The Last Scarecrow

13 | Last Human Girl

For the second time that day, the door to the climber's lodge burst open. However, on this occasion, it flew outwards, disengaged from its hinges and hurtled through the air. Blackened branches and dying embers spiralled in wide, smouldering arcs as the door came to rest on the site of the wickermen's campfire.

Five's enormous frame swooped beneath the doorframe, her arms shaking wilding. Behind her crudely stitched eyeholes and the zippered mouth, something glowed. Burning like tortured fire. Alive and terrible.

Twelve strained against her bindings, desperate to help her sister, but Jack swung his weapon— a light-weight mountaineering axe— across her chest.

Five lurched forward, hurling the two guards aside.

"Move back," Jack ordered. "Give her room."

The scarecrow staggered into the clearing, stabbing her rollerblades into the ground like spades. Crashing to her knees, moaning and screaming, she viciously dragged her gloved fingers down the sides of her head, clawing her ruined, leather skin.

It seemed to Erin as though she were trying to burrow inside and pull out whatever was causing her such distress.

"What's happening?" wailed Twelve.

Ahead of them, the bushes parted and two wickermen appeared wheeling a motionless figure into in the clearing.

"She's ready to deliver," Jack urged. "Hurry. Hurry. Hurry."

"Deliver?" Erin said, aghast. "Deliver what?"

With her head swaying from side to side, Five crawled across the clearing and picked and prodded the new arrival. She pruned and clipped, finishing her creation, as her moans rang through the trees, echoing and wailing like an injured beast.

It was indeed, a new wickerman.

"I don't like it. The noise. Such a horrible noise," Erin moaned. "Make it stop."

"I'm sorry. I cannot break free," Twelve replied, helplessly rattling her chains and lashings. "I'm just not strong enough."

Five's wails rose, filling the Island of Trees with their eerie timbre.

Slowly, the scarecrow moved her hands away from the new wickerman, quivering as they fell to earth. Five sunk into a smothering silence, her screams slipping away though the woods like fleeting spirits.

At the tree line, wickermen shifted nervously.

Jack and Tomas stood closer than most, observing Five and the latest addition to their number.

Five gathered herself, rising awkwardly until she stood straight and tall.

The light inside her head was growing. The edges of her eye sockets vibrated with heat and colour. Skeins of dark smoke leaked through the scar on the side of her head like a drum of boiling tar.

Five's hands shook horribly.

Her legs trembled.

Then, with no warning at all, two columns of brilliant light, edged with golden fire, shot out of the scarecrows eyes and buried themselves in the new wickerman's chest. The light expanded, encompassing Five's entire head, becoming a single fiery beam. In turn, the new wickerman jiggled and jostled as the light enveloped its entire body.

Erin braved an open eye, immediately wishing she hadn't. She wrenched herself around the oak tree, searching for Twelve's hand.

The light grew and grew until the back of Erin's eyelids had turned through red to pink to white. When Erin thought she was unable to take any more, the light vanished and Five collapsed to the ground.