Page 37 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

The direction she was running should have brought her back to the road. It didn’t. Instead, it brought her more corn, until she ran into a clear patch that had already been harvested. The stalks here were crushed flat, and the sky overhead was mostly empty, since there was nothing here for the crows to steal. She stopped, wheezing and trying not to think about how a rag doll that walked like a woman could be short of breath. Everything here was a metaphor. Pick at it too much and it would come apart at the seams.

“Okay, fuck, crows,” she said, putting her hand against a convenient pole as she wheezed. Then she stopped, looking up, and met the eyes of the disemboweled scarecrow that dangled there. It was impossible to tell whether it had originally been an animated doll, like she was; it didn’t matter much, since the thing was clearly not animated now. It was a dead thing, and looking at it made her shudder.

But it was a dead thing with a face, and while she had never become Roadkill in her timeline, she knew full well that she was capable of animating dead things.

Getting the scarecrow down from its post was harder than she had expected, and several times she had to swallow the urge to just wake it up and tell it to get down on its own. Without knowing how it was suspended, that could easily have ended in the scarecrow ripping itself limb from limb as it tried to follow her orders. That wouldn’t have been helpful, especially not when she needed it relatively intact to fight for her. So she climbed and she slid and she struggled and she unhooked, until finally the scarecrow fell to the ground, leaving her hanging from the crossbar that had held its arms in position.

“This was a brilliant plan and I am a genius for having it,” she said, deadpan. Narrowing her eyes, she focused on the scarecrow. She hadn’t actually tried to use her powers since arriving in Autumn this time, and after her experiences in Spring and Winter, she was a little worried about what would happen. Indeed, it felt like the “reach” that always accompanied an animation came easier than it ever had before, accompanied by the tiny sensation of loss that she now recognized as the expenditure of her own energy. The deep wellspring of power that had always been her own was back now; she didn’t have to be a vampire. The relief that accompanied that realization was so intense that she nearly lost her grip on the crossbar.

Only nearly. She held on, and the scarecrow staggered to its feet, possessing none of her grace, moving with the uneasy bend of straw and canvas and severely damaged fabric. It tilted its painted face blindly toward her, its one remaining button eye glinting in the light. There wasn’t that much of a difference between snowmen and scarecrows, when you got right down to it. Both of them were inanimate, humanoid, and hers.

“Catch me,” she said, and let go of the crossbar before she could change her mind. If the scarecrow didn’t move fast enough, well. She was made of cloth at the moment. She would probably be fine. Probably.

The scarecrow caught her. Velveteen beamed.

“You are the most useful person I’ve met since I got here,” she said. “Put me down.”

The scarecrow put her down. It took a shambling step back, giving her some space. Velveteen wasn’t sure whether it had done that on its own or because she wanted room to breathe, and it didn’t really matter. Her toys had always been better at controlling their own actions than anyone expected them to be. As long as they still did as she asked, she didn’t mind.

“We’re going to fight the army of crows that tore you open,” she said. The scarecrow tilted its head, seeming obscurely disappointed. She swallowed the urge to apologize. “Anyway, we need more of an army if we want to take them out without winding up in a million pieces. Have you ever made a cornhusk doll?”

The scarecrow had not. The scarecrow was, however, willing to learn. Velveteen couldn’t have said how she knew this; she just did. She grinned.

“Great,” she said. “Let’s get cracking.”

* * *

Gathering cornhusks was easy, even with the crows glutting themselves in the field. The clearing had plenty, and when those started running low, Velveteen ducked into the nearby green and grabbed great fistfuls of leaves and husks from the ground and from the already-denuded cornstalks. A few crow sentries spotted her and cawed loudly, summoning reinforcements, but Velveteen kept low and moved fast, and none of the flocks managed to descend on her before she could retreat to a safe distance again.

“I would kill for someone with animal-control powers right now,” she said, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the clearing and beginning to twist cornhusks together, forming the shape of a crude doll. The scarecrow sat beside her, mimicking her motions as well as it could. Its hands were twigs, skeletal and clumsy, but they bent like fingers, thanks to the power she was pumping through its body, and while it wasn’t fast, it was better by far than nothing. “I mean, get Cinder or Monstrosity or Jack Daw out here and we could clear this problem up in no time flat. Halloween needs to network better.”

The scarecrow didn’t say anything. The scarecrow just kept making corn dolls. Velveteen gave it a sidelong look.

“You were a scarecrow when you started, right?” she asked. “I mean, you were always a scarecrow, you’re not somebody who got turned into a scarecrow? Because I’m not really in the business of animating corpses, when I can help it. It never ends well.” Her mind helpfully supplied her with an image of Tag, sleeping in his glass coffin back in The Princess’s castle. Velveteen resisted the urge to punch her own brain in the face.

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.