Seasons Turning Read online

  Seasons Turning

  by

  Donaya Haymond

  Autumn Arch Publishing

  Iowa

  www.AutumnArchPublishing.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Donaya Haymond

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or literary publication.

  Publisher’s note

  This is a work of fiction. All names, places, characters, and incidences are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual people, alive or dead, events or locations, is completely coincidental.

  A product of Autumn Arch Publishing

  Cover design: Michele Maakestad

  Interior design: Aaron Bunce

  Trade paperback ISBN: 978-0-9992026-5-4

  Amazon KINDLE:

  1st Edition –2018

  Special Thanks:

  Ms. Casey, you know what you did

  One

  Summer Unlove

  It was Greensday, and the plague of giant jellyfish in the southern region of the Temperate Zone showed no sign of stopping.

  Witches and politicians collaborated to discover another portal between the Seven States and Next Door, a dimension where people were actually surprised by things. That particular portal opened from the Temperate Zone to a mysterious, foreign land called “Denver”, in what they believed to be the empire of “Colorado”.

  Kira sighed and crumpled up the yellowing newspaper. She wished she had something else to distract her while she waited for Mother on the rickety, splintered bench. Timmy kept staring at her.

  Why was he here, anyway? Did he even have parents? She realized she knew nothing about him. He popped up in her classes and never answered questions. That blond hair irritated her in its length and cleanliness, too, with shampoo so scarce for the past two years in Creektown.

  She heard mother inside the office. “Are you saying Kira made this?”

  She pictured the counselor with his bright, purple lipstick in the latest fashion. “She’s the star of the woodshop class. However, she kept getting no better than ‘adequate’ in her academic subjects. She found them a chore. Graduated by a baby’s fingernail.”

  “I pushed her to finish. I dropped out of high school, and there’s been nothing but trouble ever since. Life as a single mother deep in the woods is no jar of peaches, I can tell you. Kira’s a treasure at providing, though. Crack shot, knows all the ways to skin a jackrabbit. She’s talented at the necessary incantations as well.”

  “Ah. My daughter has trouble with them, and we end up the next day knee-deep in crabs. Now that she’s graduated, I suggest Kira take an apprenticeship and learn how to be a carpenter. I’ve already sent a pigeon to one of the best carpenters in the Temperate Zone.”

  “A carpenter?”

  His voice perked up. “Carpenters make good money. With the paucity of female carpenters hereabouts, she’ll have people lining up to hire her for the sheer novelty.”

  She stopped listening to the discussion when she noticed Timmy regarding her with a glazed expression.

  “I don’t suppose I could have any of your underwear?” he asked in his characteristic drawl, as if he was trying to keep flies out of his mouth by opening it as little as possible.

  Kira pulled away. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I imagine a girl such as you would wear plain things, with maybe a little lace trim to add some variety.”

  “Creep!” She lifted a hand to strike him, and he chuckled with brilliantly white teeth.

  “Oh, do slap me. Time was I’d lie awake, wishing you would slap me.”

  With a shudder, Kira knocked on the door to hurry mother up. Mother took her sweet time, from Kira’s reckoning, but the moment she saw Kira’s expression she took Kira’s hand.

  As they went off, Timmy shouted, “I bet you wonder sometimes what happened to your sister!”

  “I had a sister?” Kira asked Mother.

  Mother chewed her lip and stared at the planks. “We...we can talk about it at home.”

  They made their way to the pier, where the river rushed a pale brown, surrounded on all sides by verdant trees. The school resembled a grass hut in the middle of the Serengeti, except only woods and water met the eye here, with not a wildebeest to be had. The resident bears and wildcats were not immediately visible, shy and nocturnal as they were.

  Mother lowered herself into her kayak. “Stay away from that thing pretending to be a boy.” She grasped her paddle with one hand, unchained her sturdy craft, and set off ahead of her.

  “As if I were really eager to keep him company,” Kira muttered, getting in her own kayak. The wobbly craft dipped in the water. It needed repair soon, thanks to a collision with an alligator. Again.

  Rain clouds gathered above her in minutes, and it stormed with the anger of two fighting fish having caught sight of one another. The rain seemed to be talking to her. Strangely, it sounded like Timmy.

  “I’ve been watching you all school year, my dear, but now summer’s here, it’s time to fear.”

  “Just doing a ventriloquist-magnifier,” she told the torrents. “Your rhyming’s weak.”

  “My power only lasts the summer. I am the lord of the summer.”

  She bumped her craft over some rocks. “How nice for you. Does it come with horseflies, or are those extra?”

  “I like you, Kira. Your sister became rather dull after the first year. It’s only raining where you are; have you noticed?”

  “Safety, safety, safety sure, to all my dangers be a cure, I know I deserve this, for my heart is pure,” Kira responded, dragging her paddle in the water.

  The rain fell harder, but her kayak did not flip over. For a moment she felt triumphant. Then the current of the river started flow the other way. “Gaah.”

  Timmy appeared on the bank, holding out a hand. “I’ll save you.” Everything outside Kira’s reach remained perfectly dry.

  “From something you made? No thanks.” Kira wiped the water from her eyes, and then paddled against the current, fighting for every inch. Part of her wondered if she had the strength, but she was blessed with a constant feeling of certainty in her own judgment thanks to a ring she wore on a ring on her finger. The goodwife who delivered a child would present them with an attribute embodied in a jewel. It was something that would define them and support them through their life. Some children came into the world with a bracelet of trust, or a necklace of beauty. Kira had confidence.

  Timmy swam beside her with perfect ease and a smile. “I can’t force you into anything just after school ends. In my realm I do as I please all the time. Here in the Temperate Zone it’s only Summer’s reign for three months out of the year.”

  “I don’t see Autumn waltzing in and playing pervert when the leaves change color,” Kira snapped.

  “She has different views on what it is to be a Season.”

  “The teenage-boy mask? Not impressive.”

  He switched to backstroke. “No other boys want you. I made sure of that.”

  Her muscles stung with the acid tang of exhaustion, but she kept paddling. “What did you do to poor Doug? Her classmate had been sweet on her for several years, carving her hearts out of fresh-smelling cedar, until a few months ago. Then he started running away and hiding whenever she came near.

  “I overdid it a bit. He doesn’t like any human beings at all anymore.” Timmy stood and walked on water. “Getting tired?”

  “Only of you.”

  By the time she made it home she felt completely spent, verbally and physically. Timmy sank in the water under
her house, disappearing among the stilts. “You’re going to give in by August. Why not do it now, and spare yourself the heartache?”

  “Look, Great Supreme Almighty Dumbass,” Kira said, gritting her teeth and trying to climb up the ladder but failing for arm fatigue, “or whatever it is I should call you -”

  “‘Lord’ will do,” Timmy said, only his head visible above the muddy water.

  “I don’t care if you pick a new girl every summer to steal away and violate, but this is your last, okay?” Goodwife Ash told her such things happened. They learned about it in history class. Summer changed his face every year and appeared to be immortal, so no one had been able to stop it.

  Kira had to call for Mother to hoist her up. After explaining what took her so long, she asked about the acceptable ways for getting away from an irascible demigod.

  “Well, you could be like Daphne and turn into a laurel tree, the way she escaped from Apollo. I’d miss you terrible, child. Probably lie down and die from the loneliness.”

  Mother sat huddled on the floor. “I don’t see how you can escape. I never told you about your sister. It hurt too badly.”

  Kira obtained a towel and mopped herself off. “Goodwife Ash said a Season has only one weakness. What would kill Summer?”

  “You could enlist another Season…”

  Kira wrung her hair to get the worst of the soak out. “Geez, Mother, have you forgotten high school already?”

  “I didn’t finish, dear.”

  “Anyway, a Season can’t kill another Season. Otherwise they would have done it by now. Cold would be an obvious weakness. I mean, Summer loses out to the frost every time.”

  Mother stirred the coals in the cook stove. “The tea is nearly finished brewing. How in the Temperate Zone could you possibly get autumn frost and winter chill now?”

  “Go north, or really far south. Maybe I could go to the top of a mountain. Mount Jezebel is only twenty miles away by boat.”

  “He has power over the river.” Mother hugged her, ignoring how such an action would soak her too.

  Kira turned the matter over in her mind until she saw its shape. Then she found a piece of paper to write something down so Timmy wouldn’t overhear. “Isaac has a newfangled thing in his house. It’s called a refrigitator, I think. It makes everything winter inside. Soaks up gobs of electrical power.” He had only recently made enough money for a sufficiently large generator.

  “Here.” Mother handed her a mug. “Will you be wanting to change clothes?”

  “Tell me about my sister first.”

  Mother pulled up her rocking chair, one of only two chairs in the house. Her hands shook as she rocked. “Naomi was only your half-sister. I got pregnant with her when I was fifteen. The daddy skedaddled, as seventeen-year-old daddies often do. I dropped out of school and kept house for my parents. My momma helped me look after the baby, and Father kept the wolves away. Naomi was sixteen when she disappeared. I saw her talking to a boy—he looked different than this one—and I never knew whether he forced her.”

  “My Politics teacher said the Seasons can change how they look real easy.” Kira didn’t like chamomile tea. Mother brewed it too bitter, but at least it was hot.

  Mother stared into space. “Naomi going was the start of a whole load of badness. The worst was when my parents died in a flood. I took up with some unsavory folk—end result, you. I wasn’t really looking for another—”

  “Oh, thanks,” Kira said, interrupting, meaning to sound more sarcastic but shivered too hard. Did she have any clean clothes to change into? She wanted to hold mother’s hand to comfort her, but then mother might never let go.

  “I was going to say that I got used to having you around pretty quick. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “I won’t leave you.”

  “He might try to trick you. Those Seasons, they’ve got castles and servants–”

  “I’d have him boss me around or worse?” Kira hawked and spat a wad of mucus into the river.

  “The goodwives try and help people, but these Seasons just trample over everybody without an ‘excuse me’. Comes of being immortal, I’d say.”

  “I heard Spring’s a pretty good ruler and Autumn never did anyone harm.”

  “Well, their times of the year are less extreme, aren’t they? Kindly, I mean. You don’t need to protect yourself from them.”

  “Wish I lived Next Door.”

  “Next Door’s an awful place.”

  “What, have you been there?” Kira finished the tea, placed the mug on the floor, and wrung the towel out over the side of the house. She’d dripped puddles throughout the Everything Else Room. She and mother called it that to differentiate it from the Sleeping Room.

  Mother took the cracked mug and wiped it dry. “Everyone who’s been there says. They don’t have any magic at all. They spend most of their lives being surprised and scared of things instead of just going with them, the way sensible folk manage. I just keep talking, don’t I? What are you going to do? Can I help?

  “I don’t want to tell you, in case Timmy tries to find out.” She kissed mother on the cheek and shuddered her way to find some clothes.

  Kira set out through the woods that night, armed with her shotgun and a Bowie knife. She spoke to the air to warn any bears of her approach, and on the off chance Timmy might be listening. “I’m not saying my sister was an idiot, but she had a Kindness gem, not Confidence, like me. I bet you love to prey on girls who doubt themselves.”

  The fireflies formed a message in midair: Talk, all talk. For a moment she thought about spraying the fireflies with her bottle of water, but changed her mind. It wasn’t really their fault Timmy used them, was it? Clean water could be hard to come by anyhow.

  If this didn’t work, she could travel to the big city and find someone who knew more about the Seasons. They kept most details about themselves quiet for their own security. That would take weeks. Isaac’s house was only a few miles off and it took her nearly two hours to get there. Roads here in Creektown were never top priority. People didn’t go anywhere much. In the cities of the Temperate Zone they had this thing called ‘taxes’ that financed public works. Creektown never got around to being organized enough.

  Isaac was the local butcher, for people who either could afford to buy meat or had so much from livestock and hunting that they needed a place to store it. He’d talked for years about getting something to store unsalted meat in the summer. Salted meat drove a lot of people’s blood pressure crazy.

  When she knocked, Isaac came to the door holding a red-crusted cleaver. He whistled. “You’re looking mighty desperado-like, girl.” He had dishwater blond hair, dirty brown-gold like Kira’s. Mother’s hair was nut brown. The women shared eye color, but Isaac’s eyes were blue, too.

  “I really need your help killing Lord Summer.”

  “Ah. He’s come back, has he?” Isaac swore he wasn’t her father. She really wouldn’t mind if it turned out he was lying. Mother never said yes or no on the matter. He sent them free sides of meat from time to time and taught Kira most of her hunting and home repair skills.

  Kira squared her shoulders, and then regretted it. Her arms pained her thanks to all that rowing against the current earlier. “Yes.”

  “Good, child, you’re doing what most of us haven’t the gumption to. What’s your plan?”

  She whispered it in his ear. They had plenty of work ahead of them.

  Timmy broke through the door three hours later, even though it wasn’t barred. Now a blond mane went down his shoulders and blue eyes glowed. Miniature lighting crackled among his fingers. He spoke quietly, but each word echoed. His smirk was full of teeth. “I’m here to collect.”

  “I advise you against bothering Kira further,” Isaac said, with a cleaver in one hand and his other arm around Kira’s shoulders. “Don’t you have a whole realm of girls to pick from?”

  “Two weeks ago the knife would have scared me. Two hours ago, I’d hesitate
, but now...” He reached out to touch Kira’s cheek.

  Despite his age, Isaac sent the blade spinning into Timmy’s face, buried from forehead to nose. “Leave her.”

  Timmy didn’t take a single step backwards or fall to the floor. He pulled the blade out and his face smoothed out again, like pudding when the spoon is removed. “Doesn’t hurt at all. My defense is all up. Offense will be working in a few days, but in the meantime why don’t we pick out the china for the reception?”

  Kira darted into the kitchen. “Your ego is pretty near ridiculous.”

  When she turned around, there he was, a little closer than before. “That’s what I like about you, Kira. You’re so determined. I won’t bother you with the same promises Natalie fell for.”

  Ducking into the bedroom festooned with dirty clothing, Kira snarled, “Her name was Naomi.”

  “Who says ‘was’? For all you know she’s still alive. Thing is, no one can get in or out of a Season’s castle without that Season’s permission.” He grabbed her arm. “Enough tag, little girl.”

  “Don’t talk down to me.” She zipped into the bathroom. “That’s how it works for you. That’s why you take girls from other realms. The ones in yours are too easy.”

  “Good psychology! I just get ones from the Temperate Zone. Autumn and I had a little snafu a while back, and Spring—she’s a lezzie, you know. Doesn’t understand.”

  “Your supreme assholery? I think I do understand you, though.” She ducked into another room and closed the door. He followed her, so wrapped up into what he thought was a game that he didn’t check what room it was first.

  “It’s colder in here...” Timmy looked around and saw the metal walls and floor. Ice. Foggy breath. “Wait.”

  Kira tugged at the door. “Good. Isaac locked it. I couldn’t open it if you made me.”

  It took a few seconds for a notion of vulnerability to penetrate Timmy’s skull. “What is this? I’ve never seen something like this. What did you do?”

  “If you’d ever been Next Door, you’d know they had machines called ‘freezers’.