Page 106 of Seasonal Fears

“Now, I know y’all have been enjoying our pretty hay maze and our smashing hospitality, but I’m going to have to ask you to head on back now,” she says. “The way is open: you can leave. The labyrinth is closed.” These are somehow two different things. It’s a bit of a relief when full understanding of what she means doesn’t immediately pop into Harry’s head, supplied by the presence of the season. The labyrinth is the responsibility of the liminal Ascendants, and they’ll continue to see to it as they dutifully build it and tear it down year on year, tracing the borders of the Impossible City, whatever those currently happen to be.

The presence of the City is why the monarchs can’t be involved. They would never be able to resist the urge to storm the walls, to try to claw their way inside before it was time for them to go. Once or twice, sure, but for the length of construction, every year, forever? No. Better to leave this process in safer hands.

“Thank you for coming,” continues Carolyn, as if they’d had any choice in the matter. Her smile is dazzling. Harry wonders, somewhat abstractly, whether she did pageants as a child. Maybe, or maybe she was in a sorority, one of those flocks of perfectly groomed women who wander the campus of Portland State University, a sealed sisterhood that seems to fashion its members even more expertly than Mel’s beloved cheerleading squad.

“Now, we have to go, and once we do, the walls will start to come down,” she says. “I’d recommend not being stuck here when the access ends, as it won’t open again even for us until there’s another coronation. Or, to put it more bluntly, your bodies will never be found.” Her smile turns thin-lipped and tight. “Thank you for listening, and have a lovely day.”

She turns quickly, pushing between Harry and Mel, and whispers as she passes, “Follow me. Don’t ask questions, don’t look back.”

“Listening to her is the best idea under most circumstances,” says Clifford. He also steps between them as they follow Carolyn, slinging one arm around each of their shoulders, forming a line between Summer and Winter through the body of the spring.

Harry wonders whether thinking of people as abstract concepts will ever stop giving him a headache, and more, if it will be a good thing if and when it does. But that’s a question that can’t be answered until it happens, so he focuses on descending the stage with Clifford’s arm to guide him, and as he steps back onto the dirt, he realizes how tired he is.

The Summer in him burns so much bigger and brighter than it did before he was crowned that it would be easy to miss that it’s no longer sustaining him the way it has been. The first phase of frantic growth has passed. What comes now is slow unfurling and maturation into something stronger, something that can endure. Instead of ivy, an oak. Instead of dandelions, a redwood.

He understands forestry. He understands why he’s exhausted. The other Summer candidates must be feeling it even more than he is, as their formerly shared season rips itself out of them one fiber at a time.

For their sake, he hopes it doesn’t hurt. For Aven’s sake, he almost hopes it does. It’s a painful contradiction to carry, and he carries it all the same. Someone has to. Better him than Mel.

Jack and Jenny join them as they walk toward the wall of towering corn that has returned, across from the vanishing labyrinth. Carolyn leads their little pack, guiding them to an opening in the corn wall, and when they step through, they’re back in the tunnel that brought them here, back on the scarecrow trail.

None of the other candidates or attendants follow. Mel gives Clifford a blankly curious look, and he laughs.

“They came through other routes. You were the only ones to use our house. It’s been three days since you entered the labyrinth, by the way. Car’s still where you left it. No one asked, and we didn’t need to have it towed. So you’ll be able to head back to where you came from, after you’ve had a hot shower and something to eat, and maybe a good night’s sleep.”

“We have multiple guest rooms,” says Carolyn. “And my mama would come back from the dead to beat me blue if I turned you out without making sure you were ready to go.”

“It might be dangerous,” says Harry uncertainly. “If the other candidates come for us…”

“If you’re a weak enough King that you can be killed by a failed candidate when you’re coming into your season and they’re being stripped of theirs, it’s better for it to happen quickly, before the labyrinth comes down and the world adjusts to what it has now,” says Clifford. “It’ll be fine. Let us cook for you and take care of you. You can take time to figure out what you’re doing next.”

It makes sense. It’s reasonable. It still makes Harry worry a little, about someone else getting hurt because they let him into their home. Still, the walk down the tunnel is long, and by the time they reach the end, he can barely keep his eyes open. He dimly remembers Carolyn ushering him, and Mel, into a guest room painted an almost violent shade of purple, handing them a stack of towels, and telling them that she’d see them in the morning.

He doesn’t remember undressing, just falling facedown onto the bed, already asleep before his head hit the pillow.

The sunlit meadow is familiar, but there’s no figure there to greet him this time, no mirror image of himself. Harry walks among the flowers, and realizes two things. The mountain that loomed on the horizon is gone, replaced by the outline of a magnificent city, and the forest where he once walked with the Winter now looms at the meadow’s edge, bare branches reaching toward the sky.

The third thing is slower to come, and arrives only as he wades through the tall grass toward the forest. The other him isn’t here, because he doesn’t need to be; because this isn’t his anymore.

It’s Harry’s.

He claimed this land when he took the crown, when he became the Summer King, and one day it will be his responsibility to sit with Melanie’s successor and interview them for the right to take her place. That’s going to hurt, when the time arrives, but it will be the hurt that comes after long service and laying their burdens down.

He’ll come here once a year for as long as he reigns; once a year and no more, when he sleeps the deep, slow sleep of the dead. He knows that too, a feeling that only grows stronger as he gets closer to the tree line and sees the snow on the ground, the line of bare earth between it and the meadow’s edge. Snowdrops and crocuses push through the snow at the very edge, but beyond that, the only color is from the fruiting holly bushes that stand silent sentry in the shadows. This is a place for transitions.

It always was, but before, they were always changing, becoming new people on an annual, if not monthly, basis. They were growing into the people they would eventually become, the ones who would be strong enough to shelter an entire season, and so they needed to walk on the edge of the Impossible City again and again to learn how to grow in its shadow, to find out if they even could. Maybe there are people who carry the seeds of seasons who don’t become attendants or candidates, because they don’t thrive where the City can see them, and so the seasons let them go.

So he won’t come here often after this, and Melanie won’t visit her own seasonal landscape, and they’ll live their seasons in the real world, and once a year, when they sleep and end and begin again, as seasons always have, they’ll come back to this familiar place and walk alone. There are worse possible futures.

They almost lived through so many of them.

Harry stops about ten feet from the edge of the wood and cups his hands around his mouth, shouting Mel’s name. He shouts it again and again, but she never comes out of the trees. When he finally gives up and lowers his hands, he’s still alone amongst the flowers.

But they won. They’re supposed to get the happy ending. That’s how this works, right? They won. They get whatever they want now, forever. They won.

Morning is heralded by the ringing of a doorbell loud enough to belong in the Addams Family home. Harry groans and peels his face off the pillow, scrubbing at the sleep that’s formed in the corner of his eyes. The other half of the bed is disheveled, clearly slept in, but Melanie is gone.

That finishes the process of waking him up, knocking him back to consciousness as quickly as a slap. He sits up on the bed, surrounded by soft pillows and warm blankets, still fully dressed, although someone—Mel, probably—has helpfully removed his shoes for him. That’s good. He doesn’t want to think about how Carolyn would react to mud on her sheets, given how upset she’d been about the mud on her floors. “Mel?” he calls.