Page 81 of Seasonal Fears

Aven has reached the gate and is yanking on it frantically, trying to get into the garden. Trevor shoves the keys into his pocket and jogs the last ten or so yards between them, grabbing her arm and doing his best to pull her away from her target. He succeeds in one thing: he succeeds in distracting her, as she slowly turns a baleful glare in his direction.

Just yesterday he would have backed off, apologizing in a frantic attempt to keep her from hurting him. He’s been with her longer now. He understands that she’s not as impulsive as she wants to seem, that she can see the consequences of her own actions, and simply ignores them.

Just yesterday he thought there was a way he was getting out of this alive.

“We can’t break into private homes,” he says, voice low and clear. “Someone else owns that house, and if their gate is locked, it’s because they don’t want us coming into the yard.”

Now that he’s right outside the fence, he can feel what caught her attention. For some impossible reason, the garden on the other side of the gate feels like summer. No, like Summer. It’s radiant and bright, and entirely out of season, impossible to ignore or deny. There’s a patch of strawberries in the middle of the path—which is ridiculous, who plants strawberries where people are going to walk? It doesn’t make any sense—and they’re actually fruiting, putting out fat red berries that make his mouth water even at this distance. Somehow, the people who live here have managed to harness a season they shouldn’t have access to.

Alchemists. They have to be. But he’s never heard of an alchemist managing to tap into one of the primal seasons without help, and he’s a Corn Jenny, for all that he’s worked hard to refuse the title and cleave to his own name and identity: if there were a Summer candidate here, he’d be able to feel them. It’s a small party trick. It’s one of the only useful ones he has.

A pretty Indian woman in blue jeans and a multicolored patchwork sweater that clashes with the house in a dozen different ways, some subtle, some screaming, is walking down the sidewalk toward them, a white paper sack from a local café in one hand. She pauses at the sight of Aven’s assault on the gate, looking briefly nonplussed. When she continues her advance, she does it while saying mildly, “I’m sure our gate has done you some great and grievous insult, ma’am, but I’d appreciate it dearly if you’d step aside and let me go through.”

Aven stops yanking, although she doesn’t release the gate as she turns to the woman and snarls—literally snarls, like some sort of wild animal, revealing teeth dazzling bright and far more perfect than they have any right to be, rendered dull only by the proximity of her bone-white skin. She doesn’t tan. She doesn’t even burn. It’s like the sun loves her too much to touch her.

“Who are you to tell me what to do?” she demands. Trevor winces. He’s still working on getting Aven to understand that not everyone she sees is a part of the alchemical world, here to challenge for her position or her territory. If anything, she’s the one currently impinging on this woman’s territory, which puts the stranger in dire peril if Aven tries to push this to a confrontation.

“I’m so sorry,” he says, breaking in before the woman can reply. “We’ve been in the car for a long time, and my sister fell in love with your garden the second she saw it. I’ll get her out of here as soon as I can, I promise—”

“I’m not your sister,” snaps Aven, abandoning her snarl in favor of glaring petulantly at him. “You’re nothing to me apart from a useful tool to be broken and discarded. If you touch me, I’ll have the skin off your body before you can pull your hand away.” Her eyes dart back to the stranger. “That goes for you as well, woman.”

“Ah,” she says, wearily. “Another of these? You should have said something. I assume you’re here for the cuckoos, then? I can’t fetch them for you unless you let me go in. And I can’t invite you into the garden, terribly sorry about that, but I don’t even have the permissions to call for a pizza. When I order delivery, I have to have it delivered to the corner.” Her sigh is exaggeratedly long-suffering. It’s clear from the look on her face, neutral, almost amused, that she doesn’t actually mind the restriction. “It’s what I get for being the only real boy in the puppet theater.”

“You’re a boy?” asks Aven, sounding baffled.

The woman looks at her levelly. “No. It’s a turn of phrase. But this is Berkeley; you shouldn’t be making assumptions about people, whatever they look like. I could be a boy if I wanted to.”

Aven doesn’t look like she agrees. Trevor is about to step in again, even knowing how much he’ll risk upsetting her if he does, when she finally lets go of the gate and takes a step back, allowing the woman the room she needs to pass. Not enough room: her shoulders will brush Aven’s chest, her body’s heat mingle with Aven’s own. If he didn’t know better, he’d assume Aven was trying to be intimidating. Sadly, he does know better.

He knows Aven simply has no idea that what she’s doing is socially unacceptable, or likely to alienate people. The knowledge she was given by her father’s alchemy included a million ways to hurt someone, the method for manufacturing a hand of glory and the laws of alchemical exchange, but left out the majority of the social graces. She’d be lost without Trevor.

He was looking for a queen, not someone to babysit. And this child is a danger to everyone around her, and Trevor’s only chance at winning this thing, making it impossible for him to do what he most desires and walk away. It isn’t fair. It isn’t what he wanted.

It’s what he has.

The woman smiles—the thin, displeased expression of someone who’s only doing it out of politeness. “Thank you,” she says, voice clipped, before pushing herself into the gap between Aven and the gate and pulling it open.

It comes easily, not locked at all, and Trevor can’t understand why they’re still on this side of it; Aven should have been through and into that sunlit strawberry patch before he could even get out of the car. The woman slips through, not glancing back, and heads for the porch.

The patch of strawberries seems to confuse her. She pauses and looks at them, cocking her head to the side. Then she shrugs, bends, and picks a handful of ripe red berries before she continues on her way.

That’s too much for Aven. She breaks her stillness like a window, surging forward, through the open gate—or tries to, anyway. She bounces off the empty air where the gate used to be, staggering back a step before her face contorts in fury and she flings herself at the open space again and again, bouncing off every time, like a bird trying to assault a window. Trevor watches in silence even as she starts to snarl, not sure what else he’s supposed to do.

The woman looks back over her shoulder at the silent Trevor and the raging Aven before climbing the steps and vanishing into the house. A few seconds pass, and she’s replaced by a sweet-faced woman with strawberry blonde hair and a distinctly sour expression, like she’s just bitten into the bitter anise center of reality and didn’t like what she found there. She folds her arms and leans against one of the porch supports, watching Aven fling herself twice more at the air.

As she gears up for a third attempt, Trevor catches her arm and stops her. She turns to snarl at him, all feral rage and futile longing, and stops as the woman on the porch speaks.

“Nice show you’re putting on out here, but if you’re doing it for the benefit of our neighbors, they can’t see you. None of the naturals can, unless they’ve already stepped to the side like your boy there. Fixing the wording to allow for natural manifestations was a nightmare and a half. I’m pretty sure the grammar is a hybrid of Hebrew, American Sign, and some dead derivative of Enochian no one else in the world understands. So you can fling yourself at the fence all damn day, it won’t make a bit of difference unless we decide to let you in.”

The woman from before comes back out, now holding two glasses of lemonade. She hands one to the other woman, before leaning against the support on the opposite side of the porch. The two of them stare down at Aven and Trevor, and he can’t help feeling like he’s being judged, probably because that’s precisely what’s happening here.

The new woman is the first to speak. She sips her lemonade, watching them closely, and says, “I don’t recall anyone inviting guests over today. I know Tim would have mentioned something, and Kim doesn’t really do people like that. So you’re not invited guests.”

“I certainly didn’t get any warning when I went out to see my chiropractor,” says the other woman. “And since there’s half a sandwich shop spread out around the kitchen, I can already tell I’ve missed something.”

“Oh, we had guests today,” says the blonde. “They left about an hour ago. Places to go, problems to cause, the usual routine. We would have asked them to stick around so you could meet them if they hadn’t been in such a hurry. And it’s a good thing we didn’t, because the one with the white hair looks just like one of them, and I don’t think we wanted to be there for this family reunion.”

Trevor goes briefly cold. “Did she have black hair?”