Forest Shroomy's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

Forest Shroomy sat against the fence as the sun climbed. The workshop below changed everything. The probes, the harvesting, the tunnels — all of it sat under Luke's property line. His land disturbance report was the only legal shield the forest had left. But that shield only held if Luke kept believing the fight was about mushrooms on the surface. If she told him what ran beneath his feet, he could pull the report. If she didn't, the thieves kept working under cover of his paperwork. She stood, brushed the dirt from her hands, and turned toward the eastern grove. She crossed his property line at the back fence. A large metal garage stood there on a concrete pad, doors shut tight. She had passed it before and thought nothing of it. Now she walked its perimeter and counted. The footprint sat directly above the chamber she had found. A short brick stack rose beside it, copper piping bent into the ground. Not a chimney for a house. A vent. Air for the rooms below. Luke came out wiping his hands on a rag. Forest Shroomy held up a folded paper sealed with red wax — a page she had lifted from a crate in the workshop, an order slip with a buyer's mark. She placed it in his palm. She pointed at the garage. She pointed at the ground. She held up four fingers, then made a digging motion, then drew a wide circle with her arms to show how far the rooms ran. Luke looked at the seal. He looked at his garage. The color drained from his face. He did not speak for a long moment. Then he folded the paper into his shirt pocket and walked back inside. He came out with a padlock and snapped it through the garage door handles. "Report stays," he said. "And nobody goes in there until I know who's been using my land." Forest Shroomy let out a breath she had been holding since dawn. The shield held. But now Luke knew, and somewhere a buyer was waiting for a delivery that would not come.