There used to be a lot more of us, but that was back when Old Man Beasley had the place. You could look out in any direction and see one of us, standing tall and terrifying on our poles. That's how this place got its name – Scarecrow Haven. The Old Man would even take in the old or broken and recondition them.
In return, we worked hard to keep his crops safe, although I don't think even he ever knew just how hard we worked. There are some things are best left in the shadows. People see, but they don't, if you know what I mean.
Then the old man up and died and his sons took over. They tried running Scarecrow Haven for a while, but farming wasn't in their blood, not like it had been the Old Man's. They hired a foreman to run the place and slowly but surely he got rid of most of us. The winter winds snapped poles and ripped what few clothes allotted us from our limbs.
Now it's just me and Jerome. He guards the fields in the north and west. I take the south and east. There's too much for just the two of us, but be damned if he'll put up any more. So we do what we can. We look terrifying and we try to forget the old days when we were… different. It's hard, but the years have a way of playing tricks with your mind. We keep telling ourselves that.
The night was starting to fall when I first saw movement in the rows of corn. It was erratic, stopping and starting, the stalks swaying as whatever it was passed. Not a crow, certainly, but there weren't many other creatures that had their lack of sense and would come into the fields at this time of the day or night.
A hand grabbed my pole and I glanced down without moving my head – lots of practice with that. There was a man, blond and nearly as thin as me. He pulled himself up and I could feel his hand trembling as he struggled to stand.
"Forgive the intrusion," he mumbled by way of an apology. I ached to answer him back. A hand let go on my central pole and took something out of his pocket. It was metallic looking and caught the last bit of the setting sun. "Open Channel D, please." He coughed and started to slide back down. "Priority."
"Channel D is open. Hello? Agent?"
This time I did move my head and I saw that the man had collapsed and I was willing to bet it wasn't water that was staining the ground dark.
The rule is that we only move after dark, but rules were made to be broken. I bent down and scooped up the object. "He needs help now." My voice sounded like a rusty hinge.
"Who is this? Identify yourself."
"Help him now. Scarecrow Haven." I rasped and dropped the instrument. I was only allocated a few words a night, who knew why. I couldn't say much more even if I wanted to.
A noise pulled my focus and I stood tall and straight. There was a group of men thrashing their way through the field, crushing a summer's worth of crops. That made me see red and I sent out a message to Jerome. There was only a few sacred rules in the fields. One of them was protect the crops.
Instinctively I knew they were after the man crumpled by the base of my pole. There was something ruthless about them, something the unconscious man lacked. They would do just fine.
Carefully, I slipped out of the blond man's grasp and moved a few rows away from him. The wind came up and made my clothes flutter in the wind.
"What was that?" I could smell the stink of sweat on him. He was large and beefy, just the way I liked them. "Kimball, Reed, did you hear something?"
"Nothing. Ain't nothing here but that damn scarecrow." He scowled at me. "Monroe, did we get turned around?"
Monroe, my new friend, stopped at that and looked around. "No, I don't think so. Why, Reed?"
"Wasn't it over there?" A third man stared at me, apparently Kimball, and then back at the spot where I'd left the man.
"Who knows? Who cares? It's just a stupid scarecrow." Monroe snapped a beautiful stalk of corn and I felt my anger grow.
They should have paid more respect to the crops we protected, but instead they kicked, shoved and busted their way through the corn stalks.
"Are you sure Kuryakin came this way?"
"He didn't come out the other side, so he has to be in here. Fan out and clear the way. We'll find him if we have to trample the whole field down."
Hello, Lewis
Good evening, Jerome. Thank you for coming. Just because we were scarecrows, it didn't mean we had to be uncivilized.
You have company. Bad company.
I do. They are searching for another. They mustn't find him. They are ours.
Excellent. I've been waiting a long time. I'm very hungry.
I stood proud on my stick and let the morning sun warm my dew dampened clothes. At the base of my pole, the blond man slumbered. He'd awakened in the middle of the night, but I convinced Jerome what he saw he would attribute to a fever dream and thusly saved his life.
"The signal is coming from over here." A man was working his way down a row. He was well dressed, but there was a sense of urgency about him. "Illya?" he shouted.
The man stirred and I made an instant decision. "Here!" I yelled back. Kuryakin looked up at me and I nodded. Somehow I knew our secret was safe with him. He'd seen what we could do.
A moment later, there was a group of men around him and I felt relief. Now things could get back to normal. I didn't like change. It never heralded a good thing.
Well, maybe that's not entirely true. I looked at the three new scarecrows erected not far from me. It would be a few years before they would be any good to Jerome or myself. First they would have to forget how it felt to be consumed alive and what it felt like to have their bones replaced with bits of wood. A few years and they would forget they ever had fingers and legs. Then we could introduce them into our brethren. Then we would teach them how to think and act like proper scarecrows.
The man was helped to his feet and studied me closely. With a trembling hand, he touched my twigs. He was shaking my hand. After all these years. I nearly smiled.
"Illya, what are you doing? That's nothing but an old scarecrow."
"Not an old scarecrow, a good one. He keeps this field safe and not just from crows. And for the record, they work on THRUSH, too."