6: How to Stay Warm

A/N: So as not to get anybody's hopes up (or frighten anybody), this is a reminder that 'romance' is not one of the genres included in this story. Everything in this chapter was written with a 100% certified innocent intent, though of course it's up to each reader to interpret what they will…

(PS: "No one important", first of all your name is highly suspicious and I'm thinking that in all likelihood you're someone very important indeed, maybe the Pope or Maggie Smith. Thanks for taking the time to leave a kind review on the latest chapter. :) I must be honest and admit that I deserve neither thanks nor congratulations for returning to this story. I had such a fun time writing it four years ago that i forgot to keep posting chapters, so I have all these chapters that I haven't posted because I was too lazy at the time. I don't know why I'm choosing now to post them but here we go all the same. Anyways, thank you again, it is fun to know someone important has read and enjoyed this story so far.)


It was hopeless to try to find a reasonable spot to camp for the night; if there was a clearing, it was because the ground was far too rocky for anything to grow, thus far too rocky for any of them to rest. If there was any sort of shelter, it was beneath a crouching, shrubby tree which harbored crawly things with too many legs, and plenty of mud to boot. They stopped within a grove of ancient hemlocks (under which it could be supposed that more rocks may have fit but not very many), with a little patch of visible sky above them. Lion set off immediately to find something to eat.

"What is there in this forest for you to eat?" asked Scarecrow.

"Oh, you know. This and that. They say the frogs are good this time of year," Lion replied in a downtrodden tone. Scarecrow figured Lion's appetite must be vast indeed to encourage him to go scouting about in the dark, away from the group. This brought him partially out of his inner trench of flare-paranoia to worry about Dorothy; she needed food too. She had sat down to rest against the base of one of the hemlocks with Toto curled on her lap, and she looked none too happy. Scarecrow had seen Toto hunting the salamanders before they'd crossed the gorge, so wasn't worried as much about the dog's well-being. Back in the forest where they'd found Tin Man, Scarecrow had gone foraging for nuts and fruit for Dorothy; he figured he could do the same here, or could at least try. With one eye peeled for the sudden appearance of any flares, Scarecrow made as if to disappear into the woods.

"Wait," said Tin Man, calling to Scarecrow. Scarecrow turned around. "We need to build a fire," Tin Man said to him.

"What? Why? There are enough flares lighting up the woods already!"

"Dorothy needs the warmth."

Scarecrow looked at the shivering Dorothy and could have smacked himself. Of course.

"So start a fire," he said. "Don't worry, I'll keep well enough away."

"That's the thing," said Tin Man. "Nothing around here is dry. Except you."

"It… Wait, what? What do you mean?"

"We need something dry in order to start any of this damp wood on fire. You're probably the only dry thing in this entire forest."

"You want to start me on fire?" asked Scarecrow, his eyes growing wide.

"No, no, no," Dorothy said, and held out her hands in a placating manner, for Scarecrow looked on the verge of utter panic. "We don't want to set you on fire, Tin Man was just wondering what would happen if we took some straw away from you and burned that, and if you would be all right with being, well…"

"Being used as kindling," Tin Man finished for her. The meager pile of potential firewood he'd managed to scrape together sat sadly at his feet.

"Would that bother you?" Dorothy asked Scarecrow. It would very much bother Scarecrow to see bits of himself going up in smoke, but if it would help Dorothy stay warm and help her dry out, he was willing to look past that. He didn't respond, but reached through the ripped seam of his side that he'd gotten earlier that day and pulled out two handfuls of straw. Tin Man came forward to take them, and then he passed them down to Dorothy, who had taken out her flint and steel. She turned to Scarecrow and assured him that she'd stitch him back up once everyone was more settled for the night. Scarecrow thanked her halfheartedly.

"You won't feel this, will you?" asked Tin Man of Scarecrow.

"No." Scarecrow, morbidly fascinated, watched as Dorothy arranged the straw beneath some sticks and twigs, and began to strike the flint against the steel. A spark jumped and Scarecrow took a step backwards, but it sizzled out on the wet rock. She kept striking, and spark after spark shot into the air, only to alight upon damp rock or damp dress or anything other than dry straw.

"How interesting…" Tin Man mused, staring at Scarecrow.

"What?" Scarecrow replied warily.

"Apparently straw is only you when it's in your clothes…" Tin Man said. Dorothy looked up briefly, clearly interested to see what Scarecrow would have to say about this. "Scarecrow," Tin Man continued, "what would happen if we had to take out all of your straw for kindling? Would you be gone, or would you still be you, just empty clothing?"

"You don't think you'll need that much kindling, do you?" Scarecrow said, nearly shouting in panic. Dorothy smiled, and just then a spark finally chose that time to bury itself within the straw. The little pile smoldered and began to glow.

"No, but hypothetically," said Tin Man.

"What's hypothetically?" Scarecrow cried, more alarmed than before, if possible. Scarecrow was getting the impression that Tin Man was only asking such absurd questions to lighten Dorothy's spirits. While it may have been working, Scarecrow wasn't sure he could appreciate the chosen subject.

"For goodness sake, calm down, nobody's going to burn you," said Tin Man, and Scarecrow let out a relieved breath. "See, Dorothy's got the fire going just fine, she doesn't need any more kindling. I just meant, in the very unlikely circumstance that all your straw was removed and destroyed, which isn't going to happen, would you be gone, or would you be fine, just in need of new stuffing?"

"Golly," said Scarecrow, "I don't know."

"How can't you know? Your farmer has re-stuffed you before, haven't they?"

"No, I've never been completely re-stuffed. I'd only been a finished scarecrow for days before Dorothy came along and got me off that pole."

"Well I wonder," said Tin Man, and Scarecrow braced himself for whatever Tin Man would say next, "if we took out all your stuffing and put it in a pile next to your clothing – "

"No!"

"Hey, I'm not going to touch you! I'm just wondering – if all your straw was in one pile, and all your clothes in another, would your awareness be in the pile of straw, or in the pile of clothes? If it was the clothes, could you move? Would you just fill the clothes with air and float around? Or would your awareness be in the straw pile? Could you move the straw pile, in the shape of a man, or would you just… you know, sort of crawl around in a lump? What do you think?"

"What do I think?" Scarecrow whimpered, unsettled. "You're asking the wrong person."

"What if we re-stuffed you with leaves? Would you be just like you are now?"

"I suppose maybe – "

"Or rocks? Boy, you'd be stronger than me if you were made of rocks."

"I would be? But how would I be able to lift an arm? I can barely lift Toto."

"Well if you were made of rock, you could probably lift anything."

"If I were made of rocks, my burlap would fall to bits."

"You'll need new stuffing someday, anyways," said Tin Man. "Straw rots pretty quickly. If you didn't get re-stuffed, you'd end up turning into soil. Then what? Would you just be a patch of ground? Would you be a scarecrow made of dirt?"

"Erm…" Scarecrow said. Dorothy was feeding the fire now with sticks and the flames were growing, and in the light Dorothy looked a bit like she were trying to keep from laughing.

"What if," Tin Man continued, "we took your legs off of your torso? Would your legs be able to run around, or would they stop moving?"

"Golly, it's a good thing Lion's not around to listen to you," Dorothy said. "He doesn't need anything else to have nightmares about."

"Yeah, let's not burden him with horrific images of scarecrow halves dragging themselves across the mud," sighed Scarecrow. "Let's just burden the scarecrow with horrific images of scarecrow halves dragging themselves across the mud."

"Sorry," said Tin Man, though he was smiling.

"Sure. I'm going to go find Dorothy something to eat before Tin Man tries to do something uncivilized to me." Scarecrow, inwardly happy to have seen Dorothy smiling, took three steps into the woods, then turned around. "That's why you told me to stay dry, isn't it?" he asked Tin Man. "For kindling."

"Well, one reason among several, yes."

Scarecrow turned to the woods and shrugged. There were other more disturbing thoughts to address than the thought of a former part of him burning up in order to keep Dorothy happy. Scarecrow had to admit – it was very smart of Tin Man to have wanted to keep Scarecrow dry. Though he hated to think about what the other reasons were that Tin Man had in mind.

The other reasons would have to be pondered at a later time. He caught sight of a flare burning off in the distance, which jarred most other thoughts out of his mind. Most other thoughts, that is, besides Tin Man's question of what really would happen to Scarecrow were he to catch fire. What if a flare sprung into existence below his very feet? Would he char down to ashes and lose all sense of self-identity to a great black oblivion? Would he retain his mind but be acutely aware of how ashy he'd become, unable to do anything of his own free will, washed away by water and blown about by winds?

He did not like this thought.

He stuck somewhat close to camp as he searched for food, moving in a wide circle and only startling Lion twice. Lion was patiently hovering over a crack in a rock where he'd seen some sort of wet animal scuttle into. Amphibians may have been well and good for a Lion to eat but try as he might Scarecrow could not imagine that Dorothy would want to eat one. Scarecrow ran across a little thicket of sick-looking hazelnut trees, which bore an impressive number of nuts, for being so miserable-looking. This could have been attributed to the seeming lack of squirrels, and Scarecrow took off his red cowl and managed to stash several small handfuls of the nuts. He also found some clumps of low-growing plants that had sleek, dark leaves and shiny red berries, but he remembered back to the time he'd spent in the farmer's house, during his own assembly, and he thought he could recall someone saying something about how shiny red berries were generally to be avoided. Scarecrow could not for the life of him imagine why a bush would go through all the trouble to put out a berry when nobody was going to eat it, but he wasn't willing to risk picking them.

A little more scrounging turned up some shriveled apple-looking fruits that had seen better days, and a couple of late-season fiddleheads. He brought all this back to the camp, where Dorothy sat with Toto, and Tin Man carefully fed sodden wood to the fire, which was smoking up something awful. When Scarecrow handed her the meager result of his search for food, she looked as delighted as if he'd presented her with a cottage feast.

"Oh thank you," she said, and stood to give him a brief hug. Scarecrow was upset to note that Dorothy was shivering. "Sit down and I'll sew up that hole now," she said, sounding much more businesslike than she looked.

"No, you'd better just eat," said Scarecrow. "You look awful."

"I'll be fine," she replied, and started to search through her basket.

"I really wish you'd eat," Scarecrow tried.

"I will. Just as soon as I sew you up."

"The hole will wait…"

"Don't be silly, Scarecrow." Dorothy had found her thread and now rummaged for the needle. Scarecrow looked to Tin Man for help. Tin Man rolled his eyes.

"Dorothy, you're being awfully considerate," Tin Man said, "but I think the best way to make Scarecrow feel better is to eat something so he can stop worrying about you. He's got enough to worry about, what with these flares popping up left and right."

"Yes!" cried Scarecrow, pointing at Tin Man. "What he said."

Dorothy sighed and gave each of them a hopeless look before resignedly reaching for the hazelnuts. They didn't look wonderful and their husks pricked more than the ones Scarecrow had seen in Lion's woods, but they were, at least, edible.

While Dorothy broke her considerable fast, Scarecrow returned his cowl to his shoulders and took the neckerchief from where he'd looped it on his belt. It was dry now, so he placed it back around his neck. Then he stood by Tin Man and together they discussed the possible meaning and origins of the flares; that is to say, Tin Man worried out loud and Scarecrow tried to keep his teeth from clattering together from fright.

"I know there are a lot of inexplicable things in the land of Oz," began Tin Man, snapping a branch in two and feeding one half to the wretched little fire, "but they're usually either comparatively benign or there's some sort of explanation to them."

"Hmm," said Scarecrow.

"I wonder if there's oil under this forest. Maybe little springs of it come shooting out once in a while! I could re-fill my oil can… Nah, that can't be. This whole place would go up in flames if the oil was that close to the surface."

"Hmm."

"Fire-breathing dragons?" Tin Man then queried. "But I thought dragons generally stuck to Gillikin Country. This doesn't seem like dragon habitat."

"Nah."

"If it were an enchantment, what purpose would it be serving? To warn people away? To keep something from escaping?"

"Hmmmmmm," said Scarecrow, especially displeased to be thinking about those implications.

"Whatever is keeping those flares burning," said Tin Man, "I sure wish we had some of it. This miserable little fire just doesn't want to grow." He carefully arranged more of the wood over the whole mess and blew on it to try to give it more life. For a moment the flames seemed to take heart and they turned from a moody red-orange to a more cheerful orange-yellow, but it didn't last long. Soon the flames had faded down to a pale blue, and the nascent embers were beginning to grow a grey frost of ash. Scarecrow tugged out another handful of straw; Tin Man accepted it gratefully and very carefully arranged the driest wood he'd found to make the most of what they had. The straw lit immediately and the yellow flames chewed away at the sticks and branches, but when the straw had burnt itself out, they were left with billows of smoke and nothing more.

Scarecrow hesitantly reached again for more straw but Tin Man stayed his hand.

"It's no use," he lamented. "Everything here is too saturated."

"Probably too wet, too," said Scarecrow.

"That's what I just… Oh, never mind. Dorothy, I'm sorry, but I don't think we'll be having a fire tonight."

"It will be just fine," Dorothy said, smiling up at them, waving absently at the smoke that pushed around her. Toto crawled off her lap and over to the other side of the dead fire, where the smoke wasn't blowing. Dorothy got up and followed him. "Where's Lion? I haven't seen him in a while."

"I'm out here," Lion called, "still waiting for this thing to decide that it wants to come out of its cave and be eaten."

"Ah, the mighty hunter," smiled Tin Man.

"You must be starving!" Dorothy shouted out to Lion.

"Oh no," he responded. "There are plenty of frogs out here."

"Are you cold?"

"No, but it'll be days before I dry out, I'm sure of it!"

Dorothy sat down next to Toto, as near to the smoking pile of ash as she could – apparently it still gave off a suggestion of heat – and gestured Scarecrow over. He took a seat, eying the ash heap suspiciously. Dorothy brandished the needle and thread.

"This would be easier for me if you'd lay on your side," she said. Scarecrow complied, and lay down half-curled by her side. "There… Now no more straw will fall out…" Dorothy set to work, carefully going back and forth across the burlap, a steady stream of pleasant commentary spilling from her mouth. Toto readily got up from where he'd been and pressed his shivering body against Scarecrow's dry chest; Scarecrow wrapped an arm around the little dog. Scarecrow was only half-listening to Dorothy – apparently the rip was much longer than Dorothy had thought, and it was rather difficult to see as it was dark, but at least the moon was out and at least her eyes were adjusted, and she would like it very much if she had the ability to see in the dark like the rest of her companions, and wasn't it getting quite a bit chillier now, with the wind? What Scarecrow found to be vastly more distracting were the woods, which he could see from his position on the ground. Flares peeked out from between the trees, some very far away, some closer. Some were just close enough for Scarecrow to hear their distinctive foof when they sprang out of the ground.

Once, a flare foofed into existence no more than ten armslengths away from their camp. This caused Scarecrow to startle so badly that Toto, who'd been sound asleep, leapt away with a yip, and Dorothy dropped her needle. He apologized profusely and Dorothy said it was okay, but the needle had come off the thread and the thread had tied itself into a dreadful knot; she had to break it and start again where she'd left off, once she'd found the needle. After a moment Toto crawled back over to lay against Scarecrow. By the time Dorothy had tied off the thread and proclaimed him whole again, the flare, which Scarecrow had been keeping a careful eye on, had burnt down and disappeared.

"Thanks very much," he said, and began to sit up.

"Oh please stay there," said Dorothy, placing a hand on his shoulder. Her voice shook a bit with the cold. "Toto looks so comfortable."

"Much as I care about Toto," Scarecrow said, and sat up, "we should probably find something dry for you to sleep on. Leaves or pine needles or something." Toto looked up at Scarecrow, disgruntled.

"Everything is damp," Tin Man reminded him, from where he'd been standing sentry against the trunk of a hemlock.

"Oh," said Scarecrow, crestfallen. "That's right. What are we going to do?"

"Honestly, Scarecrow," said Tin Man. "I know you don't have a brain, but really?"

"What? Really what?"

"I repeat," said Tin Man, with a note of exasperation, "you're the only dry thing in the area."

"Wait, you want me to rip out all my straw and – "

"Please just lay back down," sighed Dorothy, eager to dispel his sudden anxiety. He resumed his position on the ground, and Dorothy curled up in front of him, pressing her back and shoulders into his chest. "I'm deathly cold," she said pointedly, and with an obvious shiver. Scarecrow wrapped one arm under her head and up around her shoulders, and the other over her middle as if to keep her from leaping away to her death. Toto clambered up onto Scarecrow's newly-sealed side and settled down half on top of both of them, in the dip between Scarecrow's straw-starved belly and Dorothy's waist. From the edge of the woods Tin Man let out a chuckle. He's probably known it would come to this; another reason he'd kept Scarecrow from getting drenched, no doubt.

For his part, Scarecrow did not understand the laws of thermodynamics and had no clue that his straw was capturing and storing Dorothy's (and Toto's) radiant body heat and keeping it close by to prevent further heat loss. He did feel that Dorothy had begun to relax, as if he'd been holding something frozen that was now thawing. Her shivering became less pronounced, and in a few moments it had ceased altogether. Toto was snoring softly, paws twitching now and again in pursuit of some dream-squirrel.

Scarecrow heard Tin Man pace slowly across the perimeter of their camp, keeping a careful watch. A few trees away, Lion splashed and pounced and began to crunch on something. Soft foofs reminded Scarecrow to continue to worry about the flares. Sometimes at night, when Dorothy and Lion and Toto were sleeping, and Scarecrow and Tin Man were being quiet so as not to wake them, Scarecrow would get terribly bored and search desperately for things to think about, only to remember that he wasn't very good at thinking by himself. Tonight would not be such a night. If anybody gave him one more thing to dwell upon right now, he was afraid his head would start to smoke. In fact, he realized with a sinking sensation, he could already smell the smoke –

Dorothy shifted and batted a stray lock of hair from over her ear.

"You're awake!" he whispered, worried. "Is it because you smell smoke? I smell smoke."

"I probably smell like smoke, I was sitting by the fire all that time," she responded softly. Scarecrow let out a breath.

"Oh good, it's not me," he whispered. "I was worried my head was beginning to burn."

"I doubt it," she whispered back. "The fire is completely dead. Why are you whispering?"

"I don't know. Isn't that what people do at night?" Dorothy didn't respond to that one, leaving Scarecrow to wonder if he'd had it backwards all this time. Was it daytime when people were supposed to whisper? Surely not. Dorothy took a deep breath in and let it out.

"No, you smell like sweetgrass," Dorothy murmured, "not smoke."

"Oh. Is that what's keeping you awake? Is it bothering you?"

"It's doing quite the opposite of bothering me," Dorothy said in an undertone. Scarecrow had to think about that for a moment.

"Oh, I see. Good," he finally responded. "So why aren't you sleeping yet?" Again, Dorothy did not respond right away. He didn't think she'd fallen asleep, for her breathing hadn't changed any. He waited patiently for a response, were it ever to come. Several distant foofs filled the silence, and then the sound of Lion creeping back into camp. Scarecrow could imagine that Lion would have been even more exhausted than Dorothy, having gone into the river and everything. It did not take long at all for Lion's breathing to become relaxed and then laced with a hint of a snore. Now there was reason to whisper, Scarecrow thought, though it was quite possible that even the sound of a rampaging flock of undead creatures wouldn't wake Lion now.

"I'm so worried," whispered Dorothy, finally.

"Me too," said Scarecrow. "You're not alone on that horse… Wait, do people say that? On that horse?"

Dorothy stifled a funny sort of giggle.

"I think people usually say on that boat¸ but you should say what you like." Her voice sort of twisted together near the end of her sentence and Scarecrow realized by her suddenly distraught behavior that she must have been quite a bit more worried than he'd originally thought she'd meant.

"I take what I said back," he whispered. "You sound like you might be a horse or two ahead of me."

"Oh, Scarecrow," Dorothy sighed. "When you get a brain I do hope you don't lose your sense of humor."

"Why would I do that?"

"Sometimes it seems as though the more brains a person thinks they have… the less room they've got in their head to simply be themselves."

"Oh. I hadn't thought of that," said Scarecrow. "I'll try not to forget who I am."

"Good," Dorothy whispered. "I feel a little better already. Maybe only people from Kansas get more disagreeable as they become more intelligent."

FOOF! A flare erupted again from the same spot, ten armlengths away from their camp. Scarecrow managed to keep his alarm down to a moderate twitch this time. Toto did not wake.

"Though we most certainly do not have dreadful things like flares in Kansas," Dorothy continued. "Or awful, unpleasant forests like this."

"Then why," Scarecrow asked, eyeing the plume of flame, "did you ever leave Kansas behind?"

"Well, I could ask you why you ever left your stand in the field behind."

"That's easy. I want a… a brain? A brain. Yeah."

"Right," Dorothy said. "You're looking for a brain. I'm…" Dorothy paused, and Scarecrow thought she must be very exhausted indeed. "Well, my case is different. I didn't choose to come to Oz. It just happened."

"But you chose to leave home. Before you'd even heard of Oz. You said you ran away."

"Well you would have too if you'd been there. You wouldn't believe it, Scarecrow, everything seems so… so grey in Kansas. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry have built their life around the farm but I couldn't just stay there, knowing that the world was doing marvelous things just beyond the clouds, maybe around the river bend…"

"Just over the rainbow?" Scarecrow added, getting a bit swept up in her wistful voice.

"We don't see many rainbows in Kansas," she replied bitterly. "I imagine they prefer to grace more colorful places."

"No rainbows? That does sound boring. Why would you ever want to go back?"

"I don't belong here." Her response was so immediate that Scarecrow found himself automatically wondering where Oz had gone wrong, not to have made itself more Dorothy-appropriate. It was a shame, really. He would have liked for her to feel as if she belonged here. "As exciting and wonderful and colorful as Oz is," she continued, "and as much as I love my new friends here, who are the best friends anybody could ever ask for," and here she hugged the arm that Scarecrow had wrapped around the front of her shoulders, "Kansas is where my roots are. It's where my family is."

"Roots?"

"Oh, that just means… it means that's where my blood belongs."

This made even less sense to Scarecrow, but he kept his mouth shut. She didn't sound distraught at all anymore; it seemed as if talking about Kansas was calming her down.

"And I miss Auntie Em terribly… She's strict, but I love her so. And Uncle Henry. He's taught me so much. And Zeke and Hunk and Hickory… Life would be ever so dull without them."

"Hunk?" asked Scarecrow, surprised. "Who would name their kid that?"

"Is it really so strange?" Dorothy said, curious. Scarecrow could hear that her voice was fading. "I grew up with that name by my side, I guess I'm used to it…" Her grasp on his arm dropped away and there was a moment or two of uninterrupted silence; even the flares were quiet. "Thanks for being warm," Dorothy murmured finally. Scarecrow had no problem accepting praise for something he had no control over, and he almost responded with a cheerful you're welcome, but then he had the sudden worry that perhaps when he got a brain, he would make the unpleasant discovery that having a brain made a person less warm, like it apparently made a person less fun to be around. He opened his mouth to ask Dorothy if she knew, but her breathing had shifted; she'd fallen asleep. Scarecrow stifled his question for another time. It would be a shame to lose his warmth, when there were good people around who occasionally needed an extra bit of it.