Page 66 of Seasonal Fears

“Good. Then we’re throwing you out with lunch and a map, but Roger says you can’t stay here any longer, and he’d know.”

“What, did he stick his head out the window and ask the clouds where they wanted the seasons to go?” asks Erin sarcastically. Dodger doesn’t meet her eyes. She sighs heavily. “You know I can’t take you people seriously when you pull shit like this. Speaking every language there is shouldn’t mean having conversations with the sky.”

“Sometimes it does,” says Tim. Erin looks at him and sighs.

“All right,” she said. “Sometimes it does. But it’s still stupid and I don’t have to like it and don’t you have homework you could be doing?”

“You need to head for the labyrinth,” says Dodger. “The candidates are starting to migrate in that direction, and there’s not currently another potential challenger for the crowns within a hundred miles of here. But there will be soon, and you’re not ready to face them, and that’s all I know. So you need to take the sandwiches and the snacks and get on the road. If you win, come back and tell us all about it.”

“And if we don’t?” asks Harry, standing. Kim tips the rest of the strawberries into his hands, like an apology, or an offering.

“If you don’t, I’m betting your Jack will make sure that whoever does win comes back and tells us all about it, since you don’t leave the closest thing you’re going to find to literal earthbound gods in the dark if you have any choice in the matter,” says Dodger. “Come inside. Get your sandwiches.”

Harry starts to rise as the others head for the door. Melanie grabs his arm, keeping him where he is.

“Wait,” she says, voice soft.

Harry pauses. So does Jack, until Melanie looks at her, shakes her head, and says, “Go.”

Jack goes, and for the first time since the motel, Harry and Melanie are alone.

A dreadful thought strikes him. “How much of that did you hear?” he asks.

“Not much. We weren’t eavesdropping in there. We were talking about the alchemical world, and how it bulldozes everything, and what my parents made me for. Harry, I’m sorry.” She lets go of his arm. “I’m so, so sorry. You were dragged into this because of me.”

“Not true.” He wants to agree with her, on some level, to point out that his Corn Jenny never came; if not for her, he could be safe at home in Portland, staying well clear of the coronation, with no idea what was coming. He’d be easy prey for the first Summer candidate to stumble through the city, and he wouldn’t even know he was supposed to defend himself. Once the coronation started, safety was never an option, not for him.

But he doesn’t know how to articulate all that, so he just looks at her, his Melanie, and feels like he’s in the presence of a miracle. She’s still pale—she’s always pale, and it makes a little more sense now that he knows she was designed that way, this isn’t just genetics combining at random to make someone out of a fairy tale—but there’s color in her cheeks, and her breathing is smooth and easy, and her eyes are bright, gaze focused. She’s not floundering in a sea of hypoxia and medication, she’s here, with him, utterly and completely here. It’s glorious. It’s impossible.

It’s worth it. Whatever they’ve done, whatever they still have to do, it’s worth it to see her this way, to have her back with him. Even six months apart every year will be worth it—and as Jack says, when she’s trying to ease the sting, they’ll each only be aware of three of those months. It’s a small enough price to pay.

It is. It truly is.

“If my father hadn’t—”

“Mel.” He seizes her hands. “Being on the yearbook committee doesn’t make you responsible for the world. If it did, the world would be better, because you’d make it better. Your parents did horrible things, and they did them without your knowledge or consent. But they didn’t make me fall in love with you. They didn’t put us in the same place. I’m pretty sure your dad would have been happier if we’d never met. He never liked me spending time with you, he never wanted us to be together, he never quite hit that cliché of ‘protective father offers daughter’s boyfriend money to break up with her,’ but I honestly think that was because my folks have so much more money than him that he figured it wouldn’t work. There’s Summer in my bones because it was born there. I’m season-stuck because that’s how I was made. And if that made it easier to fall in love with you as completely as I did, I’m grateful for it. If we lived in another world, one where we weren’t born from seasons, one where we were just ordinary people living ordinary lives, I’d find you anyway. I’d choose you anyway. Over and over again, forever. Don’t apologize. Not for being my girl. Not for letting me be your boy. Okay?”

Melanie blinks several times, unshed tears clinging to long black eyelashes, before she pulls her hands from his, makes a small choking noise, and throws her arms around his neck, pulling him close to her while she presses her face into the curvature of his shoulder and sobs. She was terrified, he realizes, afraid learning she was some sort of smug fuck’s science project would be the final straw and he’d say “Screw all this” and walk away. He should probably be hurt that she’d think he could do that. Instead, he’s just relieved she came to him and didn’t let the worry turn slick and septic between them, poisoning everything it touched.

The front door opens. Dodger reappears, a peevish look on her sharp-featured face. “Well?” she asks. “Were you going to come get lunch? Smita should be home soon, and once she gets here, we’re going to have a lot more trouble explaining what the hell’s going on. She knows about alchemy. She’s on the border of becoming an alchemist in her own right. She isn’t going to sit quietly while we talk alchemical concepts she hasn’t encountered yet, and we’re going to wind up needing to explain absolutely everything again, and she’ll probably want bone marrow samples from your ice princess here.”

“Let’s go,” says Mel hurriedly, wiping her tears away as she pulls her face from Harry’s neck. She’s smiling as she turns to face Dodger, a practiced reflex honed by years of cheerleading and being “the sick girl” who needed to seem upbeat at all times if she wanted to be included in anything.

Melanie follows Dodger into the house, and Harry follows Melanie, and somehow that order matters; it matters that Summer is following Winter, while Winter is following Time.

Laughter and chatter lead them to the kitchen, where the others have gathered, assembling truly ridiculous sandwiches in a sort of disassembled assembly line. Tim has several loaves of bread and a whole counter of condiments; Kim calls out what should go on each sandwich, and he applies the desired spreads, no matter how horrifying the combination. Erin has sacks of pre-sliced lunch meat and cheese, which she doles out at Kim’s request, while Jack has somehow taken over the salad station, providing leaves of lettuce, slices of tomato, and more esoteric toppings, like bean sprouts, or strawberries, or pickled artichoke hearts. Roger is at the table, accepting sandwiches and wrapping them in foil before adding them either to a pile or a bag, depending on whether they’re being set aside for the occupants of the house or sent on the impending road trip.

Harry stops to stare. Mel does much the same. It’s like a Subway gone feral, sinking its teeth into everything around it as it manifests itself in the world. Dodger pauses next to them, smirking. “Any preferences?” she asks. “It’s good to be clear. I told Kim to surprise me once, and wound up with peanut butter, gooseberry jam, banana, bacon, onion, and curry powder. We have just about anything you could want on a sandwich, but precision is key.”

“The sandwich is the perfect food,” says Roger. “No matter what you put together, you wind up with a meal at the end. The inevitability of the sandwich fixes everything.”

“Asshole,” says Dodger, with perfect fondness.

“Um, roast beef, cheddar, and tomato,” says Harry.

“Are those squash blossoms?” asks Melanie. When Jack nods, she says, “Chicken, rosehip jam, honey, and squash blossoms.”

Everyone looks at her funny except for Harry, who’s had a lifetime to get used to her weird thing about edible flowers. He just smiles as she moves across the kitchen to supervise and assist in the construction of their lunches.