Chanterelle Sporewhisper's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

Chanterelle stepped out of the honey cellar with the pale jar in her good hand and the carved token in her pocket. The firebreak waited at the edge of her grove, a ring of raw soil she had begged to have cut. Beyond it, the forest looked the same as ever. Underneath, she knew, the mycelium was rotting in patches. If she walked in blind, the blight would find her stem before the healthy web did. "You need a guide," Aldric said behind her. His wolf padded down the cellar stairs and sat at his boot. "I've walked half these paths hunting. Tell me the marks and I'll cut a road for you." Chanterelle shook her cap. "The sick threads don't show above the soil. A hunter can't read them. I need someone the forest already speaks through." She looked at his hand on the flask strap, at the steady set of his mouth. He had sat three nights for a sister. He would sit three more for her. That was the trouble. She could feel her spores lean toward him like a warm window, and a mushroom girl who leaned did not grow tall. She stepped past his shoulder before her cap could turn pink. She walked the lake road until she reached the old oak hung with small golden flutes. The tokens clinked when the wind moved. Melodius stood under it with his own flute at his mouth, playing a slow line he did not seem to choose. His long neck bent to listen to the shrine as if it might answer. "I need the blighted paths," Chanterelle said. "The ones under the soil. Can your song find the clean threads?" Melodius lowered the flute. "Ground hums," he said. "Sick ground hums flat. I hear it when I walk." He tilted his head. "Didn't know that till now." "Walk with me. Play. I'll follow the sound." He stepped off without answering and lifted the flute again. Chanterelle crossed her firebreak behind him. The soil on the far side was soft and wrong under her feet. Melodius played a bright note, then a duller one, then bright again. He turned left where the dull note thickened and right where the tone rang clear. Chanterelle pressed her good hand to the ground at every clear place. Faint threads answered her stem. Foreign spores drifted up into her cap for the first time in weeks. She felt something inside her widen. By dusk they had traced a safe path from her grove to a stand of old birches where the web ran thick and healthy. Chanterelle knelt and let the spores settle into her. Melodius watched the treeline behind her. "Someone stood there," he said. "Watching us. Red hair." He lowered the flute. "She's gone now." Chanterelle rose. Her cap felt heavier. The path home was open, and the woman who knew Melodius's name had seen her use him.