Page 14 of Shroom for Improvement

“Rhizomes. They’re like, horizontal roots—”

“I know what rhizome means. What is it I need to do to them?”

Oggy side-eyed Willow, who mouthed, “Oh, fuck.”

“It’s like an ancient soil-magic ritual?” The uncertainty in her voice made my heart rate spike. “Your father performed it at sunrise on the longest day of the year, and at sundown on the shortest. It provides the house, and the surrounding area, with the nourishment it needs to continue to... well, to continue existing. And feeding its occupants. And providing us with a home and purpose. Without the rhizome magic, the house would die, and we would be...” She trailed off, apparently unable to finish her sentence.

Willow stepped in. “It can only be performed by a shroom fae. Specifically, a direct descendant of Mycelium Stinkhorn the first. That... is you.”

I pushed to my feet, scrubbed a hand down my face, and opened my mouth to speak. The sentry fae took a simultaneous gulp of air.

And I summarised everything I’d experienced in the past few hours in only two short words.

“Well, shit.”

Motherfucking Dimples

Sonny

Most people’s collections comprised stamps, or coins, or toy cars, or dusty bottles of wine, or squishy stuffed bears, or books, or galleries of nearly priceless artworks, or notches on a bedpost.

Not mine. I had two collections.

The first was located on my apartment building’s rooftop, at the back of my allotment, shielded by fence panels. And the second, well...

I sat in the cramped nook between the end of my bed and the forty-five degree sloping floor-to-ceiling windows, and laid the objects out in front of me. On the window ledge, because I liked the way the early evening sun glittered off them.

A centimetre-sized circular white enamel pin with a golden number ten in the centre.

An orange enamel pin with a silver number twenty-five—my favourite.

A sterling-silver hexagonal pin with an embossed image of a train.

A stainless steel L-shaped crank handle from a U-Rail ticket machine.

Another stainless steel L-shaped crank handle, which had replaced the original missing one.

Three golden buttons stamped with UR, taken from the cuffs of a UR-issued conductor’s jacket (not at the same time).

One mother-of-pearl button, taken from the collar of a UR-issued button down.

A steam-train-shaped key chain made from pewter, complete with a puffy cloud of steam and probably his actual front door key—I should definitely have returned that one.

A black plastic name tag, with gold-coloured lettering spelling outC. Stinkhorn.

A fancy, dark green fountain pen, also etched with the nameC. Stinkhorn.

And now, a penny-sized gold-mushroom cufflink. Twenty-four-carat gold, in fact. It was heavy and beautiful. A family heirloom for all I knew.

Shit. I was a terrible person. I didn’t know why I couldn’t just... not steal from him. And then why I couldn’t return his things either. People who knew me knew to expect some degree of item relocation. But with Claude, for some completely unfathomable reason—and definitely not because I needed him for my research, or because I had a tiny, teensy weensy, microscopic, so small you couldn’t even clearly define it, crush on him—I couldn’t give them back.

They were pretty—his things—and I liked pretty things. They made me feel warm and cosy and homely, as though I were building a nest. Perhaps I should not have found solacein Claude’s possessions, but I did, and I couldn’t see myself stopping anytime soon.

I would return them. All of them. For definite. But... not right away.

I did, however, have plans to return his cufflink the very next morning on the eight-thirty to Downtown Remy, only Claude never showed up. Three years and he hadn’t missed a single day of work, and now he just... wasn’t there.

Exactly where he was supposed to be.

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