In the state of January in the Realm of Winter, Vincent sat on a raised, black marble dais, a beam of white light shining upon him. His loose-fitting black robe was bordered with diamonds. His slender crown of platinum was thick with diamonds. The only decoration on the onyx walls were whorls and arches of flawless pear-cut diamonds.

He sat in a lotus position, meditating. His breath was visible in the frigid air, a chill he did not feel. He spent more and more of his time here with every decade. He was more than six hundred years old, and he needed a great deal of time by himself to shuffle through the memories, to categorize them, to shelve the regrets and joys and sorrows and loves in appointed places so they did not trouble him when he worked.

Also, he really enjoyed brooding and freaking people out.

A tiny wooden door creaked open, and by the particular timbre of its creak he knew it was the Petitioner’s Entrance. By the tapping of a cane he knew the petitioner was blind. He continued to meditate, humming with a slight smile.

The blind petitioners were less amusing than the deaf or lame. They were not intimidated by the vast space, the darkness with only a faintly glowing trail to guide them, his wealth, his imposing musculature and perfection. They did not quake when they saw his skin, black as the inside of your eyelids at midnight in the Arctic winter, his eyes of solid snowstorm, his hair spiked and glisteningly pale as icicles. When he gave them sight - and more importantly the ability to process sight, which was beyond the finest surgeons of Next Door - they were still not astounded, for they did not know what a person should look like.

But an important part of being a ruler was giving the people under his control just enough favor to buy their goodwill. He had the smallest person-population of all the Seasons, though his territory was the greatest in area. Those who came here seasonally to hunt or mine (for under the snows were great reserves of coal, oil, and gold to rival Summer’s coffers if only you could live long enough to dig it out) must never band together with the permanent exiles to drive him out.

Timmy could win their indulgence by giving them good weather. Vincent needed to be a benevolent, if ultimately unknowable, god.

The woman was close now, wrapped in furs, her eyes without iris or pupil.

“You’re shivering,” he said, and his smile broadened when he saw her jump. “Forgive me. I forget the frailty of mortals.”

That was the trick. Instead of having it comfortable for them to start with – which they would never notice – he drew their gratitude for changing the temperature as a favor.

The room grew warmer by five degrees. “Is that sufficient?” he asked.

She took deep breaths of relief. “Thank you, Sire.”

“It is no trouble. Come closer, child. You must take my hand.”

“I have traveled very far.”

“How far? And what is your name?”

He rose to his feet but remained on his platform. It was a good psychological tactic to feel taller than a supplicant.

“I have come from Literaria of the Temperate Zone. My name is Prudence.”

“And have you come to be made whole?”

“Yes, Sire.”

He grasped her outstretched hand. “Close your eyes.”

“Yes, Sire.”

“Prudence, see and know what you see.”

She opened her eyes. Tears fell from them. He subtly, slowly increased the light around them, so she would soon behold the shimmering walls. “You are…you are…beautiful…”

He smiled gently and squeezed her hand. “Live a new life, child. A servant will take your cane at the exit, and you may stay for up to a week in one of the guest rooms, attended to in your joy.”

She kissed his diamond ring. “Thank you!” Then she ran out, whooping.

Another convert, another person who would fight to the death for him. Excellent. Vincent was about to dim the lights and return to his meditation when his PDA went off. He

pulled it out and looked at it. “Fuck, I’ve got a shitty criminal case to try in ten minutes.”

Outside, since the weather of his realm matched his moods, a blizzard started to howl.

……………………………………………………………………..

Amber didn’t like sleeping in the room she shared with Lynne when Lynne was gone. It felt too big and empty. Instead she used the room where all her Next Door trappings were stored, set up to recreate her apartment in graduate school before everything went wrong in that dimension. She had Lord of the Rings posters and a tiny TV with a rickety old DVD player, for her Monty Python, Firefly, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer episodes that so confused her lover. Her spelling bee awards were there, her yearbooks, her prized leather bound Calvin and Hobbes collection, and buried somewhere deep in the closet was a picture of her family and another one of Clarisse. She looked at those two or three times a year.

She carefully climbed out of the wheelchair into bed, using telekinesis to compensate for her paralyzed legs. She thought about reading for a while but decided she was too tired. She left her cell phone on the bedside table, charging but on, in case Lynne should call unexpectedly.

She was just about to fall asleep when her door opened. Rain came in and shut the door behind her. She actually wore flannel pajamas now, ones that must have been made special for her because they had holes cut in the back and it buttoned between the wings. By the glow of battery-powered imitation candlelight (Amber feared setting her room on fire) she could see Rain’s hair was dry now, sleek waves of darkness.

“Uh, need something?” Amber asked.

Rain stood at the foot of the bed. “You have softly golden brown hair, gentle brown eyes, and a rounded, full slenderness that is soothing to view. I have been considering the matter for the past few hours, and I have decided that I would like to have sex with you.”

Amber bit her lip. “As romantic as that is, no.”

Rain tilted her head. “Why not? You are attractive and pansexual. So am I. My being of Faerie makes me immune to venereal disease. Female-to-female sex has no chance of pregnancy. I do not the problem.”

She suppressed her laughter because she knew Rain was trying hard to understand. “First off, I’m in a monogamous relationship with someone who loves me....”

“Lynne has had sex with me, though, an experience which she enjoyed immensely. If she loves you, why would she want to deprive you of similar pleasure? Also, I asked her permission the last time we conferred. You may examine the note she left in your locked far-right desk drawer as proof.”

Rolling her eyes, Amber willed the hidden key out of her shoe, unlocked the aforementioned drawer, and pulled the scrap of paper to her. It said, in Lynne’s handwriting and with her signature: “It’s not cheating if it’s with Rain, since she’ll never love you and you’ll never run off with her, as long as you take sexy pictures.”

“So as you can see, that objection is groundless,” Rain said, idly playing with a fallen black feather.

“That wasn’t the only objection, sweetheart. As Lynne pointed out, you’ll never love me. I only want to have sex with people who love me. ‘Pansexual’ means that gender is not a deciding factor in attraction, not that I’ll eagerly hump everything in sight.”

Rain frowned. “Please?”

“Go screw Ezekiel or one of the other underlings. They’d consider it an honor.”

“All right then.” She turned and left.

Amber slid under the covers once more.

The door opened a fraction. “Amber?” Rain asked.

“Mm?”

“Despite the fact that you refused me, I have the vague feeling that it was not a waste of my time to come here.”

Amber waved sleepily but not without some satisfaction at the admission. “Goodnight, mixed-up fairy girl.”

“Goodnight, earnest witch.”

……………………………………………………………………………………………

Goodwife Ash cleared her throat. “Have…have you…”

Kira waited for the question with a wince. Usually the witch’s cottage was a peaceful refuge, with its little courtyard of moss-grown stone, its furniture of wicker and immaculately clean, sage-colored cushions. The cats of gray and orange and tortoiseshell sunned themselves and were friendly enough to be enjoyable company, yet standoffish enough so that their favor felt like a privilege. The goodwife herself was a plump, kindly woman with gray hair in a long braid, gold-rimmed spectacles and a fondness for berets, which she had in many colors. Otherwise she wore blank. This woman had delivered her, given her a ring of Confidence, cared for her when sick. A few years ago she resolved punishment on the man who had struck Mother and called her a whore when they disputed over the price of making their shack protective against the elements; these days it kept out rain and snow properly, though it did get powerful cold wintertimes.

Now, though, sitting at Ash’s kitchen/dining room table with her shirt unbuttoned, showing the unaccountable sun, Kira feared awful things at the end of that sentence. She feared accusations of regicide or pronouncements of doom. An urge swelled within her to try clawing off the mark with her fingernails. She quelled it. This was no time to act crazed.

After a long pause the goodwife said, “I think we need to consult the Board. Close your shirt, Kira.”

“Yes’m. I heard in school that those Next Door use the Board, but as a game. They don’t auger nothing from it.”

“Don’t auger ‘anything’, honey. Grammar is important even out here. And they did invent it as a game. It took a Commuter to realize its potential for fortunetelling.” That said, she opened the cardboard box and took out the folded panel, with its mysterious legends of ‘DOUBLE WORD SCORE’ and ‘TRIPLE LETTER SCORE’. She also produced the sack of letters from which they would form words. “Isaac was the one who got these for me. You have to combine four of the sacks to have enough letters to get anything reliable.”

Kira had done this once before, to find out what career path she should take. The results had been unsatisfactory, with a lot of moonshine about a castle, amputation, hands, and the letters “P”, “C”, and “R” stubbornly repeated no matter how many times she redrew. “I hope this round goes helpful,” she muttered.

Goodwife Ash nodded kindly at her and gave her twenty tiles without looking at them. “Form as many words as you can with those. You know the routine.”

“Yes’m.”

GEEK. GLYPHS. HANDS. FALL. A.

“I know ‘geek’ is a word, but I don’t recall the meaning.”

“Means a person who bites the heads off chickens and similar disgusting acts at carnivals, dear.”

“Oh, right.” She drew again.

P. CARVES. DOLL. R. LIVE. C. PIE.

Kira raised an eyebrow. “Those letters…”

“I’m intrigued by the ‘pie’, myself.”

“At least it mentions carving. Hope it means I get my prenticement.” She drew again.

CASTLE. KNIGHT. SEASON. U. R.

Her heart in her throat, she drew for the last time.

U. R. SEASON. U. SUMMER. SRSLY.

In the awkwardness that followed, Goodwife Ash nervously joked, “Never knew Those Beyond had a sense of humor.”

Kira had turned white. “Nice…of them…to be direct-like…”

The old woman put a hand on her shoulder to steady her. “He deserved it. I’m amazed you actually got it done.”

“I didn’t know this would happen! Why didn’t anyone say?”

“Didn’t want fools getting themselves killed trying. We didn’t know what his weakness was. It’s not that bad, Kira darling. You could do a lot of good, and you’d have money and power and you’d stay young, and…”

The door slammed open. A dark, curly-haired woman with brass goggles on her head, a sheathed sword on her belt, and the air of great importance about her stood there. From behind her came the sound of horrific coughing, like someone’s esophagus was trying to escape his body.

The woman came towards them with eyes full of pity. “It’s not that simple, I’m afraid,” she said, with a foreign accent.

What drew Kira’s immediate attention was the woman unbuttoning her red-gold dappled shirt as she approached. Underneath she wore a low-cut camisole, cut so low that the flesh over her heart was visible: the flesh over her heart emblazoned with a burnt-orange leaf of autumn.

…………………………………………………………………………….

Jared found Lynne looking at his atlas, scrutinizing a map of the USA, humming to herself. He noticed she had taken the bandages off her arm. The bullet graze was now only a white scar. And she had found his hidden stash of Godiva truffles.

“Please don’t smear the pages.” He decided not to push his luck and demand that she relinquish the chocolates.

She stared at her hands briefly and they became clean. “Do you know where Portland is?”

“What state?”

“Ozone…no, that’s not it…Orion?” She looked up with scintillating green eyes and a cocoa-stained mouth. Something about her confusion, after all her domineering bossiness, and coupled with her darkened Aphrodite’s face and black curls, made Jared glad he was wearing loose-fitting pants.

“I think you mean Oregon.” He leaned over her shoulder and pointed to the Northwest Coast. “Around there somewhere. If you turn a few pages it’ll show the area in more detail. Why?”

“Amber is from there. She does not speak of it much. What I hear about this world is generalities.”

“Can all the Seasons travel back and forth?”

“Yes, but I’ve never been interested. I don’t like not being known for what I am.”

“Considering people are out to kill you, maybe you should change your mind about that.”

She examined the brief description of Oregon a few leaves over and bit her lip. “What is that place like? Do you know?”

Jared put his laptop on the table and hugged his knees sitting on the carpet. “Um…it rains. A lot. All the time. It’s one of the rainiest places in this country.”

Lynne smiled. “As is my citadel.”

“You know, you can drop the fancy talk. I’ve noticed that it isn’t your natural mode of speech. It’s okay. I won’t be unimpressed.”

She stuck her tongue out at him, and also relaxed her posture so she was not sitting so ramrod-straight. “Fine, Mr. Smarty-Pants. Yeah, it rains a lot in March, though not as much as in April. Each of the three provinces is named after the month they most resemble.”

“Is May very beautiful?”

“Yes.”

“Huh. Must be something to see.”

She put a hand on his. “You should be rewarded for guiding me. I will make you a guest of honor. When can we set forth…I mean, head off?”

He moved his hand away quickly, for it was far too happy when she was touching it. “I came to tell you that tomorrow evening is the earliest we can go. I could bribe someone for a flight today, but considering that I’m lower-middle-class it would look suspicious. It would look like I didn’t come by the money legally. For that same reason, I can only exchange a little of the jewels at a time for currency, and at different places. I’m going to drive around town to a few of those places shortly. You can come along if you want. Maybe we could go out to dinner later.”

“If you have romantic ideas, be aware that your house is in my realm, which means I can obliterate it with a thought.”

Jared edged away. “I’m trying to be nice.”

“I’m trying to not get in a compromising situation.” She was unconsciously stroking her right pistol in its holster.

“Okay.”

He didn’t dare to voice his thoughts. You’re scared. You’re scared at the idea of leaving my house. Then you won’t be in your realm. And you won’t be in a place where people know Springtime is a person, a ruler. You’ll be ordinary, and you haven’t been ordinary for a long time, have you? And for a lovely woman used to power, being stripped of it makes you very, very nervous. You have one kind of target sign on your chest if you stay there, but you are used to that one – you have had experience with assassins. But you don’t know how to deal with being ignored, lost, preyed upon…so you will turn on me at the slightest hint of a threat, no matter how little I deserve it.

She regarded him coolly for about a minute. “I do seem to have eaten most of your pantry stock,” she mumbled.

Relief washed over him. “All right. You should summon your suitcases or whatever else you do with them. There are regulations on baggage and I need to make sure you won’t get us in trouble. You can’t take your guns, for example.”

“Ah.”

He picked up his laptop again, to book the cheapest flight possible. He would probably have to coach her on appearing normal. He turned to leave.

“Jared?”

“Hm?”

She looked wistful. “I just realized you oughtn’t visit my castle. If you’re not a Communter and the imbalance is solved, you could be trapped on my side of the wall.”

He swung his fist to indicate resignation. “Ah, shucks, guess I won’t get to Narnia after all.”

“Narnia?”

“Long story, Lynne. And I do mean long.”

……………………………………………………………………………….

Indonesia is simultaneously the world’s largest archipelago and the one with the largest Muslim population (though many other religions, including tribal ones, remain in force, and freedom of faith is constitutional). Many of the islands are densely populated. It is rich in natural resources, with the volcanic activity that gives rich, nutritious, crop-yielding soil on the one hand and fiery death on the other.

In East Java there is a place called Sidoarjo. There underground reservoirs of mud become pressurized and sometimes burst to the surface. There too, is the promise of natural gas.

It only takes one case of incautious greed for massive disaster, one company that drills too deep, in the wrong place. PT Lapindo Brantas, the company responsible, continues to evade paying damages.

Sixteen hours after Kira killed Timmy, a door opened inside the mud volcano. Of course nobody could survive crossing it, but messages began floating out, carved on wooden blocks in Indonesian, Javanese, Arabic, and English.

TO THE PEOPLE OF NEXT DOOR: STOP STEALING OUR MUD. SIGNED, THE GOVERNING BODY OF THE JOINT REPUBLICS OF MONSOON AND DROUGHT.

No one saw this. They were busy either fleeing the onslaught of mud carrying away their homes or trying to stop the flow - with expensive plugs of concrete if you had money and trusted science, with animal sacrifice if that was your belief.

The next day, another carved sign belched liquidly from the hole in reality.

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH THE GOATS? WHY WOULD WE WANT DEAD GOATS? IS THAT YOUR MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE OR SOMETHING?

Again, no one saw this. The next one had much bigger letters.

WARNING! WE ARE BUILDING A MACHINE CAPABLE OF CROSSING THE BOUNDARY. IF WE DO NOT RECEIVE A CIVIL REPLY WITHIN SIX MONTHS, PREPARE FOR WAR!

It drifted several hundred miles away from its origin. A beggar who could not read cut it into pieces and used it for his hovel.