Page 25 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

Persephone stood. She held a knife in each hand, one black, one green. She threw the green knife to the ground between them; there was no kindness in her eyes, only a deep, abiding sorrow, as long and ancient as the rites of spring. “Pick it up,” she said.

“Uh, why?” asked Velveteen warily. Years of experience had taught her that when people started throwing knives at her, it was time to dig in her heels and get more information. Preferably before someone got stabbed. Especially her.

“Because never it’ll be said in fair England that she slew an unarmed man,” said Jack, and burst into laughter. Lady Moon hit him with her fan. He stopped laughing and pouted at her, with the petulance of someone much younger than he appeared to be.

Persephone ignored them both. Her eyes remained on Velveteen. “Pick it up,” she said again.

“You have to,” said the Easter Bunny. He sounded apologetic, like this was the last thing he’d been planning to do with his day. “It’s the only way you get to leave.”

“You guys are starting to creep me out, so how about you just stop, okay?” Velveteen looked nervously around the circle. “I don’t want to pick up the knife. Leave the knife alone.”

“Beware the Ides of March,” said Persephone. “I really am sorry, but this is genuinely the only way.”

“What is genuinely the only way? I thought I was here to learn balance and all that tree-hugging, world-saving crap, not to have knife fights in the middle of a weird willow forest,” said Velveteen. A butterfly fluttered past. She reached out, unthinkingly, and snatched the life away from it, leaving it to fall motionless to the ground. “Come on. If it’s time for me to leave Spring for Autumn, can’t you just say so?” Was it time for her to go already? It didn’t feel like she’d been in the Spring that long, especially when compared to the endless, frozen days of Winter—but wasn’t that always the way? Spring was always too short. Winter was always too long. Even when they were exactly the same length.

“We are saying so,” said Persephone. “I’ve taught you how to reach into the world for what you need. Once you leave here, if you leave here, you won’t have to do that anymore, but because you’ll understand it, you’ll be better prepared to resist the temptation. I’ve made you stronger through adversity. Now there’s just one more obstacle to overcome.”

“What’s that?” asked Velveteen, who was direly afraid that she already knew.

“Me,” said Persephone, and lunged.

* * *

It was easy to forget, with the Easter Bunny as the pervading symbol of the season in the Calendar Country—where symbols were more important than reality, most of the time—that Spring was a land as blood-drenched and brutal as any other. The season brought with it vicious rains and the slaughter of the lambs, floods and mudslides and similar quiet disasters, as the world shook itself alive again after its long hibernation. Spring was the season of rebirth. It was also the season of mothers eating their own young, of eggs that didn’t hatch and hunters in the wood.

Persephone swung the knife she held in a practiced arc toward Velveteen’s throat. Velveteen yelped and fell backward, dodging as much through luck as through skill.

“What the fucking fuck is fucking wrong with you?!” she demanded. The geese honked and flapped their wings in punctuation.

“Pick up the knife!” shouted Persephone. “Don’t let me do this!” She swung again, this time in a downward swipe that should have impaled Velveteen where she lay.

Velveteen rolled away, barely getting out of the way in time. “If you don’t want to do this, don’t do it!”

“I don’t have a choice!”

The green knife was right next to Velveteen’s hand. She grabbed it without really thinking the action through, scrambling to her feet and backing away. “There’s always a choice. You—you have to have a choice, or that whole ‘balance’ thing is bullshit. Nothing that doesn’t choose can serve the balance.”

“But you want to leave,” said Lady Moon.

“What?” Velveteen looked over her shoulder at the flawlessly coiffed spirit, who was studying her nails, rather than watching the fight. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Caesar didn’t mean to chart the path out of Spring when he was killed, but he did; beware the Ides of March.” Lady Moon’s eyes flicked upward, away from her nails, to the spot right behind Velveteen. “They’ll cut you dead.”

The warning wasn’t enough. Velveteen dodged; not fast enough. Persephone’s black knife caught her in the shoulder, and she screamed, first with surprise as much as pain, and then with genuine agony as swirls of blackened decay began appearing on her own blade⁠—

(Nine years old, and her powers are still largely quiescent, beginning to stir in her dreams without gaining traction in the waking world. It’s Easter Sunday, and the kids at school have been talking about painted eggs and chocolate rabbits for weeks. She’ll have none of those things, she knows. Those things cost money; those things are the sort of luxuries that no one brings to the food pantry or puts on discounts deep enough to tempt her mother to waste part of the food budget. Still, she yearns. That’s why she’s up so early, hoping to catch the Easter Bunny in the act. Maybe he’s susceptible to blackmail. And even with that thought in mind, it’s a shock when she opens the door and there he is, hopping across her yard, basket clutched in vast white paws⁠—)

Velveteen wrenched herself back into the present and fell forward, the knife leaving her shoulder. The black swirls on her own blade remained, and when she turned, it wasn’t a surprise that Persephone’s knife now had swirls of green.

“What did you do?” she demanded.

“There were so many, many times you could have come to us,” said Persephone, advancing on Velveteen like an invading army advancing on an unguarded shore. Still off-balance, Velveteen continued to retreat. “By the time you finally came, I was the only one who wanted you, but that didn’t always have to be the case. You could have been Jack’s, or the Bunny’s, or even Lady Moon’s. If I cut away enough of your past, you will be.”

“Wait-wait-wait,” chittered Velveteen. She took another hop backward. It came horribly naturally, and she realized what was going on. She was being sliced into the Easter Bunny’s apprentice, someone who had grown up here, from the age of nine. “Are you changing the world? Or just changing me?”

“Is there a difference?” asked Persephone. She feinted right. Velveteen dodged straight into Persephone’s blade. It sliced a long cut along her ribs, and she felt time bleed⁠—

(Nine years old, and there’s the Easter Bunny, he’s standing right there in front of her, with his nose twitching and his whiskers bristling in surprise. There’s something almost dreamlike about the scene, like a voice she can’t quite hear is shouting at her that no, this isn’t how it happened, but that doesn’t matter, because he’s really here, he’s really real, and he really came for her, Velma Martinez, the girl nobody ever comes for. She starts to reach out. She just wants to touch that soft brown fur⁠—)