Page 67 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

“Yes,” said Ananke. “The Seasonal Lands are less temporally anchored than the Calendar Country. They can send you home the moment you left. No time will pass. No one will have the chance to miss you, or to exploit your absence.”

Velveteen paused. She was missing something, she knew she was…and then she wasn’t. The inevitability of it all was almost poetic in its painful simplicity. “But that time, for me, will have passed exactly like it did in this timeline.”

“Yes.”

“Jackie…”

“Everything has to cost, little animus. Even a second chance.” Ananke reached for her spindle. Somehow, it remained, even as her clothing had changed. “Will you take it?”

All those laws, passed in her absence, designed to narrow the world when it should have been getting wider. Polychrome and Victory Anna, hiding from the world; the Princess, increasingly needing to hide from herself. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t fair. Even Jackie would have agreed. Jackie never liked anything that made the world smaller than it had to be.

“I’ll find a way to get her back,” said Velveteen. “For now? Take it all back. Three years, and I do my term of service to the Seasonal Lands, and this never happened.”

Ananke smiled as she drew her spindle. “I’m glad I got the chance to meet you,” she said, and held it out, needle-first, toward Velveteen.

I’m sorry, Aaron, thought Vel. It would have been nice to have been heroes again, together.

Then she touched the spindle’s point, and collapsed on the checkerboard floor. Chronos and Ananke looked at her. “That was new,” he said.

“Some things have to be,” she agreed. “Send her back. No cheating.”

“Yes dear,” he said, and kissed her cheek, and disappeared, taking Velveteen—and the floor—with him.

* * *

The door that opened in the fabric of reality had no foundation, no wall to hold it in place or justify its existence: it simply was, a twisted thing of knotted paper roses that dripped with black type and red ink. It didn’t fit in with the rest of the gardens at the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle at all.

The body of a woman, bone-thin, was shoved through the doorway and collapsed in the dewy grass, unconscious, barely seeming to breathe.

Once again, Velma “Velveteen” Martinez had come home.

VELVETEEN PRESENTS JACQUELINE CLAUS vs. The Lost and the Found

Jacqueline Claus, adopted daughter of Santa Claus, one day to inherit his place as toymaker and guardian of the dreams of children—no pressure—started her day the way she started every day: by opening her eyes on a ceiling spangled with crystal snowflakes, each one perfect, each one unique. She remembered receiving them, one by one, tucked into Christmas stockings and birthday presents. She remembered Papa laughing as she exclaimed in joy at their fractal delicacy, the mysteries of their shifting shapes. She remembered Mama smiling, warm and welcoming and happy to see her daughter so delighted.

She remembered that none of this was true. That she was a punishment for another version of herself, a selfish, blue-skinned girl named Jackie Frost who had slept in a bed of her own, in a room of her own, in a different house. Jackie had collected crystal snowflakes too, but Jackie had made them for herself, rather than waiting for someone else to make them for her. Jackie had made a lot of things for herself, including, in the end, a mess that she couldn’t clean up on her own. Now Jacqueline was here, and no one seemed to understand that she wasn’t supposed to be. That she was supposed to be someone else, someone colder and crueler and better suited for the acts of heroism that seemed to happen around her on a daily basis.

Jacqueline rolled out of bed and shivered in the early morning chill. It never got truly cold at the North Pole. In the rest of Winter, yes, but not here; Santa wanted any children who came to visit to be as comfortable as possible. Her robe was draped over the foot of the bed, snowflakes and smiling polar bears on a blue fleece background. She shrugged it on, still yawning.

“Dear, are you up?”

“Yes, Mama.” She turned expectantly toward the door.

It swung open, revealing Mrs. Claus. She was still wearing her dressing gown, a cap covering her hair. Jacqueline smiled. She liked Mama best in the mornings, when she wasn’t being Santa’s wife yet, but was just being herself, open and warm and caring.

Jack’s smile died. She still didn’t know whether Mama and Papa knew that she wasn’t supposed to be here. She hadn’t been able to come up with a way to ask that wouldn’t make them think that there was something wrong with her, or worse, that there was something wrong with them. There was nothing wrong with any of them, except in that she shouldn’t exist.

The Snow Queen knew. She knew that much for sure, because the Snow Queen wouldn’t even look at her unless she didn’t have a choice. The Snow Queen remembered the daughter she’d lost, and she would never forgive Jack for being someone other than her.

To be honest, it made Jack’s head spin. She hoped Velveteen would finish her passage through Autumn soon. Once Vel was back, they would all go to the Hall of Mirrors, and Velveteen would choose a season, and maybe Jackie would be forgiven. Maybe Aurora would set things right.

It was a little weird, hoping that she’d be written out of reality before things got even more confusing, but she had long since come to terms with the idea.

“Good morning, sweetheart,” said Mrs. Claus, with her usual broad smile. Jack felt a pang of guilt. Whether Mrs. Claus knew that she wasn’t supposed to have a daughter or not, there was no denying that she enjoyed being a mother. It wasn’t fair that Jack was going to be taken away from her.

Maybe she was an overlay for Jackie after all, and once she went back to being who she was supposed to be, she would remember being Jacqueline, and she could make sure to be kind to Mrs. Claus. Maybe.

But probably not.