“Well, aren’t you just a treasure trove of information,” Nathaniel’s voice bites from the darkness of his hood.

I had been so focused on absorbing what Lorrick was telling us that Nathaniel’s uncharacteristic reticence had completely slipped from my mind.

I begin teetering between panic and hope. Although I don’t like to admit it, the scarecrow clearly had a positive effect on Nathaniel’s mental health. Before he had been unstable, unreliable, and, worst of all, unreadable. Were his words sarcastic or cautionary? Was he laughing because he was amused or because he was starting to slip?

Although during the day we argued as though we were on equal ground, at night paranoia dug into my skin, pins and needles of fear. I doubted that he would ever hurt me or Connie, but in the end that was nothing more than a hopeful assumption. There was always a what if - what if I misread him, was wrong, pressed too hard on a day his grasp on reason and restraint was weaker than usual? Unlike Nathaniel, I could face reality - I would end right up with Mack and that sweet old woman that claimed to be a witch.

Oh, we never talked about her. Not out loud, with what was really on our minds. Nathaniel had claimed that she’d attacked him, tried to claw his eyes out and ran away when he defended himself, tried to rationalize the blood that he licked from the corner of his mouth as it trickled down his face and made the ground soggy beneath our feet. There was no body, he’d hidden it somehow. But we knew better than to say anything.

But maybe it was better that we didn’t. Because ever since that day, Nathaniel started getting better.

The delusion of serving the late heiress restored a bit of what he had lost. Nothing close to sanity, not by a long shot, but something along that line, a lesser cousin of reliability: consistency. He became easier to deal with. On good days there was even a trace of amicability in our bickering.

But again, that was no guarantee. There was never a guarantee.

A familiar dread begins to brew in the pit of my stomach as Lorrick opens his mouth to dig his grave even further.

“Of course I am incredibly knowledgeable!” he says, confused at Nathaniel’s tone. Cheering one moment, throwing tomatoes the next. “I was there, among the madness, barely escaped with my limbs intact! They’re like dogs, you know, the gigglers, they can practically smell it on you if you’re not like them. And they don’t like that. Oh, no. Not at all.”

“Like dogs,” Nathaniel repeats flatly. To Lorrick, his tone must have sounded disinterested, unimpressed, a once captive audience grown bored. Connie and I knew better.

“We had dogs!” Connie blurts. “Two big ones. Yellow. Smarter ‘n most people, Jackie said.”

“Jackie?” I ask, eagerly pouncing on this new topic.

“Yup,” immediately replies Connie, a bit too brightly. “Yup, that’s smart ol’ Jackie, she was-”

“See, boys, the thing is,” interrupts Lorrick, forcefully enough to convey that he wouldn’t be relinquishing his rein on the conversation anytime soon. He hones in on Nathaniel and hunches his shoulders, curling his fingers like claws, a storyteller building up the tension. “There’s just this - this animalistic quality to anyone burned by dragonfire,” he continues, “an unquenchable thirst for blood itching, always itching at the back of their throats, roiling in the pits of their stomachs, hungry, starving, never satisfied! Never!”

“Yeah?” says Nathaniel, a chill creeping into his voice. “How would you know?”

Something snags in Lorrick’s expression, but again it escapes before I can put a finger on it. Stretching the arm with Nathaniel’s sword, he tugs back the sleeve to showcase an impressive series of scratches and gouges. They scabs were healing and flaking off now, but they must have drawn blood when they were made.

“Handiwork of my wife,” he says pointedly in the ensuing silence.

“You left her,” states Nathaniel. “Because of a few scratches.”

“Of course not!” snaps Lorrick, the mask falling off, the anger in his voice unstaged. “What she wanted from me… What she wanted was too much. She wanted me to give in, to be more like her, like them. I love her, I do, but there is only so much of yourself you can afford to lose.”

“What they want is never too much,” Nathaniel replies. I could see his fingers flickering under the frayed ends of the hooded cape, his fist loosening and tightening in some kind of distracted nervous tick. “You could have -”

“You think I didn’t try?” Lorrick snorts, his voice tight. “It didn’t work. Obviously.” He pauses, eyeing Nathaniel critically. “If you have to lose yourself, then it isn’t love. Best learn that while you can, young man, before you meet someone that makes it all too easy.”

Nathaniel goes quiet. A jolt runs through me when I recognize the tension in it, the same kind that had built up and came crashing down with Mack’s decapitated head. When he takes a silent step forward, the force in his stride too predatory to mean anything good, I close my eyes and turn away and pray that -

“Wow!”

When I hear nothing else, no screaming, don’t feel blood splatter on my cheek, I afford myself a peek.

The scarecrow had stepped right in front of Nathaniel, and, more importantly, in between him and Lorrick.

“He sure is wise!” the scarecrow exclaims cheerfully, arms spread. “I never would have thought of things like that! What an interesting guy! Right, Nathaniel?”

“Oh,” says Nathaniel, his voice thick, like he’d just been woken from a deep sleep. “Right. Yes. Yes,” he repeats, “of course, Your -”

“Stanley!” Connie blurts.

We all turn to him.

“Who?” says the scarecrow. “Oh, wait. Right!”

“You, ah, you dropped this,” Connie says, picking up a twig from the ground and holding it out, cheeks reddening under the attention.

“Oh - well, if you say so, then I must have!” says the scarecrow, grabbing the brown twig between gloved fingers and jamming it with the yellow straw peeking out of its sleeve. “Thank you very much!”

The following quiet is bloated and uncomfortable, but the scarecrow punctures the awkwardness with another outburst.

“I think we should cross the river now!”

“My boy,” says Lorrick after a moment, “didn’t you hear what I just said? The currents are rough, at this time of day, but the way ahead of you is rougher. Turn back while you still can.”

“Unfortunately, we cannot!” says the scarecrow, wheeling to face Lorrick. “You see, you see, we’re searching for my sister and I miss her dearly! More than I would miss all the straw in the world, in fact! If it suddenly went missing!”

“She won’t be there,” Lorrick warns. “And if she is, she won’t be the sister you remember. She won’t want to leave, or she would have already. Save yourselves from heartbreak. And, more importantly - save your lives.”

The scarecrow thinks for a moment.

“No,” it says bluntly but without resentment. “I’m sorry. I know you’re only trying to be nice,” it adds, tipping its head apologetically.

Lorrick lets his head fall to his chest and chuckles. Then he rolls his arms back and “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Love makes people so predictable,” he says with a wave of his hand. “Pack your bags, boys. I’ll go and have a word with the ferryman. We’re terribly close, him and I.”

He pirouettes on his heels and strides in the direction of the ferry.