Caruso, Niko, and Ferris sat in Niko’s room. A fire crackled pleasantly in the hearth and greenstem incense perfumed the air.
‘Now,’ Niko said. ‘There’s two reasons we have called you here. Firstly, I’m sure you recall me mentioning a small task I had in mind for you?’
Caruso nodded.
‘Well, sweetie, during your challenge with Brown, you proved yourself to be our best candidate for the job. We need you to start right away.’
‘Is the job something to do with growing shrooms, then?’
‘Not exactly,’ Niko said. ‘While your skill in that field is remarkable, what interests us is your ability to absorb and learn written information, retain what is useful, and find practical applications. Such a skill most Foresters are woefully unpractised at.’
Caruso nodded along, unsure where this was all heading.
‘You’re aware of our current anima research?’ she said.
‘No one’s told me much about it.’
‘The animashroom first appeared on our previous world. We believe it has potential we are yet to fully understand, but we’ve struggled to harness its power. Our anima stations run experiments to try and control the mutations the shroom causes. The importance of our success in this field cannot be overstated. If the Urchins figure it out before us, that could lead to a power flip in an upcoming world.
‘We have consolidated our extensive research notes to a single station. We want you to go to this station. We need a fresh set of eyes to pour through the notes, come up with theories, run experiments, find what is missing. You will be working with Mang, our most experienced anima researcher. She will assist with the more hands-on aspects of the experiments.’
‘So you’ve been studying this shroom for two whole worlds now… And expect me to figure it out in just a few weeks?’
Niko smiled, ‘I’m aware how that sounds. But time does not always lend itself to linear progression. A fresh perspective can be just as valuable as a hundred years of repetitive research. And even if you do not discover anything about the animashroom, it would be enough just to study the data and retain as much as possible into the next world.’
‘Okay, I can do that.’
‘Wonderful.’
‘I’ll be escorting you there myself,’ Ferris said. ‘On the way we will be visiting the Maji in Zone 4.’
‘The Maji?’
‘The Godshroom will be ripening very soon,’ Ferris said. ‘The Maji will tell us exactly how many days we have left. But also, he requests to meet all new initiates. He is already aware of your presence among us but a formal introduction is necessary.’
‘Is it like a test?’
‘Nothing like that, sweetie,’ Niko assured. ‘There’s no need for worry. You’ll find him very welcoming.’
Caruso nodded, ‘When do we leave?’
‘First thing in the morning,’ Ferris replied.
—
Before leaving, Miranda filled Caruso up with a hearty breakfast. He told her he wasn’t sure when he would return, but that he would try his best to finish the job quickly. Miranda hugged him and sent him on his way with a pouch full of shroom cakes, some strips of dried salted boar, a kiss, and a fuzzy lightness to his step.
Caruso and Ferris set out, following a similar path he and Kumiko took to reach the truthbutton caves—this time walking atop the cliff instead of down by the river. Caruso could still see the small boulders he and Kumiko sat on when they drank tea. And the stack of stones she had used to demonstrate her blinking was still standing next to the cliff face. Soon, the ravine swung away, and they forged on through the forest.
Deep into Zone 3, more and more shroomtrees were found amongst the regular trees, their thick caps allowed less and less light to penetrate through. Even during the day, the metamine glowed blue under the canopy gloom.
Caruso liked spending time with Ferris. There was an undeniable strength to the man. Caruso always walked taller in his presence, held his head up higher. They passed the time talking about some of Ferris’s previous worlds. Caruso was especially interested in hearing about all the different species of trees and animals Ferris knew about. The man had absorbed a lot of information in his life, it was easy to forget how long he’d been alive for.
The Zone 4 shroomline came quicker than expected. Ferris explained that when travelling through the zones, each one is roughly half the distance as the one that came before it.
There was something exhilarating about crossing into Zone 4. It was like itching an old scratch. Like answering a question he’d forgotten had been asked. It awoke that dormant urge to explore the shroom circles. That urge he’d felt ever since he could remember. It wasn’t just an urge to explore, it was an urge that pulled him ever deeper, called to him, yearned for him to commune with the forest.
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While the Zone 3 forest still contained normal trees, in Zone 4, Caruso couldn’t spot a single one. Only a vague resemblance remained. Here, there were only shroomtrees.
Giant caps spread through the canopy, blocking out even more sun than before. Some had large drooping gills that flapped thickly in the breeze, others had thousands of tiny teeth covering their undersides. There were short and squat shroomtress, and ones that towered up through the canopy, reaching heights far above anything in Zone 3. Ferris called these ones shroomtowers, and said by the end of Zone 4, there is only shroomtowers.
It was fascinating to see how the trees and the shrooms had merged. Their combinations always seemed to serve a purpose, Caruso enjoyed puzzling them out. The taller shroomtrees, for example, kept their thick wooden trunks which likely allowed them to grow so tall. Some retained the tree’s upper branches which fingered through the giant caps like veins. Caruso guessed the branches added structural support as well as transporting nutrients to the far reaches of the shroomcap. Some were enshrouded with a fungal netting that Caruso guessed protected from larger pests. He saw one with a luscious verdant canopy, yet below drooped with large tentacle shrooms. He guessed the dangling shrooms drew part of their food source from the tree’s leaves.
Many were bizarre and completely alien. One was a giant mound of purple hair which rippled in the breeze like a field of rustling wheat. The hair was soft and silky to the touch, but when touched for more than a second it gave off a mild electric shock. Another was just a tall plain arc—no shroomcap or anything—its surface was pale pink and had large oozing pustules of red slime. When Caruso walked under it, the arc emitted a low hum.
The ground itself was sparser with ground shrooms than the other zones. There were two main varieties. Blinkershrooms—a pulsing red. And wallershrooms—an off-white colour, looking like tiny buildings. The threadershrooms hung from branches, stringed together by bright white luminescent threads.
Ferris stopped. ‘Look,’ he said pointing back.
Caruso followed his point, but didn’t see anything other than the shroomtrees he’d been marvelling at. Something glimmered from beside a trunk, about fifty paces back. A pair of eyes. It was a forest cat, watching them.
‘In Zone 4 you must be constantly vigilant,’ Ferris said, eyes on the cat. ‘The shroombeasts here are more dangerous than you can imagine.’
‘More dangerous than the ones addicted to poppy?’
The cat still hadn’t moved, just stood there, staring.
‘There’s a reason we don’t live in Zone 4. Here the shroombeasts know only Zone 4 shrooms, like us, they each take to a single ability, and wield it with a natural grace. While a normal hunting cat knows to snap a neck with its jaw, a Zone 4 cat will just as quickly bind and gouge you, launch you in the air with a wall, or blink into you. They may not be as creative with their abilities, but make up for it with simple efficiency and precision. This one is a blinker.’ Ferris said the last word as if it were a bad taste in his mouth.
‘How can you tell?’
‘It’s perfectly downzone from us. If it tried approaching us from upzone, it would have to run around us before blinking into us.’
‘Why isn’t it charging or anything?’
‘Why make an obvious attack when it can wait and blink silently towards us when we have our backs turned?’
‘What should we do?’
‘No need to be worried. Show it you can wall, it will disperse. It knows it has a natural disadvantage against wallers. It would much rather hunt a threader.’
Caruso summoned a tall wall. He made it off to the side, so as not to lose sight of the cat. The animal skulked away in the other direction. After that, Caruso paid less attention to the shroomtrees. He stayed on guard, giving frequent backwards glances to ensure they weren’t being stalked.
They arrived at a particularly dark part of the forest. Although mid morning, it felt like twilight. Above them a circular window of light lanced down through a window in a high shroomtree cap. Ferris stopped under it; they had arrived at the Maji’s dwelling.
The window was about forty paces off the ground. Ferris told Caruso to wait under it atop a tall wall. Meanwhile, Ferris pulled himself up the trunk of the shroomtree with his threads. He moved along the underside of the giant shroomcap, walking on an impromptu thread bridge, then summoned a couple more threads from the window’s base. The threads knotted together and dropped down towards Caruso as a ladder. The effortless skill Ferris displayed was simply stunning.
Caruso climbed up and through the window. He stepped out onto a large shroomcap platform—the platform consisted of several neighbouring shroomcaps. The caps had clearly been manipulated. Caruso had seen similar manipulation in regular shrooms. Often skilled growers can merge several shrooms into one, or even force them into shapes. But he’d never seen it on this scale before. Not only did the three neighbouring shroomcaps form a continuous floor, but a domed hut arose out of the caps themselves. Tree branches veined through the platform, some punctured up through the surface and provided shade for the hut and its surrounding space.
It was quiet up here, Caruso had expected more bird or insect life. The view all around him was a colourful quilt of giant shroomcaps with occasional flourishes of greenery and the odd shroomtower piercing above it all. In the distance, towards the centre of the shroom circles, thousands of shroomtowers dwarfed the surrounding forest. Their giant caps formed a contiguous roof. Despite this, it wasn’t a dark place, light shone through this fungal roof as if the caps were transparent.
Two people sat in the domed hut. Caruso walked over, there was no door, just an entrance. A woman sat in one chair, a man in another.
‘Hi,’ Caruso said. Before he could introduce himself his attention was grabbed by the vine running along the hut’s ceiling which sprouted multiple varieties of edible shrooms. Caruso couldn’t understand how they could all grow from a single vine, that shouldn’t be possible. Just that little detail filled Caruso with a depth of wonder.
The two people stared at Caruso expectantly but not impatiently.
‘Oh, sorry! I’m Caruso…I’m here with Ferris,’ Caruso glanced over his shoulder, Ferris was pulling himself up through the window.
‘Of course,’ the man said. ‘I am the Maji.’
Caruso had been expecting a wizened old man. But the Maji was normal shroom-aged. He wore no shirt, and his thick brown beard was wild and untamed. He held Caruso’s gaze with an unwavering stare. Normally Caruso would find such eye contact intimidating, but the Maji’s stare was somehow open and welcoming. More like the stare of someone admiring a squirrel in a tree.
Ferris arrived behind Caruso, his face darkened at the sight of the woman. ‘What is this?’
‘She is here for the same reason as you are,’ The Maji said. ‘To find out how much time we all have left on this world.’
‘We’ll come back later,’ Ferris said.
‘No, you’ll stay.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Caruso asked. ‘Is she an Urchin or something?’ He knew instantly he’d said the wrong thing and kicked himself for making such a bad impression this early.
The Maji spoke, ‘At least in my presence, Caruso, we will not use that term. Now please, come in an sit down.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Caruso said, taking a seat on the soft shroom floor of the hut.’
‘It’s quite alright, Caruso. You have been nurtured by the Foresters, it’s only natural you use their terms. Caruso, this is Zeela. She is of the Urqaani.’
Zeela was old. Older than Niko. Her eyes shone with intelligence, and her face was wrinkled with smile lines.
‘Nice to meet you, Caruso. So you must be the boy Webber told me about.’