Page 108 of Seasonal Fears

“Just live,” says Erin. “Live like people do, and give the season something it can anchor itself to, something that will remind it that humans have to live in this world and carry the consequences of its choices. Get a job, start a family—probably easier for the two of you than for most seasonal monarchs, since you’re already a thing, but what do I know?—and live. You won’t age, and you won’t die of natural causes as long as you wear the crowns.”

“What are unnatural causes?” asks Harry uncertainly.

“Each other. Walking in front of a moving plane. Decapitation and fire have both been known to work, under extreme circumstances. I’ve heard rumor that drowning will do it, but no one seems entirely sure about that, so I’d chalk it up to hearsay and people wanting another way of taking you out. Any Incarnate can kill you. Given your place in the alchemical food chain, I’d be willing to bet your attendants could kill you if they really set their minds to it.”

Jack pales. Mel glances at her, eyebrows lifted.

“Something you want to tell us?” she asks.

“No,” says Jack quickly. “No, ma’am. We helped you reach the labyrinth because we wanted you to win. What would be the point in killing you now? We can’t claim the crowns, and it’s not like we’ve had time to prep another candidate.”

“What would happen if another coronation was triggered right now?” asks Mel, turning to look at Carolyn. “I mean, now-now. Not tomorrow, not next month, now.”

“You mean if I’d poisoned the muffins or something uncivilized like that?” asks Carolyn. “Well, I’d be a bad hostess, and we’d be back to my mama dragging herself out of the grave to punish me for it. Why are you so determined not to let my mama rest in peace?”

“Not if you killed us,” says Mel, exasperated. “If Erin strangled me or something. She’s an Incarnate, she should be enough to take me out.”

“Oh,” says Carolyn, blinking several times. “Well, I don’t rightly know. I don’t think it’s ever happened before. But it must have, at least once, or the mysteries wouldn’t call for the new monarchs to be taken away for their own safety before the rest of the candidates can recover from their shock. So there has to be some sort of a problem that only happens if we don’t get you away quickly enough.”

“Let’s ask Mr. Wikipedia,” says Dodger, and elbows Roger genially in the side. “Hey, nerd, what are these ‘mysteries’ Lady Autumn’s hinting at?”

“Sacred mysteries are common to most religions and belief systems,” says Roger. “They’re usually things that don’t make a lot of sense or are difficult to explain to the uninitiated, and while I’m not sure ‘I am a literal living manifestation of a season, ask me anything’ qualifies as a belief system, it makes sense that some things about it would be hard to explain to people who aren’t tethered to the alchemical world.”

“Okay. Does that infinite brain of yours include anything about why they’d need to get the winners away from the losers so quickly? Do people start throwing tomatoes?”

“Severing the candidates from their season kills them, but not immediately,” says Roger. “They wither and die, like a limb that’s been cut from a tree. There’s still enough sap in most tree limbs to keep them alive for quite some time, which is why grafting is a popular form of agriculture, and why trees who lose limbs in storms can frequently be repaired. Vegetable death is a slower process than mammalian death in almost all cases and—” He pauses, taking note of the way Dodger is looking at him. “And that’s not what you were asking, sorry. I get distracted sometimes.”

“Roger doesn’t know everything,” says Erin. “It’s more like he can answer any question, but he doesn’t always have the answer before you ask him. Roger, why do they need to get the winners away from the losers so quickly, if the winners carry the seasons and the losers have been severed? What is the specific danger if they don’t?”

“Oh,” says Roger. “That’s easy. Grafting.”

Everyone looks at him blankly except for Harry, who has been studying trees in preparation for taking over Castleview since he was a little kid. He stares at Roger in wordless horror as Roger smiles, triumphant in his sudden understanding, and explains:

“If a coronation results in a crowning, and one of the losers kills one of the winners quickly enough after the coronation, they can take the crown even without the blessing of the season. It’s happened before, Africa, 1812, Australia, 1704, and Europe, about eleven times during the ninth century, and then twice in the fourteenth. North America never had any assassinations before colonization shifted their coronation structure to the more European model, and since this is only the second coronation since then, this continent has a clean record thus far.”

“So a failed Summer candidate could kill Mel and claim the Winter?” asks Jack.

“Exactly,” says Roger.

Harry and Mel both turn to glare at Carolyn and Clifford, who look as stunned as the rest of them. “A little warning would have been nice,” says Mel tightly.

“We didn’t know,” protests Carolyn.

“You knew we needed to get out of there.”

“The mysteries tell us to extract the new monarchs so they can sleep in safety and align with their seasons without being disturbed,” says Carolyn. “They don’t tell us that they might be murdered if we let them sleep out in the open!”

“This whole system is stupid,” says Mel. “Why did we even bother going through the labyrinth and getting the approval of the seasons if we could have just stayed at Waffle House drinking coffee until it was all over, and then killed somebody and taken all their stuff? It’s stupid and it’s not fair.”

“But it’s the way things are,” says Roger.

“Well, I don’t like it,” snaps Mel.

“We can’t go home,” says Harry. “Aven never made it into the labyrinth. If anyone’s going to try to find us and kill us before the withering hits her, it’s going to be Aven. So we can’t go home. How far is it from here to Wisconsin?”

“You could drive it in a day if you didn’t take a lot of rest stops,” says Clifford. “It’s close to straight up.”

“Then we go to Wisconsin,” says Harry firmly.