Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

After lunch, a hearty vegetarian stew with beans and squash that I picked at, my appetite still not returning, the cohort split into two. Justin, Noor, sea-urchin-loving Albert, and the redhead Christina from Chicago went to the floating dock to do work with Dr. Hernandez while the rest of us were instructed to meet Nick by the totem pole.

The conversation with Kincaid is still on my mind as Nick starts distributing packs and foraging supplies to each of us. I really need to keep myself in check. Kincaid said he wasn't spying on me, and I believe him, but it's a worrying sign that I jumped to that conclusion. I don't know what it is about him, why he's already getting under my skin, but I'm going to blame it on a sex dream.

I've made mistakes before that have cost me dearly, and even though my sexual appetite can be extreme at times, my impulsivity can be restrained. Lusting after your professor is fine—as long as no line is ever crossed, and as long as it stays hidden away, siphoned into a harmless crush. Which means I need to stop being so…I don't know. I'm not flirting with him, not really, but I'm more comfortable with him than I ought to be. It needs to stop before I become too fixated and make bad decisions.

We head out along the logging road that runs behind the lodge. Nick tells us that it's rarely used these days since most areas around us were classified as protected land, though there is a logging camp about fifteen kilometers down the road.

"Camp number nine are our closest neighbors," he says as he walks ahead of us, a gnarled walking stick in hand. "If there's ever an emergency of some sort, which of course there won't be, just head up this road. It's tough going, but you'll eventually reach them. There's also the Checleset reservation to the south of us, bordering the entrance to the Brooks Peninsula, but it's boat access only, and you'd need permission first."

If it was an emergency, I'm sure they would be willing to help, permission or not , I think. I have to wonder what kind of emergencies happen at the lodge, but I don't want to bog down the atmosphere with that question.

The fog seems to lift as we walk along, the sun nearly breaking through the tops of the trees, and everyone is in good spirits, the bear bells attached to our packs filling the air with soft jingling. At Nick's prodding, I take out a compass from my pack and watch it move as we turn northeast, the land flatter to our right and a sharp mountain rising from our left where the Sitka spruce seem to reach into the sky. Ravens call out from the branches, occasionally swooping overhead, while the mournful call of the varied thrush comes from the bushes. I breathe in deeply, the scent of pine and fresh soil.

Clayton ends up walking right behind me, though he's thankfully in conversation with a black guy from London named Patrick.

"I'm just worried my brother will be drafted," Clayton says to Patrick. "War didn't seem a possibility when he joined the military."

I frown at that, wondering what war he could be talking about, when Patrick goes, "Shhhhhh."

Now I have to glance behind me. Patrick looks uneasy, quickly busying himself with the straps on his pack while Clayton glares at me.

"What are you looking at, princess?" he says. "Not used to walking places?"

"I was just curious what war your brother is being drafted into," I tell him.

He just stares at me for a moment, eyes boring into mine. "There's some skirmish in the Balkans," he eventually says. "Let me guess, you don't watch the news. Think you're too smart or woke for it or something."

"Clayton!" Nick barks at him from the front. "Enough."

Before I can turn back around, I trip over a rock, but Munawar's hand shoots out and grabs my arm, steadying me.

"Thanks," I tell him, giving him a flustered smile.

Munawar nods as he lets go. "I don't watch the news much either," he admits, his eyes kind. "Too much drama."

"Yeah, well, I used to," I tell him. "But I get so distracted it steals my focus, and I usually end up depressed."

"Luckily, we won't get any while we're here," Lauren notes. "I think we'll be happier for it. Though I wish I could keep up with the Kardashians."

"Do people still watch that show?"

She laughs. "You'd be surprised."

We walk for a little while longer, the logging road becoming overgrown with ferns and blooming pink fireweed in some places, before Nick leads us down a trail through the brush. Eventually, we come to a small clearing, the grass so rich and green it's almost neon, a few alder trees bordering a dark pond peppered with lily pads.

"This is where I'd like for us to forage," Nick says as he stops in the middle, lowering his pack to the grass. "Everyone split up but remain in the glen where I can see you."

"Yes, Dad," Munawar says, which makes everyone laugh.

"Fine, you can go in twos if you want to explore deeper. Just make sure you're talking the entire time," Nick concedes with a sigh. "Keeps away the animals, even though your bear bells should do the trick. And have those compasses handy. I don't want you getting lost. The forest here can play tricks on you."

Lauren looks at me expectantly. "Well? Shall we explore?"

I nod eagerly. Under Nick's watchful eye, we head east to where a faint deer trail zags through Oregon grape and stinging nettle, the latter we are careful to avoid. The alders turn into cedar and fir, the forest becoming darker as we go. I know we're heading toward the water, so it should be opening up, not becoming more overgrown, dense, and tangled, the branches overhead touching each other and blotting out the sky.

"It's kind of creepy," Lauren says, but she's smiling.

"Yeah," I agree, looking around. Nothing but dark trees and the wild underbrush. "Makes you feel like something is watching you," I add, trying to creep her out a little more.

"Something probably is," she says playfully, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Trees have eyes, don't you know?"

We eventually come to a stop by a grove of cedars, Lauren taking out her water bottle with the Madrona Foundation logo on it and downing it. In front of us is a beast of a western cedar, meters wide, bigger than all the rest, and I instinctively place my palm on the rough, red strips of bark. My eyes fall closed, thinking about what Lauren said. Trees might not have eyes, but they communicate to each other through the mycelia that travels under the earth. The mycorrhizal network allows trees to shoot more nutrients to saplings, such as those in the shade, giving them a better chance at survival. They see without eyes.

"This is a mother tree," I whisper, the oldest and most established, with the deepest fungal connections, the one to recognize distress signals in other trees and send them more water. I feel like if I concentrate hard enough, I can almost feel the tree trying to talk to me.

As if it thinks I'm in distress.

You're right , I can't help but think. I am in distress. I feel like my whole world is about to collapse any day now.

Suddenly, an image flashes through my mind.

A dark-haired girl in a nightgown, hanging from a tree, her neck broken.

Dead.

I gasp and step away from the tree, my eyes flying open.

"Looks like blue stain fungus," Lauren says. She's kneeling beside me, fingers trailing over the blue streaks on the bark, not noticing my reaction.

Chill out , I remind myself, and the image of the girl starts to fade from my mind until I can't remember what I saw, but I know that I saw something.

"Worth sampling?" she asks, finally looking up at me. She frowns. "You okay? You look a little pale."

"I'm fine," I tell her quickly. "Let's keep going."

"Sure," she says, wiping her palms on her jeans as we continue along the path. I trail behind her. My head feels swimmy, my gait off-balance. I think the lack of food is finally catching up with me, and yet I'm still not hungry.

I'm lost in my thoughts, blindly following Lauren, when she suddenly stops, and I slam into her back.

"Oh my god," she gasps.

"What?" I peer over her shoulder.

In front of us, in a small clearing of dirt and pine needles, is a mound of soil with a cross made of sticks at one end.

A grave.

A grave that is covered in fungi, the fruiting bodies of the mushrooms sprouting across it. There must be hundreds of them, various sizes of the same variety, so white they're nearly translucent, their gills a bright orange.

Suddenly the air fills with a whiny droning noise, like mosquitos.

"Should we sample them?" Lauren asks me uneasily.

I shake my head. "No. We need to turn back and tell Nick."

She nods, biting her lip until it's white. "Yeah. I'm sure it's…I'm sure they know. But the mushrooms, I don't recognize them. They're like…" She takes a step forward to get closer. I reach for her to hold her back but miss. "They're like Amanita, but I've never seen one with orange gills like this. Reminds me of jack-o'-lantern mushrooms but not completely orange. We should do a spore print."

"Since we don't know what species this is, it could be poisonous," I tell her, watching as she kneels down beside the grave. She makes a show of taking out a rubber glove from her pack and putting it on before she pulls out an aluminum flower, a dropper of water, and a small knife. "It's probably poisonous."

"I'll be careful," she says, reaching with her knife for the nearest mushroom, about the size of her thumb.

"But what if this is it ?" I ask her, crouching down and grabbing her arm. The droning sound is louder here, and I feel a wave of nausea, but I hang on. "What if this is Amanita excandesco ? If this is their fungi, maybe we shouldn't be tampering with it in any way, at least without their permission."

She seems to think that over and reluctantly puts the knife away.

"Don't you think Nick would have warned us?" she asks.

"Maybe he didn't think we'd find any. I think we should go back now. Anyway, it feels wrong to harvest mushrooms from a grave." I can't help but think of Munawar's shirt and shiver. They literally are feasting on something's corpse.

"I never pegged you for the sentimental type," she says as she straightens up. "Alright, let's go back. This shit is too creepy, even for me."

We walk back on the path, our pace quicker, and it's about ten minutes before we see the grave again.

"How the fuck?" Lauren says, looking around wildly. "How did we walk in a circle?"

The air is growing colder now, the light dimmer. I reach down for my compass and realize the hairs on my arms are standing up.

"Okay, let's try again," I say, holding it out.

Lauren comes behind me, and we turn back on the path again. At one point, it veers off through a grove of hemlock, the branches bare and spindly, the bark covered with lichen and spiderwebs hanging off the ends, but the compass is telling us it's the wrong direction.

We go back a few feet and then see the trail we were supposed to take, barely visible from this angle because of the density of the ferns. Then we pass the mother cedar, which I avoid looking at in case I hallucinate about a dead girl again, until we hear chatter in the distance, and the trees start to open up into the glen.

"There you are!" Nick says, putting his hands on his hips. Most of the students are gathered around him, looking bored. "We were about to come looking for you two."

"We went further than we thought," Lauren says. "Sorry."

"We found a grave," I tell him bluntly.

Everyone snaps to attention. Nick's brows go up. "A…grave?"

I nod, out of breath. "Yeah. A mound of dirt with a cross on the end. Covered in mushrooms we couldn't identify."

"I wanted to take a spore print, but we weren't sure if it was, you know, Madrona's famous fungus," Lauren says.

Nick seems to think that over for a moment. "A grave. Well, it's possible if you went far enough toward the inlet that you came across Everly and Michael's old dog, Grover. Was it a cross made from sticks?"

I nod.

"Then that's probably Grover," he says. "He was the most beloved member of the team. What did the fruiting bodies look like?" We describe them for him, and he smiles. "Your instincts were correct. That is Amanita excandesco . I'm glad you didn't sample them as the spores can be a nuisance if disturbed. I'll make a note to tell Everly to check on the grave."

"So, to be clear," Lauren says, crossing her arms. "You want us foraging and making new discoveries, but you don't actually want us foraging for your fungi."

He gives her a stiff smile. "I appreciate all discoveries. I just didn't know the fungi were ever found in this zone. If any of you come across them, please don't pick them, but let us know instead."

"It would help if we knew what they looked like," Patrick says. "Why don't you take us to the grave so we know?"

Nick looks at his watch. "You know, it's getting late," he says. "We need to head back. The clouds look like rain."

I look up just in time to see a bald eagle soaring past, the clouds behind it looking dark and ominous.

We start walking back to the logging road, Lauren, Munawar, and I lagging behind.

Munawar leans in and whispers, "I bet the reason he doesn't want us to know what they look like is because he doesn't want us collecting them for ourselves. Maybe they are dangerous, or maybe they don't want their property stolen and sold to someone else."

"But it's not really their property," Lauren points out. "I've looked up their patent application for the fungus. It was denied. You can't patent something that you didn't create. Unless they find a way to cultivate and crossbreed it with something else and then get that patented, but it sounds like they have trouble propagating."

"Doesn't mean we're allowed to take them," I point out. "Pretty sure it's in the NDA we signed. Not a single organism can go back with us."

"Hmmm," Munawar says.

I glance at him over my shoulder and see the contemplative look on his face. "Don't even think about smuggling them up your butt."

"I would never," he says, but from his smile, I know that's exactly what he was thinking.

By the time we get back to the lodge and dinner rolls around, I'm absolutely beat. I'm a fairly healthy person, not a thin one by any means, my size fluctuating between ten and twelve, but I've always been active with hiking, sometimes jogging if I'm training for a fun run, and my muscles are usually pretty strong and defined. So it's strange that I feel like I could sleep forever as soon as the evening hits. It's like my muscles have atrophied.

After dinner, I join the others in the common room, where mugs of hot chocolate with marshmallows and plates of crumbly butter cookies are handed out. I force myself to nibble on a cookie, but the sugar does nothing to perk me up.

"I think I'm going to go to bed," I tell Lauren in the armchair beside me. Munawar, Justin, and Noor are on the couch, deep in a conversation about some TV series I've never heard of. But when they see me looking at them, they abruptly stop talking.

"Already? It's eight p.m.," Lauren says, glancing at her plastic watch.

I yawn to prove a point. "I know, but I've just been so exhausted all day. Ever since I got here, really."

"It's the fresh air," she says. "But I've been watching you pick at your food. You're like a bird. You're not eating enough."

I give her a tired smile. "It's not a bad change, believe me. Usually, I wolf down everything in sight and in five seconds flat." I pat my stomach. "My IBS is grateful."

"Alright," she says warily. "I'll see you in the morning."

I say my goodbyes to the group and head toward the stairs. I feel a prickle at the back of my neck and turn around to see Lauren whispering with the others. Once they see me looking at them, they break apart.

I feel my cheeks go hot, and I quickly go up the stairs. It's probably nothing. I'm sure they weren't talking about me, and if they were, it probably wasn't anything bad. I'm sure they asked why I was going to bed so early, and Lauren explained.

But still, after years of feeling like an outsider, of having a hard time picking up on social cues, I always doubt myself when it comes to making friends. A few bad apples when I was young, and I'm suspicious of everyone.

I push it out of my mind and get ready for bed. No need for melatonin this night; I'm practically falling asleep on my feet. No need to do my TMJ face yoga either. It's like my jaw muscles have reduced, my face slimmer. I'm probably a lot less bloated, thanks to the reduction in food. You'd think I would be elated at the weight loss, but I'm not. It's actually kind of concerning since I never wanted to lose weight in the first place.

After I wash my face and put on my pajamas, I get into bed and turn off my lamp. The room is barely dark, twilight thick in the sky and moonlight spilling in through the window.

I get out of bed to close the curtains. It's been raining ever since our foraging excursion, but the skies are clearing now. The moon is visible, just beyond the cedar tops, almost full, with fast-moving clouds passing over it like gauze. I stare at it for a moment, feeling a strange sense of wonder, of feeling plugged in and drawn to it, when movement below catches my eye.

I glance down to see someone underneath my window. He's shaped like Kincaid, but with the moon behind him, I can't see his face.

Yet I know he's looking at me.

His cigarette glows once, and then he turns and disappears into the trees, the puddles rippling in his wake.

"Just out on your nightly walk," I say softly.