A STRANGE THING—Swishy grew used to the darkness. He stayed within the cockpit of [Straw Guardian]’s chest cavity as the world and its cursed ills closed upon him. His heart had shrunken to the size of a seed, and his torso and extremities were taken over by blackwheat. The Swishy of yesterday was not the Swishy of the here and now. The shadows of the world and those that’d internally grown had tainted him. He was Swishy Black now, a scarecrow of darkness, and the exact type of entity he’d fought so hard against becoming. The dark coated his whole being like a viscous tar. There was no immediate cleansing for the way he allowed himself to become.

We all got shadows, he told himself, echoing the advice Trey had given him after losing his first heart. Work through it, work through it. There’s a fight inside me, too.

But as Swishy stayed in the guardian’s chest, overtaken in mind and body by wickedness, he’d healed. He didn’t want to acknowledge his blackwheat repairs as healing—with his discriminatory feelings about blackwheat being what they were—but that’s exactly what happened to him. Swishy had healed, regaining energy and mobility. He likened his wheat repairs to curing Trey’s body within the full-body straw cast. He glanced at the Clayborne’s vessel in its straw cocoon, the [Heart Strings] intent pulsating around the mended bones and tendons. The bruises and clots from the Bristles’ arrows were gone. The magical and physical integrity of Trey’s body was pretty much restored. Swishy awaited the final ingredient, Trey’s soul to return to his vessel. Once inside the body, the soul itself could begin its regrowth and treatment.

The boy raised his gourd without noticing—he now had the power for it. Moments ago, he hung his head in a daze, soul-worn and heart-atrophied. And now? His heart funds were low, but his soul had a new body to pilot, a blackwheat vessel that Swishy was less afraid to embrace. He kicked his legs and circled his neck. He even spread his arms outward in a “T”—and as he lifted his arms the cursed energy spread from his core in currents, traveling through the length of his arms to his fingertips.

A new body, a dark one—but functional and ready to fight. Ready to survive.

As the boy evolved, the madness continued. Swishy scanned the area and found nothing but stressors. There were strangers in the forest, wrathravens, and berserker kid-crows. Cearth was a cage that got smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller—as the concealed souls drew against the edge of the woods, observing the chaos within; as the wrathravens flew around the guardian’s torso while scheming their next move; and as the kid-crows scaled [Straw Guardian] in rapturous pursuit of Swishy.

Head in the game, Swishy clapped his gourd repeatedly with hollow thunk’s.

His first move: defense. Swishy resealed [Straw Guardian]’s damaged chest with blackwheat. The children clawed and bit and punched at the barrier while Swishy fortified it. As Swishy produced more straw, the blackwheat contracted toward his chest, aiming for his remnant nub of a heart. The kid-crow strikes thudded against the shield, thwarted for now. Swishy, wielding more darkness than he knew what to do with, supplemented the barrier with three more layers. The blackwheat inside chuffed toward his heart, piling over itself, crackling against the competing weaves.

Every dark art he performed constituted a direct attack on his heart. Swishy closed his eyes, focusing on maintaining control.

In the back end of the guardian’s chest cavern, Trey-less Trey shifted in his sleep, comfortably lying in a cocoon of gold-straw. The [Heart Strings] pulsated energy through Trey in time with his even breaths. The soulless vessel was the coziest version of Trey that Swishy had ever known. Swishy never wanted that comfort disturbed. He’d protect it with everything he had, both light and darkness.

“Swishy…” the vessel sleepily slurred, the utterance garbled by drool. The scarecrow treasured each lilting syllable, the familiar cadence steadying him amid the chaos.

“Make it back to me…” Swishy said—both through him and [Straw Guardian], hoping Trey could hear him wherever he was.

The outside world spoke back but Swishy knew to ignore the comments—the wrathravens had nothing good to say.

Swishy took stock of his black reserves: the renewed body of straw and shadow, the voodoo serpent patrolled the skies in anticipation of an elimination order, and the other spells he knew he had access to but hadn’t yet discovered.

He couldn’t allow the kid-crows to suffer damage. He couldn’t allow that for Trey’s body either. But himself? He willfully accepted his introduction into the dark arts, once more serving as Straw City’s sacrificial effigy.

But already he found himself struggling to secure his sense of self within the Swishy-black body. Every move felt as if he were puppeteering himself. The boy had his initial practice with the voodoo serpent that cycled over the guardian’s head, swimming and patrolling the skies. The idea of piloting the curses superimposed upon his own body was a different game. The movement wasn’t intuitive. He had to think to move his arm. He imagined a leg kick and his physical leg followed the order. The dark body was an entity of its own that required energy and focus to control. Should Swishy lose consciousness or control, he had no idea what would become of him.

When it came to the ways of gold-straw, the ways of living a righteous and honorable and fun life, his time with Trey was the most supreme teacher there ever was. He’d grown so quickly when it came to the language arts, the heart arts, the thousands and thousands of methods to achieve illumination. But the chasm inside, the dark whorl that knocked around his siphoned acorn of a heart—he had no teacher, no access to understanding. As Swishy concentrated on piloting himself, he felt as if he were drowning within his own chaos-dipped quills.

Maybe his capabilities were far greater than he’d given himself credit for. Maybe the folks of the city were completely right about him. Swishy was a god. Or godlike in aspect. The unending sacrifices that he’d made for others were part of that divinity. But thankfully, he didn’t have to figure that out for himself.

Swishy possessed a lifeline, or rather, a doom line—because he didn’t want to call on her. But the townsfolk had called upon her, Bristles too, and even Trey had acquired a host of mysterious Z intents from that woman. Without an altar to contain her, she was everywhere. All Swishy had to do was call…

“Mysty…” Swishy said, his tone laced with eye-roll energy.

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It was clear that she detected the derision as well—a trail of shadow stirred before Swishy’s eyes but refused to fully conjure. Myst was offended, it seemed.

“Hi Myst,” Swishy brightened. “Please see the mess I’m in. Please laugh at me like you always do.”

She giggled, materialized fully as a foggy spider in the haystack, then proceeded to laugh harder. “Hello, dear boy, I see you’re in your gothic era,” She pointed a mocking foreleg at Swishy’s dark body. With her other seven legs, she stretched toward the crevices of blackwheat in the chest cabin, strumming the strands like guitar strings. The notes came out flat—the straw snapped, cracked, and embarrassingly chipped. “You rang?”

“I did, yes. I’m sure you can tell why.” Swishy felt like a bit of a slumlord in his decayed fortress. From shadow denizen to shadow denizen, he was embarrassed to have a Myst visit with his home in such a state.

“It’s okay,” she comforted. “You’re doing battle. This is what battle is.”

“You mean losing battle. These wrathravens won’t let up.”

“Even if you’re winning, you couldn’t avoid this…this unwieldy darkness. Consider the blackness as blood stains! Some are yours, and some are your enemy’s. It’s nothing to be shy about.”

“So can we talk? I have questions.”

Myst lowered her eyes, measuring Swishy. She, of course, didn’t need to evaluate him with her gestures but she’d grown used to the human way. She’d taken to the recognizable body language and physical cues of her most frequent altar-goers. She read Swishy—and Swishy read her reading him. A cycle, a yin-yang, a reluctant oneness between Straw City’s primary heart-holder and the altar’s heartless emissary.

“Please, Myst, I want to use the dark without it hurting me. It’s coming for my heart. I feel it with every spell.”

Myst appeared behind Swishy, a blackness merged into the cockpit. Her torso emerged from the walls and hugged the scarecrow from behind. He wanted to squirm from her touch but that required too much focus—he wasn’t there yet. “I see that, yes. I wonder how long you can keep that up, slinging curses left and right. You must think you’re Ruby—though if you were, you’d be in far better shape than what you are.”

“We all can’t be Ruby, and I don’t want to be either.”

“Why not? She’s powerful.”

“I just don’t, okay.”

“I say think about it. If you wanted to, you could be Ruby—and I think you should. Isn’t that why you called me? You can use the dark like her! It’ll be a great time!” Myst paused, which cued Swishy to stare up at his thick patch of barrier. Together, they listened to the kid-crow assault. The inner walls shook from the incessant blows, blackwheat strands knocked loose from the weaves, sprinkling onto the cabin floor. “This wouldn’t happen to Ruby. With the way she shadow-wields, even the crickets would go extinct.”

Swishy was irritated. He claimed he didn’t want to be like Ruby—which was correct in a sense. He didn’t want to use others or dominate souls. He didn’t need to harvest lives. The boy was born with flight—that was the start and end of his goals. He knew the things that made him happy, the things he needed for a complete life. He just wanted to be a joyous boy—one with limits, scruples, and mercy.

But Myst had a point. He stared at the pounded straw, the kid-crows tearing through the initial layer, and knew that Ruby would’ve taken the child’s soul.

As his irritation bubbled, he imagined eating the offending child, absorbing its straw as he’d done to prior snitchtalons. The scarecrow shuddered from the soul-freezing vision. It hurt him to imagine a callous, ruthless version of himself. That wasn’t who he was and what he’d intended for his magic to be.

Myst read these thoughts, of course, siblings of shadow that they were. “My poor little child. How will you change the city if you lose fights? Your mercy put you in hiding. This is hiding, you know. This is losing…but I suppose I can do the Ruby parts for you…for a cost.”

“I’ll fight. I just don’t want the black stuff to touch my heart.” He could feel his own pulse. His soul was stressed from the overwhelming spiritual weight of the blackwheat pressing inward, attempting to crash upon his untouched, unmarred heart. But it took everything he had to dam off the currents of curses that attacked him from inside.

“Nobody ever wants to be my friend at first. And then here we are, I’m asked to take on another student…”

“You mean Trey?”

“That’s right—but he’s a lot nicer and tolerable than you are. Why should I help you, my little rude straw?”

“Because I have our heart.”

Myst was shocked, her mouth forming an “O” at the “our” word choice.

“You told me so,” Swishy went on. “But if you won’t help me, I can just lose. I can just let the wrathravens have it. It’s not what I want—but you don’t want that either.”

“I see you’re a boy that uses your head. You know, I can just stop the wrathravens myself. They can’t have my…our heart.”

“They can. It’s not yours anymore. If you could do it yourself, you would. But Cearth won’t let you. You’re bound to the planet’s will. I know I’m not wrong. You’re stuck, Mysty. You need me.”

Myst lengthened the shadows of her arms to reach for Swishy. She pressed her body firmly against his back and prolonged her shadowy arms around him. She embraced him with the love and comfort of an older sister. They appeared as two siblings spending quality time with each other. She drew the boy close as she wrapped him in her arms—once over, then twice over, binding him—and nuzzled her head into his neck. Their shadows became one. Isolated and caged, Swishy felt a host of evil intents tear through those shadows.

DOOM and DEMISE were only the start. DESTRUCTION, DISORIENTATION, DISEASE, DEBASEMENT, and the list went on…The horrors Myst infused into the boy were ancient tortures, spiritual injuries that no one on Cearth had yet conceived of. But Swishy remained inflexible, uncompromising—because the dark arts were his required occupation, because he was Swishy Black now and would see that through to the end. He resisted Myst’s bullying. He declared that she couldn’t harm him. He willed himself to believe that she could only harm him through a deal.

Life was unfair—but Myst wasn’t.

Contracts. Myst could only get to him through an act of exchange. But he felt horrible. The longer Myst touched him, the more the soul inside trembled from the sudden pangs of agony.

“Stop,” he said. “We’re partners! Accept that! I’ll pay, I’ll pay, please Mysty, I’ll pay!”

“And what will you pay?” Myst loosened her grip, retracted her shadows, and vacuumed away the deep-set pain she’d kneaded into Swishy’s soul.

The boy turned in the enclosed booth and stared Myst right in the heartlessness. Her face softened. Swishy’s mind contained no thoughts. He allowed her to read his heart. Myst issued a chuckle and then transformed back into a spider, long-legged and elegant. She skittered in circles, an arachnid dance of joy.

“You’d do such a thing, for little old me?” She asked.

“You see my insides. Now help.”

“But is that a deal?” Myst smiled. Even in the diminutive form of a spider, Myst visibly displayed the speckled gleam of two protruding fangs.

Swishy held out his hand.

“You expect me to shake?” Myst mocked. “Don’t be a square, young straw.”

Swishy giggled and extended his stubby index finger.

Myst bit it, drawing soul.

“Ow!” The scarecrow said, retracting and shaking off his finger. “Is this what bleeding feels like?”

“Worse, young straw. They don’t call me Shadow Bitch for nothing.”

The boy leaned into Myst, his eyeholes several times larger than her body. He swallowed her in his gaze. The kid-crows had punched several holes clean through the blackwheat. Through the puncture, Swishy could hear the wrathravens below, continuing their meal upon the dead guardian’s abdomen.

“It’s time,” Swishy said.

“With pleasure…” Myst licked her spidery lips and jumped straight into Swishy’s gourd.