Week 8

August 22

People take one look at me and assume they know exactly who I am. This is not a new observation; I noticed it at home, before here. The longer I’m here, the more I realize how similar Summer people are to Winter. Certainly, the customs are different, the fashions, the architecture -- even the sun still seems too dark and hot compared to home. But the people are people. I spend a lot of time worrying that people will see beyond my disguise, but the truth is that most people take comfort in thinking they know exactly who I am. They like that they don’t trust me, that they even fear me because at least they won’t be surprised by me. The sad thing is, that they can be betrayed by their friends -- and because they assume that they won’t be betrayed, it makes the betrayal all the more shocking and difficult to deal with. And people who don’t like or trust me, they’re missing out on someone who would be a kind, loyal friend.

People pride themselves on being wise in their assumptions and the truth is that anyone is capable of anything at any time. Certainly, there would be signs and gradual changes in our friends, usually. But in an intense situation, with the pressure on, we don’t know how our friends will react. We like to think we do.

I had a friend once. We were actually neighbors, closer than sisters. She was slightly older than me with long limbs and hair and this confidence that you only get when you’re dealing with someone younger and therefore ignorant of all the everyday things that older people already know. One day, my friend’s house was robbed. She was home alone when it happened. She said she hid, but she had bruises afterward and a vacant look in her eye. When I pressed her to tell me what happened, she snapped at me. It was the first time she raised her voice to me, but it wasn’t the last.

Anyway, she didn’t change overnight, but she did go from someone who loved me and thought I was wonderful, to someone who hated me with a violence that, should she have thought she could get away with it, she would have murdered me. People believe that children are innocent and incapable of inflicting the evil upon the world that adults are. But my friend was not innocent after that incident, and she didn’t want anyone else to be, either.

My point is, that I was so certain of my friend’s goodness that I didn’t believe that her change was either sincere or permanent until my body and soul were so scarred by her anger that I still, with perfect clarity, understand what it is like to be hated with a passion and intensity that is beyond what we think most people are capable of.

I am shocked, to find that the majority of Summerfolk lack this passion. I was expecting everyone her to have it. But before I came here, I was reflecting that I was sad that our wars had gone on so long. That both sides had lost so many brethren to the other. I thought it was a shame that it had taken this long for either side to reach out and offer a true truce. I have come to see that many Summerfolk seem to share this attitude toward Winterfolk. It’s heartening.

And the ones who do hate me with that passion -- I survived that level of evil once, and I am not afraid of it. Not as afraid, anyway, as I am of living my life in the fear that that evil will eventually destroy me. Because that sort of evil can only do its psychological damage once. Physically, yes, they can attack again. But the real damage that has been done, and healed over into the tough skin of scars -- that evil can’t touch me anymore. 

It’s the wounds that are still open and raw that I have to worry about. But I have faith in God to heal me of those too -- and once I am healed, it will only be physical death that will stop me from being who I was meant to be. 

August 23

THREE DAYS!!! My mother is coming in three days! My heart is tripping like a jackrabbit with hummingbird wings. I feel a combination of dread mixed with anticipation. I hope that my actions have not put her in danger -- I would kill Adora, Stan, and Todd right now if it meant that no one would attack my mother while she is here.

My husband is looking a little nervous these days, which makes me laugh. My mother-in-law is formidable, and that’s without the reputation of a entrails-eating, baby slaying reputation that my mother has. The entrails thing is just giblets, really, and they’re already on the menu for her visit (under an assumed name). The baby-slaying reputation comes from the fact that she is a certified midwife. 

Winterians have a reputation of killing whatever babies seem sickly or retarded. The truth is, those folk grow up very protected, and with the most vicious reputations to protect them. One of my favorites is Wild John Lockhart. Wild John was born with one arm that was average-sized, and the other tiny and shriveled up. So they built him this big, golden arm, complete with muscles, and he went on to “slay” about a an entire village in a berserker rage. The story goes that he lost his arm in battle and replaced it with the metal one. He lost his mind when his wife and children were killed in front of him (a typical element in Winterian tales) and he went crazy and killed the whole town. Eventually, he regained his senses and was incorporated into a distant cousin’s household as a mechanic and he uses his metal arm for fixing things, rather than destroying them. He even remarried and had more kids. It’s a tragic ending, as far as Winter tales go -- no Winterian likes a happy, or even worse, a banal ending. 

The truth is, Uncle John was Mom’s first birth and she took care of him his whole life, and went to live with her when she got married. He’s had lots of names and lots of stories told about him and his arm, but he’s never strayed out of town, and he’s never killed a soul. He won’t even kill rats. He says there’s a use for every living thing and for most non-living things and to waste any of it with death, is a sin. John doesn’t do a lot of public speeches, needless to say.

My mother has lost three babies out of hundreds of births, starting when she was nine or ten years old. She has a reputation of twenty-three kills, though. I upped the number when I moved here because three didn’t sound like enough.

At court, I tell grisly stories that keep the lords and ladies entertained for hours. I’m quite chatty and personable when I want to be, though I find it exhausting. This is probably because I spend so much time pretending. It takes a lot less energy to be myself, than it does to pretend to be someone else.

At the same time, I have this pent-up energy that I don’t know what to do with, so Adora found me a climbing wall. There’s a secret passage (apparently, this place is lousy with them, though most of them are known. Except to me, of course) that leads to a cave with very climbable walls. I wear peasant garb, just in case we’re caught, and we leave my clothes and piercings hidden in the passage for a quick reassemble. We just found an opening in the cave that we can just squeeze through and have started exploring, though we’ll need better supplies to go further. No reason to avoid execution only to fall into a big hole with sharp, pointy rocks at the bottom of it.

August 24

I find that I am angry at Wanderlust. No, he never made me any promises, and I certainly never intended to form an indiscretion with him -- I am disappointed in his character. It is not me whom he has cheated, so much as his wife, his children, and himself. Still, I find an anger burning in my gut when I see him at court. Who does this immature, beer-gutted, mustachioed Lothario think he is? He thinks he deserves the family life and the bachelor life simultaneously? Rumor has it, he has never cheated on his wife before, and that he is truly in love with his lady of the moment.

It just makes me think of all the people who use love to excuse behavior that can be and often is treacherous, dishonest, and overwhelmingly unhealthy. No one in that sort of tryst lives happily ever after. Even if he divorces his wife and forms a new family with this lady -- 

The love of a dishonorable man can not be the temptation our ladies of the court have made it out to be. If we have a soul mate who is so ill of character and backbone, does that not speak of the darkness in our own soul? Yet, that is the phrase we use to justify such behavior. “We belong together, we should have been together from the start. It’s not our fault that we are grasping, impatient weasels who want what is in front of us more than the lives we have worked so hard to build.

It’s so easy to step away from a real life into a fantasy one. Until the fantasy becomes real and then we are discontented yet again. We struggle to feed this yearning, this sense of entitlement, that we have; thinking that we deserve ultimate happiness. But even if we did deserve this, what sort of ultimate happiness come from dishonesty and the desecration of promises and responsibilities? 

Attraction, I find, is the true culprit behind this “true love” nonsense. Attraction along with the thrill of the forbidden, the flight into fantasy, the relief from daily drudgery. It’s a weakness of mind, heart, and spirit, and the thought of which only make my mind, heart, and spirit tired. I pray with all of my heart that I never fall into such a weakness of character that the destruction of families become a small price to pay for my happy ending.

I have discussed this with Adora, who seems to have a much more tolerant attitude than I do. People are people after all, she says. They are frail and weak, and yes their souls may be dark in places, but they can still be light in others. If we focus only on the behaviors we despise about each other, then we would avoid friendships, and indeed, intense relationships of any sort.

Her attitude surprised me at first, because she seems such a stoic and unfeeling girl. When I first came here, I thought that she had no friends at all and I suppose I never reevaluated her. She befriended me, she protects my secrets, bears my ill humors, and finds me places where I can be myself in a world where I don’t belong. She comes along on all of my adventures, and I have to say, some of them are remarkably dangerous for both of us.

The forgiving and flexible nature that I have come to expect from her, applies in this case as well. Yes, cheating on one’s spouse is a despicable activity. No, it is not the work of a wise or strong man. However, who is wise or strong enough to live up to the standards we hold for a man? No man is without fault or failure. Maybe it is better to pity Wanderlust for all of the sorrow he is reaping about his own head, and that of his wife and children -- rather than to judge him. Perhaps I should pray for the recovery of his sense of decency before he has done irreparable damage.

I know that mine is not a marriage of love, but the idea of my husband with another woman, just drives me crazy. I assume he has lovers, but I do not want to know about them.

August 25

The thing I miss most about Winter is the water. You never have to worry that you’ll die of thirst in Winter. Most of the houses are made of or fortified with ice, so, can’t get to the well? Melt the fireplace.

My mother arrives tomorrow. I’m certain that I have everything and everyone as prepared as possible for her presence. I’ve got her food, shelter, and clothing worked out -- and I’ve properly trained her servants to anticipate her every need and/or want. I may have had an inappropriate amount of fun in describing some of the things she may need from particular servants, but only the ones I wanted to scare off because Adora told me not to trust them.

Trust is a funny thing. If you trust the right people, it can save your life and if you trust the wrong people, it’ll kill you. Of course, then you have to be careful of the level of trust, and also of changing loyalties. If, for instance, I began to treat Adora badly, would she remain loyal to me? Or, if someone kidnapped Todd, couldn’t Stan be prompted to poison my dinner; sacrifice me in order to save his blood? You never know when loyalties and strength of character will fall away to self-preservation. Even circumstances affect whether your friends are there for you or not. If Todd and his mother were both sick, Stan would not be there to cook my food, thus ensuring that I don’t get poisoned. It would not be a question of loyalty or even of trustworthiness, but circumstance that would lead him to let me down.

I watch these courtiers and these servants run around this place and so few of them understand the minefield they are scrambling around on. The are oblivious to the fact that so few circumstances would need to change in order to bring about their destruction. The weather, even, takes lives and health with no conscience or consciousness. The level of chaos and chance that I see dancing around me quite astonishes me sometime.

I was thinking about my cousin Joe. He woke up every morning, ate breakfast if he had the time, and went about his day. His mother found him, slumbering eternally. Apparently, at some point during the night, he forgot how to breathe.

With so many physiological, psychological, emotional, spiritual, etc. pitfalls to avoid -- how are we expected to get through the day? Never mind planning for the future, or having an expectation for what sort of day it is that we most likely will not live through. Yet we manage. We get so far ahead of ourselves that we forget the moment and imagine what the years to come will hold. And so rarely are we even close to the vision we formed in our heads. Perhaps if we did not do so, the only things we would see in life, would be the pitfalls, and we would lose sight of the reason we attempt to avoid them in the first place. There is a goal, a destination for who and where we want to be.

There is this delicious fruit here called a watermelon and it is aptly named. It is a crispy yet malleable delight that beyond all reason is infused with the water that logs it, rather than sogged by it. If I could write poetry, it would be about watermelon. If I could lick the walls at home, right now, it would not taste as sweet as a watermelon. Watermelon is the only thing in Summer that makes me feel at home. It is wet and pliant and sticky and wonderful. Mom will love it.

Another thing she’ll love, is not wearing gloves. When your house is made of ice, and your skin is not, gloves and shoes are constantly necessary. The bathroom in our house had one wall made of ice, and the other three were wood. The room was built directly over a small hot spring. That was our bathtub. We could divert the steam toward the ice wall in order to turn it into a show. Mother used to live in the bathroom. She’d take a book in there and a small chaise, and would not leave, no matter how much we tried to pound the door down. My father had to built smaller bathrooms for us kids and more for his guests because mother would never leave that room.

Here in Summer, there are these light shoes, which basically amount to some cardboard and string to tie on the feet. They are called sandals, and Mother will love them. I have disposed of (okay, packed away) all of my ornamental gloves. The ladies here wear rings and bracelets against their bare skin. Mother will die from the excess.

We were a well-to-do family. The main reason our house was made of ice was not because of poverty, but because of appearance. With father being the scholar and mother being the adoptress of every lost soul who ever crossed her path, they had to keep up their reputation somehow. And most houses, no matter how prestigious, usually had the majority of their houses made of ice. But there was this one family (like there always is) called the Joneses. I think the reason their house was made entirely of wood and stone is because their two boys were so sickly, but the neighborhood were scandalized when they moved in, knocked down all the ice, and started over with dry materials. The Joneses through huge balls where people were expected to leave their boots (and wear only their shoes) and hats and gloves in the cloakroom. Gowns were made from almost gossamer-like light wool. The style is still called a Jones dress because it was the only party you could go to and wear clothes that light. The Joneses were still from Winter, so their house was quite cold compared to Summer standards, although at the time we thought were in the middle of the tropics.

I never saw Mother envy another person, except for Mrs. Jones. It brought out the worst in her. She became catty and bitter to Mrs. Jones, and their enmity escalated until Mother declared that she would never step another foot through Mrs. Jones’ door and Mrs. Jones swore that she would never accept my mother through it. It was a shame, really. Mother spent all that time in our closed-off bathroom, when she could have been having tea with the neighborhood ladies in Mrs. Jones’ house.

August 26

Mother arrived today. She brought an entourage. She brought three of my cousins as her ladies’ maids and her own lady-in-waiting, Sari, who has been with the family for years. I thought that she and I would be alone in Summer together. I don’t know. I guess I should be happy or relieved or feel even less alone with five Winterians instead of two -- but I don’t. I feel betrayed and disappointed. Was she too scared to come by herself? She shrugged the question away, during the fifteen seconds I actually had alone with her.

And she was Summer charming. To my husband and mother-in-law and to everyone. She was chatty and effusive and complimentary. I hardly recognized her. I need to confront her, but she seems to be avoiding me, for some reason. She was even ready for Summer attire. She must have gotten ready on the ship. She is wearing the latest fashions in the softest fabrics, and here I am in this stiff dress with my stiff hair and my stiff upper-dang-lip!

SHE is the one who convinced me to be Winter in Summer! SHE said never to show any weakness or emotion! SHE told me that my life, and indeed, the lives of ALL Winterians rested upon my conduct! 

Every smile I have repressed, every laugh. To hear her tonight! Giggling. At some point I wondered, a little dazedly perhaps, if there was a tiny cat perched inside her throat. I have never heard those sounds coming from the direction of her body, in my life. What is going on? And she won’t tell me. “Exhausted from the trip, darling. Must retire.” What? She is Summer with everyone but me, and I get the chill of her Winter façade?

Oh. I am dizzy. And scared. Who got to my mother, to make her act like that? It is her, right? Other than the clothing and the behavior, that was my mother’s smile, rarely though I’ve seen it. Those were her eyes, warm and brown and contact-less, and sparkling with secrets.

If we had suddenly changed tactics, why no mention? I speak to her on videophone every week. She has always been guarded and…chilly. Her usual self.

Take deep breaths. I’m taking deep breaths. 

Mother didn’t eat one entrail at dinner. She didn’t even bother to hide one in her napkin, and she stuck mostly to fruits and vegetables, barely touched her meat. That may be how she eats at home, but in company? Disgraceful!

If I were any less confused, I might be scared enough to cry. But I have beaten that habit over the past two months. I wonder if I could anymore. Mother can. Her eyes misted so prettily when she met my husband’s mother. They embraced like conjoined twins who were ripped at the hip in childhood, and reunited, only now, after all these years.

Argh! Breathing, breathing. Deep, deep breathing. My body is aching from the yearning for home that I have been suppressing for months. I thought that I would be released from this ache when I saw my mother again but she is a stranger to me. Even now, my own throat claws at me from the inside.

And why did she bring the most horrid of my cousins? Why didn’t she bring Karen? Or Dad? 

If she had, would they have acted as oddly as she is? My cousins and Sari were all very composed, if less than frightening. I think they had few piercings than when I last saw them, and they were dressed in light fabrics, albeit more appropriately than my mother.

I need to know what’s going on. Right now I feel as though my intestines are made of ice. I am the emotionless creature that I avoided molding myself into until this point. It has come over me, now. This calmness and assurance that no matter what is going on, I will both; get the full story, and I will not allow this change in circumstance overwhelm me. I have been rigid with terror for so long, I think I have used up my lifetime allotment of it.

Should I visit her rooms? She was quite clear that she was done for the evening, and I’ve never intruded on her after she has retired. No. I am an adult. I’m married even, and she is visiting MY home. She is MY guest and I am in charge here. I am the Queen of Summer. She will answer. I know a secret passage to her room -- it is the reason I chose it for her. Adora doesn’t even know about the passage, at least as far as I am aware.

That tiniest of clicks and a wisp of air that is has been free of carbon dioxide since the last time I breathed it. Thousands of tiny stairs. No one would suspect that there would be a secret passageway between my mother’s room and one a floor above and several doors down. Secrets clutch at the edges of my stomach. It is not an unpleasant feeling.

Whew. I must stop and catch my breath. It would do no good for Mother to see me flustered. My hair is still smooth, my dress still pointing in the correct directions. Cool air from somewhere dries the sweat on my brow, under my arms. My breathing is even now. My finger is on the release that will open the secret door to my mother’s room.

What if she’s asleep? She has had a long day, maybe I should let her rest. Or, what if her maids are still in her room? I do not want anyone to discover this door. I press my ear to the door, but I do not hear anything. Oh, what is the use of a hidden door if it can be discovered at any time? There must be something. Ah, I never noticed this before. There’s a small glimmer of light, a pinprick really. I always had a torch with me before, so I must not have noticed it. Oh, there’s a latch. Oh, too much light, someone will notice.

Mother’s room is quiet, though there are lamps still burning. There she is, combing her soft, brown hair. She’s always worn hard-edged blonde wigs for social occasions. I don’t think anyone outside our immediate family and servants who have seen her natural color. In the right clothes, she could fit in at one of Adora’s pubs, better than I could. Right now she is wearing her old, fuzzy pink bathrobe. Here, of all places. And she made me leave all of my favorite clothes behind, even my pajamas with the cat’s paws all over them.

I don’t want to interrupt her peaceful moment with a confrontation. I just want to watch her like this, like my mother, and pretend that I am at home. I never left, never got married, never felt the weight of  the survival of an entire planet on my shoulders. Tomorrow will be soon enough. Tonight I’ll pretend that I am still me.

August 27

This morning, I had breakfast with my mother. She was still cold to me and warm to the servants. After the servants steered our tray of half-eaten food out of the room, my mother quirked an eyebrow at me. I met her gaze with a blank stare. The reason it was blank, was because I didn’t know what the hell to be thinking. Finally, she smiled. “Look who has grown up,” she said. Her voice was tinged with wonder, her eyes with sadness.

It was then I realized that for aside from whatever other reasons she had for her behavior since she’d arrived, she was also testing me. She watched the comprehension spread across my face, and nodded. Then she shook her head, grinning. “You never could stand my disapproval,” she said. She sighed. “Or anyone’s really. It made me worried for you.” She renewed her grin. “Wow.”

My emotions warred between basking in her approval and annoyance at her lack of trust in my character. Then I realized that I had never given her any reason to. Any problem I’d ever had, I’d run to her. When someone had hurt my feelings, I’d cry. I was a bad Winterian. Intentionally, I think. I was perfectly aware of all the ways I dealt with things which were the opposite of how I should. So when I moved here, I knew exactly what to do to be a proper Winterian.

I’m processing this now over several minutes, but all of my reactions happened within seconds. And I was still curious about her behavior. “So what’s with the Summer act,” I asked. “And why did you bring Gretel and Stella and Dantiel with you?”

My mother blinked, taken aback by the quickness of my process. But then, I’ve been honing my instincts and reactions for months, so that was not my focus at the time. She looked quickly left to right, though we were clearly alone. Then she leaned toward me. “We need to speed up the integration of Summer and Winter,” she said.

“What? Why?”

She shook her head, irritated, but not with me. “There are factions of the king’s council who want him to move against Summer.” She stood and took several steps away from me, then turned back. “They want to use you as a spy, as a traitor to your cause.”

“Why shouldn’t they? Summer has always been our enemy. Why should we keep peace with them now?”

My mother looked at me sharply, then saw that it was my turn to test her. She nodded, a faint smile tilting one corner of her lips. “There are many reasons. For one thing, Summer‘s greenhouse technology is far superior to Winter‘s, and we want it. Another is that Summer is slowly getting pulled closer and closer to the sun, which means death of an entire planet. We need to integrate Summerians into Winter, without the citizens killing each other, within the next hundred years or so. And this is the alternative to Summer simply killing all Winterians and taking over our planet. Our reasons for wanting to save Summerians are not entirely pure.” She stopped and looked away. “But the main reason right now is that peace is the king’s will and the king’s wish, and we will do what we must to make his will happen.” 

“So if he changes his mind, so do we?” The challenge in my tone was less than subtle. I thought of Adora and Todd and Stan and his wife, and a dozen other people who had shown the monster queen of Winter, small kindnesses.

Mother stopped pacing and looked at me squarely. She shrugged and tilted her head. “Technically.”

“However…” I supplied.

“However, we still have our own preferences, don’t we?” What would you have us do?”

I shrugged. “I am not in a position to have an opinion.”

Mother smiled at me, with that new recognition of my ability to stay cold, and I basked in it for a moment, and then I felt tired.

“I have friends here,” I said, if only to be real for a moment. I forced away the trace of shame at the admission.

Mother blinked. “Really…” She smiled. “That’s excellent.” It was said with a mother’s gladness for a daughter’s well being. But when she repeated it a moment later, her tone changed to steel and politics. “Excellent.” She looked up at me. “Have you forgotten that you are Queen?”

I laughed. “Yes. Queen of a country where not a man would follow my word into battle. And it’s not as though I’d have the support or belief of my husband. Seventy-five percent or more of his psyche believes that I’m a spy, getting ready to hand him to his enemies.”

Mother nodded. “Yes. And we can not chance trying to change his mind, at least, not so that anyone can see. If anyone sees you getting close, they’ll kill you. A Summer king and Winter queen who produce no mixed offspring can not cement the truce. Your estrangement from your husband is the only thing keeping you alive, at this point. And make no mistake, there are as many fleas in your husbands ears as there are in our own king’s.”

Something still didn’t make sense. Mother’s passion for saving Summerians, and her manners since she’d arrived might have marked her as a local if I hadn’t known any better. “Why do you care so much?”

Mother smiled, and looked away, then seemed to come to a decision. “I’m a Summerian,” she said. “I was born here.”

August 28

The bottom lid of my left eye is twitching, on and off. I don’t think it’s a sign of joy. There may be people who twitch with joy, but I’m not one of them. I respond to joy by gently suppressing a smile. And who taught me to do this? Mother? And why? At first it was tradition, and now apparently, it is to save two (count ‘em) worlds from destroying themselves. 

Back in the twentieth century when three out of four movies were about “saving the world” from apocalypses, the heroes in the stories were always only worried about saving one planet. It is my appointed job to save two. Yay.

Y’know, politics never really was my thing. I mean, I wanted justice and equality and all that stuff, but I didn’t like all that, y’know, effort and energy and passion that certain types of people poured into it. I am not even a reluctant hero. I am just a pretty little sacrifice with no family or consequence to save me. I’m like Adora. I’m supposed to be the martyr. 

Because, let’s face it. People love war. I mean, for centuries, millennia, even, we humans have been killing each other. Over land, over minerals, over whatever symbol of superiority we felt was ours for the taking. Hell, our planets used to be one until we blew it apart into four separate pieces. So my job is to pretend like I’ll make a difference. Like if I care enough, I’ll be able to stop.people from behaving like people. Yeah, right.

Oh, and Mom is a Summerian. Fan-fucking-tastic. What a nice little bomb to drop on me right now. Not only can I not walk away from this because Winterians are in trouble, now I’m part Summerian too. I have relatives here. Aunts, uncles, cousins. Friends of the family. And here I was, all this time, thinking I was so alone. How silly of me.

“No you weren’t.” The words were out of my mouth before I really had a chance to process what she was saying. “You were born in Icicletown, a Province of Icicleville.” I stopped. “Wait. What?”

My mother sighed. “I met your father in space. He was dressed as a Summerian, working undercover as an intelligence gatherer for the king of Winter. We met, fell in love…”

“And what, you’d always hated the heat?” 

“There’s no need for sarcasm.” Mother glared at me.

“Really?” I couldn’t seem to help myself. Necessary or not, I could not keep the ironic tone from my voice. Though, to be fair, I didn’t really try.

Mother nodded, with that small, knowing smile. I’d always assumed I knew what was behind it, but now I wondered. “It’s a lot to take in.”

Now she was turning that Summer charm on me, and I was certainly not going to melt under its warmth. “How do we know that you’re not an intel gatherer for the king of Summer?”

She looked hurt, and a little bit insecure. “You just have to trust me,” she said, meeting my gaze.

My laugh was short and abrupt. “Right.”

Her gaze sharpened. “I know that this is a lot for your to take in,” she said, her eyes shooting laze beams of disapproval through me. “But I am still your mother, and you will speak to me with respect.”

Goosebumps arose on my skin, along with years of remembered intimidation. But I’d been braving Summer by myself for an entire month, and the impressiveness of her tone and gaze grew weak against my anger. I nodded, less than acquiescent, and moved toward the doorway. 

I don’t know what to do with this. Honestly. When someone loves and cares for you for a lifetime, you would think that would be enough to earn their loyalty and trust. But if she could pretend to be a Winterian this entire time, couldn’t she pretend anything? Like love, caring. Was being my mother only part of her cover? Does she really even love me at all?