Excerpts from VELVETEEN VS. THE CONSEQUENCES OF HER ACTIONS by Seanan McGuire Posted

Here's a taste of some of the tales in Seanan McGuire's Velveteen vs. the Consequences of Her Actions, which clocks in at 608 pages.

Remember, 16 of these stories will be appearing in print for the first time.

If you haven't had the chance to experience Velveteen vs. the Early Adventures (544 pages), we still have copies in stock, ready to ship.

Now, to the excerpts:

Velveteen vs. Recovery
(excerpt)

Life at the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle followed a fairly strict set of guidelines. “Magical, predictable, marketable,” was the household motto, frequently proclaimed by any one of a number of rabbits wearing waistcoats. They were, in their own lapine way, the best possible demonstration of how a thing could be both magical and predictable. Sorcery was not a barrier to boredom. Nor should it have been. Magic without predictability was better known as “chaos,” and that was not the way to make the parades run on time.

Predictably, at five minutes past noon, a scream rang out across the sculpture garden. It was followed by the sound of a voice swearing, loudly and creatively. The Princess looked at the decorative hourglass in the center of the table, sighed, and put her teacup down.

 

Velveteen vs. Evolution
(excerpt)

Doctor Darwin turned back to the control bank, beginning to press buttons and flip switches even faster than he had been before the alarm went off. “We’ll have a single shot at doing this correctly,” he said. “But we’ll have half a dozen shots at doing it incorrectly if this fails, and that should be close enough. Once half the process has been completed, I should be able to get the resources to complete it, even if it takes longer than I would have preferred. Some people may die in their in-between state, but not you, my dear. Your reward for your part in all of this will be a guaranteed ascension into the new reality, with all the position and power that implies.”

He flipped another switch, this one larger than the others around it, and turned to give Velveteen an expectant look. Something bright and silver-blue began to flow through the tube attached to her hand, drawn from her body and into the waiting containment tank that stood nearby. Drop by drop, the viscous substance flowed out of her, until it finally seemed to reach its end, and the tube ran dry. 

As this happened, Velveteen opened unfocused eyes, staring up at the laboratory ceiling, and began to scream. 

 

Velveteen vs. The Parliamentarian
(excerpt)

“Are you quite sure this isn’t magical?” asked Victory Anna as they joined the queue for a water ride in which they would steer a two-person boat through what were advertised as dangerous rapids and glorious scenes of true wilderness. Polychrome was fairly sure that meant mechanical bumps and animatronic gorillas, but she would have been willing to ride something far more artificial to put that look into her girlfriend’s eyes.

“The Princess is magical,” she said, squeezing Victory Anna’s fingers lightly. “Isn’t that quite enough?”

“I’ve been told, but I still don’t fully understand how her powers are meant to function,” admitted Victory Anna. “Can you explain them?”

“I can try,” said Polychrome. “Basically, she has all the powers that the children of the world attribute to a fairy tale princess.”

“A fairy tale being your world’s term for a wonder story, yes?”

“Ye-es,” said Polychrome, hoping she was correct about that. “So her hair is always perfect, and she can run in really high heels without hurting herself, and she can make anything beautiful with the wave of her hand.”

“Don’t forget about her heartless subjugation of our avian brethren,” said an unfamiliar voice. Both turned.

Behind them in the line was a woman, whip-thin and dressed entirely in black spandex, with owl-themed tattoos crawling along the length of her arms.

 

Velveteen vs. Winter
(excerpt)

“Sing a song of Halloween, pumpkins everywhere, cats and bats and witches are all flying through the air,” she chanted, voice far more solemn than her words implied. Stepping forward, she rang the doorbell, holding out the paper sack she’d stolen from the kitchen. Crude bats were scrawled on the front and sides in Sharpie.

Seconds ticked by. She had no way of knowing whether the bell had rung inside the house at all: if it had, her housemates were under strict instructions not to answer, while if it hadn’t, that implied that it had rung somewhere else instead. The doorbell worked, under normal circumstances. But she had spent the last hour making sure that they weren’t dealing with normal circumstances, while her housemates looked on in confusion. Now was when she’d find out if it had worked.

It didn’t help that she’d never actually needed to call on Halloween before. Halloween had always just shown up, uninvited and eager to crash the party. Any party, from birthday to funeral. Halloween wasn’t picky.

Velveteen was. That was why she’d told Halloween she didn’t want to belong to them, didn’t want to join their endless masquerade, no matter how tempting it might seem, no matter how well she fit into their holiday games. So calling on them now felt awkward and wrong, like she was doing something forbidden. Like it was, in some way, a trick.

The thought seemed to be the last component needed to bring everything together. A cold breeze blew across the porch, tickling the back of her neck, making her hands close tighter on the handle of her bag. The door creaked open with a grating screech of hinges, and the girl on the other side looked at her with dismissive curiosity.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s you.” 

“It’s me,” Velveteen agreed. “Can we talk?” 

“I guess. It’s a free timeline.” Hailey Ween, the Halloween Princess, folded her arms and eyed Velveteen suspiciously. “What did you want to talk about?” 

“Jacqueline Claus.”

Velveteen vs. Normalcy
(excerpt) 

Arms over her head to protect her from being swooped, Velveteen ran along the line of the roof, swearing constantly. She’d been sure she was hidden from the bats, and to be fair, she had been, at least from the bats in front of her. The bats behind her had proven to be a different story, and once they’d started screeching and kicking up a fuss, the others had come swarming. Being back on the active superhero circuit meant she worked out more than most people these days, and had the training to run along a narrow concrete boundary without losing her balance and toppling to the city. And that was about the only positive thing she could say about her current situation, which seemed likely to end in rabies shots, if not outright consumption.

Neither of those things sounded like a good time. So she ran as hard and as fast as she could, hoping her flight would bring her to either her team, or something with a face. The limitations on her powers were strange and likely self-induced, some deeply-buried function of her wounded inner child’s refusal to let go of what little control she’d been able to seize. That didn’t make them less real. Without a face to focus on, she was frankly and fantastically fucked.

The bats continued to screech and swoop, getting closer with every pass. It wasn’t going to be long before they made contact, and “near miss” was replaced by “hit” in the vocabulary of her night. Mind racing, Velveteen hunched over and ran as fast as she could.