NO HEART, NO PROBLEM—that’s what Swishy told himself at least.

There were ways for Swishy to return to himself.

Swishy didn’t know the ways exactly, but he’d go by feel. He wouldn’t allow this loss of heart to defeat him like it had before. He’d chosen Myst. The powerful dark magic saw him through. Fragile and courageous, he’d found victory. It’d only cost himself. But to protect Trey, to protect the children, the transaction was well worth it.

The boy was now a husk, but his mind grasped onto his accomplishments. The high-pitched and surprisingly pleasant chirps of the infantilized wrathravens were music to his ears. The kid-crows had begun to snore, the [Grain Mill] nightmares releasing them into proper rest.

He focused on the positive outcomes, unwilling to lose himself. But the inner chasm raged on, the darkness he’d wielded now turning against him.

I did well! I won’t lose here—I can’t!

But the soulful blues drained from his gourd. Everything black, everything gold, everything of meaningful color faded from his straw.

Despite achieving acceptance, an onslaught of damage tore through him. The familiar intents of DISGUST, ENNUI, DISILLUSIONMENT, and DEATH sliced through any goodness that’d survived in him. ENVY melted his insides. HOPELESSNESS swirled amid the frenzied emptiness in a heart-shaped path. DEVASTATION crackled through every millimeter of straw in black lightning. DOOM scorched through his dilapidated dregs of soul.

The scarecrow sat through his personal hell, depleted and discarded.

There were no memories, no evidence of mattering.

No friends, no Trey, no world to be in. Nothing of worth, nothing of light.

He was alone again, drifting, drifting…

Swishy listened for a heartbeat but his body was devoid of feedback, large and small.

The conundrum of emptiness confronted him once more: if emptiness is empty, what’s with the hurt?

Why? He asked Cearth. Why does hollowness bite?

And the Cearth answered…

(…)

Up above, dancing shadows, a lovely smoke that streaked the skies in darkness and heart glitter.

Swishy’s gaze followed the dark path, feeding his curiosity if nothing else.

Myst tore across the sky, black hole and comet in one girl, a trail of devastation and unbelievable, unbridled joy. She held the heart within her fingers, tentatively, as if she’d hurt it if she gripped it too hard. She couldn’t break the heart, not with the pressure of her shadows, not with the pressure of her delicacy. Swishy remembered the moment that she gripped his heart and kneaded the restoration into it. She’d grown it herself, but she was so tender and scared of the heart now that it was in her possession.

Hadn’t it belonged to her in the first place? No. It belonged to Cearth. She was its babysitter and somehow Ruby’s wish—whatever it was—had resulted in Swishy’s birth and the altar surrendering its most treasured component.

What was the wish? What were the sacrifices? What could Ruby give Cearth that made it give her its heart?

Swishy never considered the circumstances of his birth until now. Nobody had mentioned them—not Trey, not Ruby, not the snitchtalons, not Myst. But now the scarecrow was puzzled. He’d delved into shadow usage and transformation. He’d embraced a blackwheat body. He carved ancient magic steeped in the planet’s richest and oldest capital: pain.

The scarecrow wished he hadn’t gone down this line of thinking. But he couldn’t ignore the questions as Myst flew around with the heart, joyous yet uncertain, rapturous yet terrified.

Mysty…is scared? Then what’s that mean for me?

Swishy watched through his deadened rind. His soul couldn’t stir. He could move his eyes, though, and so he kept them trained on Myst.

She drifted onto her back and lifted the Swish-heart over her chest. Then she dropped it—splash!

The heart penetrated Myst’s chest as if she were water. The impact released dark ripples and bubbles throughout her torso. Her eyes widened at the way her own fogginess secured it. Her torso held strong to the Swish-heart. A heart, a heart…she mouthed the words in amazement, her lips parting in an endless exhale.

“Again,” she breathed out—and shoved her hands inside herself, removing the heart.

She laid back, then dropped the heart back into her. More splashes, more relief, more fun. Myst did this multiple times, the removal and re-entry of the heart. She gasped each time she released it. The thrill and potential devastation of losing the heart, of discovering an inability to contain a heart, teased and galvanized her.

A term came into Swishy’s mind, one he’d heard out in public a couple of times: thrill seeker. Myst, who had nothing to fear, now had everything to fear. The possibility of hurt was her newest toy, so she went between heart and no heart, relief and terror and then relief again, indulging in feelings she’d long locked away.

The heart pulsated within her, pushing the shadows of her chest outward in a cloudy squid ink. Her insides diffused and undulated with each beat.

Myst sped through the sky in an arc, leaving in her wake a comet trail of pleasure. She did figure eights, somersaults, and [Zlide] maneuvers—warping from the sky to the ground, and the ground to the hollow of a tree, and then soared up the length of the tree into the thick canopies. She was disguised in foliage but was easily seen due to the glowing presence of the Swish-heart.

Myst glided as if she were the night itself. Her trail conceived the vaporous shape of a heart. Swishy felt loss and abyss and love. He was dead inside but overjoyed that Myst wasn’t. The joy she radiated was the most unexpected and incredible sight.

His heart was good for something. His heart had a proper use.

Hearts were for giving.

Go, Mysty, go!

Swishy was happy—happy for Myst, and happy that his homegrown heart was profoundly fulfilling. The boy was pleased at Myst’s unique heart-holding celebrations. While she gazed upon it through her own body, Swishy swaddled it straw. While Myst glided through the air and surfaces, Swishy picked a well-lit spot in which to “T”. Different bodies but they were one and the same when it came to heart usage. Tiny bubbles of joy formed in him as he acknowledged his sibling of shadow.

His insides filled, if only slightly, nowhere near enough to create a magic word let alone a heart.

Another problem: his focus on happiness triggered the deadness to rise against him. As he stared at Myst, his heartlessness stirred into a violent tornado. The pangs, the pangs, those dreadful pangs. His gourd strained to cry yet there here were no scraps of soul or heart with which to manifest tears.

Jealous and sad, he waited to see what Myst truly intended with the heart. His suspicions and anxieties dropped within his gourd like stalactites. But all she did was fly and feel, and Swishy encountered the sudden compulsion to teach her the scarecrow pose. Spread your arms, he wanted to say. Wide and straight! Now flap!

Myst gazed downward, noticing Swishy—and perhaps noting his inner thoughts. Her thick dark lips curved upward, revealing her spidery fangs. There it was, that beautiful smile that ate souls. She didn’t know how not to be a menace. But she certainly could flap. She spread her arms, lengthening them to twice her height, then triple. Her hands were rigid and straight like exquisite black blades. Myst threw her head back, revealing her slender neck to the sky.

Her skin cracked, splintering apart, spreading into thin and scraggly strips. Straw, her arms and legs and neck and face had assumed the texture of straw. The rustling noises filled Swishy’s gourd, a SCARECROW intent blossoming in Myst-black letters.

[https://i.imgur.com/XYxCHDB.jpeg]

Myst…she was beautiful.

He gazed upon Myst, a shadowy terrorist, a companion and captor who wielded so much power and pain, who Swishy now considered her a marvelous goddess.

Swishy’s deadened straw responded to his feelings then, a surge of growth inspired by budding intents. His chest contracted around his heartlessness, searching for a seed. His straw tightened and tightened, eager for Swishy to become somebody again.

The empty boy set about refilling, one encouragement at a time.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Nice,” Myst said, reverting to her ghostly form. “Death doesn’t suit you.” And then she flew off, resuming her play.

The boy had absorbed the euphoria and relief of the abyss-drawn girl. The environmental energy ticked toward Swishy in an innumerable measure of atoms. The scarecrow filled and filled and filled—and filled some more. Atoms became forms, and the forms were shaped into letters, and those letters joined together into words, and the words became life itself.

BEAUTY, DELICACY, GRACE, EMPATHY…these were only the start of a change in Swishy. The positivity and natural trustingness of his nature surged forth into identifiable forms. He experienced these things but had never found them in the culture of the town. Straw City’s drive toward progress abandoned these concepts as useless spillage.

More, Swishy urged from his body. More GOODNESS, more HOPE.

Give my people a HOME.

Give them SAFETY.

PROTECTION for all…

His promises filled the air. And that’s when—encouraged by the ethereal smoke signal of his light—the hidden presences in the woods revealed themselves.

Scarecrows. The adult ones, the ones that Swishy had abandoned in the old city for their folly. Their bodies were broken in a multitude of ways. Some had lost their legs from Bristles’ predation. Others had tripped and fallen and lost pieces of their thighs and shoulders and hands. Their skins were frayed at the ends, burnt black from the explosive zeppelin crash. Some were naked or otherwise wore rags. One even had a carrot nose and button eyes. Everyone was imperfect. Everyone was marred and defective.

“Swishy,” they called—a few at first, then several. After a few seconds, he counted over 60.

And they kept coming.

Swishy assumed they’d collect his body, collect their kids, and march toward Ruby. But they were tentative, changed. Swishy wondered what was taking them so long to tear at his straw. Or make wishes. Couldn’t they sense Myst? Didn’t they want to become more? More was here, and the Straw City locals had proven to be the decisive type.

But they slouched; they shuffled; they trembled. The scarecrows behaved like prey animals—traumatized, wary, and a little dead inside like Swishy. Their body language told Swishy all he needed to know.

They feared the dark. They all tended to their fears and voids. They’d ruined themselves and their families. Caution was a harsh lesson for them to learn.

They now stared at Swishy’s orbiting words and softly murmured. “That says GOODNESS…that one says HOME…are these…real?” After pausing, considering, and allowing the truth of the intents to sink in, their straw faces yowled in glory.

The scarecrows raised their frayed faces and arms to the sky, hoping to catch the drifting descent of positivity particles. They were vehement in acquiring these conjured intents, in learning their shape and energy. As the words lowered in pendulous arcs, feather-like and delicate, the scarecrows chased them down. They ran their bodies through the words, eager to foster these gifts within themselves.

“Yes, Lord Swishy,” they cried, “Teach us, teach us!”

The words diminished as they touched one scarecrow after the other, sharing the wisdom as equally as they could.

Wow…Swishy wanted to say but couldn’t.

And the light within everybody, in everything, began to bloom.

(…)

The scarecrows had a leader: Sling.

Or at least that’s what Swishy heard everyone call her.

Sling emerged from the woods last, the scarecrows parting the sea for her. She was over twice as tall as the other scarecrows and incredibly skinny. Her spindly frame was held together by bandages that wrapped her from head to toe. A mummy—that’s what Swishy considered her but he could see the straw-bits poking between the bandage slits. She wore a shadowclaw-colored peacoat cinched with a black leather belt, the smooth cloth billowing into a ghostly silhouette. Like many scarecrows, she stood upon a wooden stake. But she could walk. She’d split her stake apart into two separate legs and walk up the sharpened points. Of all the scarecrows, Sling was the most thoughtfully constructed.

Her bandages were imbued with magic. There was more to this mummy than met the eye.

The other scarecrows followed behind Sling, hiding within her immense shadows. They remained under her, treating her as a barrier of sorts.

She stood above Swishy, turning her head to the side, inspecting the siphoned boy. She was unafraid to approach Swishy as well—while the others hung back, recoiling slightly. “Swishy, we’ll make you proud,” declared Sling.

“Call him Lord or God!” The others cried.

“His name is Swishy—get over it!” She referred to Swishy with confidence. The boy was a mostly empty vessel, but she was confident in his life. Sling, like all the scarecrows, watched the battle and decided to not give up on him.

“Think of the sin! Think of the divine punishment!”

“Did you guys think of divine punishment when you wished to become him, huh?”

The scarecrows shrank from Sling’s overwhelming presence. They wanted every part of Swishy as they’d known him but now learned to fear his darkness.

But Sling emerged as their leader, their representative, and pointed this way and that. Then clapped loudly, straw bits flying from her elegantly woven fingers. “Chop-chop!”

And everyone set off to work.

Nobody had to be told their assignments. If there was one thing the residents of Straw City had an affinity for, it was labor.

Sling warmly smiled at Swishy, revealing the rows of stitches in her mouth, and then she turned and left. She headed in a direction opposite that of the other scarecrows, balanced upon her pointed stilts. She had her own mission, though she didn’t say what.

The scarecrows worked quickly. They raked the leaves, swept the twigs, and teamed-carried logs away from the area. As soon as several squared plots of land were established, they started to build.

They started small, fashioning straw hammocks between closely spaced trees. The scarecrows worked on opposite ends, tying, weaving, and securing knots around the tree trunks. When the first hammocks were completed, the healthiest of the group team carried the most infirm into bed.

Those that remained, created more hammocks. Others, though, had turned their attention to the blackened totem that towered over their existence.

[Straw Guardian], its blackness consumed for Swishy’s final attack, greeted the citizens. The guardian was wheat-colored again, brownish-red, orangish-yellow, returning to the color of fall. There were holes, straw splits, and decay. The structure was in horrible shape, but everyone smiled upon it.

“Darkness, darkness, stay away. This we wish. This we pray…” The smallest and weakest had led them in prayer, a scarecrow without arms, one clearly victimized by Bristles. Everyone dropped to their knees and prayed. There was so much fear in them from watching the prior confrontation. Swishy could tell that they’d seen everything: Bristles' madness, the wrathravens, the blackwheat consuming their kids. The scarecrows saw the folly in their ways. They were apologetic. Swish read their dried lips, their hearts, their souls. “We’re sorry, we’re sorry, we never meant to do wrong…”

They were referring to what they’d done to their children. The fathers, the mothers, and the older siblings all climbed up the husk of the guardian. Their bodies were weak. There was not a strand of gold-straw in there to empower their joints. They could barely crawl when they first transformed. And when they learned to walk, they could barely do that as well. And now they were climbing, their newest and most dangerous challenge. But the scaled the guardian for their kids. The ascending scarecrows wanted more than anything to reclaim their families.

“Lords of Darkness, oh how we have sinned. We’re sorry, we’re sorry.” They continued their apologies; they continued their cries. Their faces remained dried and bristled, cracked and broken. They were little more than cobbled-together kindling, the way they were haplessly constructed. But they climbed, knowing that falling meant the end. There was no healing, no new bodies should they suffer further damage.

The straw-bound were full of weakness, traversing the shadows in fragile, eatable bodies, and had now decided their purpose.

The scarecrows excavated their children from the chest chasms of their dead and tilted guardian. Within the chasm, they grabbed a child and passed it downward to another adult. That adult would pass the child down to someone right under them—and the assembly line continued in this fashion. The sleeping kid-crows were passed between many sets of remorseful arms before they finally reached solid ground.

The kids, then, were laid onto the hammock. If they had torn clothes, their parents would begin sewing them on the spot. NEEDLE, they said, holding out their hand as straw from their palm extended, sharpened, and hardened into a functional point.

Other spells were conjured from the formerly ineffectual scarecrows, domestic ones, chore-related ones, and anything remotely helpful.

The spells were numerous and lovely. A faint hint of glimmering sparkles bordered the words. RAKE, SPADE, CLOTHESLINE, BASKET, and so on and so forth.

Swishy watched them through his dead limbs, dead eyes, dead everything. No, not everything. His soul pulsed in ripples that originated within his stomach. Inside, he felt like pebbles had dropped into his soul, creating a minor disturbance. He focused on the feeling, cultivating the reconstruction of a soul large enough to move his vessel. But he couldn’t force it, not after the battle he’d had, not after his offering to Myst.

The straw sanctum was being constructed one hut at a time. There were many huts, many piles of kindling, many clusters of raked leaves that the WEAVE users now fashioned into thatched, multi-layered roofs.

Everything they now did was an act of love. Everything was tender. Everything was giving. Patience and controlled fanaticism—Swishy liked what he saw.

The scarecrows watched their savior and slowly approached him. Swishy wanted to avert his eyes from their disrepair but couldn’t. There were many ways to become reduced in this world, especially as a non-magic scarecrow. They shuffled their vulnerabilities toward Swishy. He didn’t know what they wanted but he was unafraid. After their servitude and community building, Swishy allowed himself to have hope for these once wayward scarecrows.

They stopped short of him, closing around him in a feathery perimeter. They were nervous to approach their god. “Our Lord…are you okay? Will you be well? Will you recover?” They asked him questions but Swishy had no means of answering them. “Is this a test? Are you testing us?” It was a test—but not Swishy’s. Everything in life thus far presented a challenge. But this should’ve been nothing new to the scarecrows—or was it? Had Ruby spoiled them with an embarrassment of ill-gotten gains? The plunder had soured upon them, costing them their bodies. This was their last chance to live right. They had nothing left to lose. With each strand of straw that was shaved from them, their souls drew ever closer to becoming a naked curse.

Their consciousnesses would die, die forever—without heaven or healing. This was it for them.

Swishy read their souls which undulated between panic and prayer, terror and transcendence, doing Ruby’s bidding or conjuring the courage to live right—with all its risks and vulnerabilities.

They grabbed Swishy’s body, lifting him straight upward so he maintained his “T” position, and carried him away. There was one scarecrow per arm while a third person held the boy’s feet. They’d removed the boy’s black Timbs, one scarecrow per boot, and used their BRUSH intent to conjure whiskery shoe brushes. Their soft bristles whisked away the grains and grime of Swishy’s harsh travels. Magic traveled through each stroke, purifying the shoes. The Timbs remained scarred but they were cleansed. From Swishy’s periphery, he glimpsed the gorgeous shine of his spell-polished shoes.

Off in the distance, Sling’s statuesque body stood beside a tree—her head brushing the canopy. She squatted, her knees angling upward. She reached toward the roots of the trees, opening her hands. “Come on, little guys.”

Peep! Peep!

These were the three wrathravens Swishy had reduced to chicks. The trio jumped into Sling’s hands, hopping within the palm of their new mother. Their bodies were still bound by the [Hell Weave] lasso, which Sling now undid, plucking at the knotted blackwheat. The baby birds chirped in approval and nibbled on frayed strands around Sling’s wrist. One of them undid a strip of bandage and wrapped it around itself, nuzzling into its makeshift blanket.

Lucky…Swishy thought as he gawked at the wrathravens. He wondered how things would be different if Sling was his mother instead of Ruby.

A blue aura lifted off Sling’s body, NEST intent swirling in her hands. She spotted Swishy in the distance, flashed a squinty smile, and waved.

Swishy’s chest contracted; Swishy’s possible heart grew.