EXODUS. PURSUIT. AND INNUMERABLE STAKES.
The departure went as such: the [Zip] infused kid-crows leading the charge; the [Zoom]-riding Swishy and Trey directly behind the children; Sling whose powerwalk kept pace with the boys; and the straw-bound adults in the very rear—much slower, much further back, and under immediate pressure from the enraged flock of snitchtalons.
Deep trepidation suffused through Swishy when seeing all the people he now aimed to protect. Those same daunting feelings spread among the villagers, too, whose emotions Swishy read through the straw he’d given them.
They were bound. They were one. They were together in discord as the star-speckled night loomed disturbingly upon them. Ruby’s moon was a spectral white. Pink remnants of the prior [Postcard] rested atop the trees and branches. Carnation petals of sky settled upon the ground in piles, two inches of it and counting. The children’s sprinting feet chuffed through the bright troves of discarded sky as Trey’s [Zoom] rider sprayed pink snow to both sides.
The shards of their former world, their utopia in the making, were laced with lamentation and regret.
Swishy maintained his scarecrow pose while Trey transported him on his shadowy longboard. Trey was his ride, in a casual skateboard stance, swerving around the trees and bushes and other scarecrows. As the [Zip] spells wore off the pack-leading kid-crows, he replenished them. The [Zip] influenced kid-crows had out-sped them, led by Amie—who now fashioned her purple bow into a wrist ribbon. Swishy smiled at the children, pleased to have them in sight.
And then the children dusted them, disappearing beyond the next section of woods—everytree central.
Well, at least they’re safe!
Trey sped their [Zoom] as well, barely keeping on their tails.
The boys moved through the now unfamiliar forest. The structure and placement of the trees were consistent with the prior [Postcard], but the proliferation of everytrees was new. The forestry was licorice black, a slick film coating the woods. The branches were wilted like willows, weighed down by heavy fruits. The black fruits—shaped as berries and bananas, coconuts and marang, mangos and durian—appeared to bob upon the branch ends, tempting passersby to grab and try them.
Come, try us…the curses around the fruit coaxed. The children sprinted as their fingers twitched, curious for a grubby detour.
“Ya’ll better not!” Trey scolded.
The kids flinched and kept their pace, denying the accusation. “We weren’t gonna! That black stuff looks rotten anyway.”
The syrupy fruits gleamed, the surfaces striped in smile-shaped moonbeams.
“Ya’ll are so bad at lying, oh my God! Focus on running and we’ll reward you later.”
A chorus of “Okaaay” leaped from the children’s mouths.
“Hypocrite,” Swishy said.
“Shut it, Swish, before I leave you behind.”
“So mean…”
“Yes, that describes me perfectly.” Trey smirked as he crouched down low, steering around the everytree madness with style. His head dodged the heavy fruits that seemed to offer themselves to his mouth. Swishy could’ve sworn that the branches moved of their own accord—but he couldn’t tell, not with the natural heft that bent the branches down low, conveniently at head height.
Inviting fruit? Or forbidden fruit? Who was to say?
Even Sling found difficulty in disguising her quivering gait. She strode along with massive steps, a power walk infused with the smallest portion of [Zip] Trey could manage. (“Any more and she’d be in Ruby’s living room before we could say her full name!”). Sling’s eyes were closed, her demeanor calm. But Swishy watched her soul tremor, the mummycrow pleading with herself to replenish her store of magical energy.
“It’s okay, Slingy,” Swishy said. “You can do it! This is part of the process.”
“Thank you.” Her eyes remained closed as a slight grin played against the corner of her bandaged mouth.
The dark progressed behind and around them. And even as they ran, they progressed toward The High Chasm itself.
One problem at a time. Swishy reminded himself. One straw, one hope.
As the adult scarecrows slogged in the formation’s rear, triggering the ochre glow of [Weave] spells, magic looped the gold-straw into various jewelry: necklaces, bracelets with pumpkin heads, rake earrings, and wing-shaped tokens to press into their chests.
The scarecrow necklaces reminded Swishy of Trey’s gold cross—but with a pumpkin head instead of a human one. They even branded their chests, weaving a bulging heart-shaped cord—images of Swishy’s face etched into themselves.
All the jewelry glowed with Swishy’s spirit. Gold sprouts emerged from his heart, setting his insides ablaze. Yes! It’s coming back, it’s coming back!
A short-lived celebration—the snitchtalons had caught up.
Now that the village was exposed, everyone in disarray and flight, the birds focused on attacking. They were hot on everyone’s heels, keeping a tight formation. When before they’d spread out and attack anyone they saw, this time they made sure not to leave each other behind. They were one bird, one boss, one communal dark spirit honed against their enemies. Their grief was a blade that cut through the Ruby-borne night.
The snitchtalons caught up to the last of the scarecrows, attacking with strong pecks. They were systematic, assaulting one straw-bound at a time. ASSAULT, MAIM, REND displayed in the air with each attack, a popcorn birth of violent words. The flock weren’t mincing words and intentions, so to speak—they were mincing scarecrows.
We’ll make you less! We’ll make you nothing! Just like you did to our cousins!
The straw-bound flinched from the hits but kept running. Pain wouldn’t register with their nerveless bodies but the psychic terror of becoming less, of the birds pecking unfixable holes into them, made their souls spike and their straw protrude with thorns.
A magic word flowed from every mouth: PRAYER.
Their straw god was no more than 8 or 9 meters away, receiving these calls for help. Swishy stood rigidly at the front of the board, T-posing, a rigid stance resembling the emblem etched into a store sign, a fountain statue in the plaza—anything a bird was apt to perch upon. He focused on the good, on anything that’d cultivate his gold while also sharing the benefits with his followers.
Swishy sent his energy to the gold-straw the villagers had drawn from his body.
The boy pictured himself in the position of the scarecrows. As he channeled his spirit through the air, the ideas he sought to communicate entered the Swish-straw accessories, clarifying into words and magic. He fed the jewelry power, blasting them with his intuition.
“BALE,” Swishy said through the gold-straw items. The necklaces, the earrings, the bracelets and rings and charms thickened into hay bales, hardening into armor.
And the straw-bound obliged. The [Bale] intent gathered wherever the snitches chose to attack. They hardened their heads and necks, their shoulders and backs. As they suffered pecks and bites and scratches, they shifted their straw, thinning out safe zones and densifying others.
Swishy’s aura flowered from the success. His lessons had worked. He’d mold the gold-straw jewelry into the desired form, and the scarecrows would [Weave] themselves accordingly. A triumphant sprig of gold pushed against the inner walls of his [Heart Armor], a fresh growth of hope.
Thank you! Thanks! Straw is the cure! Straw is life! A gracious flurry flowed back to him from his empowered patrons.
Swishy was appreciative but muttered to himself, “No, guys…you are life. You’re living right now…”
But the snitches had no time for games, for clever shielding. They were birds, not jackhammers, and had reverted to a technique that blackbirds had adopted since the dawn of time. They ceased their beak and talon attacks, steadying their flight to maintain a fixed distance behind the fleeing villagers. Their eyes glowed blue with [Detect], except this time those words flowed toward their targets. Once the D-E-T-E-C-T touched the individual scarecrows, the letters morphed once more in a smoky orbit.
The villagers were scared, fearful for the hex to come.
The [Detect] spell had evolved from its blue perception into a purple iridescence, one to match the shadowclaw feathers of their pursuers. Once the smoke solidified, [Lock-On] was revealed, circling the straw-bounds’ shoulders and necks.
The magic darkened—from blue to purple, from purple to the midnight black that shrouded the fiendish flock.
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DEBT COLLECTION, they said, returning to their old tactics, to the tried and true. Phantom ravens emerged from the flock’s amassed shadows and shot toward the scarecrows. There was no running from the bird-shaped projectiles. The scarecrows pumped their arms, praying for speed—but they didn’t have the magic or musculature for such an effort to matter. Once, the [Debt Collection] was called in, the snitchtalons forced them to pay with their bodies.
The talons hooked into the scarecrows’ shoulders and lifted them into the air, a flurry of cross-shaped silhouettes rising into the cloud cover. The phantoms had ascended in a sudden flash before Swishy knew what was happening. Silence reigned over the woods as the rustling sounds of scarecrow flight were erased.
What Swishy heard with disturbing clarity were his followers crying through the soul frequency, channeling their pleas into their gold-straw jewelry. But even those addresses were weakening as the distance between them and Swishy widened.
Their voices blared into focus, slamming Swishy’s psyche. The faint screams now turned louder, blasting his phantom eardrums with terror.
And then the sounds—real sounds, physical sifting of straw against the unforgiving physics of air resistance.
“They’re falling!” Trey pointed to the sky and Swishy noticed then, a hay bale rain of villagers dropping to the ground.
“Think their [BALE] can withstand it?”
“Absolutely the fuck not.”
“PILE!” Swishy strained as hard as he could, threading his soul through the ethereal network, pinpointing and reaching the villagers. He’d connected to dozens of gold-straw jewelry—hopefully, all of them—and dissolved them with [Pile]. A fond feeling spread beneath Swishy’s worries, managing happiness for sharing the first of his magical abilities. As the straw jewelry broke into individual strands, slowly and harmlessly drifting, the scarecrows did the same thing.
The falling scarecrows became suspended strands, weaving through the sky. The brown threads of themselves mixed with the cherry blossom pinks of the former sky, becoming nature itself.
Eat these motherfuckers! The birds cried. Straw is life! And vengeance is heart! [Debt Collection] crows darted in tragic streaks toward the straw rain but to little effect. Soon the flock dispelled their phantoms, conserving their energy, and flew around themselves. The results were similar, though—they caught some strands but not a meaningful, crippling amount.
An impish grin fractured across Swishy’s gourd. Thwarted snitchtalons made for a heart-happy boy.
Still, Swishy sensed the straw-bound whimper at the predation attempts. Through their trinkets, Swishy received a clear image of their distress: Bristles, the city’s number one wheat eater. The man lay within the scarecrow backpack, bouncing against Sling’s body. A snot bubble filled and popped.
The village was upset—but unharmed for the moment. Despite surrendering their bodies to [Pile], Swishy accounted for each soul. Everyone was safe, or as safe as possible given the circumstances.
“You’re amazing!” Swishy said through his phantom reach.
No, you are, Straw God!
“Don’t lose yourselves! Keep track of your souls—that’s the most important part of using this next move…”
S-C-A-R-E-C-R-O-W.
No response, no prayers—only action. Swishy could almost feel the villagers’ rough-hewn hands caress the gold-straw trinkets, ready to receive the next mystical lesson, the divine directive.
The straw landed upon the everytrees, the ground, even the plumage of the dreadful birds. They activated [Scarecrow] then.
The villagers’ vessel-less souls rushed in blue orbs, reaching for the straw in tendrils. It didn’t have to be their own straw—but any wheat at all. They couldn’t control wheat like Swishy but were learning to seek it out. Their lives, their eternal freedom, depended upon their ability to execute this now.
As the soul vines reached out to the nearest wheat they could find, they drew the straw toward themselves. Each soul hid behind bushes and within tree hollows and high in the everytree canopies, recollecting their bodies. The wheat gathered around their blue cores, shaping them from the inside out, firstly creating their torso, then their limbs, their head—and even chosen gold-straw jewelry of choice.
CACAW, CACAW! The enraged flock had no words, only primal calls—before darting into the treetops in a violent and frantic search for their enemies.
The scarecrows dived from their hiding spots and sprinted onward. Some were even in improved shape as before, having taken the time to construct thicker legs and more supportive feet. Soulful tears streamed from their grateful faces as [Scarecrow] intent made them anew.
As they ran, they continued to use [Weave] to fine-tune their rough edges.
“Incredible,” Swishy messaged them their golden frequency. “That wasn’t me. That’s all you! Fighting, dwindling, regrowing. That’s just our cycle—at least in this crazy world.”
Will you give us a better world? They asked.
“Yes!”
Better than Ruby’s?
“You’ll never have to have to run away in mine. You’ll never have to run from me.”
You promise, dear Lord?
“I promise.”
Thank God.
No words, no retorts, no soul-wrenching jokes from the snitchtalons. They were all business, tightening their formation, gathering into a single dark cloud. Their rage and grief thickened in the air as dense heat.
Swishy felt the knots in his soul—and blackwheat wrapping and double-wrapping around those areas.
A mass of noxious shadows gathered around the flock. They sped up and were suddenly directly above Swishy—and even further ahead above the children, too. Swishy could hear the disturbance in the foliage, birds diving for cover, primed for assassination. The snitchtalons had drawn up an arcane brand of hatred. Their auras became wrathraven black.
Alone, they were weak. Together, they were a R-I-O-T.
Their bodies merged as one dark tornado, their body parts indistinguishable. Their unified presence blurred but the RIOT was clear as day.
“BLACK TEMPEST” they cawed. Black weather encompassed the entire area. The horizon had disappeared. There was darkness and darkness only. Loathsome pitch stretched as far as the eye could see and the soul would dare read. Wind ensnared everyone in a cage of callous destruction. Branches snapped. Everytree fruits were flung to the ground. Leaves and dirt and feathers polluted the air.
The kids, the boys, Sling, and the villagers all stopped where they were. Everyone crouched low, taking cover—except for the strong. Swishy, Trey, and Sling stared at the birds, knowing the next step to freedom was on them.
“Trey, help!” Swishy called. “I can’t do God’s work alone!”
“Something feels blasphemous about that but okay!” Trey launched a slow-moving [Zzt] orb toward the approaching bird-nado but it gradually reduced to an ember, a spark, a snuffed-out firefly. Next Trey shot a [Zap] beam. Yellow light tore through the air, a thicker beam than Swishy was used to seeing out of him—but that, too, was diminished.
The dark aura of BLACK TEMPEST whorled with ceaseless indifference. The disgusting aura pressed onward, tearing the leaves, launching wood chips from the trees, carving the air with dark blades. Some of the straw-bound were unlucky, their hiding spots slashed and wind-whipped by the birds, so they took off running. They were average runners, though, not terrible but not any better than they were in their human bodies.
“Goodness, this is terrible.” Trey said, the Z-I-P letters orbiting his wrists. “Maybe I should give them a speed boost.”
“I don’t think running will do anything now.”
The boys gazed at the wind walls which thickened with debris, its patches of solid items increasing by the second. And their jail reached far higher than the tallest tree. Up above, the clouds were torn away by the sheer bird force.
And then the winds intensified, a sheer tornado knocking trees in half. The damage to the wood was by physical cuts, by beaks and talons fortified by shadows. The occasional shape of a snitchtalon flickered within the monstrous hurricane, a reminder of their newfound power.
Sling activated a [Wrap] spell, the bandages wrapping in endless tight layers over her body. She secured herself, then Bristles, and then used her lengthy scrolls to capture the kid-crows. She’d mummified everyone from head to toe. None of them had lost a single strand from their bodies.
But the others weren’t so lucky.
Through sheer gale force, the scarecrows began to rise into the air. Even those with strong grips on the trees couldn’t deny the force of a hurricane. Their hands remained fastened to their trees but their bodies were torn away, chunk by chunk, disposed to the winds. They’d lost their bodies again, and not in the [Pile] way, but through ruthless maiming.
The straw-bound were all reduced to debris, breaking and crumbling into fine dust.
But their souls, while also spinning in the dark tornado, were intact, relatively unharmed. They were slipping away, though, diminishing by the cycle.
“Any bright ideas?” Trey asked.
“I have one.”
“Alright, cool…well not cool but you got this.”
“I hope so.”
Swishy closed his eyes and reconnected with his gold-straw emblems, controlling them remotely. Everyone’s golden [Weave] creations took on a life of their own—Swishy’s.
As the scarecrows were vacuumed toward the blackness of the snitchtalon tornado, a familiar idea warmed in their minds. Q-U-I-L-L-S and S-P-I-K-E-S and P-O-R-C-U-P-I-N-E were carried inside that horrible wind, the birds screeching as the sharpened straw dragged across their bodies—made more painful by their own spinning force. The flock’s feathers ripped from the scarecrow’s spiteful needles, sounding like a curtain torn in two. Agony and pain cycled through the gale—both the terror of the captured villagers and the steering wounds of the hurricane crows.
Yet the dark winds persisted.
Now the scarecrows were taking initiative of their own, desperate to free themselves. [Quills] became [Barbs]—which then became [Serration] and [Chainsaw]. The nature of the straw shifted into shark teeth, grinding away at the enemy.
“I didn’t teach them that!” Swishy called out.
“I think that’s my fault,” Trey said.
When Swishy looked again he understood Trey’s meaning. More violent words emerged, SLICE and STAB and CLEAVE, and that’s when the boy noticed the slick move: the scarecrows had used [Weave] to create hands—hands that embraced and shaped blackwheat weapons from their satchels. They’d collected their last resort ammo from the [Straw Guardian], and now it’d come out to play.
Put us down! Leave us alone! Look what you’re making us do, look how you’re making yourselves suffer!
[Slice] and [Stab] and [Cleave] persisted, the blackwheat knives doing what they did best.
Except the winds prevailed, the snitchtalons crying in pain yet not slowing down at all. In fact, they’d sped up, their [Black Tempest] blossoming with vengeance. Red eyes gleamed within the gale like blood-filled gems. The vague shapes of bird heads were visible in the dark winds, their beaks grinding down mouthfuls of blackwheat.
Blackwheat upped the violence—and numbed the pain. The scarecrows continued to suffer as the snitchtalons tanked the blade damage, ignorant of their wounds. The bird-nado pressed onward, faster and stronger.
The scarecrows, losing energy, could no longer control their words. Their blackwheat attacks dissipated first. Then their [Quill] spells diminished.
Finally, they were blown to bits by the wind force.
“Swishy!” They cried. “Savior, we need you!”
Swishy tuned into the blackwheat in the tornado, the blackwheat growing within his arms and legs, and the blackwheat sprigging within his would-be heart—”
“I’m on it!” Trey said.
“Are you sure?” Swishy summoned a black “v” in his hand, the o-o-d-o-o streaming within the rest of his arm, speeding toward the outside.
Trey grabbed his wrist, the cursed “v” spiraling around them, then extinguishing into smoke.
Swishy calmed down. Who better to trust than Trey? “Okay,” he said.
Trey patted the back of his hand. “I got you, homie. I got us.” He gazed at the gale and took a deep breath. He opened his palm, summoning a [Zlide] portal. The black nebula, speckled in gold accents, vacuumed Trey into it one atom cluster at a time—and then he was gone.
Swishy focused and followed Trey’s aura along its path, a strand of Clayhearth gold soaring through the ether to the portal’s exit…
“That’s dangerous!” Swishy’s soul vision saw his friend’s destination.
Trey warped into the sky, dropping himself into the throes of the feather storm.