Page 135 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

“Of course you do. I came before you, so when they revised me into you, you knew why.” The blue girl—Jackie—shook her head. “This is a shitty, shitty system, and I’m sorry we’re both caught up in it.”

“Where are we?”

“The seasons are sort of like storybooks. They have firm borders, they set their own rules, and they contain their own completion.” Jackie shrugged broadly. “This is the edge of the book. We’re outside the season, but we’re still a part of it, so we’re stuck here.”

That mirrored Jacqueline’s own assumptions, and she nodded, agreeing. “Are we dead?”

“Were we ever alive? I dunno about you, pinkie, but I’m more of an incarnate concept than a person in the strictest technical sense. You’re adopted, right? Mom couldn’t stand the thought of taking care of something so tiny and fragile, so she handed you off to Santa and Sophie and told them to keep you breathing.”

“That’s not exactly what they said happened, but yes. I’m a version of you, same biological parents and everything, who was raised by Santa and his wife.”

“Why does he get a name and she just gets a position?”

“I mostly call them ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad’,” said Jacqueline. “And ‘Santa’ is a position just as much as it’s anything else. It’s not his name.”

“Fair,” said Jackie. “I forget that sometimes. Anyway, I’m not sure my mom can be alive. She’s made entirely of ice and wind and bits of broken mirror. So if she’s not alive, and she’s my mother, am I alive? Does it matter?”

“It does if we don’t want to be here forever,” said Jacqueline. “If we’re not alive, we can’t die, and that means we have to get out of here. Is there any way back into the main story?”

“You got a shovel?”

Jacqueline blinked. “Come again?”

“I’ve been assuming I was stuck in the margins of the storybook⁠—”

“That’s what I thought too!” exclaimed Jacqueline, with audible excitement.

Jackie looked at her wearily. “—so if we both start digging, we might be able to work our way through the page to the other side. If this is a book, let us be bookworms.”

“Oh,” said Jacqueline. Then she sagged. “But I don’t have a shovel.”

“Do you get cold? Or did you hold onto enough of Mom to stay warm in the middle of a blizzard?”

“I don’t get cold.”

“That’s something.” Jackie pressed her hands together, then pulled them slowly apart, an icy rod appearing between them. When it was roughly four feet long, she stopped, grasped it firmly, and gave it a solid shake. A handle and spade appeared, one on either end, both made of clear blue-translucent ice. She held it out to Jacqueline, who took it with a bewildered blink.

“Shovel,” said Jackie, beginning to repeat the process. “Start digging.”

Jacqueline looked at the icy implement, then nodded and drove it spade-first into the frozen ground. A moment later, Jackie joined her, and two versions of the same woman dug with all the dedication they could manage, tossing aside first snow and then chunks of white pulpy substance that looked unsettlingly like paper.

Around them, the wind blew without end.

* * *

“I never forced anything,” spat Aurora. “The girl was happy to serve her holiday, and through it, her season. She understood what was being asked of her, and she went willingly into the Calendar Country.” She looked around at the gathered heroes, and found no understanding in their eyes. “She could have said no.”

“She was a child,” said Polychrome. “I remember—I almost remember—when we met her for the first time. It’s still fuzzy and a little unclear, but I know she was the same age we were. She was just a kid. She couldn’t honestly decide whether she was willing to risk becoming so real that your only choice would be revising her into somebody else.”

“We needed a new animus! We still do!” It was impossible to miss the desperation in Aurora’s voice, or the way the light around her flared, becoming almost dazzling. “I’ve been here for so long. I’m almost used up. If risking the child meant we might lure the first stable animus we’d seen in decades to join us, instead of one of the other seasons, it was worth it.”

“And that is how I know you’re not my Lady,” said Victory Anna, disgusted. “She would never condone the risking of a child for a simple gambit. She would sooner thaw.”

“I can’t thaw,” said Aurora. “Not until we find another animus. None of us can. Scream Queen, Persephone, me—we’re all trapped.”

“And I’m sorry about that, truly, but you just need to wait a little longer,” said Velveteen. “Supermodel is gone. Animus heroes are going to start being born again, the way they always have been, and you’ll be able to find someone who comes willingly to serve your season. Destroying you would hurt the Winter in a way that isn’t fair to everyone that lives here, and I don’t want to do it. So I’ll ask you one more time: give her back to us.”

“Which one?” asked Aurora.