Scarecrow Year
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is Scarecrow Year.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
A scarecrow stands at the centre of a field sown in a long spiral. Months are knotted along a wire that runs from its wrist to a post: twelve cloth knots, the last of them still loose. Tally marks stitched down the burlap coat record a full year in thread. A woman follows the spiral inward along the bare path between the rows. The air does not move. The straw in the sleeves does not move. Her steps are the only sound, a dry brush on the path, and then even that stops when she reaches the centre.
She stands at the post and looks along the wire. Eleven knots are hard and small. The twelfth hangs open, cloth soft, the year's last month not yet closed. The scarecrow's blank stitched face points down the next turn of the spiral, not back at the way she came. The blackened steel hat sits on the pole above that face. Straw shows under the brim and does not lift.
She waits there a moment with her hand near the loose knot and not yet on it. A stem at the row's edge ticks once and goes still. Nothing else in the sowing moves. She does not call out. The field gives her no wind to answer. The tally stitches down the coat stay dark and even, a full year already kept in thread, waiting on the last knot alone.
She pulls the newest knot tight against the post. The cloth bites. The wire draws taut and hums once. The hum dies into the rows. The scarecrow turns without any wind until the blank stitched face points back along the row behind her. The pole creaks. The sleeves stay empty. The blackened steel hat is no longer on the pole. It lies broken at her feet, straw still caught inside the crown. The break in the steel is a dark edge on the bare path.
She does not put the hat back. She lifts the broken crown. Straw shifts inside it while every other stem in the field stays still. The wire, already taut, eases the width of a finger at the new knot and hums a second time, shorter than the first, then holds. The knot stays tight. The tally thread on the coat pulls one stitch and stops. The year's record stays complete. None of it comes undone.
At the far edge of the field a second scarecrow stands, small only because of distance, outside the spiral entirely. Nothing like it shows on the outer row during her walk in. It does not enter the rows. Its arms hang. The centre figure holds the turn it has taken. The stitched face remains pointed back along her path. No wind arrives to explain either figure.
She stays at the centre with the broken hat in her hands. Straw moves once more inside the crown and then is still. The twelve knots hold. The spiral path behind her is empty. The far figure remains outside the sowing.
The centre scarecrow keeps its turned face. Straw lies quiet in the broken hat, and the figure beyond the last row does not come in.