I love autumn. The changing colors, leaves turning brilliant shades of scarlet, orange, and yellow. The sharp coolness in the air. The black grapes which ripen, Autumn Royal. The pumpkin bread, pumpkin cake, and pumpkin cookies which start appearing in various places. All the trappings of Halloween; witches, vampires, skeletons, bats, werewolves; things I find fascinating all year around, yet the mainstream chooses to embrace at this time of year in decoration and theme.
It’s why I chose to be married at this time of year, with the leaves, liquid amber seed pods, and fall colors creating the wedding central theme. I was not a young bride either. Many of our relations had been wondering why my husband and I waited for so long. Somehow it felt appropriate to have the ceremony at the twilight of the year when the days grew shorter and we approached winter and the end.
Thinking about this never fails to make me shiver with anticipation and fear. Each autumn the year and myself come closer to the end. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels this symmetry.
Perhaps this is why Ray Bradbury developed the concept of the autumn people. Creatures who feast not upon our souls, but the anguish and pain left behind by those souls.
Curious that these autumn people chose to operate as a carnival, traveling in autumn. Curious that they offered people glimpses of what they feared or needed. Appropriate that they used a carousel, capable of shaving off or adding years to give people what they wanted. Appropriate that they used a mirror maze to tempt and frighten people with their pasts and futures.
The World of Darkness had their own concept of the Autumn People as the murderers of creativity and wonder. They were the teacher who told you couldn’t be what you wanted when you grew up. They were the manager who works you to the bone at meaningless tasks, leaving you exhausted in spirit as well as body, with no energy left to write or create. They were the politican who blamed everyone else for his own failings, getting his followers too angry to think about what they might actually do to improve their lives.
It’s a compelling concept, the Autumn People. Even after explaining it, playing with the idea, I find a part of myself arguing with it. Why Autumn? Why are Autumn People particularly sinister? Summer can be mercilessly hot, turning the hills brown, bringing out violence. Wouldn’t Summer People be just as dangerous as Autumn? What about Winter with its deadly cold, stripping trees of their leaves, reducing them to skeletons, and covering the world in a shroud of white? Doesn’t Winter have as good a chance at having sinister representatives? I’m hard-pressed to find the dark side of Spring with its new life, flowers, and the promise of birth everywhere until I remember that birth is linked to death, of how many people I’ve lost during the Spring. Spring may have a lovely, hopeful face, but that doesn’t mean it lacks peril.
Besides spring isn’t my favorite season, no matter how beautiful or hopeful it might be. Autumn is with all its complex associations.
What’s your favorite season, dear reader? What do you associate with it?