Page 89 of Seasonal Fears

“I know you know you’re dead, because you went and did it in the most dramatic way possible. Having your heart burst inside your chest is definitely a way to announce your candidacy. And you pulled Harry down with you because the two of you have been running in parallel for longer than anyone ever had the reason to realize. He would have died on his own as soon as the season turned. Probably not as dramatically; some candidates don’t even notice when it happens. But immediately. You’re corpses from the moment the coronation begins, going through the motions of living while the crowns sustain you.

“Any seasonal monarch is a mass murderer from the moment they’re coronated, because claiming the crown cuts all the other candidates off from what it offers, and means they stop being sustained by the season. Don’t look so horrified, little girl, you’ve already killed two of them, and you didn’t even know what you were doing.”

“But when … when we challenge them, we’re supposed to give them the option to refute their claim to the crown.”

“Yes, and if they take it, they’ll die.” The woman—the Winter—looks at her calmly. “They’ll be cut off, and they’ll die. Not immediately. It’s not as quick or as clean as losing a challenge, but it’s just as inevitable. I’m sorry. You should know all this. My last regent held the crown so long that things got lost, got forgotten, that should never have been overlooked.”

Melanie blinks, several times, trying to reconcile this with what she’s learned from Jack, the careless way the younger girl has spoken of surrendering claim to a crown. But Jack’s said other things, too, hasn’t she? Things about the turn of seasons … “I don’t believe you.”

“You don’t have to believe me. You could always repudiate your own claim to the crown, or convince Harald he should give up his. All you have to do is mean it, and accept that there’s no taking it back. And die, of course. Everything that’s mortal dies. Even seasons die. We just keep coming back after we go.”

Melanie stares at her. “This is horrible. It’s horrific.”

“Yes. It can be described as both those things.”

“It’s inhumane.”

“Little girl, whatever gave you the impression I was human?” The Winter moves closer, skirt rustling around her thighs, and nothing about her is young or innocent or pristine. She’s an insult to the uniform she wears. Melanie wants to rip it off her body, to deny her that common comfort, even as she knows the Winter is appearing like this only so she can comfort Melanie, so Mel can hear what she’s being asked to hear.

“I was here before I learned to wear a human face, and I’ll be here long after. When all humanity is dust and ash and evolutionary legend, I’ll still be here, on every planet that turns on an axis, on every world that experiences seasons. There’s a phrase in your mind: ‘Life finds a way.’ It doesn’t, always. But winter, on the other hand … winter always finds a way.”

Melanie shies away from her, frightened and transfixed in equal measure.

“Some of you are born naturally—not made, as you were—with seeds of seasons already sprouting in your hollow hearts. That’s where your own humanity was meant to flourish. As you grow, so do we, and when you reach fruiting age, we put forth our flowers. For the attendants, the soil they offer is fertile but not as nourishing as we’d like. We grow in them, but twinned with the seeds of human nature, unable to claim and conquer what rightly belongs to us. They retain some of their humanity even after the blooming. You, little flower, do not. You are only and entirely what you were made to be, and the sooner you surrender, the happier you will be.”

Melanie stares at her. “Jack said if I went too far into Winter, I wouldn’t be able to claim the crown. And you just said I couldn’t stay here with you, even if I wanted to.”

“Coronation requires a small measure of humanity,” says the Winter, waving her hand like she’s brushing away a particularly annoying gnat. “As long as you cling to scraps, you’ll be able to take me. And if not, then when someone else is crowned, you’ll fade peacefully, as so many have done before you came. I hope not, though.”

Melanie blinks. “What?”

“You were made for me,” says the Winter. “A pretty toy for me to dangle on a string. I like the thoughtfulness that went into your construction. I like knowing you exist because someone thought I might want you. Of all the candidates in this batch, you’re my favorite, which is why you’re getting so much of my attention. I am inevitable. You are not. So fight me enough now to give in to me later, and stay with me as long as you can. We can do wonderful things together.”

Melanie backpedals from the frozen woman with her face, smiling so sweetly, so coldly. She doesn’t want to be here anymore. She doesn’t want to be in this dark, cold place, where nothing thrives and nothing grows and nothing is reborn. The woman walks toward her, and she keeps retreating, keeps running, until she turns to flee, and the cold snaps around her like a branch from one of the skeletal trees. The cold shatters, and the winter shatters with it, as broken as a window, and she’s clawing her way out of the wood, she’s not there, she was never there at all—

Back in the car, Melanie jerks upright in her seat, sucking in a great, gasping breath of air. Harry, who was the only one of them to have realized she’d stopped breathing some five minutes back, hits the brakes and stops in the middle of the highway. It’s safe right now, or as safe as that sort of thing can ever be; there’s no one ahead of or behind them for miles, and the sides of the road are just a great emptiness, sand and scrub and hardpacked dirt broken by the distant shapes of looming mountains.

He unfastens his seatbelt and all but lunges across the car, taking her into his arms, and does what he’s been doing since they were children, since the first time he realized that sometimes Melanie, much as he loves her, can be surprisingly fragile. He holds her closely while she cries, and he presses his face into her hair, and he doesn’t say a single word.

He just holds her.

Acceleration

CALENDAR SEASON: FEBRUARY 26TH, 2017: ONE MONTH TO SPRING, NEW MOON BETWEEN THE WORM MOON AND THE SPROUTING GRASS MOON.

There’s a lot of America out there, and Harry doesn’t think he’s ever fully appreciated just how much before trying to drive it. Even without dawdling the way they did in California, he’s been driving for hours without end, and according to Jenny’s GPS, they’re still at least two hundred miles from the border between New Mexico and Texas. They’ll be driving for days yet, and not even the growing sense of urgency that comes over him when he looks up at the dark, star-speckled sky, devoid of any trace of moon, can make them go any faster.

Jack emerges from the rest stop, wiping her hands on the legs of her jeans, and stops next to him, head tilted upward at the sky. “Worm moon’s officially gone,” she says. “We start moving toward the sprouting grass moon now. And once she’s fully in the sky, that’s it: winter’s out of ascendency, out of decline, even, and the spring is here.”

Harry shoots her a worried glance. “You said Mel and I would both be awake during the spring.”

“And fall, yeah,” says Jack, in what’s probably meant to be a reassuring tone. She doesn’t quite make the mark. She doesn’t seem to care as she shrugs and continues: “But that assumes you’ve claimed your crowns and been coronated. This is my first coronation, too. I don’t know what happens if there’s a change of seasons while it’s happening.”

“Not making me feel better.”

“Didn’t know that was my job.” She shrugs again before she pats him on the arm. “She’s not going to drop dead at the stroke of spring any more than I am. She’s just going to get a little weaker. Maybe that’s not the worst thing that could possibly happen.”

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, somewhat morosely, and gets back into the car.