The Last Scarecrow

12 | Wickermen

The door burst open and the wickermen entered. "What business do you have here?" said one. He took a step towards Twelve. The flaming torch in his long, spindly fingers danced merrily as the metal weapon in his other hand glinted in the firelight.

Twelve towered over the wickermen. They were strange looking things. Each stood about six feet tall. Some larger, others less so. They were crudely manufactured from branches, roots, twine and sticks. Held together with a cross-hatching of kindling, knotted grass and dried mud.

Some had adorned themselves with man-made items such as belts, climbing rope, and chains. Others had made clothing from the forest.

One wore a headdress of leaves and bracken.

Another, a flowing cape of dark feathers slung around its shoulders.

"We are here looking for food, for answers," Twelve began. "For Erin's brother Clyde. For my sisters. A family of scarecrows."

"Scarecrows?" said the wickerman wearing the headdress. His voice was higher than the first, yet edged with menace and anger. Two rows of sharpened rocks had been inserted where his gums should be. He gnashed them together, adding, "We'll have no talk of scarecrows here."

"But—" Twelve began.

"Silence," he said, moving closer still. The wickermens faces were simply made: rocks and conkers and snubs of twig for eyes and noses, cavernous mouths hollowed out in the middle of their faces. A peculiar smell accompanied them: grass cuttings, damp and spent fireworks.

Twelve gestured towards Five. "Who is she, if not a scarecrow?"

"Ha!" the other wickerman spat. "She is a wretch. A monstrous ruin. Crippled by the voices. They call to her day and night. They fester inside, destroying one another, creating new ones over and over and over...or so it seems."

"That's why we keep her in the lodge," said the wickerman in the feathered cape.

His eyes zeroed on Erin who had slunk into the shadows. She found the wickermen strange and creepy. They had no right to be alive and wandering around this island, but then neither did Twelve or Five for that matter.

Erin fingers curled into Twelve's pirate jacket, her eyes slipping shut.

She remembered building Number Five. After the sharp learning curve of the first four scarecrows she'd finally found her groove. Hammers and nails and rusty machine parts were becoming familiar in her hands. Erin would sculpt and build and create her scarecrows after homework was done, and all weekend long. And when she was meant to be sleeping, she would sit in bed sketching outfits and costumes into her Book of Scarecrows. Her imagination bubbled over as she stitched the edges of Five's eyes and added the zipper mouth to the battered basketball. Initially, Five was going to wear Pa's old Wellington Boots, but when Erin came across a pair of good-as-new rollerblades on one of her reconnaissance missions at the local charity shop, everything changed. Five had been positioned in one of the lower fields of Coldharbour Farm, her cross fitted to a circular wooden base that allowed Five to spin on her rollerblades under the whim of the wind. How had the scarecrow come to travel this far across the Endless Blue and remain in one piece?

Erin felt light-headed. Surely, this was all a dream: the scarecrows, and the wickermen, and Lazarus, and the Patchwork Woman. Any moment now her eyes were going to spring open and she'd find herself nestle in the hayloft on Coldharbour Farm, the rain hammering down, her Books of Scarecrows open across her chest. But when she opened her eyes again the wickerman in the feathered cape was standing over her.

"My name's Jack," he said. "At least, that's what I think I was called. Before I was...this."

He looked down at the filthy weave of brown and green that was his body.