The Final Season by Tom Early

Author:Tom Early [Early, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: young adult
ISBN: 978-1-64405-173-3
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2019-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

WHEN I woke up, it wasn’t to my bedroom. I was lying down in a field of fresh-fallen snow, with nothing else defining the terrain that I could see, including any tracks to indicate that anyone had brought me here… or that I had walked here. The snow was still falling: light, delicate flakes that dissolved as soon as they touched my skin. A bit of my hair was in front of my eyes, and as I sat up, I moved to brush it out of the way and froze. Something about the strand of hair was off, and as I grabbed it and tugged it down a little, I saw why. My hair was brown. I tried to conjure some ice to make a mirror, and nothing happened. I frowned and reached a little further into myself. Still nothing. I closed my eyes and sank as far as I dared down in search of the core of Winter inside me. There was nothing at all.

And just as I was well and truly starting to panic, I heard the sound of footsteps crunching through snow behind me, and a voice called out, “You’re looking in the wrong place, as usual.”

I turned around, and I was confronted with… me. Or at least something that looked like me. He had my face, my body, my clothes, my white hair, and my blue eyes. And as if he knew what I was thinking as I took him in, he said, “Your eyes are brown, if that’s what you’re wondering. Brown with a bit of green, like your mom’s eyes. And yours, back before this”—he gestured at himself—“happened.”

“Who are you?” I shook my head. “No, before that—where is this? And what did you do to me?”

“Wow,” the other me said, raising an eyebrow. “We really are dense.” It was incredibly unsettling to watch what looked like my reflection move out of step with me. I had the strangest urge to raise my eyebrow too, so we’d be matching. “First off, I’m you, in case the appearance didn’t clear that up. Second, we’re at what you were so frantically looking for, the, what did we call it? Oh, right. The ‘core.’ Third,” he—I?—said, “I didn’t do anything. You slipped in here while you were napping. You still are, by the way, though I don’t know if I’d call this a dream.”

Everything he said came out with the same intonation I spoke with, nothing added or taken away. His vocabulary matched mine, and so did his body language. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of my favorite green hoodie, and his shoulders were ducked forward a little, which was how I stood when I had zero interest in talking to strangers. Even so, I couldn’t help but remember the last time I had faced something that looked like me, and Winter back then had come with every intention to wipe me from existence entirely.

“I’m not Winter,” Other Me said abruptly. “Well, I sort of am, but only as much as you are.

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