The Strawfolk - Farmpunk Fiction Contest #4 Entry

This is my entry for the Farmpunk Fiction Contest #4, hosted by @blockurator.

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The Strawfolk

"Looks like a bumper crop this season!"

Alan Kumar's voice rang out across the pumpkin patch and Leah Driscoll glanced up from her work.

"It is," she answered quietly. Taking this as an invitation, Alan strode up to her, and knelt down alongside her.

"You reckon we'll be here another week?" Alan asked.

"At least that," Leah said. "Maybe two." She went back to work with her pruning shears, trimming those vines which had withered or were dragging on the others. To the south stood the settlement, abustle with activity, men, women, and children all hard at work.

"You've done a fantastic job. As always," Alan said. She oversaw the pumpkin patch, and this season it was flourishing, the soil at this latest settlement ideal. Hundreds of fat, orange pumpkins rested on a sea of stiff, green vines and rustling leaves.

Far in the west, silhouetted against the evening sun: the ruins of a city called Brunswick. The distant profile of its many broken buildings reminded Leah of a gothic cathedral she'd seen once in a storybook. As ever there were Diaphagia swirling and soaring all around, their strange and billowing bodies twinkling and glittering as they orbited the city and drifted across the plains.

"Did you ever find your necklace?" Alan asked.

"Not yet," she said. When Leah came of age her mother had given her a tiny silver crucifix on a slender chain. Leah had no interest in the old Faith. But she'd cherished the crucifix, at first because it signified her ascension, and then, when her mother was killed on a trek, because it was all she had left of her. Whenever she was hurting, she reached up and sealed her fist around the icon, the familiar shape and heft of it giving her courage.

That week she'd lost it working in the pumpkin patch.

She tossed the shears aside to take hold of a straggly weed. Winding it several times around her glove, she gently tugged at it, rolling it in little circles as she pulled to work the roots free from the dirt.

"It'll turn up," Alan said.

"I hope so," she replied.

"I'll keep an eye out. And I'll ask around again. Don't worry, my friend. We'll find it."

He gave her shoulder a quick pat, and the emotions that surged through her then were almost unbearable.

Alan had been in love with her since they first met. But she didn't love him. And she never would. However much she respected him, she simply couldn't feel anything beyond that. And at that moment, when she was struggling to keep her shit together, his sympathy felt officious, his presence noxious. She knew he meant well. But she longed, just then, to shove him away, and tell him to fuck off. Even more than that, she yearned to scream, to just fling back her head and roar her rage and grief up at the sky.

"Thanks, Alan," she said, and looked over at him, forcing a wan smile. Then she went back to work, gently twisting and tugging at the weed till finally, in a sudden access, she yanked at it with all her strength and felt it snap off well beneath the soil.

"Fuck," she snarled, and flung it aside, only to start tugging and tearing viciously at another. Then another.

When she glanced around again, she was relieved to see that Alan had slipped away.

* * *

She labored well into the evening and then on into the night, using gas lamps to illume one tiny patch of earth at a time, searching as she trimmed the vines for any glint of the icon . But the only hint of metal she came across was an old pop tab. Finally, when she felt so exhausted she could scarcely see straight, she decided to call it a night.

On her way back to her tent, she passed Bedelia. The strawmaiden was draped, as usual across her perch, her arms wound round the crossbeam and her dirty old boots dangling down. Her jack-o-lantern head, which always wore the same festive grin, depended between her lumpen shoulders.

"Good night, Bedelia," Leah called. She said it every night, and she fancied sometimes that she saw her give a little nod. She was about to head on to her tent when she heard something that gave her pause.

For a moment she thought she'd imagined it. But then she heard it again: a discordant warbling. Her blood turned to ice and the hairs along her neck rose up on end. She glanced up and saw a swarm of Diaphagia barreling down at her.

* * *

At every dawning, they all offered up a prayer together: the same invocation every time, addressed to a nameless agency.

Please keep us all another day, and please forgive us our Dominion. Amen.

They were all taught from the time they were old enough to walk about the brazen years, when humankind had dominated the planet. How they'd lived their lives in relative safety and incredible luxury, without a single Diaphage in sight.

But the people had grown restless. The brilliance and the curse of human beings was to never know peace. No matter how much land they owned, or knowledge they accrued, or wealth they stashed away, their nature was to feel discontent with it and yearn for more.

They'd uncovered unimaginable secrets, and mastered countless arts and sciences, their sum of their knowledge so monumental that no single person could have absorbed it in a million lifetimes. They'd conquered every corner of the globe, and built incredible monuments, and even sent adventurers out into the heavens and the deep. And in this frenzy they'd chopped down every forest, and gouged every last glint of the metal from the earth, and paved over every inch of farmland. They'd poisoned the ground and the sea and the air, and stripped the world to its foundations. And when there was no clean water left to drink, and no arable land left to till, they'd turned viciously on each other, fighting for the scant few resources remaining, murdering each other by the millions.

Until the world could bear no more. On Judgement Day, the earth had split apart, great wounds and chasms tearing open in the crust. And from those vents, a Pestilence spilled forth, a host of terrifying creatures which the world's scientists, in their final, panicked moments, christened the "Diaphagia."

Called also "scintialla" and "wraiths," their shape varied from moment to moment, their contours ever shifting, like the patterns in a kaleidoscope. But they were always formulated of the same stuff: a roiling gloom studded with twinkling motes, like patches of nighttime sky. They drifted and swooped and soared across the sky, and at night they were almost impossible to make out against the Milky Way.

And wherever they sighted a person they swept down, and hacked them into pieces which they swallowed whole.

* * *

Leah's tribe all called themselves Claytonians after Clayton, Nebraska -- the small, incorporated farmtown from which their founders had set forth.

Bedelia was their shepherd.

She stood nearly eight feet tall when she rose to her full height. But typically she walked with a slouch, her elongate body bent forward, her massive head too heavy for the shoulders which supported it. For her head was a pumpkin, graven with a smiling face. Bedelia was a scarecrow, and she'd hopped down from her perch on Judgement Day.

The miracle was by no means an isolated incident. In rural areas around the world, similar cases had been reported. As the earth cracked open and the Diaphagia spilled forth, hundreds of scarecrows had hopped down from their perches, imbued with a sudden, strange life.

These creatures, which came to be known collectively as strawmen, and individually as strawmaidens and strawfellows, could walk around, and even run and jump and climb. Yet they still spent most of their time mounted on perches, as if carrying on their old vocation. They didn't seem to require any sustenance. And while it was widely believed that they could understand human speech, they never spoke back. In moments of danger they sometimes emitted strange rustling sounds, like corn husks scraping together, but apart from this they were compuletely mute.

And for reasons still unknown, the Diaphagia feared them.

And so, while civilization was devoured, a small contingent of humanity -- those who lived within a half mile radius of the strawfolk which had sprung to life -- survived.

These commnities worked all year to farm their settlements, planting stores of seeds which they had stockpiled from previous yields. But they also went out foraging for new grains and vegetables to cultivate, and harvested fruits and berries to preserve, and and hunted small game. They lived entirely off the land.

And every year after Harvest Day, they would pack their belongings into wagons and onto the backs of mules, and abandon their settlement to journey to another. They did this for a single reason: on the day the pumpkins reached maturity, the strawfolk would abandon theirsettlement and strike out in search of somewhere new to perch, leaving those who relied on them no choice but to follow after.

These treks were extremely dangerous, for those at the end of the convoy were at constant risk of being picked off. The Diaphagia swirled around the caravans, waiting for anyone to lag behind. The convoy would travel for days or even weeks sometimes before they came to a suitable place. When the the strawman finally hauled itself onto a new perch, the community knew they'd found their new home, and they settled in, and the cycle began anew.

* * *

There wasn't time to wonder why the Diaphagia were attacking. Leah simply froze in place and steeled herself; knew that any moment they would slam into her and rip her shreds. I'm on my way, Mom.

But the blow that came didn't split her open. It merely sent her sprawling. When she recovered, she saw that it wasn't the Diaphagia who'd struck her. Bedilia had sprung forth from her perch and charged to her defense, knocking her aside before the wraiths could close on her.

The strawmaiden knocked one of the monsters to the ground and stomped the life from it, then snatched another from the air and tore it into glowing scraps, like a child ripping the paper from a present. The remaining host swarmed her then, their flailing, flapping, billowing, and twinkling bodies surrounding and eclipsing her.

Their trills rose to a warble that made Leah's skin crawl, and she cried out in horror, certain all was lost. She imagined they'd absorbed Bedelia into their collective darkness, never to be seen again, or that they were ripping her to shreds. She feared that when they drew apart again she'd see Bedelia's pumpkin head smashed open on the ground, and her old clothes lying in tatters, and her straw strewn everywhere.

But after a few churning moments, the strawmaiden emerged, ripping through the twinkling gloom a in fury, visiting an even greater carnage on their multitude than she had upon them individually.

The slaughter was strangely beautiful. The Diaphagia bled an iridescent humor, and Leah witnessed untold gallons of it spewing, spraying, bursting forth in blazing rainbow spumes. She saw an infinity of colors swirling together, and stark new hues erupting from the orgy. These pigments seared her eyes, and then her reeling mind rejected them, deleted them from consciousness memory before they could soak in.

At least a couple dozen of the wraiths fell dead and gushing to the ground, and as the formation broke apart again, Bedelia seized hold of several more and unraveled them as well. Only a few escaped the melee, clawing and hissing as they retreated back into the sky.

Both Leah and the strawmaiden watched them fly off, and continued scanning the skies for several minutes after. Finally, when Bedelia seemed satisfied that the wraiths wouldn't return, she shuffled over to where Leah stood.

Though Leah had known the creature all her life, she never noticed before the strength that shivered through her with every step, and the weird, lithe grace that informed her movements. She walked with a pronounced stoop, her arms swaying like pendulums at her sides, her knuckles all but scraping in the dirt. But somehow that gait, which would have looked ridiculous in a human, looked dignified and even menacing in the strawmaiden.

And she saw, also, saw the damage which the Diaphagia had inflicted on her, the weeping gashes scored across her head, and the rents which they'd ripped open in her coveralls, and the tufts of straw eruptings through those fissures.

Leah always kept a needle, thread, and patchwork in her pack. She fetched them and began to repair the rents in Bedelia's clothing. Carefully, she forced the straw which had erupted through the fissures back inside, then mended the tears, stitching the smaller ones shut and patching over the larger ones. Fortunately, the fabric was thick, the weave good and strong.

But she noticed something as she worked which both fascinated and troubled her. Each time she forced the needle through the heavy cloth, the strawmaiden flinched and shivered, a little shudder passing through her. Could she actually feel each prick? Though the stiff fabric made it difficult to be gentle, Leah did her best.

When she was done, she gazed up at Bedelia's grinning face. And just as when she bid her goodnight, she thought she saw the creature give a little nod.

And then, so suddenly she couldn't bite it back, that pain that she'd been struggling to keep at bay since she lost the cruficix broke through. It came erupting out of her just as the Diaphagia had spewed forth from the earth on Judgement Day, hot tears flooding her eyes, and snot bubbling from her nostrils, and suffocating sobs wrenching their way like eels up her throat. Her strength seemed to abandon her as well, and she slumped forward, found herself clinging to the strawmaiden as though her life depended on it.

And moments later, and to her complete astonishment, she felt Bedelia's scratchy, wiry arms encircle her. The strawmaiden hugged her back.

She had no idea how long she wept, the time distorting along with her cries. But when the final upheavals had subsided, and her sobs had turned to hiccups, Bedelia released her.

As she stepped back, Leah saw that the commotion had roused the entire settlement. She turned away from them, as embarassed as she was exhausted, wiping abashedly at her face.

And then she saw Bedelia crouch down on one knee, and thrust both thistly hands into the dirt. She held them there for several minutes, while Leah and the others watched in silent fascination. And then, rather abruptly, she leapt up, and charged across the settlement, toward the pumpkin patch.

A minute later she returned.

She reached one spindly arm out to Leah. Dangling from her hand was the crucifix.

Thanks for reading! :D And thanks to @blockcurator for creating farmpunk and for the cool contest!