Page 102 of Seasonal Fears

This whole process has been about arguing with the universe, convincing it to help them—or at least not to hinder them—to let them move along to the next stage in their journey, to stay together. Maybe that’s what natural forces get out of wearing human faces. They get stubbornness, and the ability to argue. So it seems only right that this should be the point where they argue with the seasons for their right to claim the crowns. The actual race isn’t about getting through the labyrinth. It’s about who steps into the void and makes their case the fastest.

He wants to start the process, before someone else can beat him there. He wants to get this over with. He knows, purely and profoundly, that rushing the Winter at this stage isn’t going to help him. So he stands, somewhat antsily, and watches as the skeleton shape of the season comes closer and closer.

It’s not trying to hide itself from him. It doesn’t really need to. It’s so thin and so defined by the absence of substance that it could disappear if he stopped looking at it, or if it stopped moving for more than a few seconds. It’s just coming, one step at a time, and the cold comes with it, the temperature in the already-frozen wood plummeting like a stone, falling into the deep negatives with a surprising and terrifying speed. Harry holds his ground. He’s survived so much to get here. He’s pretty sure he can take a little frostbite.

The Winter moves to a point not three feet away from him, so close he could reach out and touch it if he wanted to, if he was feeling brave and wanted to risk losing a few fingers, and stops. It has no face. He still gets the direct impression that it’s looking at him, studying him, taking his measure.

Whether or not it finds him wanting, it’s going to have to deal with him, because he’s not going anywhere. The time for going anywhere is over. He folds his arms and raises his chin, standing as tall and confident as he can manage while slowly freezing in a landscape that doesn’t feel like it belongs to him, that doesn’t feel, in the end, as if it ever could.

Then the Winter speaks. Its voice is lower, distinctly male in a way he can’t quite name, and carries an archaic, only half-familiar accent, shaping the way it forms its vowels. “So you come to challenge for the crown, little Summer boy who does not flinch from me?”

“Yes,” Harry replies. “If the challenge is as yet ongoing, I would like to be considered as a candidate.”

“Clever boy.” The Winter doesn’t sound pleased, precisely; it’s making a statement of fact, not a judgment. Harry doesn’t think he’d enjoy being judged by Melanie’s season. It is, to be a little too on the nose about things, cold. “You are the first to reach me, and the only with a partner already in place, to let me see your heart more clearly. Two more have entered the wood since your arrival, but I think they can wander the trees a little longer before I speak with them.” It looks smug, if a shimmering distortion of the air can look smug. “One of them is crying. I will not, I think, have him for a partner. The other gathers firewood. If she ignites it somehow, I will be most displeased. Your time is short. Make your case.”

“Make my … Okay.” Harry catches his breath, tries to pull the veil of serenity back over himself. It doesn’t come easily. For a moment, he’s not sure it’s going to come at all. “I’m not here to challenge for the Winter.”

“You think I don’t know that? Bore me, child, and our time together is done. I have little patience for mortal fools.”

“The Summer and the Winter haven’t been a unified force for three hundred years, but they’re supposed to be,” says Harry hurriedly. “The alchemical marriage. Balance. Unite them and open the way to the Impossible City a little more cleanly, a little more directly. I’m not here to challenge for the Winter, because the Winter already has my heart.”

“You, Summer boy? I have nothing of you.”

“You have my Melanie.” He looks the Winter dead in what he hopes corresponds to its eye. This will all be a little awkward if he delivers what he believes will be the winning argument to its collarbone or its forehead. “She’s belonged to you since before she was born, since you’re the season she was born to become, and I’ve belonged to her since basically the day we met. She’s mine and I’m hers and she’s yours and that means you’re already mine. I’m not trying to invite you in. I know I couldn’t survive you. I’m a Summer child, and my bones burn better than they freeze. But I’m here to win the Winter all the same, because I intend to spend the rest of my life making Mel happy. I plan to spend the rest of my life making you happy.”

“My counterpart may not select her,” says the Winter. “What then? What when I approve you and you find yourself sworn to some frozen stranger? Will you complete the alchemical marriage then, or will you do as William did, and abandon your responsibilities rather than face them?”

“There’s a forest,” says Harry. “It belongs to my family, as much as any land can belong to anyone, and we take care of it. We make sure the trees are healthy, so we can cut the ones that need to be cut, and we make sure the land endures. I know what it is to carry a legacy, and what it costs to refuse it. If the Summer chooses someone else to carry Winter’s crown, I’ll stand by them all the same. I may not serve as long as I could have done without a broken heart, but I’ll serve.”

This is why the ones who run parallel do so much better in the labyrinth than the ones who don’t. It makes so much sense now that Harry can’t quite understand why he didn’t see it sooner. The candidates who make it this far must be acceptable to both seasons, not only their own, or they’d never have survived to make the attempt for the crown. What value is there in having the Summer look at him again and say “Yes, I like this one,” when he and the Summer both know that already?

This is the Winter checking to see whether he represents something it can live with, and he can only hope he does.

The air sparkles with frost, swirling and gathering until the spectral shape of the Winter is blown away, and Melanie stands in its place. Not quite Melanie as he knows her; this is a colder version, eyes filled with midnight sky, jeans and sweatshirt replaced by a gown of purest snow. He still takes a half-step forward before he catches himself.

“You’ll do,” she says, inclining her head slightly toward her chest. She smiles, and it’s both beautiful and terrible, both unfamiliar and beloved. This is the Melanie who lives where Winter walks, and he wonders if she’s meeting the same version of him, the one who walks in sunlight always and doesn’t know what it means to freeze any more than she knows what it is to thaw.

He hopes so. He gets the feeling not everyone who reaches the Winter is going to get this much time.

“Does that mean I can continue toward the crown?” he asks.

“What? No. Don’t be ridiculous. If you’re not at least a little clever, boy, I’ll tire of you much sooner than I would prefer. William and Diana held their places for far too long. Human hearts aren’t meant to contain three centuries of seasonal fears. But I’d like you to last at least as long as you would have lived if left alone.” She reaches toward him, palms open to the sky, and a crown forms there, of braided black branches supporting snowflakes the size of his hand. It’s beautiful. It’s impossible.

That really describes everything about the past few weeks.

She walks toward him, crown still balanced in her palms, and stops a few feet away. “Well?” she says, impatiently. “Kneel!”

He kneels. The living spirit of Winter, draped in the face of his girlfriend, sets her crown upon his head, and for all its cold starkness, it is not the crown of Winter; this is the Summer crown, this is the weight and wonder of a season pulled slightly apart from itself, slightly beyond itself, into the bright and open space where everything is impossible and nothing is improbable.

Harry’s eyes go wide as the forest falls away and he finds himself standing in a twisting alleyway, cobblestone ground giving way to perfect masonry and brickwork, the sky alight with banners and with birds. He blinks, trying to take it all in at once, because he knows, on a deep and essential level, that this place is not for him; however much he may want to, he cannot stay. But he can come here again, perhaps, in dreams.

Harry March stands, the summer’s crown upon his brow and living Summer burning in his bones, and beholds the Impossible City.

What Comes Next

CALENDAR SEASON: FEBRUARY 28TH, 2017: ONE MONTH TO SPRING, NEW MOON BETWEEN THE WORM MOON AND THE SPROUTING GRASS MOON.

All too soon, the city disappears, as he always knew it would have to, and Harry is standing alone in a wide clearing defined by topiary hedges on all sides save one, which opens into the stubble-strewn field. He can see some few of the attendants milling there, watching the wall, waiting for their candidates to emerge.