The Legend of Elsbeth - Chapter 15
A bedtime story
Time passed strangely in the mushroom forest. Elsbeth couldn’t say how many days they had been wandering through, or when exactly the forest had changed from being composed of trees with mushrooms to being composed of tree-sized mushrooms. Or when was the last time they ate meat? Or the last time they had had clear water? How long ago was it that Giles died? When had Margo come out of her stupor? She couldn’t say. She only knew that all of those things had happened, and now they were here.
The mushroom forest had a double canopy: the nearer one of mushrooms, sometimes within arm’s reach, sometimes twice as tall. And then the second canopy far above, of the tree tops that let in no light at all. In fact, they could not even see the upper canopy, for their torchlight did not reach that far.
The mushroom forest grew stranger and stranger the further in they traveled. The mushroom stems were so massive that they began to think of them as “trunks.” And these trunks were covered in perfectly round splotches of color, of blue and red and purple and orange. And these colors glowed in the dark with unmistakable light. And everything was so still that Elsbeth had to reach out and touch the mushrooms to convince herself that this was all real.
“There’s something different about the air, too,” she said to Deirdre. She found herself speaking in hushed tones, although she couldn’t say why. The Shadow and Margo were only a pace ahead of them and she had no reason to conceal her words from them.
“This air smells…sweet? Musty? Musty isn’t the right word…but it smells…alive.”
“There’s spores in the air,” said Margo, glancing back at them. “Many, many, many spores.”
And there was something of a gleam in her eyes that made Elsbeth feel uneasy.
“Shadow, what is it?” Elsbeth said. “Your head’s on a swivel.”
“I don’t know,” he muttered, looking about from side to side as they walked. “I keep thinking I see things moving in the shadows…dark things…but that’s the way torchlight is. It sputters and wavers and creates moving shadows where there are none.”
He shook his head as if to clear his thoughts. But as they continued on in silence, all of them imagined that they began to see things in their periphery: furtive movements, shadows the size of a man or bear or hydra or wolf. And all of them saw little blue lights moving in quick, peculiar patterns. But always when one looked directly at it, there was nothing there. Margo began talking with the shadows conversationally, and began saying things that increasingly made less sense.
“I can’t say as I welcome you home…git along, toadie…if I stop, you won’t stop…we’re all one! All one! The rabbit and the grasshopper…but you don’t know about grass!”
They all quickened their pace. They had the feeling that they were suffocating and needed more air, although they could not say why. The images in the shadows became more vivid and disturbing: floating heads, beating wings.
“Ah!” Deirdre exclaimed.
“What is it?” the Shadow said, stringing his bow. Elsbeth drew her sword.
“Hell…” she said, shaking her head. “I could have sworn I saw a l’il baby starin’ right at me.”
“But she is!” said Margo. “She is!”
She shuddered and moved on, but neither the Shadow nor Elsbeth put away their weapons, and Deirdre likewise strung her bow.
Margo began singing, “Looking at you, looking at me, looking at you…”
Elsbeth tried conversing with Margo but it seemed to be no use. It was as if she couldn’t hear her, or just wasn’t there in the head.
Margo was trembling all over and barely managing to put one foot in front of the other when they stopped to make camp. The Shadow wanted to go on and get out of the mushroom forest, but there was nothing for it—Margo couldn’t go another step. She collapsed.
The Shadow and Deirdre couldn’t find anything to eat when they went out hunting, and they tried using large chunks of the mushroom stems as fuel, but they found that they wouldn’t burn completely through and it was hard to keep a fire going with them; eventually they had to give up on having a fire, and slept in the dark. Elsbeth gave out the last few crumbs of their waybread, and everyone gazed solemnly at the empty packet that was left when they were done.
The Shadow went about the business of making blackbark tea.
“Elsbeth,” he said softly. “Tell us a story.”
Elsbeth didn’t know what to say.
“About what?”
“Tell us about your brother, Faolin.”
She smiled.
“Faolin was really intelligent. And quite the learner. He soaked up everything. He always felt a deep responsibility to be a good king someday, and would spend hours thinking on each problem in our city—poverty, crime, feudal disputes—I would always see an obvious ‘right’ answer to everything, but Faolin always saw more sides to everything than I did.
“And he loved making weapons more than using them. We had a broad education, and were given a lot of leeway. Still, he ended up down at the forge so often that father would stop him from going sometimes if his other studies were suffering. It seemed to be where he went when he got angry, or depressed.
“He was very sensitive to other’s feelings—most people didn’t know that, because he didn’t let it show—but he told me once, ‘When I see injustice, it’s like I just have to hammer it out. Problems are so complex, It’s like I need to discover what to do with it. And I go down to the forge and I hammer and hammer, and see what I create.’ He often created very complex patterns. His pieces were very ornamental. In fact, the forgemaster couldn’t hardly get him to make a simple serviceable blade or helmet of the kind appropriate for ordinary soldiers! He was always making breastplates with murals, helmets with fancy flairs, swords that were impractical…amusingly enough, the one thing he didn’t make was his own sword.”
She laughed.
“What an odd boy. Much smarter than me. Braver, stronger—everything! More mature. He was perfect, if not for his romantic ideas. Nobody else knew about that, either—just me. I used to ridicule him for wanting to invent flying contraptions or build huge canals…back then every idea of his was always ‘stupid,’ that’s what I said. But now...what I wouldn’t give to hear one more stupid idea.”
The Shadow nodded.
“That’s how it goes,” he said.
***
That night, Margo and Elsbeth were sleeping in the same tent, with their backs to each other for warmth. Elsbeth couldn’t sleep. She found herself thinking of food constantly. Everything seemed suddenly potentially edible lately. Leaves, moss, leather. The leather experiment had turned her sick to her stomach.
Margo’s cough grew into an awful, hacking thing now, and she shivered violently. Elsbeth stood up to get a look at her, and found her fever was in full pitch. Then she started back in horror. Margo only chuckled.
“Margo…in your eyes there are bright blue lights, just like the ones we’ve seen floating about in the mushroom wood!”
Margo seemed to rally herself and become more lucid for a moment.
“Yes, dearie. I’m infected with something. We probably all are, but my body is too weak to fight it off.”
Her body shook violently again.
“I think this is it, toadie.”
“Don’t say that…” Elsbeth said, but her voice trailed off.
“Elsbeth!” Margo said. “Toad’s wool can be used to stem bleeding.”
“Uh…okay. Are you bleeding?”
She shook her head, and continued. “And dwarfbane is good to help you get pregnant. But always boil it first. Always boil it…and if you see any tall yellow stalks that are green only at the edges, that’s lilith sedge, and you snap that up immediately. If anyone gets injured internally, make a tea out of lilith sedge, ideally with honey if you can find it, because it’s terribly bitter, but have them drink that. And Elsbeth, you need to eat me when I die.”
Elsbeth didn’t respond to this at first, thinking that Margo was only delusionally rambling.
“Elsbeth, are you listening?”
“Uh…yes. But we aren’t going to eat you, Margo. We would never do that.”
She shook her head and spoke most emphatically. “You will starve if you think that way. All living things are a part of each other, toadie. There’s nothing different from the stuff in me and the stuff in that mushroom tree and the stuff in you. We’re meant to be a part of each other, we just don’t normally do it so directly. But you need to get over that squeamishness.”
“Uh…Margo, we will never—”
“So that’s settled,” she said, cutting Elsbeth off, and continued rambling on about medicines. “If you ever see an overhanging river bank, look for sloth scum. It’s a silver-green moss…”
After some time: “Elsbeth!”
“Yes, Margo. I’m right here,” said Elsbeth. She was lying behind Margo now, front to back, wrapping her arms around Margo to try to still the violent shaking. Elsbeth was glad Margo couldn’t see her face to realize that a few silent tears were streaming down her face.
“Milk my yaks.”
“Uh…your yaks, yes.”
“They have to be milked, starting in Spring, or their bladders will burst.”
Elsbeth nodded, silently wondering if there would ever be a day that they would have such high-class problems again as worrying about livestock.
And then she added, almost as if it were an afterthought:
“And Toadie. You have to eat me after I pass.”
Elsbeth only shook her head.
“And also burn my house; there’s a book in there that should not be read by anyone.”
“Oh! Whoa, hold on—”
“And one last thing.”
The trembling grew even more violent now, a continual nonstop convulsion, and her words came out halting.
“Death…is the birthplace…of life.”
Elsbeth strained to think: what did that even mean?
The trembling died down for a moment, and her body grew still, and she breathed freely for a moment to say: “I came from the forest, was claimed by it, and now return.”
The trembling came back violently and her breaths were gasps.
And again, a cessation.
“Elsbeth.”
“Yes, Margo. I’m right here.”
Each breath was a gasp, every breath sounded like her last.
“Never…trust…appearances…never…”
Another convulsion, another cessation. Margo gripped Elsbeth’s hands in her own. She was really fighting now, her body seeming to attack itself. Tears streamed down Elsbeth’s face. She could feel Margo’s pulse going faster and becoming more erratic. And then it suddenly slowed. The beats grew further and further apart, and Margo breathed out puffs of air like she was being punched in her gut. Margo took her last gasping breaths and said, “Don’t be too picky—about picking life—over death.”
Elsbeth looked down. Margo had left in her hand a glowing, blue shard of crystal.
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What did this make you feel? Did anything surprise you? Bore you?
Author Notes
I’ve never had as much fun writing anything as I have writing Margo. She is dear to my heart. I’ll be sorry to see her go. I needed her death to be different from the others to be more true to who she was: mystical, mysterious, artistic, imbuing a sense of the spiritual and divine which is the gift that Elsbeth can only get from her.
Story Insight
If you haven’t noticed, each of the characters has a unique gift for Elsbeth (and I don’t mean a physical gift). They all have something she needs in order to become the great leader that she will one day be.
Book of the Week
This week I reviewed Consider Phlebas, a science fiction tale that is space opera in scope if not in timbre. Read more here.
What’s Going on in My Life
Last week I bought a full-ton truck, a diesel no less. I never pictured myself being someone who would own a massive truck, but it turns out if you’re going to haul an RV you need something big. So I went all the way. I guess I’m a redneck now…
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Until next week!