Page 105 of Seasonal Fears

The stage, such as it is, is small and restrained, and has been assembled from untreated wood planed and sanded to a satiny finish that has nothing at all to do with paint or varnish. This is all natural, sweat and hard labor alone transforming it into something beautiful. Two posts have been erected, one to either side, garlanded with flowers Harry knows don’t grow in the same place or the same season. Carolyn and Clifford lead him and Melanie to the dais, all the other attendants and candidates following, forming a small crowd around them.

“Forgive us,” says Carolyn. “This used to have more pomp and ceremony, back when it happened on something resembling a regular basis, but these days, we’re out of practice. Even the people who taught us had never seen it happen.”

“Seen what happen?” asks Melanie.

“The coronation,” says Clifford.

Melanie looks at him blankly. “I think you misunderstand,” she says. “We’ve already been crowned, by our Seasons. There’s no coronation to perform.”

“Ah, but that was for you, and for them, and for the alchemical world,” says Carolyn. “This is for your peers.”

For the would-be Winters and practically Summers who will now fade into their graves, severed from the vital connection to the seasons that have been keeping them alive since the coronation began. For the Jacks and the Jennies who have only just begun to mourn, some of whom will be losing childhood friends and trusted colleagues. It makes a certain sense. It’s less rubbing things in than it is … affirming.

Affirming that the choice was truly made, and that it was, in fact, made correctly. So Harry and Melanie follow to the stage and walk up the stairs together, hand in hand, before they turn to face the crowd.

Aven is there, scowling viciously. She made it out of the labyrinth after all, if she ever even went in. Trevor is nowhere to be seen. Either he’s smart enough to have stayed away from his losing candidate, or he wasn’t, and she’s already killed him for the crime of not preparing her well enough to win. Either way, while she glares, she makes no move to approach the stage, so Harry discounts her.

Matthew isn’t there. Neither is Misty. That’s not much of a surprise. Much more surprising is the presence of five familiar faces. Harry nudges Mel in the side with his elbow, and when she glances his way, points into the crowd. She follows the angle of his finger, blinking at the little group. They’re wrapped in a veil of rainbow mist, all five of them, and while people have made a space for them to occupy, it doesn’t look like anyone else can see them. They’ve stepped between the seconds, and the people surrounding them are no longer tied to the flow of time in the same way.

Dodger raises her hand and waves when she sees Harry and Mel pointing in their direction. Roger turns a heartbeat later, and raises one hand in a thumbs-up. So it seems the Doctrine approves of this outcome, or at least its component parts do, because here they are, at something they can’t possibly have predicted and probably weren’t invited to.

Harry’s pretty sure it wouldn’t do him any good at all to point that out. This is happening.

Carolyn approaches Melanie, while Clifford approaches him. It feels like it’s less about gender and more about place in the seasonal progression: spring comes before summer, autumn before winter. Each of them carries a platter of the same wood as the stage, polished and sanded until he can read forest legends in the whorl and pattern of the grain. It’s beautiful. It’s impossible. It’s all happening.

On each platter is a crown. The one Clifford carries appears to have been made from braided barley and corn, studded with small red flowers, like red, red rubies. The crown Carolyn carries is black branches and panes of ice, decorated with frozen red holly berries. Harry bends to allow Clifford to place the crown atop his head. Carolyn does the same to Melanie.

The air changes.

Or maybe only they change; maybe the air is the same. Still, Harry breathes in and it’s sweet and warm and tastes of the coming spring. He can smell the thawing of the earth and the blooming of the flowers, and feel the imbalance caused by both his predecessor and the carbon that humanity has been pumping into the air. The climate has changed, and the role of the seasons is changing with it, in ways that may never be undone. Still, the world lives with humanity, and as long as the world lives with humanity, it will put faces to the seasons. Summer’s shape may have changed. It still needs a head to wear the crown.

Harry straightens and turns to Melanie. She looks, impossibly, even paler than she did a moment before, with a thin edge of weariness he recognizes all too well from years of watching her health like it was his own. Her season is over, her time waning, and soon she’ll sleep the summer away, dreaming while he reigns alone.

But she’ll wake up. When his time is done, she’ll wake up, and they’ll be together again. He can handle that. Out of all the prices the world could have asked of them, he can carry this one, at least for now. And if that ever changes, they’ll both have had the time to grow weary enough that they can set their crowns aside and go to the Impossible City without regrets. The thought of dying in service of the seasons isn’t so bad now that he knows where they’ll go when this phase of things is finished. There are some rewards for service, after all.

Looking into his eyes, Mel laughs, a sound that trends into almost becoming a sob, and leans forward, and presses her lips to his, and kisses him like she’s never been allowed to kiss him before and might never be allowed to kiss him again. Harry slides his arms around her waist, holding her against him, and her body is cool to the touch but alive, so very alive. She gets to stay.

They both do.

Clifford steps to the front of the stage. “My friends, following the first North American coronation in over three hundred years, I present to you our new reigning monarchs, the Summer King and the Winter Queen, who will carry us into a better future. Long may they reign!”

The cheers that answer from the crowd aren’t entirely sincere. Too many of the gathered observers hoped to claim those crowns for themselves or for their loved ones; too many of them will die by inches as the season seeps away from them, and there’s nothing that can be done to stop it. Harry can feel that now, through all the Summer souls. A seed unsprouted does no damage, but once it begins to grow, it can’t be reduced back to what it was before. There’s no way to dam up the hole it will leave when it withers. Like a dandelion pushing through a crack in concrete, the Summer has grown up under their foundations and broken them, and they’ll die, just as he was told they would.

He feels bad about that. Maybe there’s a way to change it going forward; maybe the weirdoes in Berkeley who rewrote their own ending can find a way to rewrite the endings for the future Incarnates who fail to catch the crown. Or maybe not; maybe that would just leave too many challengers for the throne, make it impossible for anyone to ever truly relax into the role. And he needs to. He can feel that, too. He and Mel aren’t here to control the seasons they represent so much as … shape them. Summer will be gentler in the hands of someone who actually likes the world. Winter will be less selfish, and hence less brutal.

Seasonal monarchs can’t reverse climate change, or the other continents would have resolved it long since, but he feels like having a balanced system back in place will help things, at least a little.

Down in the crowd, Jenny puts two fingers in his mouth and whistles, sharp and piercing, while Jack laughs and applauds with enough sincerity to make up for all the people around her. Mel pulls away and Harry lets her go, but holds on to her hand.

Holding on to her has gotten them this far, after all. They’ve won, and now they’re going home.

They just have to figure out what that means.

No Forwarding Address

CALENDAR SEASON: MARCH 4TH, 2017: ONE MONTH TO SPRING, WAXING SPROUTING GRASS MOON.

After the coronation, Carolyn steps to the front of the stage again, clapping her hands for attention. The crowd settles down. Admittedly, it isn’t that much of a change.