STAGE FRIGHT—IT COULDN’T BE.
Yet it was.
Myst couldn’t find the words to say what she needed to say.
As an arachnid, her smallest and most vulnerable form to date, she told the boys “Fine”. She’d reveal to them the details of her humiliating battle against Ruby, the animals, the curses, the Cearth itself. But putting these ideas into language was something that escaped her. The dome of light the trio traveled within suddenly seemed harsh from her pumpkin window. The compulsion to shut the blinds on Swishy’s eyeholes swelled in her. She wanted to burrow, to hide, and her new altar had layers and layers of straw for her to do so.
It turned out that opening up was more of a process than she’d given it credit for.
The woman just stood silently, her eyes depicting twin voids. She was seeing all the trauma of what’d occurred but her mouth was paralyzed.
Her heartbeat was uncontrollable. This was her first organ that acted independently of her will—and what a harrowing experience it’d become. When things were good, they were really good. When things went badly…she now felt them long after the events were over. Wounds wouldn’t close with an influx of shadows. Hearts were not so giving.
“Tsk,” was all she managed, sitting in a web with her quad-colored heart exposed, strips of smoke streaming across it.
What was she who’d never known fear afraid of? At this moment, everything.
Myst received a face-full of Trey, a world-full. The Clayborne stared into Swishy’s head, curious at first, then his gaze softened and he started to look away. Trey had far more sense than Swishy when it came to the unspoken moments. Summoning sensitivity was his superpower. Myst wanted to reach out and touch his face but instead took in the moment of privacy she’d been afforded.
“It’s alright,” Trey said. “Forget I asked. Right, Swishy?”
“Mhm.”
Swishy’s entire head nodded, shaking Myst’s web. These equilibrium problems only happened when she weakened. Even during the most vicious Cearthquake, she never lost balance, never knew what it meant to have blurred, motion-sensitive sight. But fast movements now destabilized her. She used this as a measure of her deteriorated health.
All around her body, she had harvested curses in spools of webbing. She reached for a captured curse. A hole opened in the string casing through which the vapors flowed into Myst’s mouth. It was a minty air, FROST dominating that specific entity, that snack.
Down below in the heart chamber lay Swishy’s chasm. Even through his dense straw, Myst detected the whorling, the rushing, the chaos. Myst placed a leg into the straw, stretching it down into that nutritious abyss. The stream of souls tugged at her more than usual. She never felt this before, a current of shadow, because she was so potent that everything crumpled before she’d even touched it.
The things of the world folded before her, something she’d taken for granted. Now she stopped receiving the black carpet treatment, the status as a shadowdeep VIP.
Come in! Join us! Lend yourself to the dark straw! Come, hollow girl, give us your heart—and join OURS!
Her lips curled into a frown as she spun webs around the insolent curses. Myst’s pride was assuaged in part as she spooled them and drew them toward the gourd.
HOLLOW was the most common word of this catch.
“You are what you eat,” she laughed to herself. She studied the web balls in her grasp and swallowed them whole. Would she really get better this way? It was a creeping worry. Chasms were toxic in that way. While one never knew what they were fishing out, odds were strong that ANXIETY and PANIC stacks were in copious supply.
When she went back to her Swish-window, the light barrier stopped oppressing her. It warmed her instead of burning her. She sighed in relief.
“Sunbathing there, Shadow Princess?” Trey returned to the window.
“Not Shadow Bitch? What happened?”
“I don’t think that version sunbathes.”
“The things you see in me are continuously amusing.”
“I see what you want me to see. I don’t know how shapeshifting works but I know that at least.”
Myst needed that laugh. She felt a little better. She was on the mend, after all, and even her chest shadows moved with more vigor.
“Apologies for my muteness. It’s not like me, as you know. But the evictions, the wish-labor, the sworn enemies—it makes a girl tired. What’s a Shadow Princess to do?”
Her exaggerated shrug elicited smiles from the boys.
“I say you just have to help us. No need to say a thing.”
“I’ll talk. I’m ready to.”
She wasn’t. She knew that the words hadn’t yet come. But Myst’s heart would do the communication for her.
The woman dispelled the shadows of her chest and prepared to reveal all.
Myst presented the fourths of her heart, allowing those veiny borders of corruption to split further with prominence. From those fissures, a memory smoke ebbed outward, filling Swishy’s head. Soon the dome light became clouded and murky from the vapors. Then the outside clarified as the memories took shape. The rake light served as the perfect projector for the Myst theatre.
The boys exuded a cozy sense of ease. In her weakness, they’d made her feel comfortable.
Through the altar connection with Swishy, she sensed the stacks of KINDNESS growing in the straw beneath her. They sprouted into the bottom of the gourd as tiny gold flowers. A meadow in her living room wasn’t the thing she thought she needed. But it helped. She breathed in the scent—which was somehow like sunflowers and not straw.
Spell flowers. A home. Why couldn’t she have gotten these things in the first place?
The golden quadrant of her heart beamed with power.
And then she returned to her project, to draw out the secrets of the blackwheat quadrant, the somber events, her locked away hurt.
Within those colorful heart pieces lay what Myst held at bay, a personal chasm. Through a complex massaging of her heart, she drew the floating darkness from the inside out. Her dark orb swirled softly, a thin smoke that danced around, looping in the most carefree manner. It was like she hadn’t suffered at all. But this packed form of abyss was suffering indeed. Dark tidings offered these kinds of prizes.
But the orb was full of screeching curses. They were her cage, her dominator. And those vapors sometimes startled at its globular encasement The threshold was invisible yet obvious. Inside was the image of a girl, like a goldfish in a bowl. It trembled from the coursing entities. After a moment she faded, becoming invisible, only to be replaced with a new girl, a grown one, the Myst that’d just battled Ruby.
The heart smoke covered the boys’ waists and chests and necks. It crept over their noses. Soon, it submerged their heads.
Before the smoke took the light dome over, initiating its spell of sharing, the trio identified a familiar sight in the newly calmed skies: the lost wishwillows were floating near the peak of The High Chasm, circling in an orbit. From an enormous tree hollow, there were human silhouettes raising their hands to the golden trees. Postures of praise and deference were all around. The wishwillows quivered. Myst stared at the curses writhing beneath and inside its torn roots, commiserating with their shock.
The trio screwed their faces in different versions of ick.
And then Myst let the shadow recording roll as all three of them continued their scaling, her memories strobing over the familiar backdrop of wishwillow theft.
Time was short—it always was.
Within that bubble of light under which the trio traveled, the ecosystem sensed the presence of a vulnerable heart. Black flowers that rested against the tree trunks opened. The roots beneath them wriggled with anticipation. The straw stalks pushed upward as if trying to sneak from their protrusions.
Everything un-alive began to awaken from Ruby’s influence.
A serpentine presence flowed through the upper reaches of the territory: TYRANNY.
Swishy raised his rake; Trey primed his finger guns; Myst kept the memory smoke rolling, filling their luminous chamber.
(…)
As soon as Myst rolled out her memory smoke, Ruby appeared again.
The witch flew overhead with her broom, sneering.
Myst knew that the show must go on—she hadn’t known where she’d first encountered the concept. But the concept became freshly relevant as Ruby started up the same things actions that brought forth Myst’s diminishment.
TYRANNY swam throughout the air, patrolling The High Chasm.
DEATH followed Ruby like a loyal pet, a zealous serpent that guarded her.
JEALOUSY abounded as well, a word that hid behind the trees and stalked the trio, mostly Swishy.
All these words were active and expressive. Ruby, who always placed herself at the mercy of the altar, had been an open book for a long, long time. Cearth knew what she was about. Ruby now felt no reason to hide who she was, what she felt. If anything, her followers sought to validate those feelings, to resolve her problems as quickly as possible.
Every time a magic word grazed an everytree or a shadowy patch of Cearth or a cloud cluster, those pieces of the environment bulged toward their targets, Myst and Swishy.
“Those hearts,” Ruby called from within the cloud cover. “I need them.”
“You have one,” Myst responded.
“It’s not the same and you know it. Pumping blood is not the same as pumping life and liberty itself.”
The scarecrow didn’t speak. As Myst was inside his head, she allowed him to speak for her.
“A human one is stronger,” Myst said. “It lasts for many, many years. May I sell you on its benefits, such that you may be thankful for your humanity?”
“Little spider. I know far too much about the human body. But the past is the past. What’s done is done. The crime of my birth can now be resolved through the blessings of magic, the gifts of the altar.
“No matter what you do, you’ll always be human.”
“I believe you know that isn’t true.”
“So says the traitor.”
Why did that wound her so? The accusation rippled through Myst’s spirit. Relationships were hard. She mourned Ruby and regretted knowing her in overlapping moments, one feeling replaced by the other and so on.
The shadow mistress waved goodbye to Ruby—more so to the little girl she’d met decades ago.
Ruby cocked her head, then sighed. Her HUNGER stirred. It spread from the witch’s stomach and radiated across the land. The surroundings trembled at a low frequency but enough for the minuscule Myst to become unsettled. As a spider, she felt trapped within the reverberating jar of life.
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Still, she left her heart exposed. The smoke kept coming, throwing up its memory illusion for the boys to see.
Ruby plunged from the sky atop her broom, coldly glaring as she entered battle.
The boys raised their weapons, rake and finger guns, luminous together.
Myst simply clarified her memory-laced projectionist to the surroundings, casting the strobe of what happened while Swishy and Trey were in the altar.
[Clean Sweep] was how the projection started. And that, too, was the technique Ruby released in the present moment.
The tornadoes were aimed at Swishy and crew—but Myst focused on her projection, a passenger princess in the scarecrow’s head.
Swishy countered with [Swish Cyclone], spinning gold air to counteract the onslaught. The swept winds against the cyclical rake force continued for a time. Both Ruby and Swishy testing the waters. Trey, however, stuck close to Swishy, watching his blind spots, preparing electric blasts for birds stalking from the trees.
Smart, Myst thought. The woman doesn’t fight fair.
(…)
And so Myst moved onto the memory, to the wrathraven nest vacuuming Swishy and Trey in, to Ruby of twenty minutes ago standing on a floating wishwillow as she held the widest broom in the world.
In hindsight, lone-wolfing wasn’t the move.
Alone in the skies with Ruby—it wasn’t the place to be. The floating wishwillows lent an eerie beauty to the atmosphere. Myst was stricken with the sudden notion that the world was leaving her. The backdrop of the slowly rolling sky was gorgeous and terrifying. Her heart kept seizing with such stupid ideas, things she’d never been afflicted by in the old days.
It was a slow departure, millimeters per second, but she watched it go. She knew that defeat would mean being trapped and doomed to witness a life passing her by.
The jail of forever made her shudder.
“Scared? You? Why? I’m only cleaning this world, my sister.”
[Clean Sweep]. Ruby swept her triple-wide broom over the golden bark, producing miniature tornados along its path. Darkness flowed into those winds and gathered there, blackening the swirls.
The wishwillow shuddered and its same fears were drawn from it and sent into the POLLUTION-charged skies.
One being’s sorrow was another resource stock for the Cearth to feed upon, and so Myst reached out to siphon the tree’s gloom. But there was no air, nothing for Myst’s technique to travel through. Those tightly packed tornadoes greedily hoarded the air and cursed energy they happened upon.
“Do you like what you see? I’ve only ever wanted you to be impressed with me. I spent all these years trying to catch up. Even now, I feel like I’ve only gotten to 20 percent of your capability—which is far too slow. Me, a human girl, just don’t have the years to spare. It’s a tragic thing, really. To die before you’re satisfied.”
“I think you’ve done well…for your kind.”
“Whatever you think my kind is, you’re wrong about that.”
“I see that girl inside. You haven’t changed. Please don’t delude yourself into that thinking.”
“I have changed. I am change itself. The cleansing is only the start. With a blank canvas, my world can be anything!”
Ruby spread her arms in villainous grandeur. Everything gleamed. The wishwillows flashed with their sunbright energy. And the darkness sparkled. Such luminosity…it was something she’d learned from Myst.
A wicked smirk slashed across Ruby’s face, pushing her cheekbone beauty mark to the heavens.
Within the hollows of the wishwillows, their branch ends, their canopies, the red-dead gaze of snitchtalons and wrathravens awakened. Myst pointedly gazed around at the flock hidden in the trees. The chewing of blackwheat was all she heard.
“We all have things that we want,” Ruby spoke this as the HUNGER roiled inside her. As soon as her body lost a binding on its abyssal engine, the trigger went off for the creatures in her charge. Famine tore across the bodies of every bird, every shadow. Even the fruit-bearing wishwillows had their tree trunks caving in, twisting, collapsing upon themselves from the horrific emptiness.
Growling stomachs, writhing trees—the groans and wood snaps were the worst sounds that Myst had ever heard.
Myst reached all around her in an attempt to claw the DEBRIS and POISON and POLLUTION from the orbiting tornados. The swept winds only traveled faster, tighter, smaller. Perfect packages. The particles wouldn’t stretch toward Myst by even a millimeter.
The shadow girl’s heart incessantly pounded.
“I know what I’m not. I’m not the savior, a little straw boy with the heart that was meant for me. I know I’m not you, a shadow mistress—also with heart. But what about me? The leader. The fulfiller. Am I not deserving of Cearth’s heartbeat? I’ve been so selfless. All I do is give. I’ve patiently clawed toward the thing I want…and it’s here…it’s somehow, in you.”
“I am who I am. I’m just an emissary of the altar. Take your issues up with the altar itself. That’s what you’ve always done. That’s what you’re good at! Don’t let me stop you.” Myst laughed. This human woman was perplexing. She didn’t yet know to be scared.
“Ah yes, the altar. Well you see. I’ve had my turn. It’s about time for others to have their say. Now tell us, everyone. What do you all wish for?”
The hungry eyes glared at Myst. Wings everywhere rubbed together, the birds shaking with anticipation. Feathers flung from the trees—before Myst could absorb that darkness, the swept tornados snatched them up.
“Repeat after me…”
Silence.
“I wish!”
CACAW!
“Fooor…”
CACAW!
“Well, you know the rest. Fill it in…to your heart’s content.”
Within the blackness of the branch shadows and cloud cover, the birds screamed over each other in a rising crescendo, speaking in bird language, words that Myst knew would farm her for their dreams.
She was fertile land, far too plentiful, and unfortunately up for grabs.
A pressure rose in Myst’s whole body. Even as a smoke, she couldn’t escape the sudden gripping. The disturbing phantom clutch of Cearth.
(…)
A snitchtalon opened its beak. I wish for heightened senses.
I wish for sensitivity.
I wish to see only shadows.
These were different versions of the same wish. And these wishes played out with Myst as the conduit. It happened in stages. Portals all around Ruby’s vicinity, the individual birds having their wishes granted by Cearth. And when Myst opened her hand, curious about the costs that’d materialize into her palm, she received a stunning sight—their sight. A handful of reddened eyes, gorged and bulging. Their blackwheat-drugged eyes beat like hearts. And then they subsumed into shadow, passing through Myst into the depths of the Cearth.
Many of the eyes that were visible around Ruby had now disappeared. At the cost of their visual sight, the flock’s ethereal senses were in constant overdrive.
Myst could feel the weight of spirits sticking to her, of constant attention, of surveillance.
The privilege of being alone was gone now.
With every shift of Myst’s ghostliness, the birds vibrated in response. It was as if she were attached to their bodies. The birds behaved like they were joined to Myst by an indestructible thread.
The shadow woman turned into smoke and launched toward Ruby, but her broom tornados blocked Myst’s path—while another tornado swept Ruby away. The witch laughed at Myst as she stood on swirling winds.
A cascade of feathers then poured around Myst, showering her and her alone—more wish fuel, more paid costs. As the offerings passed into her body, using her as a portal, a bottomless and direct line to the Cearthan void.
I wish for a new heart! They mostly said. Unspecific. But the hint was strong. Myst felt the tug inside her, knowing that if her heart was given to anyone else, they’d willingly open themselves for Ruby.
The costs became stranger, too. Feathers, beaks, eyes, hearts. All of these things disappeared into Myst.
And with each paid wish debt that vanished into Myst, she began to feel an aftermath. Her chest tightened. The shadows of her torso struggled with a secondary presence, the pull of the Cearth itself. Her heart was being tugged at, small pieces fit for a bird, one ingredient in their heart wish rewards.
It was terrible, this tearing, this knowledge that Cearth’s heart was on loan and nothing else.
Meanwhile, other wishes were fake-outs, disruptions that affected Myst more than an average feint.
They said “I wish…” then trailed off.
Myst tensed as Cearth pressured her spirit, forming a secondary aura over her. She waited for transport, to be atomized and shifted in front of a would-be wisher, an enemy.
The comments slowed her down, made it easy to get clipped by blackwheat talons.
A wrathraven scratched across her torso, the 3-clawed gash tore across her, while her exposed heart was right between the claws.
“Careful not to damage the goods!” Ruby called.
The birds continued their attack.
Myst couldn’t heal properly. As soon as she tried to reconstruct, several “I wish” calls tensed her up. She couldn’t concentrate on gathering the necessary darkness, not with Cearth had its palm pressed against her autonomy.
And what darkness was there to take? Ruby hadn’t stopped sweeping. She rode on her tornado and visited the clouds, the roots of the wishwillows, the hollows. She collected all shadow, stripping blackness for herself, a trick she’d picked up from the wrathravens. The woman was human—but was exceedingly talented at executing non-human things.
So Myst continued to come under siege, watching herself get torn away. She felt no pain. She just watched herself exist as air, paralyzed by the “I wish” feints. Her frustration built each time it was said. The pressure could only be described as “no, do this first.”
Wishes came first, and Myst came somewhere afterward.
The shadow woman became smaller, choosing to revert to a shadowclaw and fly toward the surface. But she was pursued, of course, because her diminishment made her an even more attractive target. Legions of birds came after her in a tremendous swarm, many of them wishing as they flew. The echoes of the true requests echoed inside her, especially the ones asking for a heart. These triggered true Myst damage, plucking a piece of straw and puzzle-shaped portions of herself.
The wished-for hearts floated in the air, like little black stickers, cutesy, bubbling, waiting for a snitch to claim them.
Her heartbeat doubled, then tripled, then intensified still. Her pulse was far beyond what a living creature could sustain. Myst’s body, her panic, was otherworldly.
Wishes echoed all around. With each utterance, came a sacrificed portion of the bird. And shortly after the snitch piece was another puzzle piece taken from Myst herself. Feathers were all around. The costs of bird life was being paid. Precious, usable darkness. Myst reached out to absorb these costs but they went right through her, zooming past her essential self. Cearth took everything. Cearth was being stingy with her once again.
Soon, she found it difficult to be a bird, the wishes having taken many feather patches out of her. Smoke trails rose from her gaps.
The woman shrank and shrank, once more, turning into a butterfly, a stunningly black monarch.
Her tiny form made her faster, outpacing the birds, but Ruby’s wind pillars knew to come after her. It seemed like everything in Straw City had a sense for weakness.
As Ruby’s swept gusts chased Myst, the witch also joined in the wish feint fun.
“I wish…you’d have visited me.”
“I wish you were a better friend.”
“I wish I had the love that I thought I had.”
She appeared over Myst, riding on her broom, staring down at the little butterfly. Ruby reached out and grazed a wing, allowing the shadows to curl around her finger. Ruby had a pained expression on her face, narcissistic sorrow.
Myst, unwilling to give her the satisfaction, flew onward—but she was terrified. The heart, having shrunken to fit her new body, beat irregularly. A fast clip for some seconds, then not at all for several more. If Myst were biological, she surely would’ve died.
“I wish…things didn’t turn out this way.”
“I do too…” Myst mournfully fluttered.
Ruby poked through Myst’s butterfly body, massaging the heart. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head as the straw magic kissed her nerves. “Give it to me,” she said.
“I know not what you mean,” Myst mocked.
“Your body knows. Now open.”
A heart-shaped hole opened in Myst’s chest, Ruby shaping them away, exposing her.
The birds came then, red-eyed and furious, forming wing patterns behind Ruby.
Myst launched an attack, a black energy arrowed at Ruby. It was a nameless brutality that shaped through the air, a skewer in the truest form. Point-blank. It had to work. It had to.
Because it costs Myst a lot, over half her butterfly body.
Ruby subtly changed her facial expression and black feathers formed a shield—a wrathraven wing, and only the wing. The block was successful without so much as a displaced feather—Ruby had fed her energy into the spot of the attack. The nearest wrathraven hovered awkwardly—with five wings, not six—as it soared high above, on wishwillow duty.
As Ruby’s wing guard dissipated, those feathers returned to the beast’s body.
The girl was tired, so tired.
But she’d take something from these people. At this point she craved her dignity more than her heart.
Like every other citizen in Straw City, Myst targeted the easy, the weak. She reduced her body by another quarter, summoning black marbles in the air. Ruby ignored the balls, knowing that she wasn’t the target. But the birds were angered by the resistance, the gall of Myst to fight back—leaving themselves as open targets. As the marbles floated into the flock, staining their chests, Myst called out a magic word: [Crush].
The balls exploded—and not in the gunpowder and firelight way, but as a plume of smoke that once more released the hidden word inside. GLOOM in this case. The bird hearts couldn’t handle it, small as they were. They staged in flight, stricken by tragedy. They gasped for breath, the activity of their souls emotionally depressed. The gloom hex slowed their bloodstream, their pulses, their ability to fly and function.
From the inside out, they disintegrated, their souls withering as they fell from the sky. All of them died. Broken hearts. Non-existent wills.
It was just Ruby. Her and the tornados.
And birds, too, reinforcements whose reddened eyes filled the woods. Myst felt her heart probed all over. Flighted beast prowled in front of her, behind her, above and below. She was an open woman, shadowed glass.
“Give it up,” Ruby said. “You still have the chance to become…something, if you quit this struggle.”
Ruby reached down with her forefingers, ready to pluck the heart with her hands.
Myst never have believed that a human girl would tower above her like this. What a hateful thing, to be non-autonomous. She covered her chest, waiting with heavy breaths.
“You took my home already Ruby. Must you be like this?”
“Do you not trust in me, Ruby, your friend? Your sister.”
“No.”
“Then begone.”
Ruby grabbed the heart.
But even on the verge of losing her heart, Myst saw not Ruby but the girl inside. The child’s gaze was empty. Yet her stomach raged a war.
Myst had something for Ruby, for her shadow mistress dignity, and for herself.
“I wish…” Myst began.
“Oh no you don’t!” Ruby squeezed.
“I wish for you to remember what it’s like.”
“Stop that!”
“I can’t stop the bond between a woman and her inner child. That’s your business. One that I wish for you to always attend to. Did I not stress always?”
“I’ll remember this Myst.”
“You will. Because you must always remember to care for yourself. Your inner child is important. She’s a hungry spirit. She matters.
“No…”
“Make sure she always, always has a mother.”
The fingers loosened. Myst was freed from the tyrant’s grasp. Myst didn’t look back, not at first, just butterfly-flapped as far and fast as she could. And though she felt the flock’s eyes, she knew they were more concerned about Ruby.
By the time Myst slowed down, she paid more attention to the soulscape. HUNGER swelled tremendously. And only from its main source, Ruby and her starved insides. She saw the shape of Ruby’s soul, doubled over the broom, floating in pain. Birds flocked all around her, refusing to give her space, even as she shooed them away.
Ruby clutched at her stomach but had a phenomenon of bypassing for herself. Her hands couldn’t touch her shadowy stomach, that elusive yet ever-present hunger. The girl inside wanted to be fed. And Ruby would never, ever forget her.
Butterfly Myst had paid a small price for Ruby’s self-care, just some shadow. Resolving hunger was a basic need, nothing Cearth would charge her much for.
Unfortunately, Myst didn’t have much of herself to spare.
She landed and hid in a treetop, lamenting her vaporizing wings. These were so beautiful too…A form, she needed a form. Something smaller, tighter, manageable.
Eight legs, a thorax, fangs, and overall slenderness.
The woman’s heartbeat, the shortness of breath, hurt like a thousand skewers.
But already the plucked straw began to heal.