NIGHT DEEPENED EVERYWHERE.
The immersive darkness had more degrees to its palette. More tricks, more wrinkles, more imagination.
Right when Swishy felt that the world couldn’t get any more steeped in shadow, that a limit to the cursed population had been reached, the hexed blacks intensified. The world was beyond black, beyond obsidian. Cearth’s spirit population was billions strong it seemed. And there was no entity alive or dead or in states in-between that were devoid of something to wish for.
The spirit of want was a powerful force, and the scarecrow’s project was to overcome that.
And though Swishy wanted to help Myst, he didn’t know the first thing about wish-cancelling. Judging from his shadow sibling’s flight from the grubby skies and woods and ground, Myst didn’t either.
Swishy was draped over Sling’s shoulder, blackened, weakened, and cursed of heart. The [Voodoo] intent that’d bloomed from the depths of him now reintegrated into his body. He felt it as a separate part of himself, a dark flame flickering and singing through the straw. His past pains lived in him as a slow burn, and even though it’d explosively lashed out during the E-squad fight he could tell that the sum of his banked hurt hadn’t diminished in the slightest. It was a part of him now and always was.
He studied the outer darkness as he bobbed against Sling’s body. The environment outside him had its levels of darkness, and so too did his own. The thickening night made him ever more fretful for his future. Swishy worried about how much he could darken himself. The boy hoped he could take more. Lots more. Desperation set in as he prayed not to become anything resembling the world’s current state.
A deep night. A shrieking night. Swishy shuddered from the possibilities he saw in himself. His mind was taken over by memories of the ultra-black and decayed [Straw Guardian]. The [Possessed Guardian].
He wanted to be himself so bad. The boy wanted that more than anything. And by the same token he mourned how far his expectations had declined.
Sling jogged along in frailty. The mummy-crow’s spirit had substantially atrophied. Her lengthy stride allowed for swift progress but that was about it. Sling’s movements were flimsy and shaky, her thin soul barely filling her extremities. She stumbled from the persistent Cearthquakes and struggled with her footing more than she otherwise should’ve.
Meanwhile, the darkness adapted itself. The monstrous faces and gnashing teeth were too easily avoided. Growing eyes did little for their effectiveness as well. The cursed blacks gathered and gathered, weaving around each other into tight cords that resembled muscle and skin and bone. Seeking to become functional, to fulfill its wishes, the curses transformed.
The entities cohered into nodes and then positioned themselves into place. Where one spirit ended another one fused, a methodical progression through which the palms and knuckles and phalanges formed.
An army of hands expressed from the nodes, stretching their unnaturally long digits, claiming as much space as possible. Hands were everywhere, threatening to snatch away life—starting with Myst.
With a sudden flurry of swipes, they grazed her torso. The girl didn’t heal right away as the cursed contact left ripples throughout her collected shadows. She touched her ‘wound’ and steadied the wavelets through her magic.
“Is this damage?” She asked to no one in particular.
“It might be,” Swishy said.
“I should cut these fingers off. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“If you can stand the corruption then go crazy.”
Myst’s smirk faltered. There was doubt and Swishy understood. The hands multiplied. Black aura oozed from their fingertips like oil. He likened their contact to blackwheat weapons—but a level beyond that. Their poison touch affected Myst and that was new.
“Perhaps a girl like me should be careful. What a dangerous world, wouldn’t you say dear Straw? But I advise you to do the same. Seems I’m not the only one they want.” Her mischievous laughter returned—which Swishy was both glad and annoyed to hear.
Clusters of hands now hovered over Swishy and Sling, bending their fingers in preparation to grab. The hands also had other prey in mind as they summoned around other living beings, birds and salamanders and bark-resting beetles. Myst was right to warn him: the curses wanted a piece of everybody else too. For some reason, the curses became less picky as they shot away from Myst to claim different targets.
The phantom hands sprouted throughout the sky and trees and ground, wiggling and grasping. Their shadowy fingers grazed Swishy’s arms and Sling’s calves in a blind and relentless frenzy. These hands didn’t even have eyes anymore. Whatever they grabbed for seemed to not matter. A sudden change but also an inevitable one when Swishy put his mind to it for a few brief seconds. Swishy could now read the wish threads that were engrained into the lifelines of the palms. The blue threads formed into a cursive script that revealed the reason for their abrupt compulsion to seize…everything.
[Present the way forward].
The E-squad’s third wish was more potent and sweeping than the paper dolls had bargained for.
Not that that mattered to the wisher, whose original presence and voice were absorbed into Swishy’s heart. They were as good as dead; they were integrated as Swishy thought of it. Everybody eats, so he ate. The legacy of want remained, and the Cearth was an all-too-willing executor of the will.
And the altar received extra nudges to fulfill that wish since it garnered a lot of support. And piggybacking. The curses all around began to repeat the wish, agreeing heavily with that idea. The ones within Swishy did the same, the heart curses breathing [Present the way forward]. He was mortified but understood. Direction was a natural and reasonable want. He couldn’t be mad at the curses this time.
Everyone, every entity, wanted to know what to do with their lives, and Cearth was open with its blueprint.
When it came to hearts and good seed, they showed Myst as its shining example. But when it came to moving onward the land now chose many targets, enhancing the blue gleam of auras all around.
[Present the way forward] were tattooed over the hands, and the enchantment’s power made them extra sensitive to Swishy and Sling. The sprouting hands pointed toward the pair. White mouths cracked across the palms now, too, drooling at the corners.
Up above, the hands-with-mouths were chasing Myst, who now took on the form of a harpy. She glided; she dodged; she twisted away from the whip-like tongues that shot after her.
This is not the way forward. I don’t have all the answers but I know it’s not THAT, ugh.
Sling tightened her grip on Swishy and found the strength to wrap him twice over in bandages. Once the magic wraps were secure, the boy felt the spell in them with his body, sensing the word [Embrace]. The emotional spell ingredients were simple and detectable. SECURITY and PROTECTION and a Sling favorite that appeared in all her enchantments, NURTURE.
Swishy sighed into her body. He needed this. Just for right now.
Hands came and went but none reached the boy. Sling went fast, so fast—almost too fast. The bounding power walk became a jog and that jog turned into a run. Life rushed by in a blur of woods and fingertips. Cursed screams deformed into wind. The woman’s speed shattered all.
The boy held onto this brief peace while the lion’s share of his awareness tracked the third wish devilry. He was extra-conscious of his gleaming aura.
The world around him glowed as well, treasures everywhere for the curse’s taking. It was gorgeous and horrifying. He wished he could close the coin chest on life so that the city would move on.
But no—Straw City was good at finding things to want. Cearth freely offered the goods—though it couldn’t hide it if it tried. Been-there-done-that was the attitude he sensed of the planet.
The hands were a pestilence. Natural shadowclaws were snatched from the sky. Pretty leaves twisted between the curious phantom fingers. Clumps of straw were ripped from the Cearth and crushed in tight-fisted grips.
In the far, far distance, detectable only through the soulscape were the blue outlines of Trey, the kid-crows, and their mummified parents. Bristles’ winged soul flared as well, and Swishy wondered how the Cearth approved of that menace.
Madness was all around—which was Cearth facilitated but not Cearth’s fault. The way forward was received by the planet as a wish for advice, and the answer revealed itself through enlivening the souls of those it deemed worthy. A compliment, honestly, but an inconvenient one as now the hands surged for these clues to a good future—and the good people that’d lead it.
“Trey’s in trouble!” Swishy said.
“We’re in trouble, Myst is in trouble, the village is troubled. That’s the news of the day, my little one.”
Hands populated by the second, ruling the night. Small hands, big hands, long hands, and claws. Every time one conjured, Sling smacked them away with her own immense body, the sweet bandages warding the curses with holiness they weren’t ready for. The hands defogged and disintegrated upon contact, only to reintegrate after a moment’s rest.
“I need to call him.”
“If he’ll answer. If the hands are here for us, they’re certainly around our loved ones too.”
Swishy didn’t want to confirm that Sling was right. Around every true-blue aura that was bolstered by the planet, clusters of shadowy hands appeared in their immediate vicinity. Spirits were augmented and complimented but the cages went up around them, the avarice closing upon the harvestable and holy.
“I’ll try to reach him.”
“Okay, do your best.” Sling pressed him firmly against her shoulder as if trying to squeeze the stress out of him.
He felt more pancake than haybale but the pressure helped him. Her felt strength, the proof of her attention to him, was reassuring. Swishy, who felt alone, was reminded that he wasn’t. He always needed the assurance but he didn’t feel bad about it. The boy resolved to see the day where he’d just know, and that the knowing would be enough.
She’s pressing me. She’s got me. Sling is a gift, Sling is a home…Lean on her and pay her back double.
Swishy’s thoughts turned to Trey, wanting to reach him through the soulscape. The bright ideas, the ideas adorned in Clayhearth-gold, were Trey’s and Trey’s alone. The straw boy couldn’t pick the brain of a friend who had likely [Zip] sprinted to the base of The High Chasm by now.
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Thankfully, he was wearing Timbs. Swishy was geared up from foot to head in Trey's clothing, and he scolded himself for not remembering his soul link: the connection he’d forged with the scarecrows through his straw. Perhaps it worked the other way around, that through the gifts he’d received from others, he could contact them as well.
I really wish he gave me a phone. I really wish I'd given him my straw. I really wish a lot of things…there has to be a foresight card he’s hiding somewhere.
“Trey,” Swishy said as he pictured the image of his friend. He tried to see Trey as he likely was in the current moment, bossing the kid-crows around, sighing at the mummified adults, and adjusting the Bristles backpack onto his shoulders—wary that he’d wake up and attack without warning. “Trey, you there?”
“WHO WERE THOSE FLAT GIANTS? WHY DID THE WOODS DISAPPEAR THEN REAPPEAR? WHAT THE FUCK ARE THESE HANDS?”
“Strong shadows not named Myst.” The boy said, answering everything at once.
And then Trey calmed down, his breath doing a couple of in-out-in-out cycles—before a different form of anxiety-venting poured out of him. “What do you need? How’d you get inside my head? Are you coming after us?”
“I can’t Swish-speak three answers at once—”
“You just did!”
“Okay…then: Help! Straw magic! Yeah.”
“Do you have uh, some more aggressive straw magic for all this hell?”
“I don’t know, that’s why I called you. The curses are making wishes—ones that Myst is trying to reject.”
“So that’s what’s tattooed all over their hands. Cearth favoring us as ‘the way forward’ is the most annoying reason to get chased. If the curses want help, they could just say so. You know—instead of attacking us!”
“Concentrate! Please, be okay!” Swishy listened hard for activity through their connection.
“We’re good! We’re fast, even if their appearance out of thin air is arguably faster. But we got this.”
Swishy’s worry remained. In the distance, he saw the vague outlines of the villagers, acres away, zipping through tunnels of closing shadows. Chains of hands chased everyone he cared for and loved. He was silent but the pause, through the soul link, must’ve alerted Trey.
“Have you gone dark again?” The Clayborne asked.
Swishy continued his silence. He averted his eyes from his arms and hands. His condition was too much.
After a moment, Trey sighed. “It’s okay, you don’t have to say—”
“I’ve gone dark—”
“For real, it’s fine, I underst—”
“I’m okay, Trey. I think I am. Sling is carrying me. I’m good cargo.”
“I’m sure you are. Just meet us by The High Chasm. You’ve been dark before and we can make you un-dark again.”
“I know, I know. It’s scary and stressful but I can do this.”
“You can, homie!”
“Do you know how we can get them to take the wishes back?”
“Get them? As if they’d listen to...actually, you know, your idea is kind of clever.”
“I don’t see what’s clever about not knowing the answer!”
“It’s Straw City. You don’t get people to do things—you force them.”
“That’s…that’s so smart. Are you a wrathraven in disguise?”
“Me? No. But forgive me for saying this: you just might be. Well, you aren’t—but you have the traits. I’m sorry to ask but maybe straw magic isn’t the move but…”
“But blackwheat curses are.”
“I’ll figure things out on my end, but I think we have an answer for you!” Swishy could hear the [Zzt] spells sparking to life. Many of them.
“Okay, bye Trey. Getting attacked.”
“Wait, what—”
“Bye.”
(…)
A wall of interlocked hands appeared—then another and another, a series of stacked hand nets waiting to ambush the giant mummy-crow.
Sling brought Swishy into her chest and cradled him like a ball.
It was so dark. The blackwheat within her wraps reached for Swishy, bristling against his body. He tried to remain calm.
Sling’s arms is a safe place. She’s kind, she’s kind, she won’t let her darkness get me.
There was no sighing delight this time. The boy was tense as he held his soul in place, keeping it from reaching the dark parts of him. PAIN and himself both lived inside him and his willpower was the referee that kept them apart.
The hurting parts of him held his attention captive at all times. He could separate them from his straw yet still felt their physical pressure, their constant presence. He couldn’t handle another [Chasm] but he had plenty of material to use. If wish-canceling was his goal he’d use the darkness to do it.
But how? The wishes were approved. He’d seen wishes that were duds, that were deemed unreasonable by Cearth. On this day, though, the planet decided to give the goods away for free.
Turbulence. Sling stumbled through several seconds of a Cearthquake. Her grip loosened but the wraps tightened. Swishy felt the giantess lower her body and brace for impact. Through the gaps in her arms, he saw the imminent dangers.
The wall of hands grew mouths, tongues, and a dark energy that whirled within those opened maws: SHRED. Disjointed and free-floating fangs twisted within the hand-mouths as the s-h-r-e-d rotated around them like reliable gears.
Sling acted tough but she had no option. The boy felt her spirit. No soul was charging up for a technique—she was just going to take the raw hit.
Wish-cancelling. Swishy needed to do it. Now.
“[Grain Mill]!”
The blue soul within his gourd mixed with a jellyfish-like inkiness that briefly condensed—and then bloomed.
A series of dark waves jetted from Swishy’s eyes and mouth, cascading outward in widening rings. His intent traveled like sound, reaching anyone who was there to hear it, to feel it. He aimed directly at the oncoming wall of monstrous hands, which, because they were full of audacity and gall, attempted to grab the attack. As the hands clenched and pinched at the corrupted air, they were buffeted by the first blast of aura.
Swishy was confident in his usage of the attack this time. He wasn’t new to the game of HURT, PAIN, and INTIMIDATION, and strongly infused those long-stored feelings into the [Grain Mill]. The scarecrow was a boy of peace, a boy who held so much back, and the dark waves of his technique contained his worst impulses. Crimes that he restrained himself from were now being shown to the curses.
The hands trembled. Their palm-mouths turned downward into frowns. Fangs retracted. Tongues shriveled into black powder and were blown away by the wind.
Sling crashed through the hand-wall. The weakened curses burst into wailing cinders. She kept going, following the auras of the village.
A new wall rose to block their progress.
Swishy reached for the darkness again. He trusted himself to not let his straw-borne hexes affect him.
[Grain Mill].
The hands hid within closed fists or laid flat upon the ground or even finger-walked away in trembling disquiet. Some hands belonging to the most valiant curse clusters held themselves up in defense of the others, but the [Grain Mill] waves phased through and reached those that were shielded.
It was working, to share the pain, to embrace the feelings that were both a blessing and a bane to the boy who wanted nothing more than serenity.
Fresh curses, compelled by their [Present the way forward] wish, had no clue about the dark wave business—and if they did, they didn’t care. They recreated the walls and sky nets, grabbing for anything Cearth marked with a favorable aura.
He charged up another [Grain Mill] but delayed its release, craving a moment of clarity. The scarecrow was tired of touching his pain.
The blackwheat-inspired attacks took it out of him.
Swishy’s dream of a worthy heart was now that much further away.
But the boy’s curses, his dark heart residents didn’t think so. They didn’t live in the world, though—they lived in the gloom and cynicism packed in the deep recesses of vessels. Their one-dimensional wants would do nothing to move the needle toward Swishy’s happiness.
As Myst ran from the aggressive wishes, stretching into a thin string of shadow in pursuit of her freedom, Swishy took a self-inventory of his sorry state: dark straw, dark heart, and a dark future—the blowback of the [Voodoo] usage hadn’t yet come to bite him. He knew he wouldn’t feel the strain right away. But it was coming. The anxiety over his corroding spirit, personality, and curse tolerance was increasing—because all of these things were decaying by the second. His oncoming collapse was immeasurable to his spiritual sense but everything—absolutely everything—that he’d gone through in Straw City claimed a cost. His body was drained of all assets. Nothingness was coming. And perhaps, sooner more likely than later, he’d lack feeling enough to sense the presence of his chasm.
His body typically produced blackwheat that with this level of dread, this level of dark thought. But he couldn’t feel its growth. Perhaps the Great Loss had already started.
While the curses progressed thoroughly within Swishy’s being, he wouldn’t allow himself to lose his mind to them. But they were there. He could feel them like a second self—only when he thought about them. Sometimes he ignored it. Sometimes he leaned into the feeling. The boy was getting good at picking and choosing. But the important part to him was knowing that they were there, acknowledging the past and present hurt.
Turning pain to power.
He hated how Myst was right. How using Ruby tactics was effective.
And then he used that hate too.
“[Grain Mill]!”
The curses in the hands fled from the whole, either flying off as vapor or slithering as a ground-borne shadow. Dissolution of the wall occurred one digit, one knuckle at a time. No structure, no form, no mouths. There was only silence. Swishy had sealed their mouths and then did the same to their minds. They were afraid to want things—and afraid to express a will. Cearth would feel nothing from them.
Myst eased her glide for a moment as the skies were clearer in sections, the atmosphere sufficiently threatened by the scarecrow’s hex.
The hands reappeared in the sky and the spaces between the woods. Reinforcements were waiting for their chance. Swishy did it again: [Grain Mill].
A grouping of hands crumbled—and more came up.
[Grain Mill], [Grain Mill], [Grain Mill].
Swishy had barrels of pain to spare. Without realizing it, he used a [Pile] and sifted out of Sling’s arms. The boy’s straw flowed around the back of Sling’s neck and reformed into his body. He stood on Sling’s shoulders in a scarecrow pose, radiating black energy.
And a smoky curtain went up and hardened into hand-related musculature, a mishmash of palms and fingers—but in the wrong places and proportions. The deep night steadily weakened as Swishy scared the curses away.
As Sling ran past the felled barricades, kicking up dark dust in her wake, the powdered curses ceased their wishing. Swishy stared down at his victims and the ash piles trembled, retracting their [Present the way forward] wish. Their fears overwrote their first request with new ones, whimpers of Save me, Don’t let him get us, Hide us away, Blow a breeze to carry us far from that evil boy!
Myst’s shadows were cooperating again, restoring her chest.
Many different words were uttered and prayed by the curses in the woods and even within Swishy’s heart, but the boy’s diminished sensitivity had filtered them down to a general—but accurate to the situation—intent. Show us, show us, show us! The way forward is ours! And then a last uncouth one was mixed in: Open that shadow bitch! She’s just black air!
The irony of the last comment wasn’t lost on Swishy. The dark-straw was calling the blackwheat black.
Swishy reached inside and brought his heart out. Its curses cackled through their wishes, the wheat jutting in spikes and thorns.
“Stop it!” Swishy commanded, crushing a section of his own heart. The curses scurried from the damaged area, unharmed but scared. The wish threads that were connected to Myst had faded but hadn’t disappeared. They continued to feed their wishes.
The boy decided to make an example of his own darkness. He’d targeted the outside world but his inner curses should’ve taken that as a warning. Didn’t they hear me the first time? The thought cut through his mind with callousness and calculation. But he didn’t care. His wish-cancelling experiment bore valuable fruit:
Cancel the wishers.
He stared at his jagged mess of a heart, toughening his grip.
Hey, wait! But the begging fell on deaf straw.
[Grain Mill].
His curses screamed. His heart screamed. But the world healed. The deep night relaxed its shades, the curses diffusing and fleeing from the immediate area. As the entities were cleansed from the air and the surfaces, dark blue tinges of sky returned. Stars were visible.
Myst’s chest began to close, sealing the precious gem of straw inside. She ran her fingers across her chest and exhaled.
“Mysty, are you…” Swishy fumbled within his mind for the right word. Sealed, healed, and restored were the right words—but not quite right. Not perfect.
“I am…better,” she said.
Whole is the word that came to Swishy’s mind, a couple of seconds late, but he knew that Myst read him well.
“That’s a good word,” Myst said. “But what about you?”
Swishy followed her gaze toward the frayed heart in his hand, dark and somehow…bruised. But the spikes were receding.
As the straw shifted back into place, into typical heart-organ roundness, he could feel the apologies of his curse tenants. We won’t do it again. We’re sorry. He didn’t believe them but that was okay. DISCIPLINE was the way. The letters bloomed in different parts of his body, working him over. A new strength wove through him that he didn’t recognize. He liked the feeling, though, and knew that it was doing right by him.
Nutritious…yeah, this discipline thing is somehow nutritious.
Swishy returned the core inside him and sealed the opening.
Myst angled toward Swishy and grinned. A beauty mark near her jaw caught the moonlight, softly twinkling. She turned her arms into shadowclaw wings and flapped.
A cascade of feathers descended in gorgeous arcs.
Sling grabbed the boy by the waist and lifted him.
Swishy scarecrow posed, stiffening his shoulders, tensing his stubby little hands. The power and peace were abundant. He closed his eyes and waited for the arrival of his prize.
3.
2.
1.
As the first feathers brushed across his gourd, Swishy’s soul opened.