Ferris and Caruso cut across Zone 4. They walked quickly under the shroomtrees. It was a quiet part of the forest.
‘Caruso, I cannot escort you all the way to the anima station. You will have to go alone. I have less time than I thought.’
‘How will I know the way?’
‘When we get out of Zone 4, all you have to do is follow the shroomline north. Mang’s building straddles the line between Zone 4 and 3. You can’t miss it. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe as long as you stay in Zone 3.’
‘What about Urchins?’
‘If there were Urchins in that part of the forest, I’d know. But stay alert just in case. If you do see any Urchins, run. It doesn’t matter where. Just run. And use your walling to help you escape. Are you worried about Urchins?’
‘Well the Maji mentioned there are always more deaths towards the end of a cycle. Why is that? What happens?’
‘It's all about the Forester-Urchin balance. Naturally we want more Foresters than Urchins going into the next world. And the later we are in a cycle, the harder it is to replace fallen members, given the rarity of slimekeys.’
‘So what happens? Do people try and camp outside the Godshroom and wait for a fight?’
‘Not quite,’ Ferris said. ‘It’s tough to convince anyone to risk their life when the Godshroom is waiting for them. Not to mention the Godshroom is a thousand paces round and sits in the shallow of a crater. Any defenders would be out of position versus blinkers who can simply blink through them and into the Godshroom. And with the descending slope, a waller can just launch themselves onto it. As soon as you touch the Godshroom, it takes you, you simply absorb into it like a slimekey absorbs into your skin.’
‘So then where do all the extra deaths come from?’
‘While some are eager to enter the Godshroom. The Godshroom’s ripening makes others restless. Some find courage when the time on a world comes to an end. Perhaps they have a score that needs settling, or a wrong that needs righting. It’s hard to say how it will affect people. I for one don’t just slink into the Godshroom. I take it upon myself to ensure the Foresters have the best advantage possible going into the next world. But you needn’t worry about this. All I want you worrying about now is trying your best with the anima research.’
They passed under an elm tree, instead of leaves, its branches ended in wads of yellow fungus. A dangling tangle of threader shrooms snagged on Caruso as he passed beneath. ‘You really think it’s that important? The animashroom?’
‘As it stands now, the Foresters are more powerful than Urchins. The only way I can see them beating us is by figuring out this shroom and using it against us.’
‘By merging with animals and attacking us?’
‘Remember we have no idea what environment the next world might bring. Perhaps it might be a significant advantage to merge with an eagle and sprout wings, or to a fish and breath underwater, or to an animal that we have never before encountered that could grant us some means of adapting to its world. The mere fact that the animashroom is appearing is enough to know it will become important. Within the shroom circles, there is always a logic and a purpose—one we must put our faith in.’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Caruso said, and meant it. Ferris trusted him now. This was his time to stand amongst the Foresters and do his part. ‘Has all the research just been combining humans with animals?’
‘There’s little use in merging two animals, or two humans. Two-animal animas lack human intelligence to be useful. Whereas two-human animas lack any special animal adaptations. Our research is mainly focused on merging humans with animals.’
‘But all combinations fail?’
‘Only very rarely have we created a successful anima. And when we do, we cannot repeat the results. Mostly the two bodies that merge are incompatible, and neither survive the transformation. It’s frustrating.’
‘Zeela mentioned something about Forester research, is it because you use Urchins for the experiments? Or do you just use civilians?’
‘We’ve used Urchins in the past. But mostly we use prisoners from the Jamalan dungeons: murderers and rapists. Don’t feel bad for these men, they have all been sentenced to death. Part of your job will be to come up with new experiments, the last thing we want is for you to hold back. But let Mang handle the actual experiments. All you need is to study her notes. Don’t get too involved.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘The experiments can be hard to stomach. Mang is used to it and sometimes can forget that it can be hard for fresher eyes to see.’
Caruso nodded. Up ahead the shroomline came into view.
‘I’m counting on you, Caruso. Don’t disappoint me. I’ll come and get you in nine days, and bring you back to the compound so you can travel as one with the Foresters.’
—
Ferris cut away to the east, over the shroomline, and off into Zone 3. Caruso had never been this deep into the zones by himself before. He followed Ferris’s advice and head straight towards the line. He was to follow it north, but he would do so on the Zone 3 side.
He hesitated before stepping over it. It occurred to him that transitioning between between Zone 4 to Zone 3 would normally spell instant death—that or a very unpleasant one. How sure was he that he was now immune to sporesickness? How sure was he that he had actually absorbed that slimekey? He realised now that he’d never actually tested it.
He watched Ferris walking away through the trees. Taking a deep breath, Caruso mimicked the man’s confident stride, straight over the line. It felt like stepping off a cliff and hoping not to fall. But fall he did not. Caruso grinned to himself. Maybe it was silly to be proud about stepping over a shroomline when immune to sporesickness. But Caruso grinned all the same. It was reassuring. He kept up the same stride as he followed the white mushrooms north.
The walk was mainly uneventful. He kept his eye out for shroombeasts, always becoming wary whenever his path crossed a large patch of drugshrooms. Only once did he hear the grunts of a boar coming from Zone 4. It was threaded in place in the middle of a glade, struggling against its bonds. The threads had since cut into its legs, bloodying them. Beside the boar lay a couple of dead cats, they looked as if they had been dropped from a tall height. Just over twenty paces away from the boar another cat waited patiently. It didn’t try to attack the boar. Just waited. It clearly knew the boar was a waller, and was simply waiting for it die.
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Caruso walked on. During the walk he spotted a peculiar patch of mushrooms in Zone 4 shouldering the shroomline. They were blue stemmed and yellow capped—a variety he'd never before seen. He could tell that no animal or insect ate these shrooms. There wasn’t as much as a single bite taken from any in the patch.
It was hours before the forest gave way to a small clearing. A large oblong building—waller built—sat with a quarter of its length backing into Zone 3. The clearing was rimmed with pink capped shroomtrees. A smoldering bonfire stained the air with smoke and an unpleasant sour smell of burning meat. Piles of skulls, rib cages, and various bones littered the yard—many looked human. Hung out on multiple wooden racks, various animal pelts had been set out to dry. There was no door on the building. The building’s walls were bare apart from small windows which had been blink-cut down its length at five pace intervals. He walked around to the Zone 3 end.
‘Hello?’ Caruso called out.
He heard a voice from inside, but it didn’t sound like it was replying to him. A section of the wall lowered. Standing inside was a short squat woman wearing an apron clouded with washed-out blood. She had long hair that dragged on the floor. It was nothing like the shiny groomed hair of Orange, it was snarled and matted into filthy dreadlocks and the part that dragged across the floor was a solid black mass.
‘Hi, I’m Caruso… Ferris sent me.’
‘Oh yes! The brain! The brain! Every set of hands needs a brain, ha ha!’
‘…Are you Mang?’
‘Yes yes! That’s me. Mang is the hands here, the hands is Mang.’ The woman held out her hands and wiggled her fingers.
Great, she’s deranged.
‘What should we do?’ Mang asked. ‘Go inside the study room?’
‘I guess so.’
They entered the cluttered room. It was separated from the rest of the building by a wall that cut across its width where the shroomline would be. A large collection of taxidermied animals sat against the right hand wall, all skillfully made and all boasting anima-induced deformities. Some were more troubling than others. Mang followed Caruso’s gaze and went over to pet the cat with four eyes and a horrifying human mouth forever frozen into a snarl.
‘This one lived for two whole days,’ she said proudly. Caruso didn’t know what to say, but managed an ‘Ah.’
‘What do you want your hands to do?’ Mang said.
‘Um…’ Caruso looked down at his hands.
‘Not those hands,’ Mang wiggled her fingers at Caruso.
‘Right…Well, Ferris mentioned the research I was to study.’
‘Yes yes! Follow Mang.’
Mang cut a path through the crates and sacks that littered the floor, some filled with dried shrooms, others with animal tails, some just contained muddy sticks. Shelving lined the walls packed with containers and jars all filled with something strange and labelled with foreign lettering. Everywhere he turned the room was crammed with perverse oddities: a sack of teeth, dried skins stacked up to the ceiling, jars of organs suspended in a blue liquid, mummified rats dangling from the ceiling by string; it was disturbing, weird, but also kind of fascinating. It was about what you would expect from a woman who has lived alone in the forest for hundreds of years.
A desk sat at one end of the room. Its surface bare apart from an open journal, a pen, and a bottle of ink. Further stacks of journals rose above the desk on either side.
‘The brain station, ha ha! Every experiment done here has been recorded in these books by Mang’s hands.’
Caruso flicked through the open journal. He was expecting the illegible scribblings of a mad woman but instead found clear notes and tidy penmanship, each experiment was recorded in a scientific manner, with exhaustive detail, complete with intricate anatomical sketches. All her journals had the same care for detail.
So she’s not crazy. ‘Nice sketches,’ Caruso said. Mang wiggled her fingers in response. Maybe just a little.
‘You want Mang to do an experiment?’
‘Uh, were you about to do one?’
Mang nodded eagerly.
‘Well I guess it would help if I saw the process before I start reading.’
Mang lowered the only bare section of the dividing wall and stepped through. Caruso followed and was hit with a blunt waft of death. A censer smoked in the corner, but the spiceshroom incense barely touched the room’s stench. He paused at the threshold clamping his mouth and nose shut. Mang looked back at him curiously.
‘The smell,’ Caruso said.
‘What should Mang do?’
‘Can you lower a wall to the outside or something?
Mang lowered a couple of walls on opposite sides of the sod-floored room to allow a cross breeze.
‘Thank you.’ Caruso stepped through. It was larger and considerably more uncluttered than the study room. The far side was lined with narrow mycelium cells—probably where Mang kept the prisoners—some were empty, most were closed so that only a waller could open them. There were a few boar pens to the side, as well as smaller animal cages with birds and stoats, and containers wriggling with worms and beetles and moths.
Mang walked to the centrepiece of the room where two large willow-wood tables sat apart from each other. The two rectangular tables were very different. One was methodically organised with a display of knives and saws and forceps; each instrument clean and shining, perfectly equidistant from each other and aligned parallel to the table’s edge. Also on this table sat another small stack of journals, one was open to a large rendering of a vivisection. The detail was shocking: every vein, organ, and bone seemed to be accounted for. Whatever creature had been cut open had two sets of organs.
Nothing was on the other table—its purpose was clear. A dark red stain had long soaked into the wood and stretched from end to end. Straps cornered the table, each blackened and stiff with old blood. Where the straps met the table they had dug in and worn deep smooth ruts into the wood. Caruso felt a chill down his spine.
‘It’s time!’ Mang said and waddled over to the cells. From under her shirt she pulled a thin wooden tube she wore as a necklace. Sitting inside the tube was a sharpened dart. She dipped the dart’s tip into a container of black paste and squeezed it back inside the tube.
‘Poppy extract,’ she said. ‘Sometimes they run.’
She took a yellow capped mushroom from her apron’s pocket, plucked its blue stem, and placed the stem back in her apron. Caruso recognised the shroom from his walk.
‘That’s the animashroom?’
Mang answered by holding up the shroom reverently. Instead of gills or pores the underside of the cap had hundreds of tiny needle-like teeth.
They stopped outside one of the cells. The front wall slowly began to lower and light leaked in. A man sat slumped against the side. Excrement puddled the bottom of his cage and his skin was festered with sores. It was unclear if he was dead or alive, but then he gradually turned his head and regarded Caruso, his eyes murky with yellow infection. There was nothing behind those eyes. No sign of plea or even suffering; if there had ever been thoughts of escape, they had been given up long ago. This was a man who had accepted his fate and was now patiently waiting to die.
Mang ripped the animashroom cap in two and tossed one half in the cell, it landed in the filthy puddle. The man slowly picked it up and, without caring to wipe it, put it in his mouth and chewed. She closed the cell and paced back and forth before the animal cages.
‘What does the brain think? Which one?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Stoat?’
‘Yeah, sure…’
She picked up a stoat cage and placed it on top of the prisoner’s cell. From her apron she produced a berryshroom. She made an incision with her scalpel, into which she inserted several slivers from the remaining animashroom cap. She then dropped it in the stoat cage. The stoat began nibbling. After a couple of seconds the stoat disappeared as if it had blinked away. Caruso looked around, but stopped looking when he heard the screeching and gargling and grisly wet pops from the prisoner's cell.
Mang grinned and once more lowered the cell wall with the excitement of a child unwrapping a present. She lowered the wall slowly at first, then after peering in, dropped it all the way.
The prisoner’s face now came to a point at his nose, his eyes were small and beady and black. His skin had developed a smooth brown fur. Protruding out below the man’s chin was the lower half of the stoat's body, completely skinless and dripping with blood.
It was clear the merging had failed. It was an abomination. But Caruso forced himself to look.
The man arched his back and made a high pitched shriek which built in intensity until both the man’s and stoat’s left leg twitched three times in perfect synchronicity. The man sagged back to the ground. There was a sound of slowly released air, a foul odour wafted up, and blood bubbled from the seams in his neck where the stoats body protruded.
Mang dragged the anima corpse towards the centre of the room, lifted it up with a wall, and shifted it onto the blood stained table. She seemed happy as she did this. ‘Want to see how it works?’ Mang asked, selecting a couple of instruments.
Caruso didn’t. He couldn’t help stare into those lifeless beady eyes. ‘No, it’s okay. I should start my reading.’ He took a breath, steeled himself, and made towards the study room. His mind dwelled on what he had seen. It was a terrible thing. But once he had left the room he found it weighed a lot less on his mind. Mang closed the wall behind him and he remembered he had a job to do. Caruso picked up the first journal on the pile, and started reading.
A couple of hours later, Mang had completed her work and delivered a new journal. Everything he had witnessed was now just notes and stats arranged in neat little squares on the page.