Page 34 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

She stepped out of the trees and into a broad clearing. Hailey and Scaredy were standing on the other side of it, flanking a throne that appeared to have grown straight out of the ground, all twisted roots and tangled branches. There were bats roosting there. There were bones held captive in the knotty snarl of twig and thorn and rotting trunk. And on the throne, there was a woman.

She was beautiful: there was no denying that. Her skin was deep brown, never quite shading into full blackness, although her African-American roots were apparent in everything from her bearing to the cornrow perfection of her hair. She wore a dress that would have been perfectly at home at a 1970s prom, layer upon layer of pink taffeta. Somehow, it wasn’t anything the Princess would have worn; it wasn’t a fairy tale dress. It was a horror movie dress, stolen from the seconds before the blood started flying. No: not quite. There were little red dots on the hem of her dress, some dried to a deep brown, others arterial-fresh and almost unnatural-looking. The sash across her chest read PROM QUEEN.

She was terrible: there was no denying that. She smiled like the moon coming out from behind the clouds on Halloween night, and in her eyes lingered an eternity of screaming. Her nails were bloody red and filed to stiletto points, and the bouquet she nestled in the crook of one arm was corn stalks and dead roses, ringed with tiny waxy orange berries, like dollhouse pumpkins.

“Hello, Velveteen,” she said, and her voice was a mug of hot apple cider at the end of a long night’s trick-or-treating; it was a poisoned caramel apple on an oleander stick. There was no contradiction in those things. They were simply and entirely what she was, no omissions, no lies. “I was pleased when you chose to come to us last of all. It means we still might have a chance to make you stay.”

“Scream Queen, I presume,” said Velveteen. Aurora had been cold, which suited the heart of Winter; Persephone had been welcoming and warm. Scream Queen was somewhere in the middle, a bonfire of a woman, blazing bright and burning.

“In the flesh, such as it is,” said Scream Queen. She smiled, and her teeth were white and even and very, very sharp. “I’ve been waiting for such a long time to meet you.”

“You could have come to say ‘hello’ the first time your minions decided to kidnap me.”

“I couldn’t and you know it. Please, don’t be foolish, Velveteen. I have been looking forward to meeting you, and I would very much like it if you chose to stay here with us, in Halloween forever. That doesn’t mean I’ll tolerate disrespect. I’m still the Queen here. The one and only Scream Queen. Although I suppose you might be able to depose me, if you chose to stay. It would take a hundred years or more. It would be a glorious battle. The Calendar Country would ring like a bell from the force of our fight. You’re welcome to stay if that’s your intent. But until you’re strong enough to take me on, don’t disrespect me.”

“Sorry,” said Velveteen. It was clear from her tone and her posture that she didn’t mean it, but that had never been the important part: it was the apology that mattered, not the reason it was given. “May I ask a question?”

“I don’t think I could stop you, could I?” Scream Queen smiled again, settling back in her throne.

“Are you an animus?”

“No,” said Scream Queen. “I never was, not even when there were so many of you that people knew how to talk about them. I’m an empath. What I feel, you feel. What you feel, I feel. What I want you to feel, you feel. People used to call it a plaything power, something for nursemaids and women of the evening and other folks as didn’t matter. There’s nothing toy-like about the way I use my skills.”

“I guess there wouldn’t be. Especially not here.” In the Seasonal Lands, the emotional landscape mattered as much if not more than the physical one. Scream Queen would be able to rule forever, if she felt it strongly enough. “What do you want from me?”

“Oh, my darling girl.” Scream Queen looked at Velveteen, and the sadness of the season swept over her, dead and dying leaves, rain and cold and the rot at the heart of the late apples on the trees. Velveteen swayed. Velveteen staggered. Velveteen dropped to her knees.

Scream Queen rose. She walked to where the young animus lay, and knelt, running a hand over the rough yarn of her hair.

“I only want what the others got,” she said softly. “I want everything you have to give, and when you run out, I want just a little bit more. I’ll keep you if you let me, but if I can’t, well. I’ve lost out on better. I’ll lose out on worse. Right now, I just need you to serve me. Understand?” Velveteen moaned. Scream Queen straightened, turning to look back at Hailey and Scaredy. “Well?” she said. “Get her up and get her home. When she wakes up, we’ll get started.” Her smile was a dead moon at midnight, unforgiving and eternal, as her subjects hurried to do her bidding.

“There’s so much for her to do,” she said, and no one in the season argued, and the night that never ends went on.

VELVETEEN vs. A Disturbing Number of Crows

Once again, Velveteen woke to find herself staring at the rotting rafters of a decaying house. There was a bat sleeping there, suspended upside-down like a little velvet sachet. As she watched, it woke, yawned, stretched out its bony wings, and launched itself into the air, flying silently out the open window.

Velveteen sat up, and looked down at herself, more out of habit than anything else. Her skin was still a patchwork landscape of brown velvet and patterned swaths of whatever fabric had been handy when she needed to be repaired; looking at the patches carefully, she could see that they corresponded to every serious injury she’d ever sustained in the course of her heroic duties. The body had remembered, even when there had been no scars, and those old battle wounds had translated themselves onto the thing she was now. She still wasn’t wearing any clothes. As a living doll, she supposed she didn’t really need them. That didn’t stop her from feeling naked.

No sooner had the thought formed than the closet door swung open, revealing a lacy, tattered black dress hanging on the inside. Like her skin, it was patched in places, with bat-patterned orange cotton, green-and-purple muslin, and even a few swaths of brown velvet, rescued from the rag bag that had never really existed after her injuries had seen it trimmed away. Like Spring, Autumn was spinning a whole past for her, making it like she’d always been here.

“Hailey said I would get to choose for myself what I wanted to be, assuming I decided to stay here,” she said. Scream Queen wasn’t in the room—not unless the matriarch of Halloween could turn herself invisible, which was a thought Velveteen didn’t exactly feel like dwelling on—but the odds were good that she knew everything that happened in her season. Persephone and Aurora both had. So Velveteen glared at the ceiling for a moment, hoping it would get her point across. Then she got off the bed, and walked to the closet, and took the dress.

It fit like it had been made for her, which made sense: it had been made for her, called out of the substance of the season as soon as she realized that she wanted clothes. It was more childish than anything she would have worn at home, but that made sense too, because it was a dress for the body she currently inhabited, and the body she currently inhabited was human only in the vaguest of senses. What would have seemed awkward and wrong on her normal figure was…well, still wrong, but more creepy than awkward.

“I never wanted to be a terrifying murder doll, you know,” she said. The room did nothing to indicate, one way or another, whether it did, in fact, know. Velveteen sighed. “And by the time I get out of here, I’m going to be talking to myself constantly. This just gets better and better.”

With the bat gone, she was alone in the room. Velveteen glared one last time at the mirror on the wall, and turned to head for the door. Time to find Hailey again, and find out what, exactly, her last period of service was going to entail. One way or another, this was coming to an end.

* * *

Since the connection between our world and the Seasonal Lands became clear, steps have been taken to try to match those individuals known to dwell in the individual seasons with the people who they may have been prior to their choosing a life of metaphor and symbol over one lived in the normal manner, one day after another, leading inevitably to death.

In some cases, the origins of these figures are shrouded by both the time since they were first encountered, and by the distinct possibility that they are titles as much as individuals. Take the man we now know as “Santa Claus.” It was a shock when he first appeared at the 1953 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, descending from the sky in his reindeer-driven sleigh, distributing presents to all the individuals who had come to watch the floats go by. He was accompanied during that first appearance by a slender, blue-skinned man who we would all come to know as “Jack Frost,” and by a beautiful, icy woman who answered only to the title “Snow Queen.” All three represented figures from folklore and myth, although Santa seemed uncannily similar to the images commissioned by the Coca-Cola company in the 1930s. While no earlier images exist of his companions, there are sketches and paintings of “Santa Claus” going back centuries. Comparison of these images seems to suggest the existence of at least three individuals using the name “Santa Claus,” following each other sequentially.

What happened to these earlier Santas? How were their replacements chosen, and how were they groomed for their jobs? What of Mrs. Claus? If new Santas are chosen following the death or retirement of the old, it would stand to reason that those new holders of the holiday office might well want to bring their own wives, their own families, into the Seasonal Lands. Or is theirs a marriage of mythology, something which cares nothing for the individuals involved, but only for their place in the story? The daughter of the current Santa Claus, Jacqueline, is rumored to have been adopted, which would fit well with her role in the holiday, but does not clarify the nature of his wife’s connection to either him or to the season itself.

If there are this many mysteries about Santa Claus, whose own child has been a frequent visitor to our world since she began her association with the heroes code named “Velveteen” and “The Princess,” then it must be acknowledged that the mysteries surrounding the other denizens of the Seasonal Lands are even deeper and more difficult to untangle. Take, for example, the rumored ruler of Halloween, the never-seen, rarely spoken-of “Scream Queen.”