Amanita Sporewell's Arc

Chapter 12 of 14

A week passed. The mycelium had drunk deep from the hidden vein, and the loam had followed. Amanita walked the new edge of her patch at dawn and counted twenty paces where there had been ten. The fern stood tall at the center, its layered fronds glowing pale green in the mist. The sprites rode on her boots and shoulders. She had a garden now. She still did not have the garden she had promised herself. She knelt by the first spore mound and lifted a cap the size of her thumb. Red with white spots. The one she had drawn on the inside of her cupboard when she was six. She set it back gently. "You are still looking down." Lysander stood at the gate again. Same green coat, same easy smile, as if he had never left. Amanita stood up and brushed her dress. "I have room now," she said. "I have water. I have nine sprites and a fern that will not quit. But I only have one crop coming up, and it is small." He stepped inside and walked the loam ring. He stopped at the fern and touched one glowing leaf. "You have been growing what you know. Try growing what you are." "Meaning what?" "The red-and-white ones." He nodded at the little cap by her knee. "Your namesakes. Plant them along the whole new ring. The mycelium will carry them. The sprites will guard them. You already have every piece." She stared at the mound. She had been saving those spores. Hoarding them, really, in case she failed. "And if they fail?" "Then you will know something you did not know yesterday." He shrugged. "But they will not fail. Look at the ground." She looked. The mycelium had already threaded pale lines toward the mound, as if the fern itself were asking. Amanita went inside and brought out her spore jar. She walked the new ring slowly, tapping a pinch into each shallow hole the sprites dug for her. Twenty paces. Forty holes. The jar was empty when she finished. She patted the last one closed and sat back on her heels. By afternoon the first white pins pushed through. By evening they had caps. Red caps, white spots, small and perfect. The sprites danced along the ring and would not stop. The fern's glow reached them and made the whole garden look lit from below. Amanita stood at the gate and looked back. Her patch was no longer a patch. It was a ring of red-and-white caps around a glowing fern, with nine sprites moving between them like small lanterns. Lysander was gone. He always was. It was not the greatest garden in the forest. Not yet. But for the first time, she could see the shape of the one she had been promised.