The ShrivelCrown Relic

Pulled off the drying racks at the edge of the field, still groomed. The face shrank the way fruit does. Three deep ridges terrace the brow and the flesh cured down tight over the bone, coral where the smoke reached it and pink where it did not. Crossed sinew holds both eyes shut. A thin green line runs out from under each stitch and dries on the cheek. Nobody shortened the teeth, so they crowd out past the lips, and the jaw carries a tusk at either corner. Both ears were bored wide and ringed, though nothing holds the tunnels open now. The dreads came through it intact, bound up in a knot at the crown, which was the last thing about him to give. The Rotting Harvest gathers heads at season's end, smokes them slow over green wood, and hangs them facing the rows so the next crop understands what watches. This one cared how he looked. You can see it in the stitching, which is even, and in the knot, which took somebody a while. Whoever took him worked slow too. Printed in full color. The layers pull down over the crown like skin drying, and the surface runs where the heat sat longest. None of it got smoothed.