Mycelium

MYCELIUM The day Maren ate her first mouthful of dirt was otherwise unremarkable. She was resting along the path between her hut and the brook where she completed her daily task of drawing water. For no particular reason other than she was hungry and there was no food in her home, Maren prodded the knob of her walking stick into the hillside. A rich, brown lump as thick as her thumb, knit together with thread-like roots, presented itself. Maren considered it only briefly before she popped it into her mouth.

Eating dirt became part of Maren's daily routine. As the food donations from the nearby villagers were inconsistent at best,soil evolved into a staple of her diet. She put forthe some effort to never eat in front of visitors, but perhaps a few had noticed her wiping clods of earth from her surcotes and aprons when they paid her a visit. She always graciously thanked them for their gifts of fish, bread, occasional butter or cheese, smiling with those brilliant white teeth, edges rounded like tombstones.

Maren began to change. Even in her advanced years and nearly complete solitude, she felt healthier than she had in decades. She rose earlier in the morning, particularly on cloudless days, and her stooped posture began to rise and straighten. It came to the point that Maren decided, at age 72, that she would start another potato patch.

Those villagers who caught wind of her plans scoffed, but she was adamant. In the face of ever-escalating criticism, Maren's resolve never wavered. She convinved two of the village boys to plow four rows for her at the first sign of Spring, in exchange for half of anything she could harvest. For the two days they labored, fashioning rows of "tater hills," the boys would look up and hear Maren singing lullabyes. She had taken up singing underneath the tree that both her late husband and murdered son were interred years before. At sundown, Maren's silhouette waved back at the boys as they plodded back to the village.

Maren's dreams of a bountiful harvest were not realized that year, however. As soon as the first sprouts emerged, blight swept the region's farmlands. Maren's four modest rows were not spared from this turn of Nature's disposition. It was also around this time that Maren's growths of a different nature began to appear.

The first of her polyps appeared as a lump along the outside of her right thigh. "Growing old," Maren mused to herself. The polyp's growth hadn't slowed as the days crept by, and the tissue atop the lump turn calloused and scaly, just like Maren's heels. Then the papery skin finally cracked. Maren sighed and rubbed at it absently that evening, leaning into the white ash tree atop the hill. "Here's where my story ends," she thought to herself.

Maren dozed off, and when she awoke it was early on another cloudless morning. What's more, she noticed that peeking out from the calloused crack of her thigh was what could be best described as a tender plant blossom. She surmised it hadn't just fallen in there, and as her spindly fingers massaged the flesh surrounding the growth, it held firm. She could feel it in her insides, holding fast, perhaps to the bone.

The polyp continued to grow, nearing conspicuous size. Concerned already for her reputation, Maren elected to wrap additional cloaks about her shoulders to conceal its presence. As it neared the size of a fist, Maren marveled at its tender, leafy texture and pale, greenish hue. Sometimes she poked and prodded at it lightly. Although she did not quite feel as though it was still part of her flesh, she did sense that it still held firm, somewhere within her leg. In the evenings before she retired for sleep - now, more frequently outdoors unless it was raining - Maren's hand would absently, tenderly stroke the growth as she sang her lullabyes beneath the huge white ash.

Spring was ending, and the potatoes did not recover. Meanwhile, a second nodule blossomed next to the first on Maren's leg. Her concern was palpable. What would the rest of the village think? How long could she hide not just one, but two melon-sized deformities? Maren could feign illness and hobble along like she had the previous year for only so long. With temperatures rising with the coming Summer, she wondered if she could stand even another week of extra cloaks. Her wearied eyes scanned the walls of her one-room hut, to inevitably rest on the dusty old sickle hung next to the wheat knapsack.

***

"Where shall I put this, Goody Maren?" asked Alan, his arms wrapped around a bundle of bread and dried fish.

"Over there near the hearth, if you please." replied Maren, doubled-over on a bench outside her door. "So good of you to bring so much over, Alan. You certain the family can spare so much? Nothing's growing this year."

"We had a little squirreled away," replied Alan. "Besides, fish are always bitin' up at the lake." Alan settled his bundle on the stone hearth, and his eyes turned round to the table and a lumpy object at its center, covered by a cloth. "What's this here, Goody Maren?" He took a step towards the table.

There was a creak of wood from the porch, a sudden silence, then Maren's near-desperate wail. "...Cabbage!"

"You found a cabbage growing somewhere?" asked Alan. His eyes shifted to the hut's doorway, and his sheepish eyes locked with Maren's steely gaze. He tittered nervously in the pregnant silence, then cleared his throat.

"Cabbage! Yes. A cabbage. And some chicken of the woods." Maren's stare was wide-eyed and the corners of her mouth pulled down into a dark crescent.

Alan turned slowly to the threshold, her eyes wide and unblinking. "Run along now, Alan," she sighed, and slid into the hut, suddenly standing erect and commanding. "All this conversation is wearying to an old woman like me."

The young man smiled cautiously. "Of course, Goody Maren." He stepped outside, turning back only after he was a good five paces from the entrance. "Will we see you at the Summer feast?"

"Of course," came her reply. She had already disappeared into the hut. "How long 'til the celebration?"

"Two days, ma'am." Alan flinched as the hut's door banged shut.

"Of course. Good day, Alan." Maren's voice trailed off as the clatter of the door bar secured it shut.

***

The Summer Feast was typically an unseasonably subdued affair, and this one was no different. However, instead of some internecine tribal conflict casting its pall over the celebrations, this year it was the famine. Not much in the way of vegetables had been grown so far this year. The foodstuff contribution table was dominated by young venison, lamb, and pheasant. A ram roasted on a spit at the center of the village square.

Maren's appearance was a surprise, and her contribution was warmly received. Everyone gave high marks to her flavorful broth and tender, creatively-seasoned cabbage stew.

***

The warmest months of the summer trudged on, though it seemed hopeless for conventional crops for all that the sun shined. It was unusual, then, that there were so many vegetable stews gifted and shared at the Harvest Festival that Autumn. It seemed everyone had cleared out their root cellars and herb collections. Goody Maren met the gaze of every villager willing to give her a taste, and when asked what they made, the answers were all curiously similar:

"Cabbage stew, Goody Maren."

"Yes, cabbage, and some chicken of the woods."

"We were inspired by your recipe from this past Spring, Goody Maren."

Maren smiled her broad, round-toothed smile. She stood tall, lullabyes echoing in her mind.