MYCELIUS SPOREBORN's Arc

Chapter 6 of 7

By morning, the twelve slept where they had fallen. They filled the spire's floor shoulder to shoulder. When one turned, three others woke. Mycelius watched a colonist rub a stiff neck and try to stand without stepping on a neighbor. There was no room to work here, no room to rest. Spores drifted from his cap. He had raised his people, and now they had nowhere to spread out. He called four names he had given the night before. Brakka, the broad one with a helmet-shaped cap, cracked his thick knuckles and stepped forward first. "Point me at the ground," Brakka said. "I'll dig us a real home." Tallow came next, tall and shaggy, already muttering about walls and joints. Luma glowed faintly in the dim spire. Morga arrived last, brushing crumbs from her fluffy fronds. Mycelius led them outside. Near the young trees rested a huge, curved tortoise shell, wide as a house, half sunk in the gray soil. He pressed his palm to it. The shell was hollow and warm. "We grow rooms in this," he said. "Like we grew the spire." Brakka slammed a fist against the shell. It rang like stone. "Solid. Good bones." He drove his hands into the dirt and began scooping a trench toward the great tree's root. Mycelius knelt beside him and guided a living root strand into the trench, then pressed it against the shell's base. Tallow ran his long fingers over the curved surface. He talked fast, mapping where beds and shelves could hang. "Support the weight here, vent the caps there, or the whole shell sweats and rots." He drove wooden pegs into the shell to mark each spot. Morga eyed the carved-out side, already open like a mouth. "That's a kitchen if I ever smelled one," she said. "Give me a fire and I'll feed all twelve at once." The root took hold. By afternoon, mushrooms pushed up across the shell's back. They swelled into walls and cross-beams, following Tallow's pegs. Rooms hollowed out inside. Luma moved through each one, testing the air, checking for damp. "Dry," she said softly. "They can heal here. They can sleep." By dusk the shell held rooms enough for all twelve. Morga lit a fire in the carved side and the smell of cooking drifted out. Colonists filed in from the crowded spire and found their own beds for the first time. Brakka dropped onto one and grinned. Mycelius stood in the doorway and felt the ground through his feet. Then he felt something wrong. The new root, feeding the shell, had gone thin and cold. He pressed harder and traced it back. The great tree was giving again, and the two young trees with it. He had made room for his people to rest. But the shell drank from the same three trees that were already starving. More space meant more growth, and more growth meant the trees would die faster.