Page 8 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

Silence fell after that. It seemed that there was nothing else to say.

* * *

Santa and Velveteen stalked through the village without exchanging a word. His feet left tracks; hers did not. Otherwise, there might as well have been no difference between them. The elves and penguins who peeked out of their little houses to watch them pass made no effort to show themselves. They had lived in Winter long enough to recognize a blizzard when they saw one coming.

At the edge of the village was a little house that hadn’t been there the day before. It was made of pine branches and snow, and seemed rough-hewn, despite the smoothness of the walls and the way it fit into the landscape. It looked old. Old as mountains; old as snowfall. Santa stopped just outside the fence, which was made of piled-up stones held together by vines of frost.

“This is yours,” he said, looking to Velveteen. “Winter will keep it here for as long as you need it. Whatever you require will be found inside. We take care of our own.”

“And when I’m done here?” she asked.

“Then it goes back to the snow that made it, and is forgotten before the next turning of the Northern Lights.” He reached out and touched the fence. “There have been other houses here, before yours. Jack Frost had a similar one when he first took his post. It’s a little isolated, true, but it should serve you well, if you allow it.”

“It’s not my home.”

“It could be.” Santa looked at Velveteen, making no effort to conceal the pleading in his eyes. She glared back, defiant and cold, until he sighed, and shook his head, and said, “I’m sorry. This is how it’s always been done. I didn’t think that it would be so hard for you to face the trials.”

“I’ve been here a hundred times. You’ve never dumped me in the middle of a blizzard or allowed monsters to come out of the walls and try to kill me before.” Velveteen held up one gleaming white hand. “You’ve never turned me into snow. Of course this has been hard on me. There’d have to be something seriously wrong with me if it had been easy.”

“You were our friend before you became a supplicant here. I should have considered how that would impact you.”

“Would you have done things any differently if you had?”

“Yes,” said Santa Claus. He looked at her solemnly, all traces of his usual jolliness gone, and said, “I would have forbidden Jackie to befriend you. It was always going to be like this. Winter is not a tame country. It doesn’t exist solely for the joy of children, and that isn’t the role that you’re best suited to. You were always going to find yourself alone in the cold. The only thing I did wrong was allow you to see that Winter could be warm. If I had managed your expectations better, we wouldn’t be standing here now.”

Velveteen stared at him. “You’re not serious. You can’t be…you said I was always welcome here. You said you loved me.”

“I do love you, my dear; I do. It’s simply that I love Winter more. I’m sorry.” Santa offered her a small bow. “You’re one of us now, at least for a time. Try to rest up. Your service will begin in the morning.”

Then he turned and walked away, leaving Velveteen standing, staring, in front of her little pine bough house.

* * *

There was no furniture, but there was snow. Velveteen waved a hand, and the snow formed itself into a bed, a chair, a table, even a knife and cutting board. Did snow women eat? She didn’t know. She supposed she was going to find out sooner or later. She had to still be alive: she wouldn’t have done the Winter any good as a dead thing like Marionette, who had never intended to become a villain, but who had killed a lot of people in her reality anyway, because an animus with no life force of their own couldn’t help it. So she probably ate something.

She found that she wasn’t looking forward to the idea of finding out what it was, exactly, that she ate, or how it was that her new body dealt with things like going to the bathroom. There was probably some messed-up Winter magic involved. “If I shit frost, I’m going to kill everyone in this stinking excuse for a metaphor,” she grumbled, and threw herself onto the bed, sending a soft powder of snow drifting up into the air.

She didn’t mean to fall asleep. She didn’t want to fall asleep. Sleeping felt too much like accepting the idea of her new reality, admitting that this was the way things were now, and that she couldn’t change them. But she was tired, and her eyelids were heavy, and she found herself closing them for just a moment.

Everything went away. Maybe it was better that way.

* * *

Santa Claus walked through the village, shoulders slumped, eyes trained toward the dancing lights overhead. Those lights had always seemed endless to him before, an invitation to a thousand nights of wonder, a thousand days of endless, childlike joy. Now they looked like bleached streaks across a bitter sky, and he wondered if he had done things poorly. Perhaps sending Jackie to recruit Velveteen had been a poor move, manipulative, unworthy of him—but he had been thinking of Winter. The Snow Queen and Jack Frost would want to stand aside eventually, and while the Snow Queen had had her heir, Jack had never had his own. Velveteen had been intended to stand for him. And now…

Now even if they won, the victory would be ashes and coal dust in his mouth. Nothing ever came without a price. He, who was the generosity of the world, should have known that better than anyone. But somehow, he had allowed himself to forget, to fall prey to the lie of his own omniscience, and now Winter was going to pay the price. Velveteen hated him. Whether she could come back from that, could learn to love him again, was anyone’s guess. As for the rest, well. All choices have consequences. Even the ones that were forced upon the people who made them.

He just hoped that one day, all of those who followed him could find it in themselves to forgive him.

* * *

Lucy stepped nimbly out of the trees, following the tracks of Velveteen’s snow army—and hadn’t that been clever of the little animus, to turn the flesh of Winter itself to her cause! Why, Lucy had seen supplicants come and go, each of them bending their powers toward the cold, but she’d never seen anyone try that little trick before. No matter how short Velveteen’s stay turned out to be, it was certainly going to be interesting.

The Northern Lights were splashed wildly across the sky, blue and green and gold and purple. Lucy tilted her head to the side, watching them dance for a moment before she said, “All right: everything’s in place. If there’s any chance she’ll stay, she’ll stay because she’s grown too cold to dream of leaving. Not sure that’s how I would have chosen to recruit a powerful animus, but it’s not my problem. What do you want me to do next?”

“She feels she has no friends here,” said a voice from the trees behind her. Lucy turned to find Aurora standing there, in her gown of ever-shifting light. “Don’t encourage her to thaw, but encourage her to trust you. Be the friend she needs in Winter.”

“But also the friend that Winter wants me to be,” said Lucy. She had been with the season longer than almost anyone: longer even than the current incarnation of Santa Claus. She had seen Snow Queens and spirits of plenty come and go, and while she did her best not to be jaded, she knew what was expected of her. Lucy had been able to thrive in Winter for as long as she had because she did not fight it.