Page 14 of Seasonal Fears

Unsurprisingly, Jack doesn’t argue, and the world slips away.

Into the Wood

CALENDAR SEASON: FEBRUARY 11TH, 2017: WINTER, UNDER THE WORM MOON.

Melanie opens her eyes in the wood, exactly where she was when she woke up last time, Harry sprawled on the ground at her feet. The snow beneath him broke when he fell; it’s melting from the residual heat of his skin. She tries to grab him, to shake him awake, and recoils. He’s so hot that touching him burns.

There’s probably some deeper symbolism to that, but right here and right now, she just wants him to wake up and comfort her. She just wants to know none of this is happening, that she isn’t dead, or a season, or anything else that doesn’t make sense. She’s just sleeping.

She doesn’t have to do this. Because everything that Jack girl said sounded right, sounded true, sounded like it described the world she’d always almost understood, the world that existed alongside her world of doctors and pills and dying by inches. And she doesn’t want it. She’s sleeping, just sleeping, perfectly normal and perfectly fine.

Just sleeping, with the sound of her phone alarm buzzing in her ear.

Melanie Cosgrove opens her eyes, and this time she’s alone in her room, and it’s time to get ready for the Valentine’s Day dance, and everything is perfectly normal.

Honest.

The pair struck down. The Crow Girl came tumbling after them, narrowly managing not to land on Zib. She squawked and spat water before turning to the human child and asking, “Did you pull me down?”

“No,” rasped Zib, in a voice as waterlogged as a kitchen sponge on cleaning day. “I think the plant did that.” She indicated the writhing green mass beneath them. It wasn’t grabbing or pulling anymore, or trying to eat them. That was enough of an improvement that she didn’t want to question it, not really.

Niamh crawled over to Avery, who was sprawled alongside the remains of the bucket. The rope had snapped at some point during his descent, and its frayed end rested on his chest, like a tether to nowhere. Reaching out, she gingerly shook his shoulder.

“Peace, Avery,” she said. “I know drowning, and you’re not drowned. Open your eyes and come back where you belong.”

Avery remained still and silent for several seconds more before he coughed, water coming out of his mouth, sat up, and vomited into the bucket. He took a great, shuddering breath, leaned over the bucket, and vomited again.

“That’s surprisingly tidy of you,” said Niamh, in an approving tone. “Never throw up on anyone you haven’t been introduced to. I would normally suggest not sitting on anyone you haven’t been introduced to, either, but it’s a bit late for that, and since this charming individual tried to drown us all, it seems like a little sitting-on is simply tit for tat.”

“Individual?” asked Avery blearily.

Several of the nearest green fronds lifted up and waved gingerly in the air, for all the world like the fingers of a vast hand folding over themselves. Avery screamed.

Zib jerked around to face him, and followed his scream with one of her own, much higher and shriller. The Crow Girl burst into birds, all of them cawing loudly and frantically as they flew around the cavern. Avery kept screaming, and so did Zib. Niamh rolled her eyes.

“Screaming isn’t going to help or change anything,” she said. “No matter how loud you get, the facts remain the same. I’ve never encountered noise-soluble facts, although I suppose they must exist. If someone has a headache, and you scream in their ear, the fact is that their headache may get worse, and you may get punched, very hard.” …

—From Along the Saltwise Sea, by A. Deborah Baker

BOOK IVThe Rights of Spring

The promise of spring’s arrival is enough to get anyone through the bitter winter.

—Jen Selinsky

For myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have been long forgotten. The history of religion is a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice.

—Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough

Waking Up

CALENDAR SEASON: FEBRUARY 11TH, 2017: WINTER, UNDER THE WORM MOON.

Not that far away, as high school students who only got their first cars last year measure distance (which is a means of measuring distance entirely distinct from the bicycle math of younger teens, or the walking distance of children, or the advanced driving distance of adults), Harry March is getting ready for the dance.

He’s sometimes very glad he’s not a girl. For a lot of reasons, but chief among them are the moments like this one, when he has to make himself look good for some social event where Melanie will expect him to look nice enough to match her. He knows she has a new dress, one she hasn’t allowed him to see, and that she’ll spend at least an hour on her makeup, blending foundation powders and highlighters until she looks less like a dead girl walking and more like the girl she wants him to see when he looks at his high school pictures in his college dorm. She’ll be curling and twisting and styling her hair, and taking a thousand steps toward the kingdom of acceptable feminine beauty, where he has never been and never dreams of going. While he puts on the same suit he wore to Winter Formal, and to Homecoming before that, and runs a comb through his hair, and calls himself good. It isn’t fair. It’s the way things are.

He’s told Mel before that she doesn’t have to paint her cheeks for him, that he knows how much color her illness has stolen and he doesn’t care, he still thinks she’s the most beautiful girl in the world and he always will. She smiles and says he’s sweet and goes back to swatching lipsticks on her hand, like she’s competing in some grand pageant he can’t see and won’t ever be scored in.