Sweetly envenomed by winter, drowsy and stiff-limbed in our wooden tomb, we relish our sedation. We are cold, shut in, blanketed, booked, the oven is perpetually emanating the scents of fresh breads, muffins, cookies, scones, plus baked curses, clay poppets, drying herbs, drying insects, which smell much better than you’d imagine.
I was knitting some winter sweaters for the cats. Complete ninnies really, but they must have their sweaters. Unfortunately a few of them have gotten quite fat. I’ll shall have to turn them out more often next summer. As I knitted, the beast host lying in front of the fire, their many tails and paws twitching in faint simulacrum of the murderous fantasies playing out in their dreams, I heard something unfamiliar. The sound carried up the mountain on the wind was raspy, pitched, desperate. The dogs perked up, the cats pretended not to notice. I went to the window and could barely pick out a small figure in the distance. The wind howled around the traveler and occasionally deposited an eerie wheeze at the cabin porch.
“Sounds nasty.” I picked up my feather staff and stepped out onto the porch. It’s made of lignum vitae, pointed at the bottom end and has crisp, white, albatross feathers secured to the top. By the time I became a witch, the ancient völva sorceresses had been exterminated, but some of their staff magic was carried forward through the centuries by their ancestors. Christianized maidens telling the tales their mothers had told them, aware that there was something important in the stories, even if they had forgotten what.
I stepped out onto the porch and held my staff up high, shaking the feathers at the sky, “Vindr, flýja frá þessu stað!” The wind rushed up the hill and over the cabin in an angry roar, gnashing at my hair and skin with icy teeth. And then it was still. I lowered the staff, my eye on the figure below. The wind had carried bits and pieces of their story with it in its retreat and I shivered with the implications.
They were struggling, though, wheezing and coughing, pausing often to catch their breath. I grabbed the sled, shoved my feet in my boots and strapped on snowshoes. The dogs stayed close to me as we walked down the hill. I did not want to spook this client. As we got closer I waved.
“Can we give you a lift up the hill?” I could see now that it was a woman, middle aged, soaking and shivering. She could only nod. I harnessed the dogs to the toboggan and helped the woman on, covering her with a bearskin I kept strapped to it. The bear, by the way, died of natural causes… I have a bit of a soft spot for bears, but that’s another story for another day. The sled is designed just for this purpose, it has handles for the rider to hold on to, straps if they can’t, and a push bar for me. I walk behind and push while the dogs pull from in front. We got her up to the top of the hill and I helped her up the steps. She wheezed, the sound of it rattling wetly in her chest. Inside I shooed the cats away from the fire and set her in the rocking chair there. I gave her warming tea and let her sip and settle. She rocked with her eyes closed, steam rising from her drying clothes as the fire crackled and spit.
She finished the tea and I took the cup.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped, “I really thought I could make it.”
“No need for apologies. You aren’t the first, you won’t be the last to need a bit of help up the hill.”
“There’s something in my lungs. Doctors don’t know what it is.”
“I guessed that much. Fungal, viral, no clue?”
“Elements of both, they said. Like some kind of hybrid,” her voice was breathy and strained.”
“Interesting. I’m surprised they don’t have you in some quarantine at CDC headquarters.”
She tried to laugh, but ended up in a wheezing, coughing fit, blood trickling down her chin and dripping on the floor as she was bent over double. “Sorry,” her voice was constricted and harsh. “Local docs wanted that, but the CDC barely exists anymore so, here I am, looking for the old medicine.”
“Fair enough.”
“You aren’t worried about contagion?”
“I am, for all intents and purposes, deathless and eternal. I don’t get sick. That said, there is something not quite right about this. How did you get it?”
“A mushroom, I think. Well, a circle of mushrooms.”
“Tell me more.”
“I was in the yard, we don’t have snow yet where I live, but a storm was coming and I wanted to clean up some leaves. I stepped on a mushroom that was buried in the leaf liter. I thought I heard a squeak and was worried I’d stepped on a mouse, but when I moved all the leaves there was just this little red mushroom.” She reached into her parka pocket and pulled out a baggie with pale shivering fingers. I took it with great interest. She continued, “I picked it because I didn’t want it to spread. Plus I thought I could identify it.” She stopped and struggled to take a breath. I did it for her, slow and deep, her breath moved in rhythm with mine, I could feel the jaggedness in her lungs.
“What about the circle?”
She nodded “The next morning there was a large ring of them, a big red circle in the yard. I couldn’t believe it. I got a trowel to dig them up, but… as soon as I dug the spade in next to the first one, the entire ring erupted in red smoke. I choked and started coughing and that was it. I’ve been wheezing and coughing up blood for a week and a half now.”
“Mushrooms are brutal. People always think it’s fairies that’ll get you inside a mushroom ring, but no, that’s just fungus propaganda. Fungi are sprawling, intelligent, ruthless underground nervous systems that will absolutely erect a defensive fort over night to murder you before you try and root them out of the soil with spades and fungicides. Most of what people attribute to fairies is just fungus sending people on bad trips with their poison clouds. They can glow, use mind control, and I guess nurture a virus, which is horrifying.” I opened up the baggie and reached inside, pulling the dead little mushroom out by the head, its body was soft and limp as I held it in my hand. “Ok, what do you have to tell me?”Little fellow had nothing good to say. This species was especially bellicose. The little fruiting body, dead though it was, carried the electrical memories of its lineage within its flesh. I saw many, many deaths, mainly of animals. It seems this species had only recently crept out of the forest and colonized the urban area of my client’s back yard. They had done so by traveling untold miles underground, their spiderwebbed network inching forward into unknown territory at a surprising pace. The mycelium colony had nearly died many times, but they had persisted. Along the way, a short time ago, they had come across a body in a field, most likely an unhoused person. That person had what the mushroom remembered as an intruder in their body. The fungus slurped it up, this little invader, and began to incorporate it into themselves, weaponizing it. The result was a fungal spore with a chewy virus center. Quite the payload.
I went to my cabinet and got out a vial and gave it to her.
“This is jinyinhua, honeysuckle extract. It’s good for respiratory stuff, but also good luck and protective. You must get it from Tongwei in China. They have the best. Try asian markets in your area.” I handed her the vial, “Drink.”
She did and I motioned her to come to my cabinet. I pulled down a jar of powdered pomegranate rind. I am still swimming in pomegranates. I showed her how to measure out into the mortar and mix it with honey and gin, then put it in a shot glass and had her drink it.
“Why are you showing me all of this?”
“People around you will die if you don’t know this information. Those mushrooms are springing up all over your neighborhood as we speak. And as you said, doctors are a bit useless right now, not to mention unaffordable. So you’ll need to be ready to save your community. Think of yourself as an unofficial witch. Buy all the pomegranates you can, dry out the rinds and powder them. A food processor works just fine. You can dry the rinds in the oven, it’s faster. As for dealing with the fungus in the soil? Try your local university, they may have an expert on staff. Make sure to tell them about the spore cloud.” I patted her shoulder. “You’re about to fight a war.”
“Sorry, what?”
“The fungus. It wants to kill you all, so you’ll need to be prepared. Spread the word. Make sure people in your neighborhood know what to do.”
“I don’t-“
“Just trust me. This will be bad if you don’t sound the alarm and spread the word. When there are no leaders to be found, then the leader is you.”
“I can’t-“
“No, you don’t understand. You have to.”
“Are we talking pandemic? Again?”
“Yes, probably, only there’s no infrastructure to deal with it anymore.”
“I can put the info online I guess, tell everyone I know, too.”
“That’s a start, good.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Absolutely. This fungus could kill millions”
“Shit, yeah. I mean I already feel a ton better. I wasn’t expecting it to work so quickly. I can help out my neighbors. Spread the word.”
I sent her packing with as much jinyinhua as I could spare and a big jar of pomegranate rind powder. I put some feelers out to my contacts to see if anyone knows of a good mycologist in her area.
Sent a message to the demon world as well… fingers crossed someone can stop this menace.
I hope we get a witch collection one day. I would buy it! I love when she’s watching them make their way up the hill every time.
I love the set-up of the story and the humorous voice accompanying it, great one!