RUBY SHOULD’VE KNOWN THAT SOMETHING WAS WRONG.
The woman hadn’t anticipated having to fight anyone. Ever. She never thought of herself as suspicious, unreasonable, or foul. Her self-esteem was at a constant peak. Nobody criticized her. Nobody was mean. There were no signs that anything had gone wrong in the city. Nagged by the notion that something was amiss, she dismissed it. Ruby kept creating. And why not? Creation was her business.
She even beautified the place with her [Postcard] visions. The animals had a lovely place to live. Damages from the old parts of the city were remodeled through her shadowcraft. All the burned and razed structures were swept beneath the tide of [Midnight] shadows and were molded into natures. Beach, skies, woods. Serenity and quiet time were the aims. Everything would settle. The citizens would feel the goodness. It was The Stormcellar—but without its wind. What could be better? To her understanding Ruby had outdone herself.
The outcome of her having to put up a fight in this paradise baffled her to no end.
A paradise! It really is! What’s there for Swishy and Trey to rebel about? This is stupid. So, so stupid.
But now she’d set portals upon the land and drew from the [Midnight] newcomers to become troops instead of jaw-droppingly-stunning postcards. The current state of affairs ran counter to her intentions, her thoughtfulness. Ruby had to watch everyone’s movements. Shadowclaws were angry—and some were dead. Many died, actually, though that in and of itself wasn’t the problem. There were many souls to look after and she wanted people to handle their own beefs. That was the adult way, right? Conflict resolution. Stern warnings. Communication about boundaries.
Hadn’t she done that with Swishy when he entered The Curseworks? A wind-blown rage that let him know hey-you-were-wrong. It was parenting the way it ought to be done. Hadn’t he promised to make things right with her? She was heard and validated. And then she brought Swishy into the fold, setting him upon The Stormcellar. It was a vision she wanted him to contribute to. They had an understanding. Hadn’t they?
She gazed through the portals, roiling with rage, bolstering the shadow serpent that coiled around Trey. Maybe I’m somehow a bad communicator. Words aren’t enough is what they’re trying to tell me!
Things that were supposed to be good had inverted into chaos.
Nothing was right. Nothing at all.
Ruby flew through the night on her broom, somersaulting, doing all her favorite tricks that she’d seen Myst once do. The first time Ruby used the Straw City altar, she was enthralled. The morose disposition she had as a kid didn’t give it away, but every time she came for subsequent wishes, watching Myst’s movements and engaging with this secret shadow being was half the draw. More than half, truthfully.
The pretty shadow swimming fused to Ruby’s imagination, motions she tried to capture with her too-human, too-skeletal body. She knew she was limited—being a human lady of course—but mimicking the shadow woman’s movements as best she could was a sport to her, and something of an artistic outlet. Stunt flight was one of her favorite things to do, calming and lovely.
Ruby did a somersault, a little twisty-twist, and other elegant patterns. The shadows that propelled her broom left a smoky contrail that spelled RUBY. She made a little heart at the end of it too. Great work, wonderful even. She should’ve been proud of herself. Weeks went into perfecting this trick.
But she was pissed. Super pissed.
Her shadows coiled around Trey’s neck, fighting against his electrical spells, rejecting their warding light. She wanted Swishy to watch as she choked his friend.
Ugh! Why am I like this? I don’t want to be this way. Haven’t I done nothing but give? I’ve been honorable! I shouldn’t feel…whatever this even is. I shouldn’t feel so…off.
An understatement. She felt way beyond ‘off’. The proximate shadows told her so.
D-E-A-T-H flowered all around her, pulsing downward into her surveillance portals.
Death? I give life! I choose life! Please Cearth, give me grace. I’m a lady who is trying. Don’t you see?
But the letters only thickened. The world insisted that she was death, nothing of a creator at all.
So Ruby leaned into it, continuing her attack. Feeling her emotions and letting them run their course—murder and all—seemed like a reasonable method to dispelling the unsightly word. She wanted to focus on her real objective anyway.
Clearing her mind was a start. Composure was key. Then she’d move along with restoring order.
Myst will help! She always does.
She searched with her eyes, her portals, her birds, and her Cearth-given soul sensitivity. Wishing for Myst’s presence wasn’t a tact she wanted to take. Ruby respected her too much. She thought it was respect, anyhow. It was more like awe. Inspiration.
J-E-A-L…the letters filled the air, one by one, taunting Ruby.
“Don’t even say it. Respect. I feel respect.”
The “O” came, then the “U”—and Ruby averted her eyes, though she still felt the shape of the next letters grating against her aura.
(…)
During her Myst patrol, she reflected. Ruby scrambled to finish her where-in-the-curse-word-did-I-go-wrong math. Her thoughts turned to everything she’d built and the time invested to build it.
In fact, she was still building it, much to her ire.
But she was determined, dedicated, and allergic to failure. Even though she knew that she couldn’t fail in the traditional sense, being that was it impossible for her to descend into poverty and famine, she remained driven by forward momentum. Limits were meant to be surpassed. Walls were facts for less-than-Rubies. But she was Ruby. The one. The only.
Yet she behaved as if starvation was only one bad harvest away. Her heart believed this lie with everything. She knew it was a lie, a farce, but it dominated every cell in her body. Ruby had money—money with her face on it—and straw. Magic and the favor of the shadows were also in her possession. She was a fortune machine if one were to ever exist and yet that girl inside wouldn’t let up.
The kid she was in childhood made real the horrendous feelings of her upbringing.
Hunger, hunger, hunger—it never went away.
Ruby’s past refused to scar over. It was just pain, present and gripping. Time healed nothing. She woke up day after day, just hurting.
The girl inside clawed at her rib cage, her intestines, her soul. Past Ruby couldn’t keep those sharp dirt-stained fingernails away from the inner workings of the lady of now, a witch determined to do her best.
"I’m trying. I’m doing—actually. Settle, please. We are fed. Everybody eats—everybody IS eating, my child."
The girl inside starved. These assurances were empty, less than nothing.
H-U-N-G-E-R drove into Ruby’s bloodstream. Ruby sensed it coursing through every part of her. Her stomach compacted. Her talented body found new ways to hurt all the time. Sometimes she swore she felt child Ruby die, an alternate reality that struck her as real. The inner girl shut down, dissolving into regrets. Whenever it happened she buzzed with an incurable want. Inside she was death. Inside she was abyss. Curses tugged at her, urging her to awaken. But when Ruby returned to clear-eyed consciousness she was at a loss. Her insides were scrapped clean, raw in every possible way.
Achievement was her only solution, the only thing that seemed to light her soul again. Anything small or large that gave her a hit of satisfaction. A bit of food. A seed planted. Landscaping magic coming to postcard-perfect fruition. Broom tricks done right—and even broom clumsiness that nature’s curses pretended not to see, something she secretly loved. That was when she felt most like a lady.
Other things helped, too. The people getting fed. The former souls of The Stormcellar prancing in their fattened bird bodies, discussing deliciousness.
It was beautiful.
And it was maddeningly addictive.
It never stopped.
More. She knew that more was there for her to claim. Before her first encounter with the altar, she’d always seen spirits with such clarity. For her shadowkind and humanity were never separate realms. But one world. Cearth—she’d known its essence from the start.
A savior. The idea echoed inside her during a hunger spell, an abyssal daze.
Ruby thought of a scarecrow, a body without a stomach. A body that was food. She thought she was clever. A simple little thing, a life-sized doll, yet she thought of it as her greatest work. Even before Swishy came to life, Ruby was proud. The girl inside was too. Ruby was just happy to give the dark girl a fraction of a smile. Sullen little pest! An affectionate—but very honest—thought.
The birth of Swishy the Scarecrow set everything in motion. And that’s all he was supposed to be: a scarecrow. A magic one no doubt, but his enchantments were to be controlled by Ruby. Kind of like how pets belonged to their owners. Exactly like that actually.
So when Trey brought Swishy to her home, Ruby hadn’t imagined it going much more swimmingly than that. Ruby was the architect of the situation. The shadowclaws were sent to the altar site with the necessary materials for a body. They were instructed to bring anything that needed to be sacrificed. All the magical instruments and heartfelt tributes and other materials were dropped into the shadows. Instructions were clear—to cast things into the altar until the quota was fulfilled. But that was the thing: Ruby didn’t know how much her request would cost. She gave only one instruction.
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Sacrifice until you sense the right thing happening!
And so the birds did.
Ruby knew that she’d done the right thing, the smart thing, the save-everyone-forever thing. A savior was all anybody needed. The folks around her acted in such a way that she knew this to be true.
People wanted to have things, desperately, hungrily. No matter how much she’d managed to gift her people, their cravings remained. Famine was resolved, fixed quite quickly at that, but the memory of it lived in everyone like a black hole. At any given moment, the city was prone to feel the crushing spirit of lack. The invisible force molded around their organs—and crumpled. It compressed. It ground agonizing ridges against their bodies and souls. Ruby hated how her community’s wants activated the H-U-N-G-E-R in her, that potent cramping hurt so much that she went blind at times.
She was a revolution. A trendsetter. Long ago she’d acquired a taste for being cool, playful, magazine-cover degrees of aloof. An individual is all she truly wanted to be. Sometimes a girl aimed to be luxurious, pretty, and rich. And Ruby ticked every box. There was no reason to not feel this way, even when the starvation trash-compacted every aspect of her being.
It gave her pride to be herself and herself alone.
But when the hunger set in, when her fellow Shugarrians wanted something, that burden linked directly to her. She was never just herself. She was her people. Always, always her people.
Swishy was her way of becoming an individual anew.
The boy could save the day, a totem of seed, someone for everyone to pray to.
Ruby asked for her replacement but received something of a god—and a god that thought differently, that had a personality of its own. Bird-soul wasn’t supposed to be so potent. But a god could be anything is what she’d learned from this situation. If Cearth chooses you, then it will grant you its benefits. You get to represent it.
The illustrious Rubella Castór was one of those people, to a degree at least. She was a mortal woman. Her favor was destined to one day end. Swishy, though, was an unexpectedly durable seed. It was perfect, she swore it was.
All her designs went exactly as planned. She wished Swishy to life, procured his heart, and grew The Curseworks into its current form of The High Chasm. Exactly one month ago she’d tossed Swishy’s heart out the window and watched it take root into the soil. Once the heart had burrowed out of sight she focused on feeling the next steps. Rather than staring at the planting site, she closed her eyes and indulged in the rumbling.
Swishy and Trey had been sent home while the shadowclaws went around to spread word of the first successful scarecrow harvest. The zeppelin lit with its straw-positive messaging. The rumbling foundation was brewing a transformation the likes of which Ruby had never seen. It was exciting. So exciting. And then the changes occurred.
The wheat stalks sprouted first, covering the windows with their height. From one window the straw was all orange and yellow and green, the typical stalks through which the farmers created rice and bread and cane sugars. Another window was all blackwheat. It was mysterious and oily. It shined like gold. Moonlight cut through the dark stalks in cascading diagonal stripes, black and silver candy canes. Her home had become a beautiful place. She hadn’t seen anything like it. A shadowed wonderland.
All the straw made her feel good. It’d become a comfort to her. Food was the only way she and the others experienced some measure of security. And it was culturally significant too. The Shugarrian history was based in tropical islands for the entire century of Cearth along with a centuries-long run in the Earthen times. The Philippine islands, Indonesia, Singapore—the Shugarrians came from these places, known for their grain.
When the straw gleamed in the sun, Ruby knew she’d come across a miracle. She found it neat that her people could have rice again. Ruby didn’t put too much stock in this, but it was something she liked to talk about to inspire the elders around her.
Her leadership style revolved around one primary maxim: Give the people what they want.
It stayed on her mind all the time. She knew that this was how you captured people’s hearts. Never had it occurred to her that she had an extraordinary success rate when it came to fulfilling everyone’s wishes. This wasn’t the way to operate going by conventional knowledge. But that’s what made Ruby…Ruby. She was exceptional. When she got dressed, putting on her favorite accessories, double-coating her murder-red lipstick, she pumped herself up. I am a STAR, she said to herself in the mirror. No, really, I am. A gentle smile. As she giggled her inner glee stoked against the dull hunger she learned to ignore.
Ruby’s daydreams were cut short by the Swish-heart changing everything.
Everything came to life.
(…)
Ruby’s home began to rise.
Her ground floor bulged from the roots, ruining her tiles, and sending her furniture to the nearest wall. Everything slid around. The kitchen table flipped to its side, spilling her large home-cooked dinner—which was the one thing that annoyed her out of all the damages sustained. I worked hard on that! Oh my goodness! Next time I’m making the birds cook…She stewed in tongue-clicking disappointment but snapped out of it when she realized that the ascent continued.
Wind. A rush of frosty gale poured into the open windows, freezing her exposed arms, and numbing her face. She’d surpassed most of the tree line. And then everything became a mix of gray and black, swirling colors that crackled in some spots and were misty—even wet—in others. From within the clouds, she couldn’t tell if her home was still rising or if it was settling in.
The rumbling continued. Another push upward. The cloud dew pushed into the house and everything inside began to shine—her teapot, her glass cabinets, her chandelier (which thankfully hadn’t fallen), and the gold bangles upon her wrist. Down below Ruby noticed clusters of branch arms fanning outward around the former shops and homes, forming into platforms with their separate foundation. All the homes became their own floating territory, treehouses (which made Ruby laugh to herself), complete with their own straw garden sections to explore.
She spread her arms outward, indulging in the rain. A part of her mind slid to a memory of the scarecrow she’d left on the altar, the items that inevitably became Swishy. She really felt like his mother in that moment, scarecrow-posing like her son of straw.
As the woman T-posed in the window, her home began to spin and spin and spin.
These were controlled rotations underfoot. Ruby kept a tight focus on the spiraling energy. Magic that was rooted in Swishy’s heart was sent upward into the foundation and coiled like a serpent. By now she noticed that an immense tree had grown underneath the plaza area, widening, creating different clearings, and organizing itself into a small town in the sky.
Power surged through everything beneath her. As Ruby concentrated she traced the energetic currents with her consciousness. The edges of her power ran its influence down through the inner bark. She could feel the magic harden into lifelike textures, the spiritual fuel solidifying into bark and hollows and knots. The magic coursed along the shape of the branches and thinned out into delicate leaves.
Everything grew. She learned the feeling and outlines of each crop. She learned weaknesses in different stalks. Talents that came from her new world. Ruby’s personal ecosystem was more enchanted than she bargained for, which tended to be the case with her and the darkness. When she entertained shadowcraft, it always seemed to pay her double. Fate had a penchant for making things work out for her.
Ruby, who’d suffered in The Stormcellar without parents or shelter or food, was now loved by Cearth itself.
She didn’t know how else to interpret the decades of favors she was given. The way she used magic was experimental. Nobody knew a thing. The Curse was only a hundred years ago, and anyone who managed to make the altars function with regularity was a pioneer. But she’d never received so much benefit all at once before. Harvest was one thing. Understanding was the true gold. She knew more and could do more and was eager to experiment. The way the altar gave her gifts was something she never had a peak of before.
It was an intoxicating feeling, to acquire senses akin to those of Myst.
That night she became one step closer to Myst.
Ruby always knew that she was special. But for the first time, she now felt chosen by the Cearth. Shadows were typically hers to have. And now she had the know-how to use them.
She stood atop the world at the sky below. The city wasn’t visible beneath the cloud cover but her sensitivity to souls let her read the spiritual network. There were people-shaped energy patterns on the surface level, their outlines buzzing around them in chainsaw patterns. Excitement, celebration, and gratitude. Life flowed in river-like currents through the entire length of the godly tree she now lived upon. From some of the knots, waterfalls of sap gushed forth.
Ruby wished she could see the glory with her naked eye. But at least she felt that spiritual force. Better yet, there was nothing that a human like her to physically see because the tree was populated with curses. Their voices were audible, sated murmurs and groans. The fed curses had gone to sleep.
When everyone had settled, Ruby laughed. Her home was immaculately black, representative of Cearth.
I want to show Myst. She has to see this!
But the altar was down below, unseen, unfelt. It was far off in the outskirts of the city. She regretted not building the city around it but the territory was claimed—or felt claimed anyhow. Cearth made its boundary known and Ruby, even as a child, knew better than to breach it.
Until now.
If only Myst lived here. Maybe if we moved the altar she could see this view. I think she’d like that…
Ruby was high on her achievement. It was the best day of her life. If only her best friend was here to share in it.
Wrathravens cut their massive shadows across the clouds below. Ruby’s brilliant mind came up with a brilliant idea. She was proud of her genius.
Fortune favors the bombastic, after all.
(…)
Night couldn’t come fast enough.
Even though she could’ve executed her plan in the daytime without repercussions, Ruby had too many outsiders in the city to do something so brazen. Most folks came around and worshipped her after enough time passed, but she still wasn’t going to blatantly forego proper sense.
In the daytime she did everything she could to pass the hours. The blackwheat was a gorgeous obsession.
As the shadowclaws brought her baskets of blackwheat to experiment with, she created meals. Or rather, potions in the form of food. Shadows tended to respond to her will and shape into magic, and she was under the assumption that the blackwheat was no different. The blackwheat, laced in hexed blackness, could become anything.
The what-ifs dominated her attention as she created jams and pies and even something she called ‘dark rice’ to go with her adobo and eggs.
In time these cuisine experiments became the inspiration for everytrees.
But on the first night since the Swish-heart and rise of her home, the blackwheat cooking was just a thing to do. She craved the distraction.
When the sun went down and the town settled into supper and slumber, Ruby set her plan into motion. She’d commanded her flock to bring the altar to her. Ruby assumed this meant that Myst had a new place to live, something of a treehouse-slash-condo in the sky.
A hellion in the heavens! She’ll love it!
When the wrathravens and shadowclaws returned with the altar, carrying its broken-down remains within the talons. Some carried the raw stones, dark glitter sparkling across their surfaces. Others used bags for their convenience while they stole curious glances inside.
Ruby watched the birds go in and out of her zeppelin where they stored the piece-mealed altar. She’d never seen the blimp look like a ghost before. The altar’s shadows floated out of the cracks in the wood and the seams of the balloon fabric. Curses clouded from the engine pieces, buoying the structure through the sky.
Upon the flock’s approach, they dropped the pebbles and rocks in Ruby’s front yard and the fragments trembled. Shadows rippled along the broken edges and crawled along the ground in search of their proper place. But the longer it took for them to find their native placement, the more restless those torn-apart curses became. The destroyed altar shifted in place and jumped around and experimented with one stone or another, continuing to fail.
As each fragment was laid down Ruby searched the edges for a trace of Myst. But the shadows were all strangers. Everyone had a different voice, a different complaint. Despite their busted home, they screamed for other things that had nothing to do with what the birds had taken from them. Some asked for delicacies, money, and weapons. A curse in the shape of a crescent cried that it wanted to become a circle. A square asked to become a cube. These were things they could’ve already achieved with their natural shapeshifting ability, but their sense of self was scrambled. Without the altar, they’d become lesser in unforeseen ways.
“Myst, where are you? How was your flight?” Ruby tittered at her little joke.
Fuck that bitch! The shadows called.
“Myst is your leader, isn’t she?”
I know that’s what you’re used to. But not anymore. So like I said. Fuck. That bitch. FTB. I can’t make it any easier if I tried.
Ruby flexed her aura and the offensive curse shuddered. It flaked away, shrinking, becoming folded and packaged by Ruby’s oppressive will. It tried to speak but couldn’t. It wanted to groan but only gasped. A spirit of apology was developing within the suppressed party, lowercase but incomplete. The witch stole its right to expression, to existence, to will and to feelings.
When the curse’s original essence was reconfigured in full, it floated around Ruby, a dark feather drifting into the air.
“Come now,” Ruby said.
And the feather soared into place among her shoulder cape of shadowclaw plumage.
“Myst! Come out here. I have a feather for you. It’s special. I think it might belong to you to tell you the truth.”
More tittering but no Myst.
A girl needs a friend, Ruby pouted in her thoughts.
“Shadow girly, oh shadow girly. Let me make a wish.”
Nothing, though.
Cearth knew that Ruby had no intention of paying a thing.