Strawberry Shroomy's Arc

Chapter 8 of 9

By midafternoon, Shroomy stepped out of the glass shed and saw them. Crows had landed on the burnt rows, dozens of them, glossy and still. They did not pick at the blackened berries. They stared at the soil between their feet, heads tilting in slow turns. Mycelus and his beasts were long gone, but the birds would not leave. She walked closer. The charred strawberries lay split and dark, ash crusted on their skins. A crow hopped sideways and pecked once at the dirt, then stopped. Something under the soil was pulling them in. Shroomy crouched and pressed her ear to the ground. She heard nothing, but the crows heard plenty. She needed a higher view. She spent the rest of the day hauling pale stone and broad caps to the field's edge. She stacked the base wide and built it tall, fitting a small door at the bottom and a railed platform near the top. By dusk her lookout tower stood over the burnt rows, and she climbed it with her map and a bottle of the red brew from her shelf. From the platform she watched. The crows had gathered thickest over one spot, a dark patch near the old root line. She climbed down, walked into the ring of birds, and poured the strawberry-safe brew in a slow circle on the burnt ground. The soil hissed. The crows lifted as one black sheet and scattered into the trees. Beneath where they had stood, the dirt sank in a small pit, and a cluster of pale, rotted runners curled up out of the hole — fruit that had cooked underground after the lantern's heat, drawing every scavenger for miles. Shroomy dug the rotted mass out by hand and burned it in a tin pail. The field went quiet. She wiped her face and looked at the empty rows. The crows were gone, the rot was gone, but so was the last of her outdoor crop. She turned back toward the glass shed. Inside was all she had left to grow.