Page 38 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

But there was still something she could do, even if she didn’t want to. Something that would turn the tide. Velveteen sunk to her knees in the green, green ground, closed her eyes, and reached.

The crows that had fallen twitched. They twisted. And they rose on black-feathered wings, taking back the sky, silent now, flying for someone else. On the ground, Velveteen slumped forward, hands digging into the soil, head bowed. She was pouring everything she had into the crows, into the dolls, into the sky. This was too much for her. She knew that it was too much for her, and still she kept pushing, driving her reanimated crows higher, chasing the living vermin from the skies she had been tasked with protecting.

The scarecrow moved to stand behind her, unbidden by any conscious thought. The dollies struck down more crows, only for their corpses to rise and join the fight against their fellows. Velveteen’s nose began to bleed. She might have been relieved to see that, if she’d been more aware. Something that could bleed wasn’t entirely made of cloth and rags; something that could bleed still had a heart. But all her attention was reserved for other matters.

The surviving crows turned and fled, leaving the cornfield for something safer, someplace less filled with their silent dead.

Velveteen collapsed, and corn dollies and dead crows fell around her like rain.

* * *

Hailey was waiting when the scarecrow carried Velveteen out of the corn, cradled gently against its chest. She looked at it. It looked at her. Then, slowly, she smiled.

“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” she asked. “Cool. Just get her home.”

The teenage spirit of Halloween slung her leg over her bike and rode away down the endless country road, lit from above by a midnight harvest moon. Behind her walked the scarecrow, Velveteen sleeping peacefully in its arms.

VELVETEEN vs. Trick and Treat

Time didn’t pass in the Seasonal Lands the way it did in the Calendar Country. It wasn’t a matter of one day following another in a steady, predictable way. Sometimes, Velveteen went to bed at sunrise, slept for a full eight hours, and woke to find the sun rising, or the sky set to deepest, darkest, horror movie midnight. Other times, she’d wake to find Hailey and Scaredy pounding on the door with pillowcases in their hands, screeching “Trick or treat!” and beaming like they hadn’t seen her in weeks. She’d long since given up any attempts at actually figuring out what day of the week it was, and months didn’t matter here; it was always harvest time, always the ripe and reaching Autumn, where the air tasted like bonfires and drying hay, and the moon was a bloody jack-o’-lantern set against a cloud-strewn sky. She could have been there for only a few weeks. She could have been there for years.

The worst part was that she was no longer sure she cared which it was. She didn’t like living in a Halloween world, exactly. She missed having skin, internal organs, bones—she’d never really thought of bones as something that could be missed, but not having them was surprisingly inconvenient. She didn’t miss using the bathroom, or menstruation; the fear of spending an eternity as a rag doll was slightly reduced by the thought that she wouldn’t spend four days out of every month bleeding uncontrollably for the rest of time.

Halloween hadn’t turned her into ice and taken away her ability to grieve for the people she’d been forced to leave behind; it hadn’t lied to her, claimed to be her friend, and left her to die of hypothermia in the snow. Halloween hadn’t severed her connection to her innate power source; it hadn’t asked her to choose between her own happiness and the fate of all the people who could have shared her powers, the ones who’d died before they had a chance to live. All it had done was put her in costume, which it had been doing since she was a child, and equip her with an ever-growing army of demonic scarecrows.

Odd as it was to consider, of the three seasons she’d been tapped to visit, Autumn—and by extension, Halloween—had been the kindest of all. Sure, that kindness often came with hidden razor blades tucked inside, but at least it was there. At least it was something.

More and more, Velveteen was coming to realize that if she was going to stay in the Seasonal Lands at all, she was probably going to stay in Halloween.

The knowledge sat in her belly like a caramel apple eaten just before bedtime. She didn’t want to choose Halloween, the holiday that had kidnapped and tormented her as a child. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who could be happy there. But she was, and nothing she wanted or didn’t want would change that. Masks could be put on. Masks could be removed. The essential nature of the face beneath them wouldn’t change.

No matter how much she wanted it to.

“Fucked-up forever,” she sighed, and picked up the scythe, and waded into the field of cursed wheat to find the Reaper who was ruining her afternoon.

Around her, Autumn continued.

* * *

The line between real and unreal has never been exact where the superhuman community is concerned. When discussing a group of people including the living embodiment of the idealized fairy tale princess (The Princess), a human rainbow (Polychrome), the spirit of the American West (Jack O’Lope), and the daughter of Santa Claus (Jacqueline Claus), “real” and “unreal” are less immutable laws than guidelines, meant to be respected when possible and politely avoided when not. Despite this, however, the less plausible factions within the superhuman community have never descended into pure illogic, as might be expected: instead, they’ve set up systems of law and custom to moderate themselves, understanding, on some level, that the world is not equipped to do it for them.

Convincing a magically- or seasonally-powered superhuman to go against their code of ethics is considered close enough to impossible as to not be worth trying if there’s any other alternative. Some have been known to switch sides in the middle of a battle when the villains proved to be more in alignment with their personal ideals. A winter-themed hero will always fight for Winter; a fairy tale-themed hero will always follow the most logical narrative path; a trickster hero will always keep their word, no matter how inconvenient or dangerous this choice may prove for them. Some scholars believe this is because the forces which power and control these heroes are fickle: if denied their full natures, they might choose to desert their current avatars and seek someone more inclined to follow the rules.

When this line of thought is applied to the Seasonal Lands, whose occupants, whatever their origins, have been reduced and remade into something less than human, while also elevated to something more than metaphor, it must be asked what the true consequence would be for going against their natures. They are, after all, those natures written in flesh, or something similar; they are not individuals as much as they are ideas. Should Persephone divorce her husband, whose myth shapes and defines her own, what would become of her? Should Santa Claus, who represents generosity in Winter, refuse a gift to a deserving child, would he be allowed to retain his mantle? Or his daughter, Jacqueline, whose position is directly tied to acts of kindness and charity—gifts not of the material, but of the insubstantial? Could either of them survive a moment of true selfishness?

This leads to the question that has vexed scholars since the discovery of the Seasonal Lands. Are those who are called to the seasons—or other, non-seasonal positions of magical power—innately suited to the roles they assume, or are they shaped by the positions that will one day claim them? Jacqueline, who was born to Christmas, or Mischief, who was born to Halloween, are easy: both of them represent an aspect of their holiday given human form. Without their holidays to define them, they would no longer be necessary. But what of the others? What of the ones like Hailey Ween, or Scream Queen, or the rarely-mentioned but oft-seen Lady Moon?

Each of these “Spirits of the Season” has claimed, at some point, to have mundane origins: to have begun life, not as ideas, but as individuals who later went on to accept the invitation they were offered to transform themselves into something both less and more. As none of these supposed transformations has occurred within living memory, it’s unclear how the process works, or whether, indeed, the process works at all.

Which brings us to Velma Martinez, code name “Velveteen.” Should she fail to return from the Seasonal Lands, what will we learn? And what, in the end, will we have paid for that knowledge?

* * *

In the end, the Reaper was like all the rest: a paper-thin manifestation of the fears of children from the Calendar Country, who had no idea that sometimes their bad dreams took on physical form and went looking for haunted farmland to bother. Velveteen emerged from the wheat, dragging the body of this latest foe by the collar of his coat, and tossed it into the nearest ditch.

“Now’s when you stay down,” she said. She paused and added, “Asshole.” The Reaper—which had never really been “alive” in the strictest sense of the word, and was now decidedly not alive—didn’t move. Anyone watching would have agreed that this was the right choice.

Someone applauded. Velveteen turned. Hailey Ween, Halloween Princess, was sitting in the branches of a gnarled old oak, ankles crossed, orange and green crepe skirt smoothed down just so, clapping her heart out. She grinned when she saw Velveteen looking.