Blueberry Shroomy's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Blueberry Shroomy sat with the bruised berry on the table until the light went gray. The window was fixed. The door was bolted. Neither would matter if the thing outside could set a berry on her step without leaving a track. She needed help from someone who would not ask her to explain, and she knew only one person like that. She took the berry in a folded cloth and walked the field path north, past the east rows, to the small blue mushroom house at the low end of the slope. Its cap was beaded with damp. She knocked once. Her brother opened the door in his hooded cloak, boots already laced, as if he had been waiting for a reason to be awake. "Blueberry," he said. He looked at the cloth in her hand. "Show me." She set the berry on his table. He bent over it without touching it. He turned the lamp closer. He studied the round bruise for a long time. "Pressure," he said. "Not a bite. Something leaned on it after it left the vine." He straightened. "You found this where?" "On my step. No tracks." "Then it wants you to know it can reach the door." He said it the way he said the weather. "A bolt won't stop that." "I know." He went to a shelf and took down a small clay jar. "Salt-ash. I keep it for the roots." He set it beside the berry. "Lay a line across every threshold. Windows too. It won't cross a clean line while the line holds." "How long does it hold?" "One night. Maybe two if the air stays dry." She looked at the jar. It was not much. "And after that?" "You lay it again. Every night. Until we know what it is." He paused. He did not soften it. "You won't sleep well. But it won't come inside." She carried the jar back through the rows in the last of the light. At her door she knelt and poured a thin gray line along the threshold. She did the same at the window sill and the back step. Her hands were steady. The line was straight. She went inside and bolted the door. She sat by the window with the lamp low and watched the field. Near the middle of the night, she heard the dragging in the east rows. It came closer than before. It reached the edge of the garden path. Then it stopped. She held her breath. The dragging did not move. It waited. After a long while it drew back into the rows and was gone. At dawn she checked the line. It was scuffed at one end, as if something had tested it and pulled away. The door was untouched. Nothing sat on the step. She had bought a night. She would need to buy the next one, and the one after, until she found what was leaning on her field.