Nessa Reed's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

By morning, Nessa was back at her workbench. The sealed stone chamber sat quiet in the corner, its glass ports fogged from the cold night. Inside it, her last spore culture waited in a moss-corked jar. Without the specimen the rabbit had taken, the culture would not finish. She could already smell the first sour note through the seal. She checked the jar through the glass port. The white clusters inside had begun to gray at the edges. Six weeks of careful work, turning in front of her. She had hours, not days. Nessa pulled on her coat and grabbed an empty collection tin. The rabbit had not come from nowhere. It had chewed her rarest stalk and slipped into the trees with purpose. If it was sent, it had a path. She followed the gouged soil past the plot border and into the brush. The trail ended at a low mound of black thorns. Fur clung to the branches. Dried blood crusted the roots. And there, sheltered under the tangle, grew a small cluster of the same pale fungus the rabbit had eaten. Three fresh caps. More than she had ever found at once. She cut two and left one. Her hands shook as she sealed the tin. She ran back through the wet leaves, lungs burning, and reached the bench before the smell turned sharp. She ground a cap, opened the chamber port just long enough, and fed the culture. The gray edges held. The white began to spread again. Nessa sat down hard on the shed floor. She opened her record book and wrote two lines. The culture is saved. The bramble was a feeder, and something is keeping it fed. She looked at the torn fur still pinched in her notes and understood she was not the only one watching the plots now.