WING JUMP HAD NEVER FELT SO GOOD BEFORE.
I missed you! Wingy said with mischief, galvanized for the coming mayhem.
“I kind of missed you too.”
Swishy meant it. Now that he was using his main body, its wrathraven-styled wing gave him a high-powered ascension that shot him past multiple levels of tree branches. He landed on a sturdy section and then jumped again. He tore through the levels and gave mocking looks at the portals, the lurking curses, and the wandering letters of Ruby’s aura.
The boy rose one story at a time. While rising, he sensed the edges of his aura attract hidden curses that admired the darkness of himself and Wingy. Shadows crawled along the edges of his energy, sinking into Swishy’s profound depth. These days he was openly cavorting with fans of his chasm. Bottomlessness was a boon he hadn’t predicted, one that he had mixed feelings about accepting. It wasn’t something he needed to think about, though. The curses reached for him in friendliness. Besides, they couldn’t hurt him even if they tried. Swishy was dark-tinged, dark-immersed, tempered by shadow. He’d known real weakness as a Goldie and as he cut into the night he was just so glad to be back.
Swishy had arrived at a treetop and saw Ruby and Myst across the next few groupings of trees. Their bodies were obscured by the gathered darkness of their attacks and the shimmering golds of the wishwillows. They were contained within a spherical arena. He’d get there soon. But first: the henchcrows.
The snitchtalons noticed him. They arrowed toward him from every direction. They wasted no time, driven by their jealousy and grudges.
Swishy did another jump, soaring into the great shroud of night as the arrowed birds sped faster and faster, catching up in no time.
As Swishy kept rising from his tremendous hang time, he took a mid-air batter’s stance.
The birds were point-blank, squawking wrathfully.
And then the scarecrow swung the trident and its three prongs unraveled and split into threes, fanning out into the shape of a rake. From each weapon tooth came a crescent-shaped black aura in the form of a sharpened bird. His aura cut through the snitchtalons with a blunt impact, a bait-and-switch from the expected slashes that the attack’s shape indicated. The birds themselves were physically okay—but were stunned and shaken. The aura blast was a potent warning. A domineering one.
The birds meagerly cawed as they flew around, cowed and arguable. When Swishy started to descend from his jump, he tried something he’d seen in a game once. He planted a Timb on a flying bird and stepped off of it.
“Make me a path!” He commanded.
And the birds obliged, arranging themselves into an aerial stairway. They glided in a set pattern, reliably functioning as beak-faced footholds. Swishy liked flaunting his status as the bigger animal. He was never a bird of prey in his original life but part of living in the present included flexing his dominion. For peace, one had to have the power to enforce self-protection, boundaries. The snitchtalons were simply learning a valuable lesson and Swishy was a willing teacher.
The boy even did a lap over the birds, finishing the path, testing the sureness of his footing.
Every time Swish hopped off a bird he made a point of glancing at the impression his Timbs left on their backs. His blocky footprints upon their feathers gave him the most satisfied feeling he’d had in a long time. Trey had taught him many lessons, much of them wholesome and pure. But the hardness of life had gifted him with a taste for vindictive fulfillment. Who was going to teach him that walking upon the backs of his sworn enemies was honorable and right? From where would he derive the pleasure of reasonable payback?
Just life. Just hurt. And a sense of humor. The scarecrow laughed to himself and then straightened his expression, enforcing levity to his situation.
Swishy pledged not to make a habit of the sky-walking. After all this, he’d save the birds’ lives too. As one last test, he jumped off the path—and a snitchtalon came to his rescue, offering its strong body for support.
Are you done yet? The bird said in exasperation.
“If you can talk, you can carry.”
Ugh.
“If I were you, I’d be grateful that I don’t mind back-talk.”
Swishy felt the snitch stiffen beneath him like bird glue on a shop awning.
When Swishy told Trey to use the birds this wasn’t what he had in mind. But now that he was here, in his main body, being hand-delivered to Ruby, he knew he could gather the troops. Goldie life was fun but limited. Now he could speak again.
“Trey!” He swished out. “Trey, Trey, Trey! Do you see my wishwillows? Do you see me up here? Meet me up here and tell me I’m cool! I know you can’t fly but you’ll figure it out! Now come help! Teamwork makes dreams! That’s what people say, I think.”
He sprouted a Swish-mini through his index finger, pale gold and faintly luminous. It was just a doll, empty. He had no intent to use it as a body this time. Swishy stoked it with aura and it lit up, its rays fanning outward in radial splendor. He spread his arms open. He’d make sure that Trey could find him even if we were miles and miles away, even if he were in Clayhearth. The boy laid the Swish doll upon his head, lighting it up, a stage light for his perfect shine. He made a couple more for good measure, placing them on his shoulders, a trinity of glow.
The shining scarecrow stood upon his platform of birds, flying toward the chaotic sphere of Ruby versus Myst.
“Trey! I know you hear me. Time is money. Isn’t that what you taught me? Do you want to be broke? How will you pay rent? I won’t pay it. Not even once. I don’t even have money.”
Swishy laughed. It wasn’t the joke that got him. It was the surprise thought that he’d never have to pay rent. Being a non-human, he knew, was a wonderful, wonderful thing.
(…)
Ever since Ruby dropped from the sky, Trey was having a hell of a hard time.
The shadows were taking his body over; Swishy was being stubborn with his gold sprite form; and Ruby was threatening him with what she called betrayal, lack of loyalty, and bad fashion sense. He knew she was lying about that last one. His parka, his Timbs, his Clayhearth gold—she was jealous, Trey had decided. Old polka-dot-wearing bitch.
Thankfully Trey had a savior. When the portals were staring into his soul, prodding through him, searching for his weaknesses, his vulnerabilities, Myst had come from the shadows. He knew it was Myst because…well he just knew. Smoke tended to rise—while hers danced in level layers, coiling upward into hoops. When Myst swam around him the thickness around his neck had relaxed. The slender shape of a hand stretched before him and pulled Ruby’s inkiness away. The air felt like air again rather than an oppressive stickiness, an inescapable tar.
He gasped for air on his hands and knees. In this position, his Bristles’ backpack was heavy, its full weight pressed down like a slab of stone—but he didn’t care. His body only had all-fours in him. Trey heard the voices, Ruby’s protests against Myst. “Here for Trey and not for me? I don’t interfere in your kills. Don’t tell me you’ve taken a liking to him, that treacherous idiot.”
Idiot? Well damn bitch, tell me how you really feel.
Trey scrambled to his feet and ran away.
The young man didn’t get far. The nearest node of darkness extended into a vine and tripped Trey. He fell and as he stared up at the sudden lasso, it wriggled with a no-no-no. Trey struggled between two feelings, mortal fear and embarrassment at being smack-talked by a cursed snare.
Beneath him, the shadows moved. Everything with a remote hint of blackness surged in a wave, rising from the ground, becoming a cresting hex that rose over his head and now crashed down.
His breath was stolen again, both the fear and the literal gut punch of pressure.
The corruption left splotches on his hands—and likely the rest of his skin.
Cursed words became real inside him, countless instances of SUFFOCATION, DROWNING, and then a specialty word, two for the price of one: DIE-SLOW.
He activated a [Zlide]—he tried to anyway—but his abilities were uncooperative. His aura gathered toward his hands but wouldn’t come out. The corruption had blocked his shadow-shaping. He flexed his fingers, attempting [Zzt], [Zap], and even the starts of [Ztorm]. To his knowledge, he had multiple options at his disposal. But the black wave smothered them all. Nothing would get through its oppression. Its matter or lack thereof was unmalleable. All acts of creation and ignition were beyond him now.
The thickness had returned, hard boundaries solidifying around his mouth, his throat, and within his chest wall.
It was a violent, forceful drowning.
Salvation came from multiple points. As his consciousness and vitality slipped from his grasp, he attuned to that which most grounded him, a sudden awareness of the frosty gold cross figure around his neck. The gleaming jewelry soothed him even as death clamped around his windpipe. His pain was relieved in mild doses, too, from the remnant pulses of the Swish-mini straw. The worst of his aches was followed by a surge of straw-chew healing, both physically and mentally. His third grace before the demonic attack was Myst, who reached out with her energy, causing spurts of weakness in the immaterial grip on his body. But Myst’s connection would cut out as Ruby presumably attacked her.
“Myst! Thank you but just focus on yourself!”
Much in the way that Swishy stubbornly clung to his miniature form—a hardheadedness that Trey had eaten him for—so too was Trey being inflexible about his body. He was afraid to leave it—but he could, and he resolved to lean into that privilege. The Clayborne submitted to the beginnings of a [Soul] release, going blue, surrendering his body once again.
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As the young man floated upward through his skeleton, he activated a secondary spell.
[Heart Strings].
The threads spread from the tips of his fingers. He knew that his vessel wasn’t meant for complex puppeteering. Keeping things simple was key—so he gave it all his fears. With the golden strings, he squeezed that heart of his until the body received the true message: trigger the right glands and let the epinephrine pour forth.
The dose of adrenaline was no joke. Nothing was so panic-inducing as a limbic system breakdown.
Trey, the body, ran and ran. His gait was better this time, even with the heavy burden on his shoulders. He didn’t know how to speak, though—he kept yelling “Aaaaah!”
“Run, homie, run! And please for the love of God don’t trip.”
The vessel stumbled over a rough wheat patch but kept on his feet.
“Aye, that’s right. Look at my guy go!”
Soul Trey decided to follow along through the skies, staying vigilant for the plethora of Ruby portals.
He wouldn’t make the mistake of setting his body loose without him. Trey flew through the woods, phasing through every surface, determined to not lose his very-very fast self. The portals eyed him, though, the soul him, unfooled by his movements.
“Trey!” He heard his name over and over, dozens of times, the rustling cadence that belonged to none other than Swishy. Up above, his friend was a star, gleaming in gold-puppet shine. Trey could still taste the gold-wheat in his mouth, its crushed particles lying between his molars. The calmness washed through his insides from the superpowered version of the city’s trademark straw-chews.
Thankfully, the Trey body had the instinctual training to mad dash in the straw star’s direction. He was fast as hell too. The ‘hurry’ directive he infused into himself was proving to bite Trey now that his soul struggled to keep up. When he almost got to his body, reaching out to reenter himself, his physical form dodged. He kept stretching toward himself but his mindless body proved agile. All the fleeing from recent days made him a professional at side-stepping the hand, juking sudden Ruby portals, and even stiff-arming a couple of snitchtalons that’d spotted him.
“Come on, get your ass back here!”
“Aaaaaah!” The body said.
That only made it worse. The heart-string effect only heightened the fear. All stimuli, helpful or otherwise, activated the vessel’s hair trigger for fright.
“I just walk to talk!”
“No talking, no talking!”
“Fine then.” [Zip].
The soul’s increased speed turned him into a straight line, a blue laser—but this wasn’t without its counter.
Trey-less Trey used [Zlide].
He vanished…mostly.
“Close the portal at least!”
“The ghost is talking to me! Nooooo!”
Well…Soul Trey shrugged. He’s not wrong.
The gaseous portal remained open, its perimeter speckled in Clayhearth gold, so much of an invitation that the snitchtalons and curses entered.
Fly him! The birds cried. Drop him into a gorge!
Trey flew into the [Zlide] portal while gathering aura in his hands. Using the remains of his magic for an electrical fight seemed an inefficient and time-consuming route. His solution had to be mobile and swift. [Heart Strings] curled around his fingers. As he flew by the tenacious birds, he pointed at them, sending threads into their bodies and around their hearts. Instead of squeezing the adrenaline out like he’d done with Trey, he used a hug-like pressure. A soothing touch. Their pulse slowed. Their body conformed to the internal pace that the spell had set for them.
The affected birds slackened their flight—some even landed and rested—sinking deep into the dopamine haze that Trey triggered in their bodies. Use the birds…the scarecrow’s advice came into his head then. He wasn’t sure what to make of the comment but maybe the calm flock was part of the larger picture.
Maybe he’d ask nicely. The snitches had never been the agreeable sort—but they were high now. So why not?
“Ya’ll wanna help me?” Trey said it with his voice while also feeding an earnest pleading into the [Heart Strings]. His threads relaxed their grip on the birds, such that the ask felt real—instead of the reality of holding their hearts prisoner.
A pause. He didn’t know if it was the relaxation or if the flock had snapped out of it. In either case, Trey felt stupid. His body was getting away, having already exited the [Zlide] realm, while his soul waited on his worst enemies to do him a solid.
Sure, the first bird said. We’re just vibing here but we can give you a hand.
Always help a neighbor! Said another bird.
This is the truth!
It’s the Shugarrian way!
Wingbeats aplenty—and for once the feathers sounded great. He didn’t get the immediate message that he was about to die.
“Cool, just slow my body down please. Be careful, though, he bites.”
Literally, right?
Trey had to think about it. “Me, I don’t bite. But I can’t speak for my body. He’s…volatile.”
Got it!
[Zip]—he’d used it on the closest birds to him, about a dozen he’d counted.
And then they were off, both Trey and the recruited snitchtalons gliding out of the [Zlide] realm—only to find that the vessel had used [Zip] too. Stealing good ideas was simply the way.
Vessel see, vessel do…the blue soul kneaded a finger against his temple.
Fortunately, the body had led them all underneath Swishy’s air space, having assumed the straw boy was a safe place. Again, the effectiveness of simple programming, of the urge to seek refuge from terror. Trey-less Trey found a foothold in a wishwillow trunk and began to climb. He was speedy, too, using an arachnid agility that soul Trey was jealous of. The tree bark stained the body’s hair and hands with gold.
But [Zip]-driven as he was, the climb slowed him down, allowing the soul and the snitchtalons were catch up—until the vessel did another [Zlide]. The body moved upward in careful allotments, using less than half of the available range, taking special care to land on the widest branch arms. For as empty-brained as the vessel was, he’d exhibited an extraordinary amount of care. He was Trey, after all, a man whose talent was common sense above all else.
Inevitably they came upon a level of branches with too large a gap for a [Zlide] to cleanly clear. Soul Trey floated up to his body, slowly, showing just as much fear of the vessel as the vessel had of him. He hoped this would work, that it’d disarm his guarded self.
“I’m a friendly ghost…and a scared ghost. Please don’t hurt me. I’m just lost. Can you help?”
Body Trey paused, offering a look of pity—one that the blue soul mistook as a you’re-so-dumb-you’re-so-pathetic expression. But then the vessel spread his arms apart and gestured toward him. He mouthed out something like ‘it’s alright buddy’ but he couldn’t tell. Soul Trey was both glad and disappointed to retrieve himself again. “You’re gonna have to learn a little bit about stranger danger, man.”
And then Trey reached out and reentered himself. As the soul aligned into place atop its anatomy, the [Heart Strings] wilted and dissipated into ethereal particles.
(…)
The Clayborne was back in action.
Trey peered around at the other branch clusters, seeking a hint of danger, a dark feather or a glimpse of blackwheat-tinged eyes. There were no red flags, though, no frenzy running amok. A cool wind blew through the gaps of the leaves. He ran a hand over the wishwillow gold below him. It was gorgeous. The ochre shades were the same he’d encountered at home, the warm tones of gold and mustard yellows and glinting browns. He’d make a treehouse if he could—he promised himself to do so after all this was over. It was important to have dreams. A second decision was made then, too, to ask Swishy about the ones he’d had. He’d spent so much time tutoring him, feeding him flashcards, that he didn’t stop to pause and break down a long view of life.
He remembered flying. He remembered a heart of his own. But there had to be more. Life was large and life, for an enchanted scarecrow, promised to be long.
If they made it out that is.
The wishwillows were monumental to Trey. He couldn’t believe he was walking upon such mythical bark. He thanked his God for this moment—despite the danger, despite how it could all be snatched from him through a tragic twist of shadow. But the tree motivated his gratefulness. Trey wasn’t the only one either.
His snitchtalon friends, heart-string’d as they were, rested within the branch bundles, nibbling the leaves.
A few birds within a nearby knot were pecking at a golden fruit, what looked like a Midas-touched mango.
Off to his other side, he spied a trail of ants. They marched beneath his large black Timb, edging around the raised heel. Balls of gold-straw glimmered upon their backs, the colony’s harvest.
Flickering from Trey’s peripherals: a ladybug. Gold-straw specks upon its black spots.
There was one certainty Trey gleaned from all this: that Swishy—or his Swish-minis—had been out here making friends.
Trey was the proud father-brother-friend that he never knew he’d become. The boy was up there beyond the crown of treetops, some gold and some black. Nothing was in his way. Even the birds were cooperating, gliding near Swishy as his willing—or coerced—footholds. Trey wasn’t dumb. He knew something was up.
“Alright, let’s get up there. Homie needs me!” He whistled and his [Heart String] birds came to his aid. Use the birds…the direction nagged at Trey, and he constantly second-guessed if Swishy meant for him to do this. Probably not. The scarecrow was hinting at something innate, something that had to do with the shadowdeep, with the type of bird that he and the straw-bound offered Swishy.
Ready to go? A friend-bird said.
“Yeah bros, thanks.”
The birds floated around him. A curtain of shadows cast across his face. Trey tensed up.
Are you afraid of us? We’re not the pecking type, my friend.
“Of course you aren’t. You’re good birds.” Trey spread his arms to the side, offering himself for lift-off.
Thank you! A friend in need deserves flight indeed.
“Catchy!”
And honest too!
The birds hovered up close and Trey restrained his compulsion to flinch. Fight time was done with the magically reformed snitchtalons. He was a little sad that the harmony was spell-induced. “I’m sorry,” he whispered so nobody could hear. Even while fighting for his future, he felt he’d done something wrong.
The first talons gripped one shoulder and then the other. The claws closed around his collarbone, his forearms, and the scruff of his shirt.
And then his feet left the surface.
He was being flown—that old feeling, the tugging, the uncontrollable straightening of his back and neck. Scarecrow pose was the safest, most comfortable way to do this. He sank into the posture and closed his eyes. With his vision cut off, he heard the fluttering in a sharper tone. The bird groans also rang sharper as they strained from the combined weight of himself and Bristles. But the flock was strong. They’d tug-of-warred with worse.
He hovered; he rose; he descended. And then descended again, his feet clomping back onto the log.
“Aye bros, what’s wrong? I thought we were flying.”
Trey looked around and confirmed that he was right where he’d started. He pivoted around and found that the birds were gone. Across the way, he heard them in the foliage, trembling, cowering, clattering their beaks.
He took a step toward them but found that he couldn’t.
Then he kicked his foot outward—only air. Trey tried with the other foot to no avail. His feet now dangled a couple of rulers’ high. “The fuck is this?” He kicked and kicked.
A yawn from the other side of the backpack. Now Trey was traveling backward.
“Don’t tell me this is some sort of divine punishment!”
“Divine punishment?” Bristles asked. “Saveth the drama. This is muscle. This is strength. Eat and lift, Trey. If you did those two things you wouldn’t have these problems.”
“I see your point. I take your point. Now will you please put me down?”
But Bristles wasn’t listening. Trey, while now on the backpack end of the situation, swayed with ease and gentleness. The psycho on the other end moved with care—and Trey would dare say kindness. It wasn’t that, though, and truth be told he didn’t have his hopes up in a Bristles reformation.
The soft gesturing came from the wrathraven nature of the man-bound beast, the obsessive love for shiny things.
“Gold, gold, so much gold! Our straw savior hast done the miraculous. Again he’s proven too good for you, too good for this world. Wait, is that him up there? Walking upon the birds? Is he using my move? He flatters me so. I…I’m fulfilled. I’m overcome.”
The ride got a bit rougher for Trey. He buckled from the outpouring of Bristles emotion, the big-bodied sobbing that bolted out in random spurts.
“Easy now, easy!”
“I…I lost myself for a second. This is such a big moment for me, you see.”
“I see it, I feel it, and I wish you’d put me down so I could feel it less.”
“Down? Why no, what giveth you the idea of your release?”
“I don’t know. That you hate me.”
Bristles laughed. He laughed for way too long. And by the end of his mania, all the [Heart String] birds had fled. Trey could feel them watching, though, just from stadiums away. He was at least glad that they cared. Fake-cared. Hypnotized-cared. Whatever.
“You see, Trey. I’ve accepted that you’re important to our Lord and Savior Swishy. But you can’t fly. How will you reach our dearest skywalker? You need me.”
“I…I…I’ll manage.”
“Foolish. Why simply manage? The hard way is the slow way. Me, your superior, will show you the blessed way.”
“I’d rather not! Hold o—”
“[Nevermore].”
All around Trey, six black wings began to sprout.