Page 79 of Seasonal Fears

Aftercare

CALENDAR SEASON: FEBRUARY 14TH, 2017: WINTER, WANING WORM MOON.

“Harry, you can slow down now.” Mel puts her hand on his arm. Her fingers are chilly again, not frozen; he can feel them as part of a human hand, not an assault on his Summer shell. She’s thawing. He’s not cooling. That should probably worry him. But the road is long and straight, and they’ll be back on the highway soon, heading south before they bend east, heading for the labyrinth, heading for the crowns.

What he didn’t realize before—couldn’t realize, because it hadn’t been made clear to him the way it needed to be—was that he never needed Roger and Dodger to tell them where to go. He only needed to connect to his season. He knows where he’s going now. If they lost the car, he could find it on foot. The labyrinth is calling him, calling him to come and claim his birthright, to be the first to take and wear the Summer crown, and he’ll kill anyone who tries to stop him from getting there, he’ll stop anyone who wants to get in his way.

Mel knew. Mel was already tied into her season, and she knew, even before they were told what it was, that someone had lit a beacon in the east, calling the seasons home. There’s no possible way she didn’t know. He glances at her pale, well-loved face across the dim cab, and feels a flare of anger stronger than any he’s ever felt for her in his life. She’s his Melanie, his best friend, his girl, and now his Winter, the opposing number to the fire he feels burning through him like a curse, and she’s not supposed to be the one who betrays him. The fact that she has hurts more than anything he can imagine or articulate. They were supposed to be in this together, and she didn’t tell him.

Her expression turns concerned, reading the anger in his eyes, but she doesn’t take her hand away from his arm. “Harry? Honey, are you okay?”

In response, he hits the gas a little harder.

Jenny leans up between the seats, occupying the space that has traditionally belonged to Jack, and says, “He’s still Summer-struck after calling it to him back in the garage. It may take him a while to come back to normal.”

Melanie twists in her seat. “Who are you?” she asks, and it’s not a demand, more like a plea for things to start making sense again, and somehow that doesn’t help as much as it should. Harry can’t help feeling like she doesn’t have the right to ask his attendant anything at all, not when she had an attendant and he had nothing but questions and confusion for so long. Why is he even here? He’d be safe at home in his own room, in his own bed, if not for her—

But that means he wouldn’t be hearing the sweet siren call of the labyrinth, urging him onward, nudging him toward the best route to reach his future. Mel may have pulled him into something he could just as easily have avoided, but now that he’s here, he wants to stay.

He wants to stay so badly that he can’t imagine letting go even enough to come back to her.

“Corn Jenny,” says Jenny apologetically. “I was attending the asshole from the lawn—his name’s Matthew, and I wish we hadn’t left him alive, that’s going to come back to bite us later—but your boy here was able to claim my loyalties. So I work for him now. I’m going to help and shepherd him toward summer.”

“He’s my opposite number,” chirps Jack, and she sounds so happy about that that Mel yields her suspicion and sags in her seat, hand still on Harry’s arm, expression still concerned.

“Well, okay,” she says. “I’m guessing he’s with us now?”

“You have a problem with that?” asks Harry sharply. “You’re allowed to have your attendant and I’m not?”

Mel snatches her hand away from his arm like he’s finally started burning her the way she’s been freezing him, cradling it against her chest and staring at him with wide, wounded eyes. Jack elbows Jenny in the side.

“You want to be an attendant, attend,” she says. “Convince him what we need right now is a human person, and not an incandescent ball of gas shoved behind the wheel of a hybrid sedan.”

Jenny looks at her blankly. Jack groans.

“I had to talk Mel down when she sank too deep into Winter before, and he couldn’t do it,” she says. “You’re probably never going to meet people more ridiculously and unrealistically in love than these two, and he wasn’t enough to anchor her to being a person. That’s my job. And it’s your job.”

“Matthew never—I mean, I haven’t…” Jenny stops. “I don’t know how.”

“I didn’t either, before I did it. Right now, he’s in a place that’s very safe and comfortable for him, that doesn’t challenge who he knows he is in any measurable way. He needs someone to help him come back from that. Tell him to come back.”

Jenny hesitates. Harry, who’s been listening to this whole thing from an academic distance, where it really doesn’t matter, keeps his eyes on the road.

“Or don’t,” he suggests. “I can see the labyrinth now. I know where we’re supposed to go, and I didn’t know before. I’m happy like this. My mental state is not a problem to be solved.”

“Sort of is when it’s not your season yet and you’re manifesting so hard that you’re going to confuse the trees,” says Jack. “If you pull down much more summer, you’re going to ruin the entire artichoke harvest.”

Harry’s not sure why he’s supposed to care about artichokes, but he knows he likes this fire burning in his belly. He wants to keep it there. So he shakes his head, keeps his eyes on the road, and keeps driving. The GPS says it’s thirty hours to Alabama, but that assumes driving the speed limit. He’s willing to bet he can make it in fifteen, if these people would just shut the hell up and leave him alone.

“He’s glowing,” says Mel, sounding faintly panicked. “Is he okay?”

“No,” says Jenny. “But he still can be.”

He’s never wanted to be left alone this badly before.

Then he feels a hand settle on his shoulder, and the outlines of the fingers through the fabric of his shirt aren’t cold like Melanie’s hands, or hot like Matthew’s. They’re perfectly normal, perfectly neutral, just fingers. Just a friend, reaching out across the burning gulf that’s opened between him and everyone else in the world, just a ladder, just a …

Just a lifeline.