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the scarecrow
hoarse as the rattle of a
man choking or the hiss of a
serpent. This was the laugh
they heard repeatedly from
the mouth of his detestable
dummy once it was erected in
an empty place in the fields.
Sages, trying to be fair to this
ignoble man, said that the
scion of strangers had not
wished to cause any harm,
for if his work had not been
beneficial, he would not have
freed the oasis from the evil
of the rascal whose body was
dumped at the feet of the
scarecrow when it was first
erected. Mean-spirited men,
however, considered this
action a crime of the most
repulsive sort and asserted
that, since the damn rotter
had feared he might be
discovered, he had tempted
to the site an innocent fool,
whom he had killed with his
own hands to provide people
evidence of the culprit ’s
existence (to which the seer
had alluded), and to dispel
doubts concerning his own
plot.
If narrators differed about the
circumstances of the puppet’s
erection and the puppet
master ’s intentions, they
agreed that the specter who
emerged to meet the Council
of Elders on that ill-omened
evening was none other than
the scarecrow from the fields.
They offered as evidence the
disappearance of the sorcerer
of the Unknown from his
workshop and the fact that
no one saw him in the oasis
thereafter.