Strawberry Shroomy's Arc

Chapter 7 of 9

By the time the second lynx call broke from the trees, Martha was already gone for more wire. Shroomy stood alone at the pit's edge, scythe in hand, and knew three lynx would gut her field before dawn. Then a light moved through the hedge. Mycelus stepped into her field with a lantern swinging from his hand, its glass throwing wide gold light across the rows. "Stand back," he said. He hung the lantern on her lookout post and twisted its base. The light flared white-hot, washing the field in a ring of fire-bright glow. From the woods, the lynx calls broke off. Shapes turned and slid away from the burning circle. Shroomy watched them go, her hand tight on the scythe, her chest loose for the first time in hours. But when the lantern dimmed at dawn, she saw the cost. A wide ring of her strawberries lay charred black, their skins split, leaves curled to ash. Whole rows ruined. She knelt in the burnt dirt and pressed her palm to a blackened fruit. The lynx were gone. Half her crop was gone with them. Shroomy stood up and wiped her hands on her apron. She walked to the empty glass shed at the field's edge, opened the door, and started clearing the benches. If the outside ground had failed her, she would grow them inside. By midday she had soil in trays and the first salvaged runners laid out in rows. The night was over. The work had changed.