Page 4 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

“I think I’m bleeding to death,” she said, clearly and calmly. “I need help. I need you to go and find something that can help me. Go as quickly as you can. Don’t come back unless you have something that can help.”

Still silent, the snow beasts backed away from her, melding with the walls, and disappeared. Velveteen watched them go. Then she looked at the candle flickering in her free hand, and shook her head.

“What good is a light in the darkness if you die there anyway?” she asked. “Can you tell me that?”

Lucy didn’t answer, if she even heard. Velveteen closed her eyes and let her head loll back against the snowman. Eventually, her hand fell away from her middle, and the blood flowed a little freer, although it was sluggish now, like it knew how much she needed it.

Eventually, the candle fell from her numb fingers, landing in the blood pooling on the floor around her feet. It guttered, but did not go out.

Lucy did her work well. The candle wouldn’t die until its keeper did.

* * *

The Snow Queen wouldn’t help her. Jack Frost wouldn’t help her. Even Santa wouldn’t help her. There was no point in asking Mrs. Claus; she never agreed to anything Santa wouldn’t do. That wasn’t her place in the story.

Somewhere out there in the cold, Velveteen was freezing and frightened and alone, and all Jackie could do about it was prowl in her safe, warm halls, forbidden to help her, forbidden to save her, forbidden to do anything but be the spoiled, useless brat she’d always been. She’d only befriended Velveteen (and the other members of The Junior Super Patriots, West Coast Division, but they were irrelevant, weren’t they? They were necessary burdens from the start, because it was the animus that Winter wanted) because she’d been told to. She’d only been a heroine because she was bored. Now Tag was dead and Velveteen was dying, and Jackie was still useless. Just like always.

Jackie looked down at her pale blue hands and wished, not for the first time, that she was braver. Someone braver would have already defied her parents and gone to do what was right—but did she really know what that was? Santa said she was being selfish. He was the spirit of generosity, and she was…well, she wasn’t that. Maybe he was right. Maybe the right thing to do was allow Velveteen to freeze, if that was what the Winter intended for her, rather than risk an entire season just because little Jackie Frost didn’t want to lose a friend.

She balled her hands into fists, straightening. No. If that was selfishness, then let her be selfish; let her be the most selfish person who had ever lived. Let them sing cautionary carols about her for the rest of time. She could do a lot of things for the season that had borne and raised her, but she had her limits. She couldn’t leave a friend to die.

Almost without realizing it, Jackie Frost began to run, heading for the nearest door to the outside. Velveteen had to be very nearly frozen by now.

Time was running out.

* * *

Velveteen was unconscious when the snow beasts oozed back out of the walls, holding loops of ivy and boughs of holly and mistletoe in their icy jaws. They piled the vegetation at Velveteen’s feet, careful to avoid the still-burning candle, but doing nothing to avoid the blood. One of them, mouth now hanging open and empty, nudged Velveteen’s knee with its head. She didn’t move. It nudged her again.

“Wha’?” Velveteen opened her eyes, blinking bemusedly at the snow beasts, and then at the piled greenery. “What are you doing? I said I needed help. Not a garden supply department. Get me help.”

The snow beast whined. Velveteen stood up a little straighter, wobbling with the effort. Her head felt light. Spinny. She looked down at the tangle of branches and leaves. All the plants were green and healthy-looking, the sort of things that grew throughout the winter. They were alive. She wobbled again, and then collapsed into the center of the makeshift bier, releasing her hold on the snow beasts and her snowman at the same time. The snowman crumbled into powder. The snow beasts stayed where they were, but did not attack. Instead, they turned the eyes toward the darkness, and waited.

They didn’t have to wait for long. Jackie Frost came walking down the tunnel, her skin glowing a faint blue in the enclosed space. She stopped at the edge of the bier, looking silently down at the figure lying huddled amongst the leaves and berries. For a moment, all was still. Then, slowly, Jackie smiled.

“Should’ve known you wouldn’t let me get off easy,” she said, and knelt, touching the nearest holly leaf gently with the tip of her pointer finger. A filigree of frost etched itself across the glossy green surface of the leaf, before spreading—slowly at first, but with growing speed, until it literally raced from point to point—to cover the rest of the bier. Once the frost had covered all the vegetation, it stretched upward, creating a dome that sealed Velveteen away completely.

“You’re gonna be fine, bunny-girl,” said Jackie. “Just rest a little while. Winter can wait.”

That was it: that was all she could do, and more than she should have done. Jackie Frost, daughter of the Snow Queen, selfish spirit of Christmas, turned to begin trudging back up into the light. Maybe she could catch a ride home from Lucy. Maybe no one would have noticed that she was gone. Maybe she was going to get away with it. Maybe.

Jackie would have been stunned if she could have seen her mother in that moment; stunned, and a little bit afraid. For while she had seen the Snow Queen angry, and disappointed, and even laughing, on the rare occasions when the Snow Queen considered something to be worth laughing over, she had never, in all the long, slow years of her life, seen her mother, the coldest woman in the Winter, cry.

* * *

Velveteen woke up warm.

She sat up and stretched, shedding dry, dead leaves in all directions, and paused when she saw her hands. They were white. Not “suddenly I am a white girl, how the fuck did this happen, is there a racist reality manipulator in the house” white; white, the color of arctic hares and fresh-fallen snow. There was a loop of ivy wrapped around her wrist. She blinked at it, and followed it up the length of her arm, to where it joined with her new-made leotard of holly and mistletoe.

“Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more fucked-up, it finds a way,” she muttered, and stood. At this point, it wasn’t really a surprise when standing revealed that her entire costume was now made of winter vegetation, all the way down to her bark-and-ivy boots. She touched her face. Her skin felt slick, like snow.

A small part of her advised panic. The rest reminded her that she turned into a patchwork scarecrow rabbit when she was in Halloween; becoming a living sculpture of winter greenery and snow while in service to Winter was really not that far out of the question. At least she could still walk, and breathe, and talk. She stooped to pick up her candle, which was miraculously still burning. If this was how Winter wanted her, this was how Winter would have her. She’d get her flesh and blood back when it was time to leave.

She had damn well better.

Velveteen walked down into the dark, following the flickers of light still dancing in the walls. If this was how the Winter wanted to play things, then let them play. She was going to play to win.

VELVETEEN vs. Santa Claus