SWISHY SLUMBERED; SWISHY DREAMED.
Swishy, heartless once more, saw into the soul of the woman holding his freshly grown core. He knew there was no greater gift that he could give. It was his only offering, the only thing inside him. He learned throughout his Straw City day that his learnings, his scarecrowing, and his tenderness with Trey and Ruby all contributed to the tightening, cohering weave of his chest—a mass of vibrant, boundless joy. The scarecrow naturally wanted to give back. Of course, he handed his heart over! He wondered what words glowed in Trey's pocketed deck, especially since he'd overheard several that sounded right to his spirit: SHARING, GIVING, FRIENDSHIP, FAMILY. But a more pressing curiosity resounded from his straw-swishing head tilt as Ruby clutched his beating heart: Will this make you better?
Just as he'd gotten to know Trey from their full day of travel and play, he'd seen a good deal about Ruby, too. From the moment she'd first smoothed his matted head of hay, Swishy sensed the familiar darkness within her aura, a vortex of curses hurricane-ing inside her. Each time they touched, each time they fed, each time a kind word traveled from her lips to his straw-bound vessel, Swishy keyed into the frequency of those dreaded peeves. And while Ruby appeared stable enough, Swishy couldn't trust her mysterious composition.
He was darkness' biggest fan but even he knew that it didn't belong inside you.
Ruby needed help; Ruby needed healing.
Much like when Swishy's contact with the ground gave rise to the woods after his birth, the direct skin-to-straw contact between Ruby's hand and his heart allowed him passage into her essence.
And to his pleasant surprise, the peeves weren't peeving like they usually did, no clichéd wailing about being lost and hopeless and abandoned to be heard. Instead, the entities within Ruby were a peppy, optimistic bunch. They gossiped; they joked; they laughed. For the first time, Swishy detected a community within the pitch.
They even used names! Antonio and Annette, Juan and Josephine, Emmanuel and Emma, Paolo and Patricia and Pingoy and Pamela and dozens of others.
"Hello!" Swishy soul-shouted, his sudden address like a belly-flop into the sea of curses.
And in an ethereal splash-back, he received a chorus of Hi! Hey-o! Hello there! Kumasta na!
"What's going on in here?" Swishy asked.
"You know what goes on here...in the portal."
"I do, yes. It just looks like fun. I don't usually hear fun."
"I know! The others like to complain so much! We're the fun ones, we're cool."
"Ah, just like Ruby!"
A laugh occurred—then multiple, a chorus of mirth crackling through everyone.
Swishy wondered if he was being made fun of, but now wasn't the time to feel self-conscious. "What's wrong? Ruby is great."
More laughter, and a little bit of choking, before the souls began to calm and contain themselves. Ruby! He called her Ruby! That's rich! It's funny every time we hear it. (And then finally addressing Swishy) But yes, to answer properly. Ruby as you call her is our queen. She is our everything.
Swishy's soul drifted towards the voices. He couldn't help but seek the answers. He'd given up his heart, so what more did he have to lose?
So the scarecrow reached out, seeking abyss—and the curses pulled him in...
*
THE STORMCELLAR—that's where her story began.
That's where she began.
The Stormcellar was a tropical island contained within vicious winds, the territory of the Shugarrians. They named themselves for 'sugar' since they had several types of it—cane and wheat, bananas and mangos, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, plums. 'Barbarian' was part of the name, too, because they wanted outsiders to fear them—not for protection, just for sport. The circling winds were opinionated spirits—and bored ones, too—so they let their sense of humor run free. Look primitive, directed the voices of the island, Make it seem like you don't have oil or electricity or batteries. If we get visits—maybe pirates or archeologists—then they should think we're illiterate. Have a sense of romance! It's fun, let's all have fun!
While the island was legitimate of modest means, the Shugarrians weren't exactly living in huts or drawing water out of wells. The township had gas, electricity, some stores, a library, an internet café (with spotty reception at best), a cell phone tower, a cramped K-12 school, a church, and multitudes of outdoor prayer shrines decked out in beaded rosaries and floral wreaths. Sadly, they weren't progressed enough to claim modernity. The hope of advancement was a distant fantasy as the powerful winds nestled around its precious natives, sealing them from The Stormcellar from the world.
But the sentient weather—because of its sentience—was flawed just like any conscious creature. The winds were clumsy and bumbling, chaotic and careening, unpredictable and therefore an all too predictable destroyer of everything.
With everything razed, all that'd remain amidst the ruins were the disappointed islanders and the whistling cacophony of Oops! Sorry! Oh well! The Lord giveth...you know the rest!
Sealed in destruction, The Stormcellar inhabitants led simple lives. They farmed. They fished whenever the graceless winds allowed for calm, non-lethal seas. When the thunder rang out, they prayed—they shouted out vehemently such that God could hear them beyond the volatile, haphazard gale.
But they mostly starved, progressively whittling away into ghosthood.
Because of their suffering, and their limited time as flesh-and-bone humans, the Shugarrians were known by another name: sugar-wraiths. Once born, it was only a brief matter of time before the winds starved them. They were dead villagers walking, doomed to ghostliness through and through.
One by one, bodies withered and were shed, the souls transitioning into their sugar-wraith forms.
Once properly ethereal, the sugar-wraiths were swept up into the constant hurricane, swirling and swirling, joining The Stormcellar's collective tempest. They were laughing ghosts, always-together ghosts, prayerful and pious. They remained within their purgatory of wind, forever hoping to escape to Heaven. The sugar-wraiths believed in a coming change; they didn't know when—but their fortunate fates were certain.
(...)
One day there appeared a girl loved by abyss—Rubella Castór. She must've been an orphan—no one knew for sure—but the adults didn't notice her until she was about seven or eight. She just appeared, having rolled into one of the towns asking for food. The girl had a mangled nest of auburn hair. Her eyes were the blackest black, slick and shiny like oil pits. The world inside her was endless. Everyone innately recognized how special she was, so they fed and clothed her, sheltered her, and accepted the orphan as one of their own—never questioning, never doubting.
In fact, the abyss-loved girl did all the questioning and doubting for the whole Stormcellar. Her ire at the wind-driven ether was constant and passionate. She refused to accept her pre-ordained place in the wind. Acceptance wasn't her way—tenacious ambition was.
"How can this be enough for anybody?" The girl preached in the outdoor marts, in the fabric shops, at the pop-up shrines in people's front yards. She sermonized at the beach, too, standing front-row center to the eternal ghost storm. She raved about a better life. The way she spoke felt like childish fantasy but the Shugarrians were perpetually dying, primed always for open-mindedness and faith. "We can be better than wraiths! We can be MORE!"
And the villagers, so attuned to this worldly eight-year-old, read her mind from her stern, displeased expression. Everyone had a quirk, a strangeness, an odd way of being, so the Shugarrians quickly accepted this fifty-year-old in the body of a child. It's not that the child was an old soul, she was a pissed one, rubbed raw and bruised by nature.
A wind blew a weathervane to the ground. A bamboo stalk snapped in two. Banana bunches blew off the treetops and soared in boomerang twists into the ocean. The girl grimaced and spat.
"Rubella, you look like something stinks. Smile, smile! Practice, my child!" One adult or another said.
"Ruby. My name is Ruby."
"Okay Little Gem, but please, smile. It will be okay." The villagers laughed and laughed. They accepted their fates. They were eager for the day their stomach stopped growling and their gust forms began.
"Where is this 'okay' you speak of?" the girl snapped, using a broken stick of bamboo to guide everyone's eyes to the surrounding lands: the cane crop was flattened; the bananas and mangos and strawberries were mashed into brightly colored pulp; the bamboos stalked were felled and crushed; the ancient oaks were scarred, wind-whipped and eaten in unforgiving chunks. "This is the world of light. Look at what the sun is shining on! All of this is broken. And all of us are half-dead. What we have is this light. Can you call that a blessing? It's a mockery, that's what this is."
The villagers murmured, groaning about the futility of protecting their crops, the cosmic joke of ruined abundance. They began to express frustration at their cousins in the wind, the hurricane that destroyed the insides yet blocked the outside.
The winds whirled in anger and hurt—they were sensitive, feeling wraiths—and hurled a banana at Ruby's head in response.
Ruby caught it, peeled it, and ate it in two bites. "Thank you. Now I have the calories to think."
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"Don't be so mean," the winds said. "We're doing our best. We don't mean to hurt you. This form is hard to control!"
"I know, I know. But trust in me and I will save you."
"Go on, then. Less talking, more helping."
She turned to all the villagers. "You'll see."
Murmurs, whispers, casual prayers. Everyone dispersed, considering the future.
Ruby left as well, crossing the cane fields on the outskirts of town, hiking the couple kilometers into the bamboo thicket housing The Stormcellar altar. She calmly walked at first, but once she got properly out of sight she skipped, she pranced, she ran straight toward her destination. The thrill shivered through her as this child was finally about to get her way. "YAY!" she screamed—and then, feeling embarrassed about the kid in her, let out a vexed tsk before assuming a calm, measured stride.
There was a clearing with a stone platform, a dark wind swirling about its center, a black hole and a sandstorm all in one. Nobody had been here in years; nobody had anything to give. But the altar definitely functioned. Wind is the resource here. This place is rich in moisture and air. This land should be great, my goodness.
"Hello," Ruby said, unsure if the altar was a live being.
The dark winds curled and swirled, dancing in what the girl took for a greeting.
"Please, I wish for a book of spells."
The blackness curved into a question mark before widening into an oval-shaped portal. Go on, is what the altar communicated. Your offering...
Ruby smirked, reaching into her brown satchel, and pulled out a Bible. "Divinity for magic! A fair trade, yes?"
And then she tossed the holy book in.
The Bible disappeared into the stone altar, swallowed whole, and after a moment of mysterious swirling the girl's gift was tossed into the air.
Ruby caught the resulting product, a black box with gold embroidered lettering that read: FLASHCARDS. This wasn't exactly what she asked for—but the magic, the soulful energy buzzed within her tiny palm.
(...)
Later that night she returned to the village, clusters of blackbirds trailing above her in V-formation. They nested in the banana and mango trees. They perched on fences and signposts and the edges of roofs. They reveled in the sheer darkness of the night, a sliver of crescent moon providing almost no illumination. Each bird flew, their intense caws tearing through everyone's sleep.
"These birds are kind of...active."
Ruby laughed.
"Oh, Stern Girl is laughing. Tell us Little Gem, what's got into you?"
"This!" She raised a flashcard: CELEBRATE. And a bird swooped down and snatched the card, magic coursing into its mouth, moving through every inch of its taut muscles. The bird passed the card to the other birds, a game of telephone rapidly spreading. Once a bird absorbed the card's magic, they began to understand and embody its directive, to celebrate, to flap cacophonously, to CACAW and CACAW and CACAW and CACAW until the whole town was awake.
The townsfolk marveled at the birds as the feathers rained down on them. The sugar-wraiths were smart people and they knew exactly why Ruby had woken them in the middle of the night. The winds roared and roared but the avian flight remained strong, unshakable.
Ruby shuffled and bridged the deck, then tossed several cards upwards, a spectacle that stole every eye. The birds zoomed through and caught the cards, the gold letters imprinting shiny impressions in the night sky.
The first cards read: SHADOWCLAW, SUSTENANCE, FETCH.
And so the shadowclaws, absorbing the magic meanings of the flashcards, obediently abided by the will of The Stormcellar's only spellcaster. They rocketed through the island's crops, harvesting the sugarcane and bananas and mangos and strawberries and laying them at Ruby's feet. Everyone cheered—the winds as well, whipping up into frenzied proclamations of, Our sugar family has food! These birds are strong! Ruby has saved the village!
Ruby gazed at her shadowclaw saviors knifing through the air, their purple auras beautifully scarring the sky. She was grateful, gracious, and more determined than ever to push her blessings.
"We're leaving The Stormcellar," she declared.
Everyone stared, shocked and impressed, but most of all mystified.
"All of us are leaving, too. Even them." She pointed a snapped bamboo towards the surrounding winds.
Each mouth hung open. The hurricane simply slowed.
Ruby drew a card and proudly raised her solution to the heavens: SACRIFICE.
[https://imgur.com/SHmYymJ.jpeg]
(...)
Ruby was ready. Her shadowclaws were, too, because they didn't even touch the card—they simply knew. By now Ruby trained them to read the desires of Ruby's soul. Hundreds of birds took off in the direction of the forest altar. The girl led the Shugarrians into the bamboo thicket, marching onwards, each sure-footed step a reinforcement of her willpower. By the time they'd arrived, the shadowclaws were skimming the ground, circling along the altar's dark sandstorm. The winds breezed into the clearing, too, passing through as a cool, controlled zephyr. The sugar-wraiths were relaxed for once, eagerly awaiting Ruby's next feat.
"Go on," Ruby said to the flock. "Into the dark, you go."
One by one, the ground-level glide of the shadowclaws was swallowed by the altar, disappearing in poofs of midnight powder. The winds intensified, taking the cue, gradually pouring their sugar-wraith selves into the dusty portal. Meanwhile, the villagers watched in silence. In under a minute the entire flock was absorbed. A long pause—prayers, hope, sweat—as the onlookers whispered amongst themselves about what exactly Ruby was up to.
A spree of shadowclaws exited the portal, one after the other, cawing in the same cadence, animal in body, but sugar-wraith within. The possessed shadowclaws struggled through their wobbly flight—they were awful fliers as wind and equally bad as birds, too. The Shugarrian audience was pleased to see their kin.
Ruby, the island's precious Little Gem, declared her feat: "I've offered the bird souls to the altar in exchange our sugar-wraiths can have their bodies!"
An uproarious commotion traveled through the villagers in a wave. They clapped; they clamored; they praised the altar; they praised young Ruby.
But a mild breeze remained. There weren't enough bird bodies for all of the wind-bound sugar-wraiths. The leftover ancestors anxiously waited, an anxiety which in short order spread to the cluster of expectant townsfolk.
The villagers asked questions: Should we get more birds? Can we use other animals? Perhaps we can put them in kitchenware, like Beauty and the Beast? They spoke in measured, scientific tones. Now that Ruby had dragged the blessings from the altar, the townsfolk eagerly engaged in their freshly discovered calling as spellcasters.
Ruby studied the tempest, counting to herself. "I think...I have room."
She stepped into the altar, offering up her darkness—and the winds flew towards her in response. The sugar-wraiths dove into her eyes. The ghosts streamed into her mouth, replacing some of her missing baby teeth. And the remaining ones traveled into Ruby's body, nestling into the shadowed parts of her heart.
In the weeks that followed, preparations to voyage beyond The Stormcellar began. The work progressed quickly, too, because of their system: the birds—containing sugar-wraith souls—fetched supplies while the humans built and packed.
The new shadowclaws even improved at flying; they were faster and steadier, finding it easier to control individual birds than a collective, powerful wind.
On the day of the departure, Ruby boarded their brand new, multi-leveled ship. She was excited to leave, having become sick of the ocean, thoroughly done with the possibility of being trapped on an island. Flatlands were in her vision, long and endless and fantastically fertile. She settled near the helm of the ship escorted by several shadowclaws, her ancestral lieutenants.
As the ship drifted away, the sailors were sent off by dozens of Shugarrians waving from shore, folks who chose to stay behind. It's decent weather now! they declared, also promising to save a lion's share of the harvest for their child queen.
And in that moment Ruby's bottomless black eyes absorbed a final view of The Stormcellar, impossibly tamed, stripped bare of its tumultuous winds. The others also looked at their former home with pride—though that's not what Ruby focused on. She instead concentrated on the gentle breeze, the kiss of air ghosting her forehead. Ruby smirked. She kept a secret, one between her and the wind.
Unbeknownst to the village, Ruby performed two rituals—not one:
In the first ritual she'd paid shadowclaw souls, and the altar returned their empty husks, bird bodies prime for the sugar-wraith's taking.
Hidden in plain sight, the second ritual occurred. Ruby gifted the Stormcellar's trademark winds to the altar. And in return: the shadowclaw souls were returned to the world. The bird souls were captured in a summer breeze, powerless, non-threatening. They could caw with all the rage inside them but Ruby would only feel it as a pleasing gust.
A useful haul, Ruby schemed. These souls will come in handy at the next altar.
Nobody knew—because the villagers didn't speak bird. And Ruby simply didn't need to—because she'd trained them through the flashcards. The slight breeze returned by the altar was silent, indecipherable.
Birds are amazing, Ruby thought, basking in the delicate rush of a passing zephyr. The sugar-wraiths couldn't pilot wind to save their lives, but these bird souls are so gentle and fast. They can pilot anything!
As the ship drifted into the ocean, The Stormcellar shore at last disappearing, Ruby decided to properly train her breeze-bound shadowclaw souls, securing her control over them. She pulled out the deck and drew several cards. LOYALTY, DEVOTION, COMMITMENT, WORSHIP, IDOLATRY were all lessons that Ruby, quite gleefully, tossed into the wind.
The cards disintegrated in mid-air as those obedient bird souls, that precious living wind, absorbed every lesson.
The shadowclaws first lost their bodies. They next lost their autonomy. The only thing they gained was their young, forward-thinking master.
(...)
A month later, after the Shugarrians had settled the land with homes and hearths and cultivated fields, Ruby discovered another stone altar. The flat stage was elevated, cracked, and ancient. Dark nodes swirled within the breakage and splits. "I have a gift," Ruby declared, and the darkness floated from the crevices into a cohesive smoke, deepening and thickening into a tremendous, tree-height portal.
Ruby knew what came next for her pet tailwind, her fleet of shadowclaw souls trapped in air currents. The next altar could do well with innocent bird-soul. She was banking on life for life, bird-soul for magic seed. Her fingers thumbed through the flashcard deck, divining a 'lesson' to willingly drive the bird wind into the darkness.
She drew a card and her abyssal eyes gleamed in the sunlight: CURIOSITY.
She tossed the card upwards and the breezy bird-souls caught it, caressing the raised gold lettering, and applying the lessons to the enigmatic dark portal.
What is it? The bird-souls collectively thought, zooming into the cryptic gateway—Swishy among them. Let's go see! We have to! We must! They were playful shadowclaws, lovely in their simplicity. Swishy—along with the rest of his avian family—willingly traversed the darkness. They didn't know they were being accepted as payment, trapped, profoundly sealed. And they didn't care. The secrets of the pitch were enough to sustain them. For a time, at least.
And in return the altar began to spray Ruby with tan-colored seeds— the beginnings of Straw City's fast-growing and magic wheat.
The flock entered as a single formation, a condensed zephyr, but once immersed in the dark each bird-soul began to separate, one by one by one by one...
The former shadowclaws called for each other, cacaw-ing, or using words they'd blindly gathered from Ruby's card magic, but they couldn't answer or find each other.
Swishy began to hear the accursed words then: lost, wretched, dead inside.
But the only word he'd yet learned was CURIOSITY. So Swishy, formerly a shadowclaw, now settled into his new home, keen on discovering what the darkness was about...
*
The soul connection broke—Swishy was stripped from Ruby's memories. His soul snapped from the dark flurry inside her and returned to himself.
Back to the empty-hearted present, to the soul-deep hurt crackling through Swishy: he watched Ruby throw his heart out the window.
The scarecrow's essence was drawn to a newly formed link, the ground outside feasting off his heart, absorbing its energy, triggering the familiar and turbulent rumbling. The cracks, the crumbling, the distinctly ground-breaking birth of saplings into cloud-tappers, cloud-tappers into sky-piercers, all surrounded by majestic fields of wheat. As the trees and wheat stalks rose, so too did the entire foundation The Curseworks was built upon, ascending heavenwards as the ground released its strained, monstrous growls.
Swishy couldn't make out Ruby's words but understood her glee. He read her lips then, the deliberate enunciation of HARVEST.
A sudden pulling—down to the ground Swishy went. Trey had drawn him to the floor. Swishy clung to his friend's chest, confused, disorientated, dazed. He squeezed and squeezed, knowing that this was what a BROTHER was for.
"Are you okay, Swish?" Trey's voice dripped with worry.
"Sorry..." the boy meekly swished with his hand, "I'm just not myself."
"Yeah...nothing is as it seems around here."
"I'm a bird, a real flap-flap."
"You play too much," Trey laughed. "Don't ever change."
The rumbling continued and Trey pulled him close, closer, and closer still.