In Which Mushrooms Carry History Through a Door Between Worlds, by Sharon J. Gochenour
The first part: reunions.
[[ taste known ]] [[ taste familiar ]]
(they creep through the earth, a thousand branching fingers, each tendril a single, elongated cell, a pressurized questing beast lacing itself through the debris of discarded lives: dissolving stone, liquifying the dead, passing from the mineral realm to the kingdom of the exquisite, microinfinite, churning bioverse, periodically surging upward into the clear air to unfurl with an umbrella-snap, exhaling a long sigh of spores, hissing and slipping through boundary and portal and gate)
[[ our own ! old friend ! our smell in the earth ! we know ourself ! ]]
(they have not met themselves/themchildselves in a long time)
[[ a new tree ! a beautiful tree ! smell of sugar sunlight ]]
[[ here god ! ]] [[ yes ]] [[ this ]]
[[ not tree ? ]]
(they have lived with trees for a long time, pulling down the air into the roots, bringing the stones up into the wood; they know trees)
[[ still tree ]] [[ but also god ]]
(they have lived with gods too, though gods are not so old as trees)
[[ a god , then ]] [[ good roots , filled with sweet ness ]]
[[ taste , stretch upward , beloved self ]]
*
“It’s been a while—”
“So long!”
“Too long!”
“Too. Long!”
“Do you want some tea? I made up a new blend yesterday from the fennel I was growing on the balcony—”
“Did it already go to seed? Oh, wow, yeah. That sounds great, I’ll have some of that—”
“Let me get the kettle. Do you take honey? It’s from Maya’s bees—”
“Well, I guess, sure—”
“She got a fungus demon stuck in one of the hives, the one on the northern edge of her lot I think, real nightmare, it transubstantiated a big section of four frames into motor oil before she could smoke it out—”
“Wait, can you smoke a fungus demon out? I thought you could only do that with spirit mites?”
“Yeah, she made up about two dozen wands—”
“What wood did she use?”
“Black walnut, I think, that’ll kill anything—”
“Is this honey from those frames?”
“I actually didn’t ask—”
“Did I tell you about the tree god I found on the corner of the park?”
“Which park?”
“The old park by where the school used to be.”
“The one that runs down a hill? That’s not a tree god, that’s a dryad, Yvette brings her mulch every couple months—”
“Yvette on the city council? No, but I don’t mean where the new school used to be, the one by the old school.”
“The one they knocked down because of the moss?”
“The moss?”
“The moss that kept growing over the floor in the gym? I think they had to hire an extra janitor to clean it off the stage curtains every night.”
“Oh no, not the old school out on the hill, the one in town. The one the cemetery spread into as soon as they took it down.”
“Oh, that school. I barely remember that school. I think it was pretty haunted even before the cemetery got it.”
“There’s a tree god growing in that little patch of timber that came up on the hill behind there.”
“What kind of tree is it?”
“It doesn’t know yet. It’s got acorns and silver leaves.”
“How strange.”
“It’s so strange.”
“Does it have—you know—”
“It’s got the infestation, yeah. It’s funny, really—when I started scraping off the white stuff—you know the white stuff, from the bugs—it, I mean the god, thought I was another bug, and it just dropped the whole branch—almost brained me—”
“Only you would think that was funny—”
“Well, it missed me.”
“Your tea’s ready.”
“Ow—hot—oh, this is very nice—”
“Well, what did it want?”
“What did who want?”
“The tree god! Have you made it an offering?”
“It wants the same old thing, you know.”
“I suppose you can ask your brother to bring up some cow blood from the meatlocker—”
“No, I did it.”
“Oh! You didn’t! You shouldn’t have. They get used to it.”
“It was only a little bit. I didn’t take it from my palm. I just sliced the back of my calf a little bit.”
“Let me see—”
“It’s fine, look—”
“It’s not fine—”
“It will be fine—”
“It’s not fine yet—”
*
[[ hello god ]]
[[ no it doesn’t say hello ]]
WHAT WORD OF THE GREATER WORLDS BRING YOU TO ME, MYCELIOUS ONE?
[[ what ]]
[[ other trees ]] [[ what did they give to us ]]
DARE NOT SPEAK UNDER MY ROOTS AS THOUGH I MAY NOT HEAR, FUNGAL ENTITY.
[[ hear ]] [[ not understand ing ]]
[[ what do we carry ]]
I SMELL YOU, VERBOSE BASIDIOMYCETES. DISCLOSE YOUR SECRETS.
[[ here ]]
(they open pores in their thousands of hyphae, letting hormones and transcription factors and sugars and salts flood soil around the god’s tiniest root-hairs. the god shivers inside its bark, bombarded by the chemical shadows of other suns on a million unknown leaves. a wisp of familiar scent passes into its cambium. it shudders harder)
WHAT GATE PASSED YOU THROUGH, MUSHROOM-BEARER?
[[ gate ]] [[ what gate ]]
[[ what gate ]]
WHAT WORLD CAME YOU FROM LAST, MYCORRHIZAL TRAVELLER?
(they release more sugars, tangled hexagons and pentagons of carbon studded with oxygen. mycelia do not carry the tiny, volatile molecules which are the voices of trees, but the god smells them all the same, broken into pieces among the murmuring of the fungus)
[[ what want INSECTS CRAWL UPON US, THEY CARVE OUR SKINS here this sugar ]]
[[ tree god COME take water HOME tree god HOME roots dry HOME ]]
[[ tree this SEND HELP O BRANCH-BROTHER smell this ]]
(the god shrinks into itself)
*
The second part: endings.
“Good gods among us, that’s a tree—”
“I told you—”
“We couldn’t touch each other’s hands if we stood on either side of it, look—”
“Wouldn’t recommend that, it’s got the infestation in all the folds of its bark—”
“Yuck, thanks. Look at this huge crack. It must have come through suddenly.”
“Very suddenly.”
“I wonder from where?”
“Who could say? Here, take this—”
“Oh no, this is my day off—”
“But look, just look at all the gunk the bugs have left on it—”
“I should have known when you brought a bucket of soapy water—”
“Well, yes, that was a bit of a giveaway—”
“It’s too hot for this—”
“It’s not that hot. Come on, we’ll work on it for half an hour and see what kind of headway we can make.”
“What if the bugs get in my clothes?”
“Burn them.”
“I did not sign up for this—”
“Do you want to take the sticky stuff off with the toothbrush, or scrape the scales off with a razor? I brought two of each—”
“Oh god, neither. Surely there’s a better way to kill the bugs than this. Haven’t you asked your grandma about this?”
*
HOW DARE YOU TOUCH ME! APES! HOW DARE YOU!
[[ spore spreaders ]]
[[ vibrations ]] [[ useful ]]
[[ time for spores ]]
[[ spores ! yes ]]
YOU SMELL OF DEATH, CURSED CHORDATES! TAKE AWAY YOUR BLADES AND YOUR BRUSHES! LEAVE ME IN PEACE!
[[ death ]] [[ death ]]
[[ death ]] [[ here ? ]] [[ where ? ]]
(their hyphae flex in the earth, remembering the nitrogen they have given and will receive in turn)
*
“No, I haven’t asked her—”
“Is she not doing well?”
“It’s hard for her to remember things.”
“You know, I don’t even have any grandparents left—”
“Yes. I know.”
*
OH! MY BARK! MY BEAUTIFUL BARK! YOU ARE SCRAPING IT, YOU MAMMALIAN MONSTERS, YOU FURRED FIENDS! YOU ARE DAMAGING MY DELICATE INTERFACE!
[[ death with us ]] [[ death in the earth ]]
[[ red light warm red light BROTHER HELP US cooling light THE CRAWLING DEATH IS UPON US ]]
[[ trees crying ]] [[ why ]]
[[ yes ]] [[ all dying ]] [[ all dead ]]
[[ then return ? ]]
[[ no return no nuts no saplings no sugar no new sun in the warming of the sun ]]
[[ only death ]]
(they are happy to have their gifts returned to them, but they do not care to keep them)
[[ no sugar for ourself ]] [[ we left to find ourself again ]]
BE SILENT, O LOWLY TOADSTOOLS! YOU HAVE MANGLED THE MESSAGES. YOU HAVE BROUGHT ME THE WRONG MISSIVES. SEARCH YOUR CELLS FOR A DIFFERENT SIGNAL.
[[ what message ]]
OH, THIS ITCHES LIKE A GROWTH SPURT.
*
“You should just ask her. She might remember something like this, if there’s any sort of charm, or ceremony, or anything better than just—scraping—”
“Anything worth doing is worth a little elbow grease—”
“Don’t be so self-righteous—”
“I don’t want to upset whatever power might be tied up in it.”
“But I think we’re damaging the tree by getting all the bugs off, look at this gouge from the razor—”
“Have you ever seen a god like this, though? I don’t even know where we’d start setting up a circle—”
“Your grandma would know, you should ask her.”
“I don’t want to upset her—”
“Why would that upset her?”
“Look, we’ve cleared almost this entire section, maybe we should come back tomorrow—”
“What’s this we, I didn’t volunteer for this—”
“But if we did this much every day—for say a week, we could get the bugs knocked down—”
“And then what? They always come back—”
“We’d have to do some maintenance, but it would relieve some of the stress on the god—”
“If they’re beneath the bark—”
“They might not be beneath the bark yet—”
“I’ve never seen a god with this bad of an infestation that didn’t go all the way into the core—”
“They’re moving her to hospice.”
“Oh.”
“My mom and my aunt decided last week.”
“What did she say when they told her?”
“She couldn’t say anything.”
“But—”
“She cried.”
“How long—”
“Maybe a couple of months, they think.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry I said the thing about not having any grandparents.”
“It’s okay.”
*
The third part: in which mushrooms carry history through a door between worlds.
THE ITCHING HAS STOPPED. THE OVERGROWN NAKED RATS HAVE LEFT. PRAISE BE TO ALL SUNS.
[[ earth shakes no more ]]
[[ no ]]
[[ spore spreaders are gone ]]
[[ yes ]]
[[ will they carry us ? ]]
[[ many of us went up into the above land ]] [[ we made many spores ]] [[ some stick ! ]]
[[ some always stick ! we go ]] [[ with the spore spreaders ]]
[[ yes ]]
YOU MUST TAKE A MESSAGE FOR ME, PUNY YEAST-COUSINS.
[[ what message ]]
(they smell the god thinking. like a tree, some part of it is always thinking, each bit concerned with its own affairs: the roots with water and calcium and iron, the branch tips with new leaves, the veins with sap, the core with old memories of the warmth of the sun. but now: now the god is thinking altogether, recalling when it was one among many, not separated from its kind by a door between worlds)
(the memories rise and crackle through its trunk and branches. they smell the sugar flowing up and back through the god’s veins. it sorts through all the information it might give to the fungus, what message might be of use or at least of hope to its dying bark-brothers. the shadows of every pestilence it has ever overcome flicker in every cell, but those strengths were its inheritance, not its invention. what it knows, its brothers also knew)
(it would like to give the mycorrhizae a seed to bear away, a false acorn packed with fat and tannins and hope, to plant in some world the bugs have not yet reached)
(it does not think there is such a world)
(it finds a pocket, the tiniest pocket, of something unknown, a piece of genetic material not from another tree, spilled on the base of its trunk. it has met nitrogen in many forms, has been fed by the death of many lives, but it has never examined so carefully every whorl of molecular lace, nor copied a chain of acids so meticulously)
TAKE THIS AND TRY—THAT IS, THIS IS A GREAT AND POWERFUL GIFT, A WEAPON TO USE AGAINST THE CREEPING MENACE. TELL MY BROTHERS THAT THIS IS THE STUFF OF A NEW SORT OF TREE, A TREE WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN MENACED BY ARTHROPOD FOE.
(the god cannot lie, but it does not have to know the whole truth)
[[ interesting ]] [[ not a tree ]]
[[ like ourself ? an eater ]]
[[ a translator ]]
[[ a maker of new things ]]
[[ ourself ! ]]
TAKE IT! TAKE IT BACK THROUGH THE GATE, O CHITINOUS EARTH-DWELLERS.
(the hyphae creak and flex underground)
*
“You’ve got a mushroom—”
“Yes—”
“It’s like, in your hair? Here, let me—”
“Don’t—”
“Oh god, it’s attached—”
“I know—”
“Have you had that looked at?”
“Do you have a mirror in your—no, never mind—”
“Ouch, does that hurt?”
“No, they just pull right out.”
“They? They? You’ve had more than one? What are—”
“I don’t know. I’ve looked and looked and I don’t think it’s actually penetrating the skin—”
“But how—there’s another one!—holy acorns in a tornado, where did—”
“Shut up—”
“You can come see her now. Her room is right down this hall.”
“Thank you so much—stop, don’t touch it—we’re coming, right behind you—”
“How are you going to keep your grandma from noticing that—”
“It’s fine, shut up.”
“Right in here, ladies—”
“Grandma! Oh, Grandma.”
*
“Oh, Grandma, I love you.”
“Hi. I’m Yesi’s friend, Kate.”
“She remembers. Don’t you remember, Grandma?”
*
“See, she remembers you.”
“Do you mind if I sit here?”
“I don’t think she minds—”
“There’s another one—”
“Don’t worry about her, Grandma, she’s just a little weird. You know how goofy we get sometimes—”
“UM.”
“We were cleaning off a tree god this weekend, Grandma. It’s got the bugs.”
*
“I remember when you showed me the tree god in the timber behind the pasture. It was the first one I’d ever seen, a bur oak. You said you thought it had been there for hundreds of years—why are you tickling my back?”
“They’re growing through your shirt—”
“I’m sorry, Grandma—oh, no—”
[[ ourself ! ourchildself ! ]]
*
(she has been in this world a very long time, as the lives of humans go, and she has touched many gods; dog gods and cat gods and cow gods and raspberry gods and even a god shaped like a man, but she has loved none of them so much as the tree gods, laced to the whole earth and all the other earths through their intertwined roots)
(she remembers in the time before the bugs, when the tree gods were very few and very precious, the barest indication of a world beyond this one; but then, as the grey scales and the sticky white excrement flowed over them, overwhelming each one in its turn, the gods appeared more and more often, pressing through portals and breaking open new ones, desperate to flee)
(she grieves for the history the children of the gods will not know)
[[ I see you , small ones , growing upon my old body , with your brown caps and delicate stalks . who are you ? ]]
[[ eater of old ]] [[ maker of new ]] [[ breaker of stones ]] [[ drinker of air ]]
[[ all of these accomplishments ! I am honoured to make your acquaintance ]]
[[ honour ]] [[ yes ]]
[[ honour ]]
[[ I am ready to go to the new world in your company , small ones ]]
[[ new ! ]] [[ ourself we make new ]]
[[ let loose my grandchild . come down and be with me . yes , that’s good . thank you . what shall we make together ? ]]
[[ here ]] [[ make ]]
[[ I feel the sunlight you have brought me . I taste the sugar you have tasted . I smell the voices you have carried here from far far away ]]
[[ gate ]] [[ there gate ]]
[[ you look for a gate , small ones ? ]]
[[ message ]] [[ message for trees ]]
[[ I , too , would like to carry a message to the trees . I have so many stories they would like to hear ]]
[[ go ]] [[ go and we ourself we follow ]]
[[ come , then ]]
*
“Visiting hours are over—where is she?”
“I—I couldn’t say, exactly—”
“Why are all these mushrooms in the bed?”
“Maybe we’d better be going—what happened?”
“I don’t know—”
“You still have one in your hair—”
“Ouch—”
*
Story copyright © 2021 by Sharon J. Gochenour
Artwork copyright © 2021 by Kat Weaver
Sharon J. Gochenour is a writer, illustrator, researcher, and retail employee. They think a lot about cheese and gardens.
Kat Weaver is an artist who sometimes writes and a writer who sometimes makes art. Her written work has been published in (or is forthcoming from) Neon Hemlock Press, Timeworn Literary Journal, Lackington’s, and elsewhere. She is currently one of the Senior Fiction Editors at Strange Horizons. In addition to appearing in previous issues of Lackington’s, her illustrations can be found in Metaphorosis, the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadows anthology, and Crossed Genres: Hidden Youth. She lives in Saint Paul, Minnesota with her wife and their two birds.
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