Page 109 of Seasonal Fears

“What’s in Wisconsin?” asks Dodger.

Harry looks at her as if she’s just asked the silliest question in the world. “My family castle, of course.”

“Of course,” echoes Dodger. “Of course the weird kid with the Summer crown and the dead girlfriend has a family castle in Wisconsin. Where else would you keep a castle? It makes perfect sense.”

“It does,” says Harry. What he doesn’t mention is the strength of the Wisconsin winters: it should still be cold enough there to keep Melanie from sliding too far into Spring, at least for a little while. They’ll have to see about colleges in the area, too. Anything to keep her awake for more of the year, as long as he still gets sufficient time awake to manage the family business.

They’ve had illnesses in the family before, and he’s sure they can find a way to make this work. Maybe it’s happening a few years sooner than originally planned, but it’s not like this wasn’t the idea all along, in one form or another.

“We can’t go back to Portland,” he says, reasonably enough. “Aven didn’t die in the labyrinth, and if the attendants didn’t know about this … grafting … thing that failed candidates can try for, she probably didn’t die on the coronation field, either. Out of all the remaining potential Summers, she’s the one most likely to come for us.”

“You think she’d kill you?”

“I think she’d kill either one of us.” Harry shrugs. “Mel rejected her. I ‘stole’ her sister. She didn’t strike me as the kind of person who knows how to handle being told no.”

“If she was in an alchemically induced coma for most of her life, she probably never learned emotional regulation,” says Jack, voice slow and thick with horror. “So she’d see Mel’s refusal to break her parallel as a rejection. The only question is which of you she’s angrier at.”

“So it’s settled,” says Harry. “We go to Castleview. It should only take a day for us to get there.”

“Actually,” says Dodger, “we can help you with that.”

Castleview

CALENDAR SEASON: MARCH 5TH, 2017: ONE MONTH TO SPRING, WAXING SPROUTING GRASS MOON.

With Dodger’s help—which makes no sense at all; distance isn’t something you can argue with, distance is distance, it’s fixed and immutable, and one weird mathematician with candy cane hair making a few notes on a map before programming a specific and arbitrary route into the GPS can’t change it—they make the drive from Huntsville to the absolute top of Wisconsin in under an hour, and that’s with a stop at Starbucks to get Melanie a nightmare concoction of sugared syrup for the trip.

He wouldn’t believe it if he weren’t behind the wheel, but even as the GPS beeps and announces “Destination is ahead,” the road curves and there’s the sweet, familiar shape of Castleview, cupped by the sheltering hand of the forest that surrounds it, all gray stone walls and towering battlements.

It’s not a Barbie dream castle or anything else so straightforward and simple: the people who sold it, in Scotland, had inherited it from a long line of ancestors who paid for its walls and masonry with blood, and who probably wouldn’t approve in the slightest of its new home. But this is its home now; like the people who brought it here, it has put down roots. Maybe not as old or as enduring as some of the trees around it, which were here before the land was developed in any way, and will be here long after, but deep enough that the castle isn’t going to move again without human intervention.

Which means “never” as far as Harry’s concerned. He pauses on the road, creating a traffic hazard, to smile mistily up at the castle that has been his heart’s true home since he was a little boy. All his dreams, big or small, complex or simple, have come back to Castleview, and the future he was going to have here.

“Holy fuck me,” says Jack, sounding awed.

“Not for a long, long time,” says Jenny, half-amused, half-stunned. “You’re going to look like a kid for the next decade.”

Jack sticks her tongue out at him. He snorts.

“That doesn’t help. But I’ll echo the sentiment: holy fuck. Harry, when you said we were going to your family castle, I thought you meant just a really, really big house. Something unreasonable. Not a castle.”

Harry blinks. “Why would you think that?” He’s used to everyone at school knowing about Castleview, having seen pictures during show-and-tell sessions or heard him read from the endless tedious essays about what he did over his summer vacation.

Melanie rolls her eyes and pats Harry on the arm. “Not all of us grew up in your house, sweetheart. Just drive, and they’ll get over it.”

“If you say so,” grumbles Harry, and presses down on the gas, resuming the leisurely glide along the road. Can’t speed here, not in the shadow of Castleview; the castle pre-dates the current outline of the road, which was planned and paid for by the castle occupants, meaning it conforms to their ideas about visitors (largely unwelcome) and how fast cars should be able to safely travel (not terribly).

By the time they reach the drive, the door is open and Harry’s grandmother is standing on the step, flanked by bronze lions and beaming, her hands clasped above her heart. She at least waits for Harry to stop the car before she launches herself in their direction, moving with the easy spryness of a woman who may be in her early sixties but still lives an active outdoor life. She was the only one who laughed instead of worrying when they found Melanie literally climbing the walls that first summer, and she lights up when the passenger door opens and Mel herself emerges.

“Mel! It’s so nice to see you, sweetheart, Harald didn’t tell us he was bringing you to visit.” She pauses to shoot a mock glare at her beloved grandson, who is getting out of the car on the opposite side, already shaking his head as his grandmother sweeps his girlfriend into an embrace. “I wasn’t sure when we’d be seeing you again, after everything that happened. I’m so sorry for your loss, my darling.”

She lets go of Mel and bustles toward Harry as Jack and Jenny get out of the car, leaving Melanie to blink after her in bewilderment. She can’t mean Aven, can she? Aven isn’t so much “lost” as “temporarily and unintentionally found,” and they’re hoping to lose her permanently by coming here to go to ground. Jack and Jenny come to stand beside her as Harry’s grandmother hugs him and fusses over him, calling him tired and too thin.

“—told us you were on your way, but we expected you a few days ago,” she says, and Harry blinks.

“My parents told you I was coming here?” he asks.

“Of course they did. We’re old, Harald, it’s rude to surprise us. And speaking of surprises, who are these nice folk you have with you?”