Swishy reawakened in Sling’s arms and before she could say a word he was constructing another Goldie.

“I see…” Sling said, eyeing the straw god’s panicked hand movements. A pinpoint of gold light emitted from the fingertip, a gathering spot where the Swish-mini weaves now formed. “So Ruby is near.”

Sling lifted her head and watched the dark passages ahead crowned by the ebbing light of the wishwillow. The wood beacon was only a couple minutes' walk away. The straw-bound were rigid upon their stakes, their arms moving from the T-pose to the prayer hands.

During Swishy’s absence he’d managed to protect his main body from the stressors of small boy life. The midnight shades of black had even lightened to a deep slate. His curses were alive and well, speaking with curiosity about the Swish-made lighthouse. They knew it was him too. They were integrated into his spirit. He couldn’t deprive them of his energy if he tried, and he did his best to keep calm as they said unwittingly predatory things about his feat.

That looks delicious. It looks rich! I want to become a leech on its surface. When I get there I’m going to turn into a slug and claim its gold with my shadow slime. It’ll be ours, all ours! We knew we did the right thing by riding along with this boy! The wrathravens never treated us this well! We always wake up to a new treasure, a new habitat. You’re amazing, mouth-wateringly so!

The commentary was bothersome, at least in that the idea of wanting things was deeply uncomfortable for him. He’d only ever known ambition to go wrong. Yet the fact that he had fans for both his light and dark was encouraging to him. He had a spectrum of good to offer to the world.

“That’s texture,” a voice said in his head. He sensed another presence inside his gourd, a black smoke alongside his blueness.

“Myst is that you?”

“It is, boy of miracles, large and small.”

“Are you okay?”

“I believe that has yet to be determined but thank you for asking.”

“What about Trey?”

“I almost believed you cared about me too,” she laughed. “Perhaps you should’ve led with your real question, after all.”

“Okay, fine, so what does that mean for him? Myst, wait, where are you going? Hold on—”

But she answered with a series of incessant and gradually fading giggles. The dark smoke of his mind squeezed through the gaps in his neck and arms, venting out in belabored hisses. His soul sense watched the vapor trails vanish upward. His shadow sister had a mission of her own.

“Is she…protecting us?” Swishy asked.

“She?” Sling was confused. “Who were you talking to? Myst? Don’t tell me she’s had a change of heart.”

“No, like I told you, she just has a heart. She has mine.”

“I see, I suppose that’s a powerful influence. There would be hope for anybody with that thing.”

“You’d think so…” Swishy glared at the High Chasm, regretful that his beating heart hadn’t done for Ruby what it’d seemed to do for Myst. “Okay, stay back Sling, I have to see what’s up there.”

“Take care!” All the scarecrows said from behind them. Both the adults and the kid-crows waved their hands. “We believe in you! We’ll give you all the gold you need!”

The kid-crows even stood in front of their parents’ stakes. Amie was even positioning them carefully, knowing that the sight bothered Swishy. She delicately curated Swishy’s peace of mind. He was pleased by their consideration—though he figured that Amie and the kids were just as put off by the anchoring as he was.

The boy focused on his long-honed skill, mining the gold from the dark. There was a healthy stock of light that remained within. The best parts of his world were right there. The kid crows, the straw-bound, Sling. And at a distance he heard the sated murmurs of the first five wishwillows. It’d been a while since he’d heard such innocent satisfaction. And Swishy knew its source. The pleasure of being was something he recognized. The trees were themselves and themselves alone. And they didn’t require any consumption or possession or ambitions. He was proud of creating one of the only entities in Straw City that didn’t consume anything, beings that found happiness on their own.

Swishy turned to face the villagers, smiled, and then allowed his main body to go dormant. The blue soul of his gourd vanished to nothing while the fingertip Goldie came alive, a sun-colored star’s moment of birth.

It happened instantly. The processes of HAPPINESS, CONTENTMENT, SUSTENANCE combined in a flash—he’d gone through the cycle so fast, a complex and long-fought-for efficiency.

Swishy infused his whole consciousness into the single straw sprite, maximizing his flight control. He impressed himself with his own awareness as he dove into the all-consuming dark. As the accursed evening attempted to drown his presence out, his light carved out a zone of protection for him. When stray curses wanted to reach for him, he dodged effortlessly, and when the Ruby portals upped their gravity, he glided low to the ground, grabbing onto pebbles and dirt rocks, using them as a momentary shield before speeding off and away from their magnetism.

Swishy was getting good at this. And he knew that this confidence would produce more gold-straw dividends in the main body.

In no time at all, he was near the wishwillows. Just one more clusters of everytrees to pass before he’d arrived to guard his new friends.

But a curious thing happened. The portals had begun to disappear. Ones that he remembered were in the area had either shrunken or moved on. Ruby’s power hadn’t weakened but had moved on, her darkness retracting with her. She was far away again. Flight became easy, unstrained, yet Swishy didn’t feel any better about it. Something was wrong.

Cracks, breakage, the ground crying in a mysterious agony.

A spray of dirt blasted through the night, sending hardened soil in Swishy’s direction. The boy dodged the asteroid rain of minerals, horribly stressed.

The wishwillows are in trouble!

A strange thought indeed—for the trees to find trouble—but anything with a life of its own was subject to strife. He, a bird, knew this well.

And came the reverse rain. Gold drifted up in specks and chunks and shards. Skyward shimmers of the wishwillow particles were gorgeous against the night sky. But they didn’t belong there, not at all. The luminous debris drifted away like balloons—and toward the massive High Chasm at that.

Then came the larger portions of the gold: the snitchtalons carrying entire branches and sections of wood away. Some carried the foliage in their talons. Others used their beaks and snuck nibbles at the much-coveted Swish flavor.

A massive presence also accompanied the smaller birds.

Darkness, total and absolute, flashed over the Swish-mini’s head. Its shadows ebbed and flowed with a measured dominion. Large, small, then large again, then narrowed. Six wings working together in unison. A wrathraven led the charge, its talons gripping the detached canopy of a wishwillow. The tree was properly beheaded, harvested for Ruby’s purposes to the upper reaches of her home.

Ruby, who Swishy saw mere moments ago, was nowhere to be seen on the ground. When it came to possessions, she was the most distractible—and focused—person he’d ever seen. Confronted by the gold, her soul claimed it as hers.

If “that’s mine” was a person, it was Ruby.

A voice crackled by the side of his head, the city’s resident witch. “My little scarecrow! These trees…they’re lovely! I knew you had it in you to be a savior. Perhaps I birthed you for good reason, after all. I only wished you’d produced miracles from the start, but I suppose this is what they call maturity! And these are much less…gothic than my dark trees. These are so cute. The cutest! I’d be jealous if these didn’t already belong to me.” Her belly laugh came from the depths of her. She could’ve filled a well with those guffaws.

Offense, disgust—these feelings, these words, would’ve clogged the overly black weaves of Swishy’s main body if not for his urgent need for control. They tried to grow large, to become an all-caps hex, but he allowed those sentiments to burn through him and then disappear, offering them one moment and no more. He instead devised a bargaining statement though he’d possessed no intention to negotiate. “I think I can make more of this stuff you like if you told me where Trey was.”

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

A tongue click filled his head. Then the impatient clicking of Ruby pacing in her heels. His Swish-minis were all straw, no gourd to live inside of, yet Ruby found a way to enter his consciousness for a quick word. “You know, I was having a different conversation. I suppose nobody taught you that changing the topic like that is rude. I gave you compliments and now you’re talking about irrelevant things. Trey produces nothing. He’s just a boy. Actually, let me rephrase. He is a mortal. Very mortal.”

Swishy looked around, ignoring Ruby, compartmentalizing.

There was a lot going on.

The gold rain, the wishwillows rising, the world he was creating leaving him—and so soon at that.

But Swishy couldn’t allow himself to be distraught. That’d do him no good. He’d have to stop the birds—Ruby wasn’t going to fly the trees away on her broom. She needed the flock for that. There was much that she needed others to do, and he resolved to cut her power off at the legs.

“You’re scheming. I don’t like that.” The voice came outside his head—somewhere above him, disguised by the feathers, the shadows, the chaos. Ruby’s silhouette flashed for a millisecond, her two feet standing on her broom, an empress glaring down at perceived insolence. “You did your first good thing for me in a while and you’re already souring it. Make more of the trees, do pretty things, stun the world. Show off like little boys like to do. You grow the world and I’ll handle the direction. We’re a team, yes? Which I feel is a good compromise—ugh, I hate that word. It’s weak. All this came through me anyway, but I suppose you can have your due of credit—so long as you take responsibility over it.”

“I’m responsible. I know I am. There’s a lot I carry. You have my heart. It beats through your home. You should know I’m responsible. I’m giving. And I want to give. Haven’t you felt the things in my heart? Even a little bit?”

“No.”

“I knew you’d say that.”

“You sound disappointed. Well I’m disappointed to be having such an irrelevant conversation.”

“I—”

“Enough. Dolls don’t speak.”

A heartrending pulling occurred, a second destruction of the ground from the next wishwillow victim.

A second wrathraven had wrapped its claws around the middle length of the tree trunk and carried the wishwillow into the air. It was a disgusting beast. Six wings signaled normal wrathraven anatomy—but this one had two heads. The left said heave while the right said ho! And the team pushed itself along through the air, a stuttered but rhythmic flight. Over its talons, there were gold rings, one on each foot.

Two souls flowed through its amorphous chest, flowing around each other in the shape of a heart. Swishy wanted to feel the warm-and-fuzzies but felt only grossness and a sense of violation.

Snitchtalons began to assist the dual-headed wrathraven then, using shadowy ties and knots to wrap around the tree trunk. Others had ropes attached to their ankles, the other ends of which were lassoed to the branches and other important anchor points. As a twin-headed beast led them in their flight tempo, the flock heaved the second wishwillow away.

And the poor tree didn’t know any better. The upper parts were sated, high off their own gold, while the roots were wiggling like octopus tentacles. On their bottoms, they’d decayed into curses, screaming, wishing to hit the ground again. Only the bottom parts had known that they'd been stolen. And the news traveled through its body in patches, souring, throwing a tantrum at its unplanned and vicious relocation.

Trees without grounding were the greatest sorrow for them. Swishy didn’t know this but knew it well enough now.

It was a sad thing to learn.

“Oh, I’m replanting them anyway. They’re being so dramatic. It’s only a slight change. Is that really so shocking?” Ruby’s voice rained from the skies, blunt as bricks.

“Great,” Swishy said.

“You’re speaking so roughly for a little sprite. You’ll learn a lesson soon. You’ll learn through Trey, through Myst, through your little scarecrows. I know where all your people are. And you know nothing. With no means of protection. What will you do now? What kind of god lets its people die?”

“I’m going to take care of everybody—you too.”

“Me? You’re doing that now—with the trees.”

Swishy delved into the dark parts of his mind, broadcasting his [Chasm]. We are all things, Trey had told him, and he knew now was the moment to put that to the test. The scarecrow, like Ruby, had a darkness that bites, and she would come to know it. He blasted his mind, the parts of himself that Ruby occupied, with the worst of himself. Curses, evil, and retribution.

“Oooooh, that’s intriguing. Such darkness in my little crow-eater. How suitable. Well then, ta-ta.”

He felt Ruby leave his head. But she left behind a trail of D-E-A-T-H, an aura that flared violently, giving Swishy’s soul a scrapped feeling of rawness.

And then the feeling faded.

Ruby was gone—along with all traces of death with her.

(…)

But Swishy knew he’d find her soon. He suspected that he and her were heading to the same place.

The wishwillows.

Get them down was the primary thought in his head. The concept was strange to him, to save the trees, to bring them back down to Cearth. But his good sense told him that this was an accurate understanding of the situation. The wishwillows were imperiled. And the scarecrow was the peril ward, the savior as folks liked to call him, though he was yet to figure out why.

He created the bit of a world and had to prove that he had what it took to save it.

Above, the wishwillow five were upward bound, drifting at mere centimeters per second. The progress was nonetheless noticeable and real, and Ruby would in time have her gold-tree demands met. There was variation in the suspension, though, as some of the larger chunks had begun to make their way down. Some levitated in place, waiting. The birds were anxious. Even the wrathraven had calmly watched the skies all around, their red eyes reduced to wary slits.

Ruby had flown up there on her broom, leading the way, circling a wishwillow, guarding it close.

It was good that the wrathravens were carrying the two trees upward, rather than joining the attack.

Blackness swirled around the golden treetop, slender vapors that appeared like a lasso trick, gorgeous swimming that Swishy knew to be Myst. Her torso came into form. There was no smile on her face this time. She was focused. The boy understood why. At any given moment the Cearth could turn against her—as it’d just revealed that it wasn’t for her at all. All it took was a well-placed wish to bring her to heel. Myst understood that. Yet she glared down as if Ruby were an impudent child.

Their clash, he needed to get up there for a front-row seat.

Through the Swish-mini, he went to spy on Ruby and Myst, on the battle that was brewing up above. He tried to get close, hiding beneath wood chips and leaves and lost feathers. It wasn’t comforting to know that his puppets seemed to come with minimal risk. But the terror associated with navigating an atom form through a cursed atmosphere proved hazardous to the mind, to his future gold-straw production.

Goldie’s wing wasn’t suited for altitude but Swishy had to make do. What he settled for instead was fluttering his limited height up to a grounded surface, a disc of debris to rest upon, to absorb the gold from. When he landed on a floating woodchip, he rubbed its bark. Despite the gold, it was in such a poor condition. Its energy was tremulous. And the bark had disgraceful patches of tearing, of skinlessness.

“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Swishy said, rubbing the wood.

The wishwillow chunk didn’t respond. There was no soul active. It may have been alive but the sudden destruction had it shaken. A senseless guilt surged within Swishy. If only I left it alone…then he dismissed the useless thought. Gold is good—and Ruby isn’t. Feeding plants isn’t a crime.

Still, he hated the self-punishing parts of him.

Meanwhile, the wishwillow’s new master had her feet firmly planted on its surface. Swishy watched Ruby’s energy pore into the tree, steering it upward. Her aura radiated and pressed against everything around her, both objects and creatures. The POSSESSION intent that was first introduced by the E-squad and their commandeering of the [Straw Guardian] now emitted from Ruby. Hers was…older. There was a gravitas to it. The woman was being herself, and the things of this world came under her ownership. The flock around her settled into a smooth chemistry dictated by her. They were coordinated and perfect.

For now, he could hear everything that the witch and the shadow mistress were saying. Myst was a soul-speaker. And Ruby soul-spoke back. All the cards were out on the table, there was nothing for any of the heavy hitters to hide.

Myst spoke first: “Hmm, I know you think yourself a disciple but what you require is discipline, a timeout from these shadows I love so dearly. It’s a pity that such a talent had to become so spoiled.”

“But Myst, you watched me build this. You granted my every wish. You, surely, saw whatever it is you liked and didn’t like inside me. I don’t relate to your level of surprise. Why have you turned on me? I just wanted you to visit. I rolled out the black carpet for you. I brought your home to my neighborhood. By my side. Because we're shadow sisters, yes?”

“I’ll admit, you were a wonderful first human to meet. But these days I’m starting to miss that when only the birds made wishes. It was a simpler time…a less homeless one.”

“You know your altar isn’t going to stay broken. It’s in a…let’s say a renovation. I would’ve made you the loveliest shrine.”

“Did you think someone like me would live in rubble when I have all of this?” The shadow woman made a large gesture toward the lands, the skies, the wishwillows.

“Please, Myst, come home. Why stray from the way things have always been? You can have all this. It’s yours to explore. But surely all shadow beings need a nest, a place to comfortably and darkly settle.”

“Your people wouldn’t leave me alone. Perhaps settling in that nest has been an illusion all along.” She hugged herself, a playful caress disguising the truth of her self-soothing. There was hurt in her. One that she may or may not have recovered from yet. “I’ve begun to think that maybe I should broaden my horizons.”

“You are the broadness, the flexibility. In you, there is adventure and endless possibility. Those abilities are what I admire about you. Everything you’ve shaped, I’ve tried to do myself.”

“How’s that working out for you?”

“I’d say well.” Ruby rubbed her hand over the bark. “There’s much to work with. Shaping shadow is a powerful thing. Shaping light…I’ve never tried it. Perhaps I too can broaden my horizons.”

“A limit is what you need.”

“Limits were my birthright. Limits in sustenance, in shelter, in hope. Thankfully, we are long beyond those horrible, horrible days.” Ruby’s cold eyes didn’t look like she was beyond anything at all. Black intents filled those pupils, the words stacked in many layers—so dense Swishy couldn’t read the individual ones. Her dark fury was bottomless.

She landed on a branch and held the broom in her hand, wielding it like a weapon. Her whisk broom was massive, and its wideness gave off the impression of a rake. And no longer obscured by the night, Swishy finally noticed its color. Against the wishwillow’s glow, the blackwheat bristles were striking.

“Time to claim my prize,” Ruby said.

“I am a prize but not yours.”

“Silly Myst, I mean that heart inside. Such a poorly kept secret. Maybe you should’ve wished for freedom. But I suppose I, in my graciousness (and luck), gave you that. Love me better, love me with all your heart.”

Myst betrayed the slightest hint of a frown.

“[Clean Sweep]” Ruby said, swinging the broom once.

And upon her command, so began the windstorm.