NAILS, CURSES, AND NEGATIVITY ALL RAINED DOWN. The storm was loud and jangling. Metallic tings resounded off the forest floor.
The scarecrow raised his rake, erecting the light dome. The light umbrella’d around him from the tips of his prongs, the gaps between the bars solidifying into a luminous bubble. As the nails pelted the barrier, there was no damage done to it. Not even a sizzling corruption broke the guard down. The shield was perfect, unmarred, divine. Swishy had drawn from an enigmatic source and he suspected that it had something to do with his wish.
He expected the world to somehow open for him. Perhaps the woods would somehow be reborn through his vision. But no dice. The rain was as vicious as ever. The murkiness stalked him with a leery energy. And the everytrees continued to bloom their nebulas into heart-shaped berries, casually feeding them to each other, the fruit juice spraying the barrier.
The land was as disrespectful as ever.
But he’d become an altar. He didn’t know the total scope of what that meant for him. Swishy would learn it in time. And at any rate, he knew that he’d secured Myst for the moment.
“Are you okay?” Swishy asked her.
“I asked you for an altar and you delivered…unconventional, yes, but I can’t complain.”
“Good. Because if you complained I don’t think I could get rid of you.”
“I, too, am unsure if we’re to ever be independent again. Perhaps I should be asking you, how do you feel about the prospect of becoming my forever fishbowl?”
“A fishbowl?”
“You’ve seen them, I’m sure. Glass, full of water, the occasional decoration.”
“But I don’t want to be decor.”
“Oh, Swishy. You’re my home now. Thank you, truly, for the gift of yourself. But what kind of hospitable host would you be to not allow a girl a chandelier, ribbons on the wall, some tasteful curtains.”
She webbed Venetian shutters over his right eye.
“Hey, stop that!”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding.” She waved her webbing away. “But I am grateful. I’ll make this worth it. Power and healing will come in due time.”
“That makes me feel better about coming against Ruby.”
“Oh, you sell yourself short. You’re living proof of the blessings of accrued time. You, a boy of harvest, wastes nothing.”
The scarecrow fluttered in the air, loose feathers drifting about from the compliment.
“Good boy.”
Her cadence was calm but Swishy felt it then: a second pulse in his ears, beating off tempo with his true heartbeat.
It’d come to him again, his second heart, his gift to his arachnid sibling.
But her ethereal anatomy wavered, wobbled, vibrated. The woman’s ghostly integrity was in tatters. Her weakened, shadow-thin body had betrayed her.
Myst, who’d gone through a gamut of unspoken damage, now struggled to contain her long-desired core.
Soft lines of smoke curled around her chest as it held onto the heart. It was quad-colored just as he remembered it, equal parts orange-wheat, yellow-stalk, blackwheat, and gold-straw. She’d taken good care of it. But the threat of diminishment was obvious.
Myst's heart was so small. Strong, though, undrained unlike what its scale suggested. What he’d given her was just shrunken down into a her-sized vessel. The heart was flexible. The heart adjusted. Everything she’d become, it’d conformed to—everything but its heft.
Yet it acted as a steel ingot weighing down upon her body.
Her heart did surprisingly little to help Myst carry its burden. No heart could take care of itself. Such a feat required a personality, a person, to submit its due of blood and faith.
Then Swishy found the damage, something of a rot.
Black fissures that cracked across the thresholds of the quad-straw boundaries, bleeding gashes of shadow, Ruby-sustained injuries.
Then the heart started to open, spreading apart like a pomegranate. Myst’s ether pressed it together to the best of her ability, which wasn’t much right now.
The stuttered second heartbeat kept fighting, though, a valiant but losing battle.
“Does that hurt?”
“If I said yes, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Mmm, I might understand. Scarecrows can’t ‘hurt’ but I’ve hurt plenty. You’ve seen it yourself. You taught me a lot about that.” He politely omitted that she’d caused some of it, but that was long-lost straw in the hay bale.
“Yes, perhaps I should credit you for more understanding. It’s quite a ride, this living thing.”
“Too much of one, honestly.”
Myst laughed.
“But for real. How can I help you? We have a moment to figure it out.” More than a moment by Swishy’s estimation, the light dome from his rake somehow getting stronger, though that might’ve been his imagination, his mysteriously inflated sense of hope.
“My dear, you’re helping plenty as it is. I might even say this is the most help any entity has ever given me. You really want to be my brother, huh? I’ve always known I was that cool. Surely, you can admit that.”
“I help the needy.” Smug-Swish had his pride to think of.
“Fair enough, straw child. You’re a mouthy one but at least you’re a good shelter from the rain.” She almost reached beyond his eye to touch the barrier light—but thought better of it. Her shadows crinkled from the exposure, even though she wasn’t even close.
Meanwhile, the nail rain continued. The jagged curses pelted the dome. Once they so much as breathed upon the light shield, they melted away from their attack form. They slid along the barrier as disparate slimes, trickling to the ground. Once upon the surface, they reconstructed into dark slugs and slid away to join nature.
Myst still struggled with the heart, carrying it, spinning thin enough shadows to support a ribcage. Her constitution was worsening.
“Let me help!”
“I can handle this. There’s plenty in you to aid me. I’ll just have to go harvesting.”
“Please don’t say harvest.”
“That’s what this is, I’m afraid. But in this case, you should worry about yourself.”
“I’m doing okay enough. My straw’s here. My rake is lit. I’ve got wings, too. You, though, have seen better days.”
“Rude. If I need anything more, I’ll simply wish it…altar.”
Swishy’s whole body quaked as soon as she said the word.
“See? Told you that becoming an altar was a little excessive.” But he read her mind now that he was her altar. Everything Myst came was accompanied by entire scrolls worth of subtitles. Little excessive was that understatement of the eon.
“I can just have you explain it all to me.”
“If I understood how our altar situation worked, I’d read you the whole book. But alas, we’re bonded now. I only know that you can’t be rid of me and vice versa. Though that’s all I can put together.”
“I see…make yourself at home then.”
And make herself at home she did.
Myst receded into the boy’s head to attend to her spilling heart. As her dream fell through her, she reformed her vaporous ribcage. But within seconds the internal trembling resumed, signaling the next inevitable disintegration.
Myst strolled around in Swishy’s head, prancing, humming a little tune, acting no different than herself in the best of times. But the changes were obvious. Ruby had wreaked havoc upon her. In her prime, she never felt as light and weightless as she now did. Her heft of shadow was always with her, significant, world-bending, boy-breaking.
Now, though, there was less. Myst was so close to becoming nothing and Swishy didn’t know how to reconcile that.
“You’re staring.” Her sweet smirk left an impression on Swishy’s mind. He saw her plainly as if he stood right before her. She played it cool, her coy mannerisms elegantly draped upon her horrendously ravaged innards.
“I can’t help it. You’re inside my head.”
“It’s good digs, I must say. So spacious and web-able.”
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
Swishy laughed at the joke, yet he couldn’t help but see her as a torn curtain. She was pierced through. Shadows flowed into her body but most of them exited right through other porous parts of her.
And so she’d condensed into a spider, a manageable, dignity-saving form.
“Please,” Myst interjected, reaching out to Swishy’s train of thought as if it were a literal stream of soul. “Don’t look at me that way. It’s embarrassing.”
“I’m sorry. Wanna borrow some shadows?”
“Of course. I’d love nothing more than to take some curses off your hands.”
Inside, Swishy’s heart chasm jumped. He couldn’t tell if they were frightful, excited, or both. Who could know with them?
Meanwhile, Myst flowed as a vapor into his straw, drawing out the dark parts of him that he didn’t even know he had. His body lost its weightiness, the shadow woman siphoning the curses away. She drained his body with her eight legs, using them as veins to transfuse Swishy’s hurt into her lifeblood.
For a moment, his rake light flickered.
“Stop flinching,” Myst scolded.
“Okay.”
The scarecrow scarecrow’d, feeling himself being fed upon, and practicing becoming at peace with it.
“My how you’ve suffered,” Myst laughed, swimming in a pool of his heart’s chasm. “You have no idea how delicious this is.”
Swishy eyerolled.
But the light dome shone with renewed steadiness.
(…)
Swishy floated along.
The shadow pair moved through The High Chasm, its base at least. From the uphill incline, Swishy knew he was traveling upon a root. With each step, the nail rain followed him, stubbornly attacking the shield.
“Give me a break,” Swishy complained.
And the rain responded by redoubling its deluge.
“Jerks.”
Myst just laughed.
The woman rested in a web within the ‘ceiling’ of Swishy’s gourd. She was recovering well enough.
The shadow spider was the same size but her chest had filled out, the heart wrapped in place by sashes of darkness. Her chest was still see-through but was like a thin silk. No longer did she appear like punctured cloth.
A makeshift solution for the moment but she was on the mend, Swishy could tell that much.
Myst strode over to her window—or rather, Swishy’s eye—and stretched a leg outside.
“Can I taste?”
“Okay, one sec.” Swishy opened a pinhole in the barrier. A nail got caught in it, lost its metal form to the light, then streamed through the hole.
Myst caught the cursed rain, studying it, absorbing parts of it. She settled in, closing her eyes, swaying gently. The shadow woman was the playful sort but Swishy appreciated this new side of her. He found her kind of cute. He wished he could steep some straw in hot water and offer her a warm cup of Swish-brew tea.
He quite liked that thought, being his shadow sibling’s coffee shop in the rain.
They drifted in silence, listening to the rain hit.
They were still nails, pelting holes in the rubbery and indifferent everytrees, but the barrier nullification was a perfect hut. Swishy wondered when Trey would catch up. Together as a trio, a family. Swishy shivered from the perfection.
“Thinking happy thoughts?” Myst teased.
“Nooo.”
“I see. Well, I’m happy.”
“That’s good!”
And they kept it moving, Swishy steadily flapping.
The other curses, the nearest ones that’d attacked as rain but deconstructed into slime, now grew curious of the boy’s aura. Instead of trying to tear the dome down, it nuzzled against the edges, tasting the warmth.
Can we come in? The darkness seemed to say.
Swishy, an altar, was in no place to resist. Truth was that he found himself quite compelled to let them—or anybody—in. He was surprised at home much less stressed he was about the prospect of giving, no background checks to be performed, no warnings, threats, or establishing of his boundaries.
“Dig a trench,” he said.
A trench?
“Yeah, go under.”
Aye, aye captain…
The curses spoke no more. They shuffled along in contented silence. Swishy felt their path beneath him. They traveled in the underground like running water. He knew they’d find their way in. They were smart like that.
Swishy tried to not be nervous about it. He replayed Myst’s warning in his head: Stop flinching.
There was nothing to flinch about either—he was an altar now. An umbrella, a shelter, a refuge. Maybe if he acted like one he’d have more chances to learn what Cearth had done to him. He was impatient to know.
His boundaries had all changed now, this he knew.
Myst watched the whole time with bemused eyes.
“Got any thoughts about this?” Swishy asked.
“Only that your newest tenants look so delicious.” Shadows welled from her body. He wondered how much health she’d recovered—and how well his store of traumas had fed her.
“Mysty…”
“Yes, my budding little landlord.”
“I don’t feel any different, but I should, right? I had to pay something but I don’t know what I paid.”
“I couldn’t tell you, especially now that the Cearth has forsaken me.”
“Another thing to find out the hard way.”
Suddenly, he sensed a probe through his straw and spirit, Myst rooting one of her arachnid legs into him, expanding its reach. Her leg tunneled through him like a vein, going and going, until stopping. She poked against something hard. His mind supplied an imaginative tink-tink sound as if Myst had struck rare ore.
“Do you know what that is, sir scarecrow?”
“I feel like I know about me least of anyone.”
Myst retracted her leg through its route until it popped out of the straw and became its normal size. Around that leg, Myst carried a thick stack of RESOLVE, a golden orb with the letters orbiting around it.
“Inside, you hold treasures. This is why they want you. But this, too, is why you’ll win.”
Then she dropped the resolve orb into the gourd, which shattered into pieces—only for Swishy’s body to recollect them. His spirit swelled with sudden health. The light dome slightly grew, just a few centimeters in radius, proving Myst’s point.
For now they were shielded from the oppressive weather. The nails clattered on Swishy but then slid around Swishy’s aura, softening into liquid droplets.
Myst continued to stretch her leg into the dark rain. The drops steamed upon her body, vapors that she breathed in. Already she grew thicker. Her movements were more vigorous. This time she stuck her tongue out the ocular window.
“Nutritious,” she said, licking a droplet from the corner of her mouth.
“That’s promising.”
“But is anything around here promising for long?”
“We’ll change that.”
“Of course.”
The soulscape shifted.
Swishy stopped. He fluttered in place, looking backward.
“Worried about Trey?”
“Maybe we should wait. It’s dangerous out there.”
“I think he’ll be fine. Knowing him, he’s surely making stylish progress.”
They were both worried, though. The twin heartbeats told him so.
Areas that he’d already traversed were torn open and then closed. These spiritual rifts were closing to his location in regular increments. He counted to himself, keeping tempo with what was most certainly Trey’s repeated [Zlide] warps through the rain.
After a few more seconds, he’d finally seen him.
“Zlide!” Trey kept saying, coming toward the Swish-borne lighthouse.
Every time he emerged from his warp, the Sling-ravens came out first, spreading their six wings over Trey like an umbrella.
“Okay, let’s go. He’ll warp inside here in a second.”
“I’m impressed with your decisiveness.”
“Keep it moving is just smart. Even umbrellas like me would rather be dry.”
“You tell no lies little straw.”
Swishy felt her gaze shift, watching Trey’s progress.
Myst placed a spider leg over her heart.
The twin beats pounded in Swishy’s head, a continuous and emotionally confusing distraction.
Her heart Swishy had to remind himself. It’s not mine anymore.
Myst offered a thin smile.
(…)
While Trey pursued them, Swishy used these fleeting moments to settle into his state as an altar.
The boy tried to feel the world. He could to an extent, already possessing an innate sense of organic material. He was also as soul-sensitive as anyone could get. But he knew there were changes, too, such as how he was Myst’s sudden mind-reader.
Now that the curses he’d invited through the dome started to enter him, crawling around his black Timbs, joining his shoelaces, sticking around his wheaty feet like socks, they were louder than ever. It was impossible to dim the noise. As an entity of service, of wish-granting, the words No or Not Yet or Be Quiet were gradually stricken from his body. As the minutes ticked by, he sensed the subtle re-wiring of his spirit.
He was sure he couldn’t just grant wishes with the infinite energy and imagination of the altar. But what could he do? What changed about his potential influence?
His nerves settled some. There was something in this for him, he just had to figure it out.
The curses inside were relaxed, dormant sleepers for the moment.
Myst had the decency to await their slumber before wrapping them in webs and harvesting their shadows.
It was a girl eat everything world and Swishy was in no position to complain about it. It was his fault.
“Yum,” Myst said, baring her fangs over her prey.
Swishy felt the souls vanish, dozens at a time.
The weather rolled by. Ruby and company had seemed to have given up on the black nails.
The skies calmed, the nails reducing to drizzle.
The clouds began to not track Swishy so personally either, having spread out as a humongous blanket. Rain started up in the proper way. Some droplets were real water while others were shadows. The curse-laden rain was peaceable enough, snoring little droplets plopping onto the Cearth. The curse drops left their mark on the soil in lingering sparkles. All around, the land was doused in magic hydration. After a few moments of kaleidoscopic indulgence, the first sprouts rose.
Even the sentient everytrees started to calm down, relaxing into their newly rooted positions. Their mouths closed, allowing the trunks to take on the texture of real bark. They swayed in the wind, their rubbery trunks leaning ever so lightly toward Swishy’s light.
There was a change that Swishy couldn’t identify but he knew was there. The land respected him much more than it ever had before. Altar life was an unexpected move when it came to the city’s cleansing.
Swishy smirked. He liked to be liked. And who wouldn’t find amusement in the moodiness and fickleness of nature? He’d grown used to the opportunism and welcomed it.
Because he was the opportunity.
The scarecrow looked to the sky, searching for Ruby, wanting to watch her see how great he was.
He even taunted the sky with a thumbs-up.
There was no response but he knew she saw him. There was no way she didn’t, as luminous as he was.
And as nosey as she was.
There was wheat all around—in the colors of autumn of course. Orange wheat, yellow stalk, reddish flame hay. Occasionally, there were patches of gold-straw. Swishy looked to the High Chasm, to the everytrees, and felt blackwheat growing discreetly within the cover of the woods.
Ruby’s rain but the land had adopted his colors. The everytrees stirred in discomfort. Uncertain feelings had overtaken them as they turned their canopies downward, staring at the sprouts, at these bright little lives that made a home out beneath and around their roots.
“Nice…” Swishy said.
“What's nice? Did I miss any magic?” Trey emerged behind him with a [Zlide]. He walked into the light barrier with ease, knowing he was always invited. And the Sling ravens came in right after, warily stalking the skies—guard duty never ended for them.
“Trey!”
“It is I, a real one.”
“What’s a real one?”
Trey paused to consider. “My good looks and warrior qualities.”
“I like that.”
“Me too,” Myst crawled on the eye rim in greeting.
“Welcome back, Shadow bitch.”
“I’ll still kill you, you know.”
“As a spider? Please? You don’t even have poison.”
“I have poison. Do you know who you’re talking to? Please, Trey, I know sense is not your friend but you’re too darling to not have any.” She pointed a leg at him, an inky droplet hung from the end, souring into a noxious purple.
“Point taken,” Trey said, recoiling again.
“How are you holding up?” Trey asked Myst, staring into Swishy’s eyeholes.
“I’ve dwindled to within a spidery inch of my life—but I suppose I’m well. It’s warm here. And cold, too, full of such loving, loving darkness.”
“Uuuh, I’m glad to hear it. The darkness part.”
“Thanks for asking.”
“But I have another question now. I don’t mean to pry but you know, it was a storm moments ago and a storm yet to come—strictly for us.”
“You want to know what happened to me.”
“I do too!” Swishy piped up, raising his hand even though the woman was in his head. The awkwardness of the gesturing made him shrink in embarrassment.
“Sweet boy, are you sure you must know?”
“I want to, yes. We have to know what we’re up against.”
“We, huh?”
“Yes, we. We’re all here.”
Swishy could feel Myst considering the words that were spoken to her. He had a strong approximation of where she was in her mind. Being cared for was something foreign to her. But life had unexpectedly become more for her.
Ripped from the altar, she now lived in the world. And to get through Cearth, one had more varied needs to attend to. She couldn’t put her finger on what those needs were or why they were needs in the first place.
For a moment, her pulse and Swishy’s aligned. They were one heart, one body. Their enemies were the same. And they’d come to learn that their traumas were too.
“Fine,” Myst said, then opened her chest.