Page 18 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

“She didn’t explode because she’s an animus,” said Persephone patiently. She had learned to be patient, with this group. Spring was a mercurial country: it was only natural that the Spirits of the Season would be equally variable in nature. “She can harness and process life. I fed her a very nice star-blossom, just to see what she would do.”

“What did she do before you planted her?” asked Jack.

Persephone’s patient smile became strained. “Don’t you remember when I told you who she was and why we needed her to come here? You’ve met her before, outside the season. Think, Jack.”

Jack frowned. “I don’t want to think. Thinking is what you’re for.”

“Mmm.” Persephone paused to take a deep breath. She knew better than to waste time in arguing with Jack, who rarely, if ever, bothered to remember anything he didn’t want to. “Before I planted her, she was an animus, just like she is now. She was simply a little more…self-sustaining.”

“Meaning what?” asked the Easter Bunny.

“Meaning she spent her own life force to do the things she did. She had a small internal pool of the stuff, and she exhausted that before she reached for anything ambient. She can’t do that right now. I’ve dammed the access points. If she wants to use her skills, she has to find life elsewhere to fuel them—and since she can’t reach her own stores, she’ll have to use them if she wants to live.” Persephone crouched down and smoothed a lock of Velveteen’s hair away from her face. “Life cannot exist without death and rebirth. They’re connected for a reason. I need her to understand that if she’s going to choose to stay here, with us.”

“Um, not to be a party-pooper, since that’s not really in my nature, but we’re the most alive things in Spring,” said Lady Moon, taking a step backward. “What’s to stop her seizing onto us and pulling all the goodness out?”

“Nothing, really,” said Persephone. “She could turn sour, give in to the rot that sleeps at the heart of every living thing. I’ve walked the Primrose Path, where all the cultivars of other worlds are grown, and I’ve seen versions of her that sprout in darker soil. Most of them go by ‘Marionette’ or ‘Roadkill,’ and they’re not suitable for Spring anymore. If she chooses that life, we can’t stop her. I don’t see it happening, though. She loves life too much to hurt anyone on purpose. There are fruits and flowers and bright streams to sacrifice for the things she needs to do for us. She’ll be stronger if she learns to be a river, and not a reservoir.”

“There used to be more like her,” said Jack suddenly. The others turned to look at him. He was frowning at Velveteen, seeming older and more present than he had only a few moments before. It wouldn’t last. It never did. “Animus put the sun in the sky and the soil under our feet. They were everywhere. Where did they all go? They were supposed to be here. They were never supposed to be this strong, but they were supposed to be here.”

“They went to the ground,” said Persephone, who had been an animus herself once, centuries ago, before the earth had split open below her feet and the God of Death had offered her a place in the Seasonal Lands, where she would never need to grow old, or tire, or die. She would have other duties, and be cut off—as all animus who chose to serve a season were—from the life of the world. It had seemed like the greatest gift she would ever be offered, and she had taken it, and never looked back. She still wasn’t sorry. “She’ll go to the ground too, one day, unless she chooses us. Now go, all of you. She’ll wake soon. I need to explain what’s been done to her.”

“I don’t envy you that, sugar,” said Lady Moon, and sauntered off, the green vine wall opening to let her pass. Jack and the Easter Bunny followed her, leaving Persephone alone with the sleeping Velveteen. And with the geese, of course.

Persephone looked at the geese. The geese looked at Persephone. Persephone sighed. The largest and meanest-looking of the geese honked at her.

“Look, I don’t care if you feel like you should supervise, you’re not going to,” she said. “No one likes geese. You’re basically giant, evil ducks, and if you’re here when she wakes up, she’s going to be understandably distressed. Go back to whatever it is you do when you’re not being a pain in my ass, and I’ll make sure someone tells you when she’s awake.”

The geese honked again. Persephone made a small shooing gesture with her hands, and was relieved when the large waterfowl turned and waddled away. She was a goddess of life and death and springtime. That didn’t mean it didn’t hurt like anything when geese attacked her calves.

With a wave of her hand she closed the opening in the wall, and settled down on the moss, watching Velveteen as she slept. Soon, it would be time to start explaining herself. She wasn’t looking forward to that part, but some things couldn’t be helped.

If you wanted to win the prize, you had to be willing to at least attempt to play the game.

* * *

Velveteen opened her eyes and found herself looking at the face of a goddess. Persephone’s skin was several shades darker than Velveteen’s own, and her hair was a purple-black riot of curls, shot through with veins of white and pink and red, like she was her own field of flowers on the verge of bursting into bloom. Her eyes were green, until she blinked; then they were brown, and when she blinked again, they were blue, ever-changing as the season she stood for. Velveteen thought that Persephone might just be the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

Persephone smiled. “Hello, Velveteen,” she said. “How are you feeling?”

“Naked,” said Velveteen, without thinking. Then she froze, her cheeks darkening to a deep, cherry red. “Oh fuck I’m naked in front of a goddess. Oh fuck, I just said fuck in front of a goddess. Uh. Please don’t smite me, or whatever it is you people do here in the springtime. I’m much happier when I’m not getting smote. Smited? What the hell is the past tense of ‘smite’?”

Persephone blinked at her for a moment before she threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, I am going to enjoy having you here. My name is Persephone. I’m a goddess, yes, but that doesn’t mean much in a world where men can fly and women can shoot rainbows from their hands. I was just a superheroine a few centuries before it was fashionable, so I got a better title and more worshippers than most people do these days. I got tired of it, eventually, and I moved into the Seasonal Lands. There’s less outright worship here. More geese, but less worship.”

“Geese?” said Velveteen blankly. She sat up, trying to cover herself with her hands. “I really appreciate the warm welcome, and I’m sure I’ll get over the part where I used to read about you in books soon, but right now, still naked, still not really thrilled about that. Help?”

“Help yourself,” said Persephone, rising and taking a step back. “Everything you need is here.”

For a moment, Velveteen could only gape at her. Then she groaned. “Oh, seriously? This is a test? Look, your, uh, goddess-ship, I don’t know if you know this, but I have spent the last however long being treated like a dancing bear by people I thought were my friends. I am done with tests. I’ll sweep your floors, I’ll do your dishes, whatever, I don’t give a shit. All my shits have been given. What I won’t do is take any more pointless, painful tests just to show that I deserve a job I never asked for in the first place.”

“Spring doesn’t want you,” said Persephone.

Velveteen blinked. “Uh, hate to break it to you, lady, but if Spring didn’t want me, I’d be in Autumn right now. I’m sort of glad not to be—those people are assholes—and at the same time, I can’t really believe you when you say that I’m not wanted.”

“I didn’t say you weren’t wanted, Velveteen,” said Persephone. “Spring doesn’t want you. I want you.”

Velveteen blinked again, more slowly this time. Then she narrowed her eyes, squinting at Persephone for a moment before she said, almost accusingly, “You’re an animus.”

“Yes, I am,” said Persephone. “That’s why I was called to Spring. I don’t share your specialization. I don’t animate things that aren’t alive. I channel small amounts of ambient life force into the world around me. So mosquitoes die while flowers bloom—or sometimes, vice versa. Everything has to balance, after all. We’re not meant to be swords, cleaving reality from itself. We’re meant to be scalpels, nudging things to where they’re intended to be. What Supermodel did when she killed all the other animus of your generation…it wasn’t fair.”