It was later that day when Ferris’s bullroarer sounded throughout the compound. Caruso knew the drill. Foresters emerged from their rooms and from around the gardens to make their way to the far wall. Caruso joined them.
Niko sidled in beside him, squeezed his shoulder and smiled. ‘I trust you’re well?’ she asked.
‘Yeah I’m good, thanks.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ Niko always held his gaze for a fraction too long.
A section of the wall lowered revealing Miles, Blue, Kactus, and Ferris. Two Urchins were bound and gagged, their faces splashed with red paint—threaders. Same as last time, Miles erected a platform before the crowd where the two Urchins were brought to their knees and threaded in place. Neither struggled, there was little a threader could do while blindfolded. The Urchins were both older than the normal shroom age, a man and a woman.
‘You Urchins are about to get fucked!’ Kactus yelled, after which the crowd's energy began to build. More Foresters called out, and shrooms were pelted at the two bound prisoners.
When Ferris leaped up onto the stage, the crowd stilled immediately. He strode back and forth a couple of times, letting the silence build, as all waited for his speech. Only when the atmosphere was charged enough did he begin.
‘These two Urchins were caught sabotaging our animastation. Ask yourselves: Why would they risk their lives for this? Ask yourselves: Why is preventing our anima research so important to them? Ask yourselves: What are they afraid of?’
His voice was intoxicating. It wasn’t just his tone, there was something seductive about the cadence of his speech. The way he paused between each sentence was perfectly timed to both emphasise his previous point while building anticipation for the next. The crowd was his; riding the rhythm of his words.
‘Change.’ Ferris answered his previous question. ‘They know a change is coming. They fear it, resist it. They attempt to hold us back, to stop us learning and growing and becoming who we are destined to be.
‘They care not for our duty to the Godshroom. They care only about themselves. But we are Foresters. We must forget ourselves in order to unite. We must empty ourselves completely to allow the collective Forester strength to fill us. We must surrender that which no longer serves us.
‘We are at the precipice of a new world. When we enter the Godshroom and leave these bodies behind, let us too rid ourselves of all that stands in our way.’
The Foresters roared for their leader, Caruso along with them. Something about the speech felt personal to him. Especially the part about forgetting himself. Too often he had wished he could do just that, too often he got in his own way—he could recall too many memories where this was the case. He knew this had always been a weakness of his. But something told him he was now on the right path.
‘Orange,’ Ferris said. ‘Show us how it’s done.’
Caruso cheered along as Orange leaped onto the platform and gave the crowd a low sweeping bow. The Urchins looked smaller somehow. They knew what was coming. Caruso noticed a small thread emerge from beside the male Urchin and quest its way into the woman’s lap. She held onto it with trembling hands. If Orange noticed this, he didn’t say anything.
Orange looked at the Urchins, his waist length hair drifting out beside him in the wind. He didn’t waste any time. Two threads grew up either side of the female; one secured around her neck, the other stood poised beside her ear.
Caruso waited for Orange to tease and play with the crowd. Instead, his thread suddenly gouged into her ear canal. The Urchin tensed, gave a single twitch, and sagged to the ground. Blood trickled from her ear.
It was an anticlimactic performance. The crowd's response was mixed.
‘Did she deserve such a swift death?’ Ferris called out.
Orange was quick to reply: ‘The faster we rid ourselves of the Urchins, the better. We are too late in this world to choose theatrics over decisive action.’
The crowd hushed, seemingly unsure whether they should be cheering or not. Caruso wondered how Ferris would take this. On one hand it seemed like Orange had disobeyed him. Yet on the other, Orange’s reply seemed to speak Ferris’s language.
Without missing a beat, Ferris doubled down on what Orange had said, uniting the crowd once again. ‘It’s a fair point. Why concern ourselves with these Urchins? What we need now is results.
‘Caruso! Come take the stage. It’s time our newest Forester display his hard earned skills.’
Hearing his name shocked him at first, but being called a Forester in front of everyone felt empowering, the applause and cheering felt even better. Caruso stepped forward. Miles removed his wall beneath the Urchin.
Caruso took a quick glance at the crowd. Orange gave him a wink, Caruso nodded back. He wasn’t entirely sure what Orange was saying with that wink, but he was grateful Orange had set him a simple standard to follow. Even then, the usual thoughts of doubt crept in: What if I mess up my walling in front of everyone? Am I really about to kill someone? This is wrong. This doesn’t feel right. But the Foresters lifted him up with their continued chanting and support, burying any concerns.
Ferris gave me an order, that’s all there is.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Caruso felt the ice down his spine and let it gather and pool. The energy of the mycelium network stretched out before him, the power available to him. He had grown to enjoy this feeling.
More thoughts clamoured for his attention, but they were distant, muted, easily ignored. The crowd slapped their chests in tandem, slowly at first. Caruso fell into the Forester’s rhythm, his heart beating along with their slaps. They accepted him. He was one of them now.
Caruso channelled the ice down into one single wall, fast and strong. It collected the Urchin and shot him into the air, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty paces high. The slaps of the crowd quickened as the Urchin reached the zenith of his flight. He stalled in the air for a couple of heartbeats then began to drop.
Caruso was overcome by a strange sense of stillness as he watched the man fall through the clear blue sky: twisting slightly in the air, clothes rippling, his blindfold flapped free and floated away high above, tugged away by the wind.
Then, with a loud wet slap, the Urchin impacted against the edge of Caruso’s wall and shunted to a bloody heap at its base.
Dead.
The Foresters’ slaps broke out into a manic celebratory pace.
Caruso stared at the broken body while the crowd roared in the background. Somewhere inside of him there was a feeling of horror for what he’d done. But it never made it to the surface. In its place he was met with a curious sense of power. A power both comforting and thrilling—he didn’t quite understand it. He heard his name being chanted by everyone. Ferris appeared and congratulated him with a wide toothy smile and called for the crowd to continue their cheers. Caruso understood why this felt so right. He was a Forester. As long as he was a part of them, their strength became his.
—
In the following days Caruso spent his time between the kitchens and the garden, Miranda taught him basic cooking skills, and together they applied the finishing touches to their garden. He knew something was growing between them, something beyond friendship. He tried not to think about it. So he chatted with her and shared easy smiles and laughter. When Miranda brushed up against his arm, or when she held his hand in hers to demonstrate a specific knife skill, Caruso no longer recoiled in fear.
Foresters don't recoil in fear.
The garden was all set up. All shrooms had completed stage 2, had been planted in their own specific mediums and supplemented with their choice of nutrients. Lengths of shade cloth had been hung up to provide the perfect amount of sunlight for each variety.
And now, finally, young shrooms had started to emerge. First arrived the edibles: the berryshrooms stepped up their log in little purple discs, the honeyfungus poked small caramel caps through their bed of elm mulch and pine, and the firetongues licked across the ground, plump, sticky, and red. The medicinals weren’t far behind. The silverstems sprouted under their thick blanket of pine needles, and the dog's vomit—which had started as a tightly clenched green brown ball—was just now unfurling and oozing outwards. Of the bittergill there was yet no sign, but they had planted it in several different ratios of ash wood and termites nest; Caruso was confident one would work.
One night, he and Miranda met in the garden to inspect the shrooms for incandescence. The idea was to pluck out the brightest shrooms to encourage unlit growth. Before doing so they took a moment to enjoy the fruits of their garden glowing around them.
Miranda sidled up next to Caruso, her touch electric in the cold starry night. ‘It’s so pretty. It feels wrong having to pluck all the bright ones.’
‘Sometimes, in the presence of a nightjar’s song, the shrooms will naturally turn dim as a defence mechanism.’
‘Can’t we try that instead?’
‘Well, we don’t have a nightjar with us. But perhaps you can try singing its song. If you get it just right, it should work the same.’
‘I don’t know what it sounds like.’
‘You would’ve heard one before, it's slow and dreamy and beautiful. Let me try.’
He attempted to mimic the nightjar’s song but all that came out was a croaky off tune warble.
Miranda laughed, ‘I definitely haven’t heard that before.’
‘Well then, they should be singing now, let's go out and listen.’
‘Outside? Is it safe?’
‘Not really. But that’s okay.’ I'm a Forester now. Caruso lowered the outer wall and they stepped out into the night.
It was strange walking out of the compound at night, there was a sense of vulnerability, of freedom and excitement. A playful forest scent danced along the cool breeze as they crossed the clearing into the forest.
Before long the compound was lost behind them. Miranda clung to his arm and stayed close. This was a good idea. Insects chorused from the trees while branches bumped and creaked in the wind. An owl hooted off in the distance. And a thousand thousand shroom lights shone all around them in blues and greens, purples and pinks.
‘Can you hear it yet?’ Miranda’s breath tingled in his ear.
‘Not yet, it should sound like a low bleat, almost like a frog.’
They stood still, drinking in the sounds of the forest night.
A nearby scream ripped the night in two. Before he was aware of it, his walls had surrounded them. The forest stilled to empty silence. Miranda huddled in closer and gripped his arm tightly. Panic clawed at his chest.
Then the visage of a barn owl swooped over them, shrieking into the night once more.
‘It was just an owl,’ Caruso said, relaxing into laughter.
Miranda stayed in his arms. It felt oddly intimate within his walls.
He realized then what he wanted to do. And before he could give voice to any doubts, he looked at Miranda and kissed her. She melted into his arms, kissing him back. The walls around him lowered, letting the whole forest in to share this magical moment. And there amidst it all, a nightjar bleated its slow pretty song.
—
Breakfast was strips of honeyed boar, fruits, and shroom cakes. Caruso sat with Ferris, Niko, and Orange. When Miranda came to offer a flagon of orangegill juice, she and Caruso shared a secret grin—only Orange seemed to notice.
It was an important day. The plan was to show everyone the garden after breakfast. It was hard to sit still with his excitement bubbling inside and when Kactus joined the table, it only got harder. Years of arduous study, weeks of careful effort; today it all came to fruition. And he was confident. The bittergill still lagged behind, but he knew all his other shrooms were in perfect condition and ready for harvest. Kactus stuffed his face, unconcerned about his imminent defeat.
‘Well,’ Orange said, ‘shall we?’
‘The bittergill still won’t be ready yet,’ Caruso reminded everyone.
‘Hardly a surprise there,’ Kactus said.
Ferris cast a disapproving look towards Kactus who deflated under his gaze.
‘In the nature of this competition,’ Orange announced. ‘I elect myself, Niko, and Ferris as the core judging panel in which we will assess the quality of Caruso's shrooms against that of Kactus’s.’
‘We all know which way you’ll vote,’ Kactus said.
‘If you are suggesting I am biased, then I must whole-heartedly agree.’
After a confused pause, Kactus said: ‘Let’s just go look at the damned garden.’
Caruso went to pick up his dirty dishes but Miranda pulled him away and pushed him towards the larder. He had been in this larder countless times, and lowered the outer wall just as many. It felt different now. The presence of Ferris and Niko, and of Kactus added a weighty prestige to the occasion.
Caruso took a deep breath and dropped his wall to the garden.
They were greeted with a thick plague of pink flapping wings. Shroommoths had got in and decimated the entire garden.