Velveteen vs. The Seasons

by Seanan McGuire

A few of the reporters replied with “fine,” or with inquiries about her own health. Most just shouted for her attention, already getting down to the meat of the thing.

  The Princess swallowed the urge to sigh. This was what she liked the least about this little ritual. No one wanted to talk to her: they just wanted to get her to slip up and admit to something titillating, something that would sell their papers and tarnish her image. As if she didn’t understand that for her, image was everything; as if she would risk it all for a drunken tryst or a stolen cigarette. She didn’t care what the reporters thought of her. Most of them were sure that she had a whole secret second life that they could profit from, if they could just uncover it. It was what the children thought that mattered. She was never going to do anything to endanger what those children thought.

  “Yes, in the front row,” she said, pointing to a reporter who had at least been polite enough to raise his hand, rather than just shouting.

  “Miss Miller, what do you have to say about the recent directorial changes at The Super Patriots, Inc.? The corporation has tried repeatedly to recruit you. Do you feel that the new leadership may change your answer?”

  “Not in the slightest.” It was a softball question: he had probably been planted, or at least encouraged by management, and she was grateful for that. It was best if she could start with something that didn’t hurt to answer. “I believe that the current organizational team will provide excellent guidance for The Super Patriots. They have a good vision for the team, and they understand how to work with others. At the same time, I am very happy where I am. I’m in a team with the children of the world, and they don’t need me taking on another boss.”

  “Miss Miller, do you feel as if the independent heroes of the world have a responsibility to come together to monitor the new Super Patriots, to avoid further abuses of their power?”

  The question had come from one of the newer reporters. She hadn’t called on him. The Princess turned in his direction and smiled sweetly. There was nothing about her expression that could be called anything but pleasant, and yet it still somehow managed to be full of knives. “What paper are you with, sugar?”

  “I’m with The Powers Gazette,” said the reporter. He was starting to look nervous. Good. A little nervousness would serve him well.

  “New to the beat?” The Princess kept smiling. “I guess you haven’t been to one of these press conferences before. I’ll answer anything I’m asked, but manners are important here. You raise your hand if you want to ask me a question. Understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said the reporter, shrinking down in his seat.

  “Thank you. Now, as to your question, no, I don’t believe the independent heroes should be providing oversight for The Super Patriots, Inc. They’re a good company that got led astray. They have government watchdogs keeping that from happening again. As to the rest of us, we all have cities or states or theme parks,” she paused to allow for laughter, “that we’re tasked to protect. If we spent all our time watching our peers to be sure that they wouldn’t do anything wrong, we’d be neglecting the people who count on us.”

  The reporter raised his hand. The Princess’s heart sank. She did her best not to let it show on her face. Follow-up questions about things other than her wardrobe were almost always bad. Still, she nodded, giving him permission to continue. Anything else would have been taken as cowardice, and she couldn’t have that. Fairy tale princesses weren’t cowards. Neither were superheroes.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  “You mentioned the new government regulations controlling superhumans and their powers,” said the reporter. “What do you think of the restrictions that are being placed on the animus power class? Do you feel as if this is a proportionate response to the situation with Supermodel?”

  The Princess took a sharp breath, feeling her smile die. She didn’t try to summon it back. It would have been inappropriate, under the circumstances, and she was glad of that. Sometimes, smiling was the worst part. “You know, there’s been a lot of focus on Supermodel. How she went bad, how she dragged the company down with her, and I don’t think it’s wrong to look there for answers. She was a good woman once, and if she lost sight of that, it was at least in part because there was no one to teach her about her own powers. I’m not seeing that much focus on Velveteen. She was an animus too, and she brought Supermodel down. No power is inherently good or bad. It’s all in how people choose to use it.”

  “It’s interesting that you should mention Velveteen,” said the reporter. He didn’t raise his hand this time. This was what he had been angling toward all along. “No one has seen her since the battle at The Super Patriots, Inc. We have only your word, and the word of the other heroes involved, as to what happened. She has never come forth to give a statement. It’s been a year. Do you know the whereabouts of Velma ‘Velveteen’ Martinez, and are you concealing her from the authorities?”

  Damn you, thought the Princess. Aloud, she said, “I do not. She came to the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle after the fight, to recover from her injuries and rest. Then she left. I don’t know where she went, and I haven’t heard from her. I wish I would. She is a very good friend of mine, and I love her dearly. I worry about her.”

  “Miss Miller—” began the reporter.

  The Princess held up her hand, stopping him. “No more,” she said. “I told you we raised our hands here, and you ignored it, because you wanted to use me to score points against my friend. Velveteen never did anything wrong. She gave up her childhood because people she thought were on her side weren’t, and then they harried her through her adulthood, until she finally became the hero they’d never really wanted her to be. Now she’s gone, and I’m worried about her, and you want to use me to hurt her more. It’s not going to happen, and I’ll thank you to leave her alone. She deserves better than the treatment she’s received.”

  It was rare for the Princess to lose her temper during one of these sessions, although it wasn’t entirely unheard of. Everyone was quiet for a moment, scribbling notes or simply staring. Finally, cautiously, another hand went up.

  “Yes?” said the Princess.

  “Princess, who made the dress you’re wearing today?”

  “Do you like it?” The Princess stepped out from behind the podium and did a little twirl, winding her train around her legs, before returning to her original position. “The dress was made by my usual tailors, which is to say, several skilled raccoons, pine martens, and squirrel monkeys. They’ve been paid for their labor, before you ask, although none of them wanted money. Most woodland creatures operate on what’s considered an alternate revenue stream. The base design was by Grace Yant of Southern California, who submitted it through our spring portal for my wardrobe. She won annual passes to the park for herself and her family, and a dinner with me at the Castle. She’s a very talented little girl.” Her original drawing had been more scribble and less sketch, but it had been clear enough for the raccoons, who were accustomed to working from less.

  The next several questions were in the same vein, softballs about her wardrobe, her work in the parks, and her volunteer duties. The Princess answered them with dutiful enthusiasm, trying not to sound like she was utterly bored and would rather have been virtually anywhere else on the planet. The hour was winding down when the new reporter, the one who’d asked about Velveteen, put his hand up again.

  The Princess gritted her teeth. She wanted to tell the man where he could shove his questions, and suggest that he follow them with his notebook and recorder. But she knew better. This little display was to prove that she was still the sweet Southern girl she’d been since she went to work for the company. It made the shareholders happy, and it kept things going smoothly. If she wanted the world to stay the way it was, she had to play along. No matter how much she hated it.

  “Yes, sugar?” she said, through gritted teeth.

  “Mr. Miller, can you please explain to our readers how it is that you feel comfortab
le taking up the role of ‘fairy tale princess’ when you’re biologically more suited to the role of fairy tale prince? Do you feel as if lying to the children of the world is justified by the bottom line of the corporation you work for? Have they forced you into this role against your will?” The reporter leaned forward, expression suddenly predatory. He thought he had found a weak spot, and he was going in for the kill. “My readers are very interested in your answer.”

  “Not that interested, if they couldn’t be bothered to look up every other interview that’s ever asked me the same question,” said the Princess coolly. There had been a time, when she was still young and terrified of having her new life taken away, when she had tried to forget where she’d come from. The corporation had been happy to let her hide. They liked their new superheroine uncomplicated and uncontroversial, and since no one who’d been there for her coronation had spoken out against her, they were going to keep their mouths shut for as long as they could.

  But time had moved on, one day at a time. Carrabelle had grown older, and eventually grown up, and realized that her silence wasn’t helping anyone—not even herself. There were little girls out there who were just like she’d been, trapped in the wrong bodies and trying to convince their parents that they knew themselves all the way down to the bone. There were little boys being forced into parts they’d never asked to play, raging at the center of their shells of false femininity. She was supposed to be the princess of all the children in the world, not just the ones who’d been lucky enough to be born with an outside that already matched their inside.

  “If you’d done your research before you came in here looking for some juicy gossip, you’d have found the interview I gave on my eighteenth birthday, the one where I brought pictures of myself from before I convinced my family to allow me to live as a girl,” said the Princess. Her voice was tight, and the more observant reporters noted how many birds had appeared, roosting on the trees all around them. If she lost control, Hitchcock was going to be proud. “You’d have been able to read what I said then, which was, I think, about as well-thought out as any discussion of the topic is ever going to be. I’ve never lied to anyone. I was born a girl. I will die a girl. The fact that the hopes and dreams of the children of the world pointed to me and said ‘her, she’s the best princess we can find, she’ll take the best care of the story’ should tell you more than anything else that I have never deceived anyone. It’s not my fault that the doctors put a label on me before I was old enough to choose one for myself.”

  “So you admit that you were born male,” said the reporter. He didn’t raise his hand this time: the pretense of civility was gone. The Princess was almost glad. If he wasn’t playing nicely, she didn’t have to do it either.

  “I admit that I was assigned male at birth, by people who were not telepaths, who did not have the ability to look into my mind and heart and see that I was already a little girl. I was a girl when I took my first breath. I’ll be a girl when I take my last. You want to sit there, secure in the gender that they gave you when you were born, and judge me? I am a princess. The story chose me, because it knew what I was, just like I knew. And you know what? All those little girls who idolize me, all those little boys who ask me if I’ve got a prince out there, none of them care what the doctors said when I popped out of my mama. They look at me and they see a woman. Children are the magic mirrors of the human race. They see the truth when it’s in front of them.” The Princess shook her head. “You can try to paint me whatever way you want, sir. If you’ve got a bigot’s brush to use, well, I suppose that’s your problem and not mine. I think it’s time for you to go. The adults would like to have a press conference now.”

  She turned pointedly back to the other reporters. Some of them had their hands up. Others were looking at the newcomer with expressions of mingled horror and pity on their faces, like they couldn’t believe he had come to the press conference without doing his research first. Many of them had discussed trans issues with the Princess, sometimes in this very forum. She was always happy to talk. She just wasn’t happy about being accused of intentional falsehood, and most of them couldn’t blame her. No one liked to be called a liar.

  “I will not be ignored,” snarled the new reporter, rising from his seat.

  The Princess snapped her fingers. The large bear that had been waiting by the entrance, looking like nothing so much as a rustic armchair, pulled itself to its full height and lumbered toward the reporter. “No, sweetie, you won’t,” said the Princess. “Bruno’s not going to ignore you. He’s just going to show you the way out.”

  The bear reached for the reporter. The reporter pulled a pen from inside his jacket and blasted the bear across the courtyard with a deluge of red ink. The rest of the reporters, who had been working the superhero beat long enough to recognize trouble when they saw it, began scrambling away. Some of them even left their notebooks behind.

  “You will not suppress this story!” shouted the reporter. Red ink ran down his hand and arm, swirling and spreading until it covered his entire body in a thin film. He lowered his arm. The film popped, revealing a black bodysuit with the letters FD on the chest in red. “The people will have Full Disclosure!”

  The Princess stared at him. “Did you seriously just name drop at me?” she asked incredulously. “Did you stand there, in my place, during my press conference, and drop your name like it was something I was going to want to pick up? Honey, that’s not just crass, that’s downright unprofessional. Who taught you how to be a supervillain? Did they have credentials?”

  “I ask the questions here!” shouted Full Disclosure. He turned his pen on her, shooting out a huge gout of red ink. For a moment, the Princess disappeared, wiped from view by the gory editorial curtain.

  Silence fell across the courtyard, broken only by the sound of the birds ruffling their feathers in the trees. It was a silence so profound that when the Princess snapped her fingers again, it sounded like a gunshot. The red ink fell away, revealing her in her still-pristine dress the color of midnight and moonlight, covered in diamonds that glittered like stars in the night sky. She looked at Full Disclosure pityingly.

  “A princess never gets her best gown dirty,” she said.

  He shrieked something about ethical journalism and blasted her again. This time, a curtain of glitter appeared in front of her, absorbing and deflecting the ink. The Princess started to look annoyed.

  “I don’t think you quite understand what you’re doing,” she said. “You’re attacking me on my turf, with thousands of children who believe in me so close that I can feel them. You really think you’re going to get anywhere? There are times and places when I’m vulnerable. This isn’t one of them. Now pack your pen and get out, before I have to do something unladylike.”

  “I am not one of your lapdogs, here to be misled with facts!” shouted Full Disclosure. He turned his pen on her for the third—and, as it happened, final—time. The glitter absorbed the ink again, and when the deluge stopped, the Princess sighed.

  “I really wish you hadn’t done that,” she said. She clapped her hands once, twice, three times, and the birds that had been roosting so peacefully in the trees took to the wing. Some of them were sweet little things, bluebirds and sparrows and starlings, as befitted the living incarnation of the dreams of children everywhere. Far more were hawks and eagles and snowy owls, crows and ravens and turkey vultures, as befitted Carrabelle Miller, who wore her gowns proudly, but never forgot where she had come from, or who she was, or how hard she was willing to fight to stay exactly where she was.

  The birds descended on the screaming supervillain, who blasted them with gouts of ink, and swatted at them with his frantically flailing hands, and did everything within his power to hold their talons at bay. In the end, he even turned to run. It was far too late by then, of course; he had been lost the moment he chose to turn his red pen on the Princess after she had asked him nicely to stop.

  The other reporters watched silently as th
e birds carried him, kicking and screaming, off into the blue storybook sky. Finally, one of them raised his hand.

  “Yes?” said the Princess. “You can all come back to your seats now, by the way. Unless one of you is also a supervillain in disguise, I think the major excitement’s over for the day.”

  The reporters returned to their seats. The one who had raised her hand asked, “Where are the birds taking him?”

  “Oh, corporate security.” The Princess smiled. It was not a pleasant expression. “They’ll make sure he understands that while becoming a supervillain is a personal choice, it is a choice that comes with consequences. And sometimes those consequences will include being blacklisted from all the products and services provided by a large, multi-national corporation that doesn’t appreciate people being disruptive during their official press conferences. He didn’t technically break any laws, since the use of superpowers is approved in this courtyard and no one was hurt, so we don’t need to involve the authorities. I just hope he doesn’t have any children.”

  Nervous laughter followed her last statement. Many of the reporters did have children, and were all too aware of how miserable their lives would be if they were suddenly cut off from the Princess’s parent corporation. She looked expectantly around the group.

  “All right,” she said. “Who’s next?”

  *

  The press conference had devolved into predictable blandness after that. Anyone who might have been considering a question that was a little bit daring or boundary-pushing or, God forbid, interesting had decided to hold it back after seeing their supervillainous colleague carted off by the birds. And dull as it was, it had still managed to drag on for another two hours before her handlers had come in and rescued her for the afternoon parade.

  Finally, another two hours after that, the Princess sat at her vanity and stared at her reflection, willing herself to find the energy to start removing her mascara. If she didn’t, she was going to fall asleep with it still on, and no amount of childhood faith and trust could keep her face from sticking to the pillow while she slept. It just couldn’t be done.