VELVETEEN vs. A Disturbing Number of Crows #4
The scarecrow’s face was paint and a button on canvas; it didn’t have expressions, as such.
Somehow, it still managed to give her an amused look before it shook its head.
It had always been a scarecrow, said the motion; it had never wanted to be anything else.
It hadn’t wanted to be abandoned and torn apart by crows, either, but what could you do?
Sometimes the story went to uncomfortable places.
“Oh, good,” said Velveteen, and reached for another handful of cornhusks.
The two of them worked in silence for a while, with her producing three cornhusk dollies for every one the scarecrow completed.
Those slow additions added up, and when her questing hand found that their pile of cornhusks had been utterly depleted, there were piles of dollies around them, heaped high.
Velveteen stood. “Okay,” she said, looking at the scarecrow. “If I fall down, you catch me. Get me out of the corn if you can. I’ll try to keep animating you until I can’t anymore. Got it?”
The scarecrow nodded.
“Awesome. Here we go.” She turned to the piled-up dollies.
They were humanoid in only the barest of senses: they had cornhusk legs, cornhusk arms, and smiling little faces poked into their heads with nails Vel had pried from the base of the scarecrow’s perch.
They were humanoid enough. Velveteen reached and they responded, sitting up, looking around, and finally helping one another to their cornhusk feet.
A hundred or more silently smiling faces looked at her, waiting.
It was like something out of a horror movie. Velveteen resisted the urge to shudder. She was like something out of a horror movie, at least right now. This was where she belonged, until it was all over. Until she could go home.
“There are crows in the corn,” she said.
“I know you grew here: this is your home. I know that once, you sheltered the good Halloween memories of children. And I know that many of you fell because of those same crows. They stole the memories you were supposed to protect. This is your chance to get revenge. This is your chance to do for someone else what no one was willing to do for you. Are you with me?”
They were. Every last one of them. They grabbed nails and sticks from the ground, arming themselves for the fight that was to come. Then, silent, they swarmed into the corn with Velveteen and the scarecrow close behind. It was time to fight, and win, or lose, as the season decreed.
* * *
The crows were not expecting an assault.
That was clear from the way Velveteen and her makeshift army found them, perched on the cornstalks, glutting themselves sick on the memories that grew, golden and sweet, around them.
What’s more, the crows were not expecting an assault that came on like a wave, silent, swift, and terrible.
The corn dollies were light enough that they could swarm straight up the corn, attacking whatever they found there.
They were merciless with their borrowed weapons.
They were fearless in their fury. What did it matter if one of them fell, when three more would be closing in right behind?
The crows shrieked and cawed, ripping corn dollies from themselves, beating them away with their wings.
The corn dollies kept coming, driving their sticks into crow eyes, stabbing their nails into crow flesh.
Whenever one of the dollies was caught it would come apart in a shower of husks and silk.
Velveteen raced between the stalks, filling her hands with fresh husks and shaping more dollies, waking them and sending them into the fray.
Every “death” hurt her a little, but it returned that doll’s energy to the well she was using to power them; as long as their numbers stayed roughly constant, she would have the strength to keep rebuilding her army.
Crows shrieked. Dolls disintegrated. It was a holding action: there were always more dolls, but there were always more crows as well, reinforcements summoned by the dismay of their fellows.
Midnight was coming, and Hailey’s warning was beginning to echo in her ears: she didn’t want to be there when Halloween’s defenses kicked in.
But there was still something she could do, even if she didn’t want to. Something that would turn the tide. Velveteen sunk to her knees in the green, green ground, closed her eyes, and reached.
The crows that had fallen twitched. They twisted.
And they rose on black-feathered wings, taking back the sky, silent now, flying for someone else.
On the ground, Velveteen slumped forward, hands digging into the soil, head bowed.
She was pouring everything she had into the crows, into the dolls, into the sky.
This was too much for her. She knew that it was too much for her, and still she kept pushing, driving her reanimated crows higher, chasing the living vermin from the skies she had been tasked with protecting.
The scarecrow moved to stand behind her, unbidden by any conscious thought.
The dollies struck down more crows, only for their corpses to rise and join the fight against their fellows.
Velveteen’s nose began to bleed. She might have been relieved to see that, if she’d been more aware.
Something that could bleed wasn’t entirely made of cloth and rags; something that could bleed still had a heart.
But all her attention was reserved for other matters.
The surviving crows turned and fled, leaving the cornfield for something safer, someplace less filled with their silent dead.
Velveteen collapsed, and corn dollies and dead crows fell around her like rain.
* * *
Hailey was waiting when the scarecrow carried Velveteen out of the corn, cradled gently against its chest. She looked at it. It looked at her. Then, slowly, she smiled.
“So that’s how it’s going to be, huh?” she asked. “Cool. Just get her home.”
The teenage spirit of Halloween slung her leg over her bike and rode away down the endless country road, lit from above by a midnight harvest moon. Behind her walked the scarecrow, Velveteen sleeping peacefully in its arms.