Page 25 of Seasonal Fears

“Haven’t you ever felt like some things were bigger and smaller than they seemed from the outside, and both at the same time? Ideas that felt like people. People that felt like ideas. Humans are very fond of anthropomorphic thinking, and there’s a reason for that, because the way the universe works, if enough people think hard enough, for long enough, that something works in a certain way, reality will change to make that possible.” She sounds so earnest, so utterly convinced that what she’s saying is true, that he can almost overlook the fact that it’s completely and utterly ridiculous. “A long, long time ago, people thought the seasons had faces. They thought the seasons were people just like they were, and if they asked the Summer nicely enough, they could get a better harvest, and if they asked the Winter nicely enough, they wouldn’t all freeze in their beds.”

“Tell it to global warming,” he scoffs.

In the mirror, Jack’s expression grows even graver. “Well, that’s part of the problem. But see, those people a long time ago, they thought so hard that the seasons were just like them that they started electing people to represent the seasons. They called them temporary kings and queens, and gave them everything they could possibly want, right up until they killed them for the sake of the community. Blood on the snow and blood on the barley and all that good shit.”

Harry blinks. “That’s barbaric.”

Jack shrugs. “Those were barbarous times. And anyway, they stopped killing people eventually, turned the idea of standing in for a season into something symbolic and fun for the kiddies. That’s when people like me started showing up, the seasons Ascendant. I’m not the living Winter, never could have been, even if I’d wanted the gig, which, hello, no one sensible wants the gig. It’s a shit job. But I’m tied to the living Winter. If your pretty poison apple girl manages to win her crown, I’ll be part of her household, along with every other Jack Frost in the world—and we outnumber you lot by quite a bit. There are hundreds of us, maybe thousands, because the seasons are different everywhere you go.”

Living in Portland, Oregon, where the coastal winds shape the weather and the mountains loom like walls against the sky, Harry is well acquainted with how an hour’s drive can change the weather. Still, he frowns. “So you’re saying Melanie—my Melanie—is somehow one of you people?”

“Not quite,” says Jack. “Melanie is one of the candidates to become the living Winter for this continent. The Incarnate seasons are a lot less common than the Ascendant seasons. There are only seven crowns, and each of them can only be worn by one person at a time. The Winter King of this region just died, and Melanie’s one of his potential replacements.”

“You do realize how ridiculous this all sounds.”

“Sadly, yeah, and that’s part of why I was the one sent to try to make her understand what was going on. Still don’t know where your damn Jenny is.”

“I know a bunch of Jennies, but they’re all at the dance, where we’re not.” The front door of Mel’s house opens and Mel emerges.

Her dress is gone, and he mourns it a little, even as he can see the sense in her change of clothes. Jeans and a simple shirt under his school jacket make a lot more sense if they’re running away from home (and this is ridiculous, they’re not running away from home on the word of a weird kid who still isn’t making half as much sense as he wants her to; that would be ridiculous, and while they’re teenagers and hence allowed to sometimes do stupid things, they try not to be ridiculous, Melanie because she’s watching her health, Harry because he doesn’t want to worry his parents), and he knows her well enough to know that the backpack slung over her shoulder will be full of medical supplies, snacks, and other necessities.

“Not a Jenny, your Jenny,” says Jack, with new urgency. It’s like seeing Melanie again has her concerned about running out of time. “I’m a Jack Frost, I belong to Winter. You were supposed to get a Corn Jenny by now. The one for this region is an older lady who’s been doing her job for absolutely ages. She’d be doing so much better of a job explaining things than I am, and she speaks Summer—I don’t. She could probably put this whole thing into, I don’t know, football terms or something so it would make sense to you. The best I can hope is that you’re infatuated enough with my dead boss to keep listening.”

“She’s not dead,” says Harry.

“She is right now, but she doesn’t have to be,” says Jack. “Neither of you does, not all the time. If you just listen, and do your best to make more progress than the other pairs—if you can get to the crowns first, she doesn’t have to be. Not for keeps.”

Harry tightens his hands on the wheel, watching Mel cross the lawn. “Keep talking.”

Jack leans forward, resting her elbows on the gap between the two front seats. “Seasonal monarchs are exactly that—seasonal. For three months out of the year, they die. We measure the terms of waking and dying by moons, since the calendar isn’t always in synch with the seasons. For her, that means when the flower moon shines in the sky, she dies, and sleeps through the rose moon and the hay moon. And then, when the green corn moon shines, she wakes up. Weak after her long sleep, but alive, and here. With you.”

Jack knows what he’s afraid of; he can tell by the way she stresses those last two words, the way she pauses to let what she’s just said sink in.

Melanie is almost to the car when Jack continues: “It works both ways, of course. You’ll have three moons together, and then, come the cold moon, you’ll die, and you’ll sleep through the deeps of winter. She’ll keep her crown and her counsel alone, and you’ll wake up at the start of spring.”

“Six months out of the year,” he says numbly. “That’s what you’re offering us. That’s not a life. That’s a long vacation.”

Melanie opens the car door and slides back into the passenger seat, a worried expression on her face. Harry frowns over at her.

“Mel? What’s wrong?”

“Apart from feeling like I just robbed my own house?” She hugs her backpack to her chest. “The phone rang the whole time I was inside. The house line, not my phone. It would go until the answering machine picked up, and then whoever was on the other line would hang up, and then they’d go again, and again, and I don’t know if it was the same person every time, but it scared me. Dad’s colleagues are the only ones who use that line, and I don’t like it when they call the house.”

“Why not?” asks Harry.

“I don’t know. When they call, they sometimes come to the house after they talk to him, and … and they just make me uncomfortable.” Melanie shrugs awkwardly. “There was this one woman, Dr. Barrow, but she only came around a couple of times, and we haven’t seen her in almost a year. She used to look at me like I was a science project. I didn’t like it.”

“Have you tried telling your father this?” asks Harry.

Melanie’s phone buzzes again, another call to be ignored. She glances at the screen regardless, grimacing at the name displayed there. “It’s my father,” she says. “He’s my father. How am I supposed to tell him I don’t want him to meet with his colleagues because they give me the heebie-jeebies?”

She’s a teenage girl, occasionally rendered frail by her ailments, aware that she’s beautiful. It’s not arrogant, although she’s fully capable of being arrogant about things she’s actually done, things she’s worked for and accomplished: she’s never wanted or needed to weaponize her prettiness, because she’s had Harry for as long as she could remember, and while her looks have something to do with it, she hasn’t always been pretty while they’ve been together. It’s just factual, something she needs to know if she’s going to walk in the world.

People who think a pretty girl is prettier when she doesn’t know it are people looking to take advantage of a pretty girl who doesn’t understand the danger she’s in, and Melanie doesn’t have the time for that. She never has. So she knows she’s beautiful, and she knows her father’s colleagues look at her like she’s a science experiment, and she knows it makes her profoundly uncomfortable in a way she has difficulty articulating, in part because it isn’t connected to her looks. If they looked at her the way the boys look at her in the school halls, or the way her freshman-year math teacher looked at her, she’d understand it. She wouldn’t like it, but she would understand it, and that might lessen her discomfort in some genuine and measurable way.

These people look at her like something they want to own, to possess and take apart, like she’s a toy that someone else has and doesn’t deserve, and it makes her skin crawl, and it’s so far beyond her experience in all other things that she can’t articulate it so that it can be understood. Not by her father, not by Harry, not by anyone. Until she grasps it for herself, she can’t possibly show it to someone else, and that aches.

“I have everything I need,” she says. “Harry, should we go back to your place and get whatever it is you’re going to need?”