Page 39 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

“That was awesome,” she said. “You’ve been getting better and better, but using your scarecrows to flush the Reaper out of the wheat, so it wouldn’t have the advantage? That was genius. I have to say, I’m super-impressed. I always knew you’d be good at this job.”

“What do you want, Hailey?” Velveteen folded her arms, watching the other girl. She’d never been able to find it in herself to forgive the Halloween Princess, or to start trusting her any farther than she could throw her. Yes, Hailey was devoted to her holiday, and yes, Hailey currently considered Velveteen a part of that holiday, but she was the definition of a fair weather friend. As soon as the wind changed, Hailey would be an enemy again. And the wind was going to change.

It always did.

“You.” The lithe teenager slipped out of her tree, dropping to the ground. She reached into thin air and pulled out a wand, topped with a pumpkin where a star would ordinarily have been. “Do you know how long you’ve been here?”

“No, but you do, don’t you?” Velveteen frowned. “You’ve never let me near anything that might tell me what time it is back in the real world.”

“That’s because we needed you to commit to being here, to being now, and not keep marking off days like you thought this was some sort of prison sentence.” Hailey’s face softened in an almost indefinable way. “This hasn’t been so bad, has it? You’ve been happy here. I know you didn’t think you were going to be, but you have. You’ve had tricks and treats and you’ve enjoyed them. Don’t lie to me. I’ve seen you smiling, when you didn’t think anyone was looking. This has been a good home for you.”

Velveteen slowly unfolded her arms, resisting the urge to grab the other girl and shake her until she started talking faster. “Am I…am I done? Is this the end of my stay?”

“Not quite. But you’re close. It’s time for the masks to come off.” Hailey took a step toward her, reaching out with a hand that was shaking slightly like she was fighting to keep her composure. “May I?”

The urge to say “no” was strong. Velveteen had been beaten, frozen, transformed, and starved by the Seasonal Lands. She sometimes felt like she was living in a series of worlds that had never heard of the concept of bodily autonomy, and wouldn’t see the sense in respecting it if they had. This was a small thing, but it felt strangely intimate, invasive in a way all the bigger things had not been.

“Yes,” she said, and Hailey leaned up, questing fingers finding the sides of Velveteen’s face, and pulled.

There was no pain. There was only the sense of something being lifted away, something so light it was almost weightless, which still somehow managed to be so heavy that when it was removed, Velveteen stood straighter, breathed easier, like a filter had been removed. The air was a welter of new scents and flavors, apples and candy corn and bonfire smoke like ashes on her tongue. Her skin felt too loose. Barely daring to breathe, she looked down at her hands. The fabric covering them suddenly looked like gloves, instead of a casing intended to keep her insides from spilling out.

Gingerly, she grasped her left hand with her right, and pulled. The fabric came off as easily as it always did in her dreams, and then she was looking at her skin, her own skin, brown and smooth and her. Those were her fingers, long and slim, like they were meant to play the piano or, or, or make great art, not punch evil-doers and fight for justice. Laughter bubbled in her throat. She swallowed it down, ripping the glove from her other hand and shoving them both into her pockets before staring, disbelieving, at the reminder that once upon a time, she had been a human woman; she had been free.

She could feel her body inside the heavy velvet costume she was wearing, and it took every ounce of self-control she had not to start scrabbling at herself, looking for the zipper she knew had to be there. She was herself again, she was herself for the first time in who even knew how long. No snow, no rags, no flowers bursting from her skin. Just her, Velma Martinez.

Even thinking of herself as an ordinary woman, instead of a superhero—which was a sort of metaphor even before the Seasonal Lands got involved—was enough to make her eyes fill with tears. She blinked them away, taking a moment to make sure she wasn’t about to break down sobbing in the road, and looked at Hailey. The teen was holding a simple velvet domino mask, very much like the one Vel herself had always chosen to wear with her official costumes.

“There you are,” she said, and smiled, a little wistfully. Vel realized with a start that while Hailey had chosen the life she had, had chosen the unending Halloween, the graveyard dances, the hollow trees, the company of owls, the act of choosing had meant giving up some other things she might have wanted, once upon a time and very far away. Hailey would never grow up. She would never have the chance to decide whether or not she wanted to have children of her own, to hold their hands as she led them through the ancient rituals of trick-or-treat and ghost-in-the-graveyard. She’d given her future to the holiday that loved her, and while she might not have had any real regrets, the ghosts of what she’d never have still lingered around the edges of her smile.

“Here I am,” Vel agreed. She looked at her hands one more time before asking, “Does this mean I’m not a tourist anymore?”

“It means the trial period is over,” said Hailey. “You can choose us, or you can leave us, but you can’t stay for long without the season starting to digest and transform you. I just want you to know that I didn’t have to tell you that. I could have taken your mask and not said a word.”

“So why didn’t you? You were perfectly willing to trick me into staying here when I was a kid.”

Hailey grimaced. “Yeah. When you were a kid. It’s different, for kids. Maybe you would have taken my job, and been a little girl for a hundred years, until everything you’d ever known was gone. Or maybe you would have grown up over the span of a season and become something terrible and new. Either way, you wouldn’t have had as much to mourn for. Adults are…adults are different. They have things to mourn for. They have things to miss. You can’t steal an adult and expect them to adapt, not the way you can a child. You have to come willingly now, if you’re going to come at all.”

Vel was quiet for a moment. Then, carefully, she said, “I think where I always get it wrong with you is expecting you to react to things like a human being. You’re not a human being anymore. None of you are.”

“Haven’t been for a long time,” said Hailey, almost cheerfully. “Come on. You’re a visitor now, and that means the rules are different for you. We need to get you in and out before the clock strikes twelve.”

“When will that be?”

Hailey’s face darkened. “Whenever Scream Queen decides it’s time. So come on.” She started walking down the endless Ray Bradbury road toward the forest. After a moment’s hesitation, Vel followed.

* * *

Somehow, it wasn’t a surprise when they took two steps into the forest and were walking out of it, onto the dark, gothic street of the nameless city where Trick and Treat lived. Streetlights glowed every ten feet, orange as jack-o’-lanterns, and the sidewalks were thick with children ranging from toddlers to teens, all clutching their pillowcases or plastic pails, faces concealed behind rubber masks.

At least, Vel thought they were masks. After watching a goblin trade a popcorn ball to a witch for what looked like a rock, and then pop the rock directly into his mouth, she realized she couldn’t be sure any of these kids were wearing masks. Maybe they were just wearing fancy clothes and looking for free candy. Maybe the ones that looked human were the ones hiding their faces. It was impossible to say, so she decided to stop trying. The magic was in the laughter, not in the species of the child doing the laughing.

Most of the kids waved or smiled at Hailey when they saw her. She waved and smiled back, bright as a button. She was glowing slightly: the perfect babysitter, always visible, never in danger of being hit by a car. “Aren’t they the sweetest?” she asked, glancing at Vel. “About half of them are kids from the Calendar Country who think they’re dreaming. The rest live here. They’ll grow up to be incredible monsters someday.”

“How many people have you been an imaginary friend to?”

“Never enough, and so many that if I let myself remember their names and where their bones are buried, I’d never stop crying.” Hailey rolled her eyes. “Don’t look at me like that. I’ve never killed a trick-or-treater. Time and your world take care of that. The ones who don’t die of old age get hit by cars or crushed by falling masonry or whatever, and they never come to see me again. Not even in their dreams.”

Vel was quiet for a moment before she said, “I’m sorry.”