a fight, there was every chance the gadgeteer would side with Aurora over her friends, at least at first. Vel couldn’t even blame her for that. Victory Anna was a woman without a world, and that had to wear on her more than she let anybody see.
“When I was still a junior-grade hero, the Seasonal Lands found out I existed,” said Velveteen.
“I was one of only two animus-type heroes left in my generation—me and Tag—and my powers were more conducive to the services the seasons need an animus to perform. Only I wasn’t going to be strong enough to serve until I was older.
But two out of the four seasons decided they didn’t want to wait for me to mature.
They wanted to get their bids in early. Autumn started abducting me whenever they had a problem that needed to be solved. Winter went for a softer touch.”
“Vel?” asked Tag, uncertainly. “What are you talking about?”
“I’d forgotten, just like I’d forgotten Jackie, until Santa mentioned it,” said Velveteen.
“It’s so easy to go with the story in front of you, and not go digging for memories you aren’t supposed to have anymore.
Easy, and a little terrifying. Who are we, if we’re not our memories?
When I was a kid and doing The Super Patriots Holiday Spectaculars, Winter sent their youngest Spirit of the Season to steal me away for a little visit.
Jackie Frost. She took me to Santa’s Village. She said she was my friend.”
“She was your friend,” said Aurora, mulishly. “That’s the whole problem. If she’d remembered to treat you as an assignment and not a friend, we wouldn’t be here now.”
“But she didn’t,” said Velveteen. “She talked to me. She visited me. She came to play with me when she thought she could get away with it. And when The Super Patriots painted me as a villain, she stuck with me. Almost no one else did, but she believed I couldn’t possibly have turned bad.
Jackie was one of the first people who had faith in me, and I still barely remember her, because Jacqueline is standing where she’s supposed to be in all my memories. ”
“And I remember Jacqueline showing up when The Super Patriots were filming one of their specials in my Park,” said the Princess. “She wanted an introduction to Velveteen, but she didn’t sneak, and she didn’t steal. She’s been one of my best friends for years.”
“You can’t have them both,” said Aurora.
“It doesn’t work that way. Only one of them exists, and right now, neither of them does, and I’m not sure I want to let either of them be more than a footnote.
The universe will fill that space with a new iteration soon enough, if we just wait it out.
We’ve done pure selfishness and pure selflessness.
Maybe this time we’ll get something halfway balanced.
Krampus hasn’t had a daughter in a long while.
He could be a decent target for what’s coming. ”
“You’re avoiding the question, or the accusation,” said Velveteen. “This is your fault, and you’re too tapped out from holding the season together to beat me in a straight-up fight right now. The clever thing to do is to give us back our girl.”
“You keep saying that,” said Aurora. “What is it you mean?”
“Jackie broke the rules because she was trying to save what she cared about,” said Velveteen.
“I don’t know exactly what she did, but at this point, I know enough to know that’s what happened.
Well, no version of Jackie would have cared about us if you hadn’t sent her to the Calendar Country!
You created this situation. She would never have given a damn if you’d let her be a concept, instead of forcing her to be a person. This is on you.”
* * *
Jacqueline straightened, looking at the woman in front of her, who eyed her with good-natured wariness, like a feral cat that knew hands could sometimes hit and sometimes offer tasty treats.
She was glowing a pale, lambent blue, and her hair was snowy white.
Jacqueline’s own hair was a pale, pale blonde, but the difference between the two was stark.
“So you’re my replacement,” said the blue girl. “I guess I should have known any version of me was going to be a fuck-up. Hello, fuck-up. What did you do to get yourself deleted?”
“I saved my friends,” said Jacqueline. “They were turning into dinosaur people, and I didn’t want that. I know what you did.”
“Of course you do. I came before you, so when they revised me into you, you knew why.” The blue girl—Jackie—shook her head. “This is a shitty, shitty system, and I’m sorry we’re both caught up in it.”
“Where are we?”
“The seasons are sort of like storybooks. They have firm borders, they set their own rules, and they contain their own completion.” Jackie shrugged broadly. “This is the edge of the book. We’re outside the season, but we’re still a part of it, so we’re stuck here.”
That mirrored Jacqueline’s own assumptions, and she nodded, agreeing. “Are we dead?”
“Were we ever alive? I dunno about you, pinkie, but I’m more of an incarnate concept than a person in the strictest technical sense.
You’re adopted, right? Mom couldn’t stand the thought of taking care of something so tiny and fragile, so she handed you off to Santa and Sophie and told them to keep you breathing. ”
“That’s not exactly what they said happened, but yes. I’m a version of you, same biological parents and everything, who was raised by Santa and his wife.”
“Why does he get a name and she just gets a position?”
“I mostly call them ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’,” said Jacqueline. “And ‘Santa’ is a position just as much as it’s anything else. It’s not his name.”
“Fair,” said Jackie. “I forget that sometimes. Anyway, I’m not sure my mom can be alive. She’s made entirely of ice and wind and bits of broken mirror. So if she’s not alive, and she’s my mother, am I alive? Does it matter?”
“It does if we don’t want to be here forever,” said Jacqueline. “If we’re not alive, we can’t die, and that means we have to get out of here. Is there any way back into the main story?”
“You got a shovel?”
Jacqueline blinked. “Come again?”
“I’ve been assuming I was stuck in the margins of the storybook—”
“That’s what I thought too!” exclaimed Jacqueline, with audible excitement.
Jackie looked at her wearily. “—so if we both start digging, we might be able to work our way through the page to the other side. If this is a book, let us be bookworms.”
“Oh,” said Jacqueline. Then she sagged. “But I don’t have a shovel.”
“Do you get cold? Or did you hold onto enough of Mom to stay warm in the middle of a blizzard?”
“I don’t get cold.”
“That’s something.” Jackie pressed her hands together, then pulled them slowly apart, an icy rod appearing between them.
When it was roughly four feet long, she stopped, grasped it firmly, and gave it a solid shake.
A handle and spade appeared, one on either end, both made of clear blue-translucent ice.
She held it out to Jacqueline, who took it with a bewildered blink.
“Shovel,” said Jackie, beginning to repeat the process. “Start digging.”
Jacqueline looked at the icy implement, then nodded and drove it spade-first into the frozen ground.
A moment later, Jackie joined her, and two versions of the same woman dug with all the dedication they could manage, tossing aside first snow and then chunks of white pulpy substance that looked unsettlingly like paper.
Around them, the wind blew without end.
* * *
“I never forced anything,” spat Aurora. “The girl was happy to serve her holiday, and through it, her season. She understood what was being asked of her, and she went willingly into the Calendar Country.” She looked around at the gathered heroes, and found no understanding in their eyes. “She could have said no.”
“She was a child,” said Polychrome. “I remember—I almost remember—when we met her for the first time. It’s still fuzzy and a little unclear, but I know she was the same age we were.
She was just a kid. She couldn’t honestly decide whether she was willing to risk becoming so real that your only choice would be revising her into somebody else. ”