Page 109 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

Jack cringed away, then caught her breath and forced herself to straighten and lean assertively toward Aurora. “Do you have the power and authority to stop this?” she demanded. “Is that something you can do?”

“It would cost the Winter dearly,” said Aurora. “Tell me why I should, spirit of selflessness. Tell me how it wouldn’t be selfish to take this glorious dream away from the one who’s worked so hard to dream it. Tell me why our version of the story deserves to win.”

Jack looked at her, exhausted. “There is no selfless reason to want our world to be the one that wins,” she said. “There’s no way to phrase this that makes us look like the unquestioned heroes of the piece. Someone has to lose.”

“Then you lose,” said Aurora. “You sold your selfishness for Velveteen’s life, remember?”

Jack blinked. “Yes, but I wasn’t sure you did. No one else here does. I’ve been so alone since that happened.”

“You were being punished,” said Aurora. “You still are.”

Jack narrowed her eyes. “I have been a very, very, very good girl,” she said, with painful deliberateness.

“How could Santa’s child be anything else?”

Jack started to laugh. Aurora blinked at her, nonplussed. Jack grinned, almost feral. “Did you start to forget the details of who I was before you revised me to suit your own standards for the story? I was my mother’s full heir. I walked the entire Hall of Mirrors, glass by glass, and I’ve seen Jacqueline Claus turned selfish and sour, and I’ve seen self-serving Snow Princesses. Where you come from doesn’t decide what kind of person you’re going to be, just angles you one way or another. I can be very, very good and very, very selfish at the same time, but I have played by the rules of my holiday, and I demand my Christmas present.”

Aurora frowned. “You don’t know what you’re asking,” she said.

“Don’t I?” Jack gestured at the corpse in the coffin in front of her. “This is Tad. He’s a friend of Jackie’s—one of her best friends, really, because he treated her like a person from the very start, and he never tried to force her to be anything she wasn’t. He died before she did, and I’m grateful for that. It means someone didn’t get their head rewritten to take her away. Only this new world comes with a new Tad. He’s awake and alive and moving around out there in Dino-land, and Vel doesn’t know anything’s wrong, and as long as he’s here, the real Tad is never going to wake up.”

“Is that all?” asked Aurora. “I can deal with that.”

She clapped her hands.

* * *

Velveteen held her breath as she ascended the three short steps to the stage, aware of Tag lurking in the wings behind her. If she looked back, she knew she’d see him there, claws raised in a gesture of encouragement, crest held high. He believed in her. He believed she could do this.

If he could believe in her, she could believe in herself. Sparks and Vic were going to try to finish their patrol and make it for the afterparty; she could watch the smartest female she knew go up against the smartest male in the world, and no matter which one of them came out on top, it would be entertaining as hell for everyone else in the room. And it was going to be such a fancy, big-deal party that she was sure the catering would be top notch. Maybe they’d even serve mammal. She’d heard the little skittering things were delicious, and their surviving populations were recovering now that the plague was gone.

Forcing her own crest to stay smooth and not dislodge her headband, Velveteen stepped onto the stage. The crowd cheered, emboldened by the sight of their hometown heroine. She paused to look demurely down at her claws, then bobbed her tail and focused on them as much as the lights would allow. They were yelling and roaring and trilling, a hundred vocalizations blending together into a beacon of acceptance and joy. She waved, and the crowd got even louder.

Then, without warning, the mayor himself was right next to her, making her jump. She managed to suppress the urge to snap at him, to bury sharp teeth in soft flesh and make him understand that she was not someone for him to sneak up on. Her lips still twitched, pulling back enough to show the shine of her teeth as he put an arm around her narrow shoulders, his own crest standing high and tall.

“Velveteen!” he announced, as if he thought anyone here didn’t know. The crowd cheered again, then quieted. “Our hometown heroine has come to meet with a very special guest, someone who I’m sure needs no introduction from someone as ordinary as your mayor. So please join me in bidding a warm Portland hello to the one, the only, the incredible Doctor Darwin!”

If the crowd had been making noise before, they exploded now, going absolutely wild as the skylight slid slowly open and the saurian himself descended through it on his floating platform. His wife was with him, as always, her feathers groomed and styled meticulously. Females all over the city would be going to the salon the next day to request pale imitations of her timeless look. The children had been stowed with the stage manager, watching from the wings. In that, they were united with Tag. Velveteen glanced over. There was her male-friend, clapping wildly, crest fully extended.

Oh, how she loved that terrible nerd. She returned her focus to Doctor Darwin, the male to whom it currently properly belonged, and waited for his transport to bring him to the stage. Once he landed, he would shake hands with the mayor, and then her part in this performance would begin in earnest. All she had to do was not throw up on the stage. She could handle that. Almost certainly.

There was a commotion from the audience. She turned again, and saw the familiar, bright red form of Victory Anna forcing her way through the crowd, Sparkler following daintily behind. The people around them protested and pushed back, but the two heroines continued forcing their way through. Seeing that they had her attention, Victory Anna waved vigorously and shouted, “Something’s gone off on a reality-wide scale!”

Velveteen blinked. If anyone would notice when something went wrong with reality, she trusted it to be Victory Anna. The other female had lost not one but two realities, and believed that losing a third would show a certain inherent lack of character.

The mayor tightened his grip on Velveteen, teeth bared as he said, “You are not running off on some petty act of heroism when you’re about to receive the biggest honor we have to offer you. If you try, I’ll see your license revoked.”

“Yes, sir,” she agreed, and didn’t move.

Which meant she was perfectly placed when spheres of glittery frozen snow began raining down from above, bursting across the stage in a wild swirl of holiday cheer and broken glass. Someone screamed. Velveteen pulled away from the mirror and spun, ready to fight whoever was leading this assault—but there was no one there.

Glitter filled the air, becoming a cloying, choking cloud. The stage fell away, as did the sound of the confused crowd. Velveteen kept spinning, trying to follow her predator’s instincts to a target. Instead, she found the smell of…peppermint? And hot cocoa? And the distant sound of sleigh bells?

The glitter began dropping out of the air, and Velveteen found herself facing three soft, squishy-looking bipeds. They had flat faces, and strange weeds growing from their heads. One, topped in golden weeds, was halfway feathered, her body apparently caught mid-transformation between proper saurian and whatever the other two were meant to be.

All three of them were watching her. One held more glass balls filled with glitter, one in either hand; the other was empty-handed and narrow-eyed, and Velveteen had the immediate impression that she was somehow in charge of whatever was happening here. “You make a lovely lizard,” she said, neutrally.

“Thank you, I think,” said Velveteen. “Who the hell are you, and why have you abducted me? I was about to meet with Doctor Darwin.”