SWISHY OPENED HIS CHEST—minimally, afraid to confirm a heart—and stored Trey's cross inside.
The straw closed over his new friend.
He missed Trey; he feared for Trey; he craved him so. It'd been a long time since Swishy was by himself. Even in the dark, the peeves were company of a sort. Swishy stood in silence. A dead night. Not a whistle of wind. Even the commotion from across the lot had tapered off, the fights concluded. The people rolled around on the ground, wincing, gripping their heads and necks and ribs, presumably groaning though Swishy couldn't hear. The world was not so generous as to grant him a single guttural sound. A groan, a sigh, a gasp. Swishy enveloped by the mute chasm called the world.
Alone. Oh my...
The monstrous dark expanded with souls, with curses, with the wrathful spirit of blackwheat sprawling across the land, swallowing all. Building by building, the pitch claimed Straw City. He wanted to like this—he was supposed to anyhow. But he failed to steady his pulsating soul. He couldn't place himself in his beloved element of night.
Was the darkness no longer a home? Had the world taken that from him too?
The world...it was too mysterious, too big. And Trey was out there—up there. Maybe that wasn't the type of flight Swishy wanted, after all. He'd have to fly alone. No flock, no black-feathered Treys in the sky. No soaring flashcards to center Swishy's soul. The discomfort. The worry. The doubt. The strained emotions stayed powerfully inside, weaving a core of unease and blackwheat. Trey was gone—and all the soul salves with him.
Save Trey—it's time to do for him.
Swishy stepped inside the library to gather some words. The plan: he'd stick to it. The night: he'd retreat from it—tactically, of course.
Inside, a dome, a glass ceiling observatory. No lights, no lamps, nothing electronic, not even a candle or mounted torchlight. Moonlight filtered through the observatory glass, a chrome glitter bathing only the topmost floor. But humans need light...His eyes formed into blue bubbly question marks.
Then he remembered where he was: Straw City. he removed a glove and cautiously reached out.
The wheat glowed from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. Straw everywhere: orange-wheat in the pots, yellow-stalk in the lanterns, and wisps of gold-straw spread about the ground for a hint of style. Swishy tired wheat raised from its slumber, hugging his shape with light.
A song of light hummed through all four levels of the dome, most intensely near Swishy, gradually fading farther from his person.
He spotted a clock on the east wall: big hand 6, small hand 9. Only two-and-a-half hours left. Gotta hurry!
Swishy ran toward the nearest rows, the wheat awakening as his soul brushed by.
Books, books everywhere. Swishy sparked to life. His soul—his heart, he'd guessed—was sensitive to the care devoted to the bindings, the words, the stories, the histories. The library was a world of book-bound worlds. A world of dreams. A world of worlds. His soul wandered for the biggest fishes, a thick catch of ethereal energy adhered to the books. Ruby started with one Bible. Trey could give his altar two. Maybe three? Swishy focused his search on energies that resembled godliness. The DEITY card was in him, the knowledge, the frequency.
But he kept getting distracted by Trey's blooming cross. Swishy felt it in his chest, the orb of soul condensing around Jesus. Curiosities zoomed through his mind, diverting his attention, lowkey embarrassing him from how much he didn't know.
Why does he look hurt? Cross position is the most comfortable there is? Trey will explain. Trey...
The scarecrow shook his head. Focus—he needed to focus.
Swishy cast his soul into the darkness. The books sprang to life, displaying their souls. The authors had put so much into them. The vibrancy. The brush of love. His soul buzzed in deliciousness.
Swishy whizzed by the aisles and shelves, and grabbed books off the shelf, deciding by those emitting the loveliest shape of soul. The words were less important than the image and feeling emitted from the books. He grabbed his favorites and accidentally knocked the others over. A chaotic pile of spilled books lay in his wake. He treated the fallen texts like piles of dead leaves—he even jumped into them, swimming in the spines, back stroking the covers.
He blindly seized promising pages and pocketed them. There was no rhyme or reason. He just went by feel, by the power of knowing what moved the soul. He soon cleared the first floor, mostly children's books, picture books, and animal encyclopedias. The souls were shaped like short-armed T-Rex's and suns with happy faces embedded onto their surfaces. He passed by a section of books whose souls were the shape of game controllers. He even found a farming book featuring cornstalks, leaves, crows, and a scarecrow.
Ah, this is the kid's floor! Nothing for Trey here.
Swishy bounded up the tremendous spiral staircase. The path curled endlessly like rotini pasta. He knew from games that people got dizzy from this but Swishy joked to himself that humans were weak.
To scarecrow is to be strong!
Swishy detected animal-shaped auras running across the library—a couple squirrels, a leopard, a manta swimming across the ceiling—caressed by scattered moonbeams. There was a bird-like aura, too, one that Swishy first assumed was a dinosaur until remembering Bristles’ energy, his assertion. Is this…a wrathraven? Swishy was awed…and Swishy kept “reading”. He lost himself in the blissful vibes, skimming the useless biological vocab. He didn't need Trey to channel a HORSE or a RACCOON or a DUCK-BILLED PLATYPUS. And especially not BACTERIA, MICROBES, PROTOZOA, GERM. A final book gave him a bad feeling, The Corvidae Family, with a photo of a shadowclaw.
Nope! Next floor!
He ascended once more, wishing he'd hit the library under different circumstances. No shadowclaws, no kidnapping, no dark tidings closing upon the city. The worries soured him but he accepted this. He appreciated the grounding.
The third floor: forests, oceans, mountaintops, the plains, the Arctic. The souls rose from the books in the shape of their natural structures.
Swishy saw books on natural disasters, remembering The Stormcellar. Hurricanes and blizzards and tsunamis were indeed powerful—but beyond Trey. Maybe one day. But not tonight. So Swishy moved on, determined to acquire manageable magic.
Presently, Trey didn't compare to Ruby in the slightest. She could contain souls. Trey couldn't even see them. He believed in his friend—but he wasn't stupid. Swishy moved on, determined to find a more manageable magic.
His climb continued—up the rotini, he went. Swishy played upon the steps, jumping up two and three at a time. The further he climbed, the closer he got to the glass ceiling, its giant moon. The lunar roundness engulfed him.
The moon settled him, a surprising sanctuary and friend. The world was not cursed. The world had dark spots. And the world had a silver eye, glittery and comforting, and in a stunning color that Swishy couldn't replicate in thousands and thousands of years.
As Swishy neared the top floor, great gobs of soul floated above him. He was so close to the perfect Trey text he could taste it. He reached outwards, knowing that the proper words would magnetize toward him.
Power! Trey will have power!
Swishy arrived—stepping into an unsettling energy. Unlike the prior floors, this one was unchained. He knew the source of the wildness, too: curses and shadows. The first three floors were strictly for human authors. These books transcended mortal imagination. They'd come from the world. The secreted souls reminded him of the flashcards, the blackwheat, Ruby...and himself.
Altar energy overflowed from the top floor. These mysteriously collected and cohered souls vied for dominance.
He paused, he observed, he practiced caution. The fun was gone. These were serious times, cautious ones, and scary, definitely scary. He wished he had a friend; he wished for help. Everything mystified him. There was no protection—only enigmas and danger. Swishy stared at the souls and the souls stared back. The boy shrank before the great powers before him. No explanation needed: Swishy was prey.
Swishy took the first step and quivered.
He refused to back down—onwards, only ever onwards. He stepped into the aisles and noticed a sign affixed to the left shelf, WORLD HISTORY, and the right shelf, WORLD RELIGION. He scanned for titles that intrigued him. Many words were simply strange. But other words infused him with a doomed feeling. He didn't know why. He just knew that certain words attacked him—mostly from the world history side. The world religion side held its own power, too, but the shelves were oddly empty, a stark contrast to the rest of the fully stocked sections.
He didn't have time to think on it. Dark lexicons bloomed forth: DOOM, DISASTER, WAR, FAMINE, WEAPONRY, DESTRUCTION, DISEASE, DEATH.
His soul shrank and shriveled and whimpered. The bravery in him flattered into a wafer. These words weren't for Trey—that's not how he rolled. And in a way, these words appeared to be the enemy. Swishy didn't need the definitions to know that.
As he progressed, one word appeared across several spines of the thickest books: CEARTH.
He pulled a book from the shelf, From Earth To Cearth: A Dummy's Guide to World History, 1st Edition.
For some reason, the text produced a heart-shaped essence. His fingers traced over the word CEARTH, absorbing its oddity, seeking to understand its nature. But he didn't understand. The soul form didn't tell him much. He wished it was a flashcard, something instant and easy, but alas...
There's no time—whatever, let's do it the human way!
Swishy rolled his irked blues and cracked open the book. The scarecrow read the first line, swishing it out. "The first days were the most beautiful ones, as they tended to be..." The stunning pristineness of the former Earth then revealed itself to him.
The boy read of the forests and the oceans and desserts and ice sheets. Swishy imagined the blizzards, the constellations, the auroras and the kaleidoscopic patterns of light. He read of the moon and gazed into the glass ceiling, swallowed by silvered glory. The moon had lived within the earth until one day a large mass punctured it out, the planet's heart jettisoned beyond its reach yet forging bonds that kept it within orbit. The heart could leave but it never went far. The scarecrow loved that. His insides beat with hope.
Word by word, the described worlds came alive. Nothing cursed—everything beautiful. Nobody lost heart. The whole of the planet's vegetation went to seed for free. The sense of wonder from his initial birth came back to him then, the desire to play on the planet.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
His soulful optics focused into small blue beads and skittered across the page in jittery left-rights. His eyes had reset to the left with typewriter jerkiness. Soon he reached the part about the world as he knew it, a rebel Earth, a demanding one. After The Curse, the altars were discovered...
CURSE...Trey had fed him that word on his first day in the city—which propelled him into the next month of madness. Swishy began to realize how little he knew of the world, how little he conceived of the darkness, and how much the peeves actually, legitimately suffered. If the un-dark was confusing for him, what must it have been like for the peeves. There was no escaping for them.
I'm not the only one. It's not me, it's everyone. How sad...
Cearth, the Cursed Earth. As beautiful as it was—the stunning nature, the gorgeous maneuvers of darkness and light—the curses and agony and wretchedness were abundant. Inside and out, the Cearth was hurting—and its people too. The scarecrow gathered details on how an altar functioned. He learned the onset of magic in this world. He read of the planet's decision to charge humans for everything. The land had been greatly misused and taken for granted, something Swishy related to. There was a city of souls that owed him a debt. He loved the idea of becoming a collector. The book mentioned reparations, recompense. He didn't know the meanings but the spirit of them thrummed through him.
This heart ain't free. Pay me—I want payment!
Swishy skipped pages, flipping through the encyclopedic texts until his favorite word caught his eye: HEART. The joy, the fear, the hope and disappointment, the triumph and despair—all the beautiful ingredients of a heart would also suffer. Sad but true—but interesting, so interesting.
The boy read on, seeking illumination...
(...)
When people think of altars, they think of souls. And this is not wrong—every altar is full of souls, clusters and legions and armies of mysteriously begotten consciousnesses. But the souls are united in a way that's completely opposite of human society. In our human settlement, each person contains their individual soul, their specific consciousness, and as autonomous and separate beings we act differently. Our actions and thought processes are individualized.
The altars—while comprised of countless disparate souls—function quite strangely as one individual. How is that? By what influence do the souls submit to a collective will, so much so that the souls in the altar easily and non-turbulently decide upon a physical form, a favored resource, and acceptable payments? The altars are communities and yet they're highly organized. The closest we have to this collective programming are ant colonies and beehives. While ants and bees have a queen, what do the altars have?
A heart. Every altar contains a heart.
And every person does too. It is our hearts, ultimately, that decide what payments—what pleasures and resources and actions—are correct for the greater structure, the greater whole.
Anecdotally, among altar users, the altar shadows are regarded as greedy, miserly, stingy, and heartless. But decisiveness, that instinct for desire and want, is the defining trademark of the heart. The altar wants without reason or explanation. And it is unwavering. It is believed that the altars do not require resources from humans. The altar, by its nature as a purveyor of natural resources, is far greater than us. Nothing a human being can offer can provide the darkness with a substantial gain. The idea is not to earn the favor of humans but to throttle the prolific nature of humankind. Through forced payment, Cearth seeks to limit human power.
And it does so with what humans colloquially call heartlessness. But there's nothing heartless about want. It is more accurate to say that altars exhibit a decisive, unwavering heart.
Some have tried to change the hearts of the altar. People have reported offerings of free gifts. Tributes. Birthday presents. Love tokens. And yet the tributes are exactly where the humans left them, touched not by even a sliver of darkness. The altars do not give gifts—nor do they take them. Cearth simply engages in barter, a barter regulated by the most rigid of hearts.
Others have chosen a different route. Rather than coaxing the stubborn Cearth into a more lenient due, they've chosen to explore the shadows in a practice known as Dark-diving.
People have gone inside of the altar's darkness, investigating the chasm of souls for a chance to harvest the heart—but none have succeeded...reportedly...
See the below examples of documented altar-dives and dungeon crawls:
Swishy gazed in shock at the overly simplistic attempts at dark-diving. There was a faded photo series of a woman with a rope around her waist, smiling, one hand on her hip. She was brave and dumb—while the line of men who gripped the long rope were un-brave and dumber. She wore a polka dot dress and a straw hat from the rice paddies—a Ruby-like patterning. Swishy stared at the photo, thought, It couldn't be her...But it could—and that's what scared him. She was young, Trey's age, and their similar poise was undeniable. Swishy was almost jealous of the decisiveness. The photos were entitled, The First Dive, Year 80, CE (Cearth).
He didn't know what he'd do if he was laying in the dark, fetal and serene, only for a whole human to jackknife into the oceanic shadows.
The humans are something else—and only 20 years ago too! No wonder they're still crazy...
He ripped the photos out of the book and pocketed them. Maybe Trey could do something with the idea. The darkness was closing in and it would've been good for him to know that you can come back from it—and even take pictures. He closed the book and tucked it under his arm and proceeded onwards, toward the next massive energy node.
Tick-tick!
Swishy circled to gaze at the glass walls, observing in the observatory, surveying the surveyable sights, but he found nothing. A dark cloud passed across the moon. The room appropriately darkened. The scarecrow huddled downwards, cautiously checking his left and his right and his left again. He checked behind him, under him, above—
Tick-tick-tick-tick!
The ticks were several, then dozens, followed by an immeasurable amount resounding against the glass ceiling. Swishy angled his head upwards and found the snitchtalons—a legion of them—frantically pecking. And pecking hard. Head-banging, really. Some bent their beaks from the impact.
Cracks developed in the clear dome, small ones that spider-webbed outwards which each hit. Within their now-crooked beaks, Swishy spotted their drug of choice: blackwheat crumbs. Redness seeped from their mouths—both blood and the berserker energy of their dark-straw meal.
Run!
The glass gave way, showering Swishy in a rain of broken glass. The scarecrow took off and the snitchtalon flock darted after him. Once immersed inside the library, the shadowclaw bodies melded with the dark, attaining invisibility. Swishy took off through the aisles of the fourth floor, but his body triggered the glow of nearby wheat. Hiding was impossible for him. He crashed about the shelves, a helpless beacon against a vicious wind.
The birds recklessly flew in the crowded halls, crashing through the shelves of books. They wised up, though, and darted into the shelf holes. Swishy ran down the RELIGIOUS STUDIES aisle and bird beaks pecked through the books like arrows in a booby-trapped dungeon. The birds stabbed all the way through phone-book-sized volumes, ancient hard-cover tomes.
Swishy shook his head in disappointment. There were beloved gods in those books—he could tell from the quality of soul. He felt the prayers devoted to the book deities. And he saw the image of prayerful devotees, kneeling, bowing, averting their unworthy eyes.
He gleaned the clear shape of one deity, that familiar cross with the man upon it. He recognized the book title The Holy Bible and at last put it together...Ruby's first sacrifice, her flashcards!
Swishy breezed past The Bible, anguished about how his spirit friend had been used. He ran and ran in a frenzied search for Trey-friendly words, possible magic to see them through.
A sudden rumbling(!)—books flying and falling behind Swishy. Waves of texts chased after him as the bird beaks skewered the shelves. And the inevitable happened—a great collision. One of the shelves crashed upon Swishy.
Swishy was smashed, thoroughly frayed and ruffled, but quickly reconstituted and climbed from underneath the toppled shelf.
The birds were upon him then, pecking, kicking, scratching. They tore at his clothes. They gashed his pumpkin rind. And through all their pecks they kept their beaks properly clenched, refusing to ingest gold-wheat. They were enraged by the blackwheat, yet they were aware enough to keep the boost going.
Swishy's soul swelled with panic. The more they tore at him, the closer they'd get to the words he'd collected. One snitchtalon clawed at his heart, vicious digs which swiped layer after layer of chest away. The boy was becoming raked and tilled. They opened him, trying to steal his insides—his cards, his feathers, his heart.
They stabbed at the winglet and ripped off feathers. They shoved their head inside his gourd, seeing if they could eat his blue soul—they couldn't—but kept at it because it scared him. Terror was their talent, and violence was the means.
Physical pain? Not a thing for Swishy. But the shame of his position—the humiliation of his enemies besting him—drowned him in devastation.
I can't let this happen, I have to make it to Trey, I have to make it out!
One bird pecked face, and Swishy, rearing his neck backward, suddenly sprang forwards in a vicious headbutt. He slapped at the birds. And when they tore straw from him, he soul-sharpened the disembodied straw and pricked their legs, their chests, their faces. The scarecrow stood up, frayed and emboldened.
My body is soft. I can't hit back.
A snitchtalon lunged at him and Swishy smashed it with a book—his copy of From Earth to Cearth had come in handy.
The flock, shaking off their various injuries, shot red glares at him. They began their verbal abuses then.
Your wings, your cards, your heart. You won't have any of it. We'll take it all and bring it to Ruby. She doesn't know what you're up to and she doesn't care either! Why(?)—because you belong to her. You're property. You're straw and pumpkin. When we constructed you, you cost $18.74 in ching. We have the receipt for your worthless ass. It's in the pocket of one of my vests. Without that heart, you'd spoil in a field somewhere. And without Trey, you'll just spoil right here. Now Swishy, you little rotten thing, what can you really do? What good are you if not for being seed? We give you worth, so prove that worth. And spill the fucking seed.
Swishy backed out of the aisle toward the spiral staircase down to floor three. Get out, get out, I have to get out. He kept his eyes on the prize, or he tried to anyhow. But the snitchtalons were hurtful. No other being in the city, as far as he'd known, had been purchased. His birth was confusing but fun, everything growing, everything glowing. He missed his ignorance of worth. In the before days, he never fathomed that such a thing could be taken from him. $18.74, that's what the snitchtalons said, but he felt like two.
Troublesome...I knew the outside was trouble. But why the inside too?
The flock took to the air, gliding, circling, taking form as a cloud of red-eyed terror. The billowing shadows converged upon Swishy.
Swishy ceased backpedaling. He was straw and soul, the flexibility and fragility working in his favor.
He dove over the banister, T-posing past the rotini spirals until crashing into a third-floor shelf. His dust and bristles were splayed across the floor. His soul searched for his lost straw, hurriedly reforming. He balled away his panic, trusting his soul to find every piece of his body.
The snitchtalons instantly appeared, searching for the gourd, knowing that the straw would rejoin at the pumpkin root. Run if you like but we already have Trey! He's not a scarecrow but we'll make him one. We can even string him to a cross. You'll be real brothers then.
He imagined Trey, he imagined Jesus, and the righteous anger curled within him, nestled inside by blackwheat—it had to be blackwheat. But restraint, always restraint.
Revenge is a dish best served later.
Swishy reformed amid the pile of books and ran toward the next staircase. Bird after bird shot at him but the scarecrow ducked and dodged and swatted at them with his arms. He proceeded through the aisles, grabbing books, sometimes shielding attacks with them, and other times throwing them. He accepted the chaos, finding a barrier in the flurry of texts. When he reached the steps, he jumped over the railing. Another thud! Floor two—he made it. He scrambled to reconstruct his messy straw spray.
The birds were faster this time, and one dive-bombed at Swishy's head mid-straw-recovery.
Swishy focused his soul, his body-control, and caught the bird in his mouth.
The scarecrow felt the snitchtalon's panic, the thrashing and wrestling inside his head—but it was too late. The soulful digestion worked on the bird-body. Swishy staved off that attack, absorbing every feather.
Once he'd reconstituted in full, the winglet—while still a winglet—was larger. The additional heft was noticeable. Swishy eyed the hesitating flock. As the snitchtalons drifted in the dark, Swishy sprinted toward the first floor, choosing to dash down the rotini this time. During his descent, the straw-filled pots next to the railings glowed upon his approach. The race to the finish was almost complete. Swishy could feel it, the thickening of his wing, the encouragement of his soul. His chest beat with panic—but also pride. He was a straw-boy. Who knew he had such strength?
Harvest-touch and battle-ready, Swishy finally set his feet upon floor one.
The snitchtalons were upon him once more—but Swishy had preemptively thrown books. He backed into an aisle and launched any text within reach. The birds dodged everything, always learning, always adjusting. But they were tired, their organic bodies unable to keep up with the scarecrow's perfect stamina. They huffed and puffed and desperately gasped. In their opened mouths, Swishy no longer found a trace of blackwheat. The redness of their evil eyes receded to opaque shadow beads.
Swishy eyed the library entrance—along with a book lying by the door. Within the catastrophe and debris, the boy discovered a parting gift, a perfect text for Trey. He backpedaled toward the exit, attentively tracking the sluggish birds, who now rested atop the shelves, pathetically perched.
"Sucks to have to breathe!" Swishy cried out, "Seek peace, read a book! Swish-swish, snitches, swish-swish..."
The boy smugly retreated, bending down to claim his travel-sized loot. He then stepped outside and dashed off, putting that infinity-endurance to good use. Trey is fine, Trey is fine, Trey is fine, Trey is fine. Another mantra, his calming incantation. His friend would make it to the ground, somehow, and Swishy was resolute in collecting him.
The scarecrow madly sprinted into the deep night—billowing curses aplenty—and held the book to the cloud-veiled moon.
The Heart Arts: A Cardiothoracic Glossary for Inexperienced Caretakers and Distressed Patients.