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"The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco." -Attributed to Mark Twain
Mary was a small girl with dark, heavy hair that hung against her shoulder blades like curtains. Her window dressings at home were still the ones she had bought upon first arriving in San Francisco: thick, ornate and in rich colors that reminded her of ages past. They reached to the floor, the gold tassels on their ends splayed like birds' feet.
She was a goddess of the sun and a goddess of winter. This combination had never made sense in her Slavic homeland. Hoary trees bent under December snow might go weeks without seeing even weak sunlight. She arrived in this city, carried by the tales of its immigrants, and the world began to make sense.
Just as the descent into winter killed the long glorious days of summer, so did western waters kill the daily sun. Her role was clear: she was the end to all cycles and to all things. Mary watched as the Pacific claimed another day in streaks of orange, purple, and eventual black. Her arms spread wide to the night, her head lolled back. Her heavy hair barely moved in the winds off the ocean.
Her lips pursed at the empty sky. She missed the spectacle of skies without cities below, where more than Venus and a few brave stars could fight through. Winter's long nights had always been the best time for stars. Even if her realm was the sun, she still loved the moon and its companions. It was early March in Outer Richmond, the northwestern corner of the city. Soon spring would arrive in the City by the Bay. Winter would fade and summer would live, but eventually it would die again. The sun would stay longer in the sky, but it too would meet a daily end.
She listened to the waves crash for another hour before making the walk back to her house just off Geary.
"Mary," she said darkly to a gold-framed mirror in the front hallway. "You are surrounded by immigrants from Krakow, Prague, Moscow. Why did you change your name?"
Morena was a name she had once answered to. Marzanna was another. She was something to be feared. "Mary" was a neighbor who picked up the mail when people traveled to visit relatives for Christmas.
Mary held up her hands and studied them. They had been withered and claw-like in the forests of the Urals. Other did fear them, as was proper. She did not regret their appearance, as she felt they marked her great power. Those who deserved to die had fallen to her mangled hands.
Her neighbor from 1963 to 1989 was a small Chinese grandmother who swore by Oil of Olay. She promised that it would help Mary's hands. "Vitamins," she said in her thick accent. "It has the vitamins." June believed in vitamins' magic like people had once believed in Mary's.
While she'd only started using the stuff to shut the woman up, it had worked. Her hands, though still scarred, looked human.
Mary studied her face for a while longer before she made a noise at the back of her throat and turned to a ceramic plate hung next to the mirror. "You see this, Jarilo?" she asked the folk painting of her brother. "You see this? I am nothing now. I don't even have my hands, my claws." She bared her fangs at him. At least she still had those.
A few children once tried to claim her as one of their own. They had asked her where she had gotten her beautiful skirt. "From my brother," Mary replied, "the god of summer and the moon who arises from the underworld each year to take me as his wife. He betrays me by summer's end and I slay him with my own hands. Summer dies and winter returns. Next year he rises and takes me again."
They laughed and complimented her on her clever "backstory," then asked her where she had found those ceramic vampire's teeth.
Mary hated goths. "I'm making pelmeni," she muttered, unwilling to do anything but grab dumplings from her freezer and boil them.
"It's almost time for you to take over," she informed her brother after she had eaten her pelmeni with sour cream. "I want to take my rest. It's your turn. Give this city its summer."
The crude brushstrokes on the plate stared back at her.
She had arrived in this city, carried by the tales of its immigrants, and her brother-husband died for five years in a row at her hand.
Both knew their powers had waned, but the cycle breaking was unthinkable. So long as winter was colder than summer, so would she reign in December; so long as June was warm, so he would reign then. Anything else was unthinkable.
It had been unthinkable in Russia, that was, or Poland. But winters were shallow things in San Francisco. She could not bring the city the deep, quiet freezes that she remembered of Russia with a longing ache. Her brother, long dead, could not find the power in him to give them a proper summer. Perhaps he had been fighting a losing battle from the start, in this city with summer days that had people shivering. Or perhaps if people believed him, as they should, he would have risen again and a great glorious summer would have been San Francisco's for every year thereafter.
Mary moved her heavy hair off her shoulders and drew in a sharp breath at what she saw in the mirror.
"My hair is turning blonde again," she spat at Jarilo's image. "It is your time. Your time. It will be the summer and you will leave me here alone again. You have missed out on decades of our dance, brother. Why did you let yourself grow so weak that you couldn't rise?"
The plate stared at her.
"I had to kill you!" she cried. "You betrayed me. I had to kill you. Winter kills summer, I killed you. Even in this terrible, wrong city with no real winter and no real summer I had to kill you."
Every year she had hoped he would not betray her. Perhaps there would be eternal summer, eternal joy for them both. His summer would never die, nor would her sun.
"I am death," she said desperately. "I end things. You are supposed to start them again. You."
Fog rolled in off the Pacific. No, her brother would not rise. His summer would never hit its peak. While the sun might not need her to be born anew tomorrow morning, it did need her favor to reach the city below. Mary did not intend to cooperate. This one thing, she could still do when enough anger fueled her.
"It's your fault," she said darkly to the image of her dead brother. Turning, she bared her fangs at the fog brushing against the bay window of her living room. "Your fault."