In a movement too swift for Joe’s eye to follow, the gold shackle was squeezing his upper thigh painfully. “I’ve traded one dog for another. Fool me once, shame on you, but I won’t be the fool twice. No, my new dog will remain tethered. You have such lovely eyes, Joe. As you may have noticed, I’m in the market for a new set. Not to worry, I’m a patient man, and soon it will be harvest.”

Joe reached down and struggled to pull the shackle from his thigh, banged his fists against it in futility. It remained there, tightly bound, with its rubies shining portentously in the moonlight. The strange man turned abruptly on his heel and called over his shoulder as he left the field, “Artemis! Tether my cur upon the earth and keep him here ’ere bound so he may watch my field in great despair as harvest after harvest come ’round. Grow roots from his soul and let him bake in the day under the scorching sun. May his only hope of reprieve ever be a kiss from the eternal one.”

The earth trembled under Joe’s feet and thick vines burst up, wrapping tightly round his ankles, up to his knees, and then to his waist. He tried to shake himself free and run but the vines held firm. A gale wind slammed into the field like a linebacker and raked sharply over Joe’s body, pummeling him with dirt and debris. He screamed for help but his voice was yanked from his throat and hidden among the creaking branches of the tall oak trees.

Joe felt the humanity being painfully ebbed right out of him until he became no more than an empty, dried husk frozen in inanimate time and space. A lovely pair of ravens sitting alongside Artemis in the branch of her tree swooped down and landed, each to a shoulder. Their claws dug into his skin, cracking through his wasted shell, though no blood stained their talons. Peering into his beautiful charcoal eyes alternately with twists of their heads, they called out ominously across the pumpkin patch, “Crow! Crow! Scare crow!”

Simultaneously they drove their beaks into the sockets of his eyes and popped them out. Clasped tightly in the miserly talons of the ravens, Joe magically took flight and left his body far below, on the little hill at the edge of the pumpkin patch. The soot-plumed birds came to rest in the tall oak tree with Joe’s charcoal eyes clenched in their fists. They framed the moon perfectly, staring out over the vast field and its inhabitants, dozens of other scarecrow guardians. Though motionless now, they would spring to life if an unsuspecting young trespasser were tricked into spending a night in their patch. And soon enough that young man would also become the harvest.

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Numbers

15

I was performing that night.

Oklahoma, I think, or maybe it was Fiddler.