Amanita Sporewell's Arc

Chapter 5 of 14

Amanita walked out to her garden at dawn and stopped short. Half the seedlings were gone. Green stems chewed to stubs. The magical sprout she had traded her endless water for stood untouched, but the row beside it was ruined. Something had come in the night. She knelt in the loam. Small tracks pressed the dirt. Not deer. Not rabbit. The prints were narrow, three-toed, the size of her thumb. Whatever it was, it had eaten its way down the row and stopped only when the sky lightened. "If it comes back tonight," Amanita said aloud, "I'll have nothing left to grow." She thought of Aunt Myrtle's warnings about pests, and of the shop where she had first found the bottle. The shopkeeper at the flower shop kept jars of dried petals and powders on a back shelf. Amanita remembered a bitter-smelling bundle labeled for keeping mice off bulbs. She pulled on her boots. The walk took an hour. The shop's painted door was propped open. Vines curled around the sign. Inside, the shopkeeper measured her out a handful of dried yarrow and a twist of pepper root. Amanita paid in dried mushroom caps from her apron pocket. It was not enough, she knew, if the nibbler was hungry enough. On the way home she stopped under the willow. The little fungi sprites who guarded the loam poked their caps up between the roots. One with a blue-striped cap climbed onto her boot. Another peered up from behind a stone, cheeks round. "I need a favor," Amanita said. She crouched low. "Something is eating my seedlings. I fed you honey water when I took your loam. Will you watch my patch tonight?" The blue-capped one tilted its head. The others clustered close, whispering in small squeaks. The one on her boot patted her ankle twice. That was the answer. She carried six of them home in her basket, packed in moss. She scattered the yarrow and pepper root along the garden's edge. Then she set the sprites among the seedlings and left a saucer of honey water for their trouble. She did not sleep. She sat at her window and watched. Just past moonrise, a shape crept from the ferns. Long body, twitching snout, quills along its back. It sniffed the pepper root and sneezed. It kept coming. Then the sprites moved. Six little caps rose from the loam at once, glowing faintly. They shrieked, a sound like kettles. The creature bolted back into the ferns and did not return. At sunrise Amanita walked the row. The seedlings that remained stood safe. The sprites were curled asleep in the moss, honey saucer licked clean. She counted her losses. Half her crop was gone. But the rest would live. She carried the sprites back to the willow that morning. When she set them down, the blue-capped one did not climb off her palm. It looked up at her and would not go.