Page 61 of Seasonal Fears

“Alchemists can be born or they can be made. James Reed and Leigh Barrow were made, same as everyone in this room except for your boyfriend and your attendant,” says Erin. “Your father was born. He was a normal, natural man who brushed up against the alchemical world and thought, ‘Oooh, all that power, all that tyranny, and all I have to do is give up my qualms about taking other people apart for my own benefit? I’m in!’ He and his wife were both acolytes of Reed’s, when the Doctrine project was still active—before they knew for sure they had a success.”

All four siblings look uncomfortable. Harry frowns. There’s something here he hasn’t quite made sense of yet, and he can’t help feeling that once he does, he’s going to be even less happy than he is right now.

“I told you that you were constructed to be the perfect vessel,” says Jack, voice gentler than Harry’s used to hearing from her. “It’s why you keep sinking so deep into Winter, even though you don’t have the crown yet.”

“It means we’re probably related,” says Dodger. “Reed never met a single cell of Asphodel’s that he didn’t think deserved the chance to be recycled. He took his failures apart and reincorporated them into the rest of us. He built me and Roger, Kim and Tim, even Erin over there. And, since your parents were building off his research, supplied them with seed stock. Sort of literally.”

“Well, that’s horrible,” says Melanie, with all the inflection she might use to say that something was a less-than-fabulous idea. “What if I’d been a failure?”

“You sort of were, since your mother went into labor when she did,” said Jack. “You were supposed to grow up with your sister, each of you secure in your respective seasons.”

Roger looks intrigued. Jack shakes her head.

“Later,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m blowing off the Doctrine of Ethos, but later.”

“Just because you underpin the universe, that doesn’t mean you get to know everything,” says Dodger.

Roger’s intrigued expression shifts to annoyance. “I’m aware,” he mutters, petulant child in the body of a grown man, denied the one toy he desperately wants.

Harry can’t allow himself to be distracted, not when Mel’s still staring at Erin with rapt, if somewhat horrified, fascination. Dismayed, Mel asks, “So my father isn’t my father? This James Reed asshole is?”

“‘Asshole’ may be the only title James Reed ever deserved, except for ‘monster,’ but we can’t entirely blame him, any more than we can blame you for having cold hands, or me for alphabetizing the spice section every time we go to the grocery store,” says Erin. “He was constructed too, put together by Asphodel herself, and half of what he did in his life was just a matter of following the instructions she left him with when she had to go away. I’m much more inclined to blame men like Roland Cosgrove, who had a choice in the matter. He didn’t have to be an alchemist, or if he felt like he did—if he was one of those true believers who pursue alchemy because they view it as their duty to keep magic from leaving the world forever—he could still have done something else with his life.”

“As if magic could leave,” scoffs Kim. “It’s so entangled in all the manifest vessels that it couldn’t slip away if it wanted to. And it doesn’t want to. Magic belongs here like everything else does, and it isn’t going to subtract itself from the equation.”

“Everything evolves. Magic used to be raw and flexible and everywhere, like water. But too many people drowned, and it’s just aware enough to realize that if it turned itself into the monster in the castle on the hill, it would be burned out. So it became people who could do things that seemed impossible, but were just extensions of their natures within their specific, narrow spheres, and it became alchemists, who could change the world in bigger, more variable ways as long as they followed the rules. The difference between a forest fire and a candle is scale and control, not elemental nature.”

“And my father was a candle.”

“You’re a candle,” corrects Erin. “Your father was a little boy with a book of matches. Your mother had a book of matches, too. I remember when Reed and Leigh were discussing the project that made you. If it had succeeded without complication, they were going to use the two of you to force a coronation. The old Winter King wasn’t tractable enough for them. He wanted things. He made demands. Reed wanted the universe made manifest and leashed to his hand.”

Harry is suddenly very glad they keep talking about this Reed person in the past tense. If he were here, in the living flesh, Harry’s not sure he could resist the urge to break the man’s jaw. He’s not usually a violent person, but it sounds like all their problems, or the greater measure of them, can be traced back to James Reed.

“Oh,” says Melanie. “I don’t think I would have liked that much.”

“You wouldn’t,” says Tim. “They liked making people in pairs. That was something Reed learned from Asphodel. People should always have counterparts they care enough about to bleed for, because someone who has something to lose is someone you can control.”

Kim leans over and takes his hand, not saying a word, and a little more of their story unfurls for Harry, horrible in its implications, impossible to contemplate with any comfort or ease.

“I also remember how Cosgrove’s project went wrong,” says Erin. “How’s your sister?”

“Dead,” says Melanie, not batting an eye. “Maybe you don’t remember as much as you think you do.”

“Or maybe there’s things he never bothered to tell you. They were hoping to salvage something from the project, even if they couldn’t have their perfectly balanced vessels. Roland and Ariadne were equal partners, according to Leigh; after Ariadne died, he couldn’t try again without convincing another woman to be the mother of his children, and fortunately for the women of the world, incubating the vessels of the seasons when they were alchemically constructed for perfect balance meant drinking way too many foul draughts and doing way too many ridiculous rituals for him to trap an innocent into helping him. There are plenty of female alchemists. Most have the common sense to not offer their wombs as lab space. So if he wanted to prove his theories, he had to work with what he had, and what he had was one little girl the world knew about, who had effectively and symbolically had a stake driven through her heart while she was being born, and one little girl the world didn’t know about, who was legally dead and alchemically sustained.”

Melanie blinks, eyes going wide and glassy. “My sister didn’t die?” she asks.

“Not unless it happened after I was turned out of the lab,” says Erin. “That was a while ago, and they were still debriefing your father following the death of his wife. I can’t say for sure that the other girl made it out of infancy. But they had plans for her. If she lived, she was going to be the Summer Queen one day and balance you in all possible ways.”

“That’s why it was so easy for you to go parallel,” says Jack, sounding relieved, like some terrible mystery had just been resolved. “You were primed. All the accounts of old coronations say that once two candidates had joined forces, if one of them was lost before they were so entangled that you couldn’t kill one without losing them both, the remaining candidate would parallel much more quickly. They already knew what it was not to be alone.”

“Is that also why she’s so deeply sunk in the Winter already?” asks Harry. He wants to grab Melanie and run, wants to tell these strange, serious people with their devotion to a cosmology he isn’t sure he’ll ever fully understand that he’s good, thanks, he doesn’t need their specific brand of crazy. But he can’t. He’s seen too much to dismiss the things they say as simple delusions: he knows this is all happening, whether he likes it or not.

And he’s not sure Mel would come with him if he tried. The wild story they’re spinning involves her parents, both of them, the father she ran from and the mother she never met and has hence always idolized; worse, it involves the twin sister he’s always felt like he was competing against in a small, invisible way, the girl who would have been Melanie’s preordained best friend and confidante, who would have been there for her through everything, always, if she hadn’t died at birth. Now Erin says she didn’t die, and she might still be out there, and if she is, she’s also going to be competing to seize the Summer.

He hopes Mel hasn’t already made the connection he has, the one that reminds him that only one candidate can seize the season, while the others have to either renounce the crown or die. And he can’t renounce right now without killing Mel.

If she were running in parallel with her sister, it might be possible for him to step aside, but since everything else in this wild, self-contradictory world they’ve gotten themselves sucked into seems to end with death, he has trouble believing that he’d be allowed to simply step aside, even if he wanted to. And he doesn’t entirely want to. Does he want to be the Summer King? Well, he can’t say that with any certainty. It sounds like a lot, and not the kind of “a lot” where he still gets to go to college, and play football, and take over the family business. His future has always had two absolute landmarks that he can’t imagine going without: Melanie, and Castleview. He’s been trying to come to terms with the idea of losing the first for years. Now he may get to keep her, but it will mean losing the second.