Research Projects and Rhizome Rituals

Claude

How was it possible that Sonny had gotten more attractive since I last saw him? It was infuriating. The man stole from me. He stole from me! My favourite cufflinks. My celebratory, Employee of the Decade, twenty-four-carat cufflinks.

Stole them. Straight from my shirt sleeves.

I needed to remember that.

Not let my mind get distracted with tall, skinny, scruffy, undeservedly handsome men.

Though, he looked more tired than usual. Dark circles rested under his eyes, his petrol-coloured hair was rumpled and stuck out at odd angles, and there were so many creases in his black T-shirt it was difficult to read the Make Compost Not Recreational Space Rockets vinyl print.

I hated how I knew what his shirt said—what all his shirts said. Like there was some kind of Sonny shirt catalogue in my brain. I hated how my fingers itched to feel the fabric of that shirt, to trace the bobbles on his shoulder where a bag strap must have frequented.

I hated how a tiny, irrelevant and insignificant part of me wondered what his body felt like under that fabric.

No. He pickpocketed me. Like every other magpie fae would have if given half a chance. I had to remember that.

“You stole from me!”

His response was the most basic, cliched answer ever. “I can explain.”

I said nothing, not really sure what was going through my thoughts, never mind how I’d begin to articulate them.

Sonny reached into the back pocket of his jeans, removed something, and pushed it into my fist. His long, elegant fingers brushed my skin. I noticed they were caked in dirt, his fingernails all chipped green polish and crescents of brown against his pale skin.

I opened my palm and my gold-mushroom cufflink rolled over, the post and toggle pointing upwards like a tiny ship’s mast. I waited for him to apologise.

He didn’t. Instead, he offered me a shy smile, which was definitely not cute and was one hundred percent fake, and dug his hands into his front pockets. I wouldn’t let my eyes follow their journey.

“I only wanted to talk with you,” he said eventually. “To explain everything and... ask you something.” His cheeks and the tips of his pointy ears flushed bright pink. Also, definitely not cute.

“We’ll be in the guest house when you boys get hungry,” said Oggy. Or was it Willow? They were both sporting blonde ringlets with no facial hair this morning. Difficult enough to tell them apart even when they didn’t match.

Sonny and I watched them toddle off down the stairs.

We both said nothing for a good few seconds. Sonny stared at his feet. I stared at Sonny.

“That’s my room there,” he said after the silence had become nearly tangible. He motioned his head to the door behind him. The door that was not there this morning. “Listen, I only stole from you because I wanted to talk with you and I never got the ch—”

I cut him off. “Is that the only thing you’ve stolen from me?”

His face dropped in an instant, lips pinched between his teeth.

“I hate that I was right about you all along,” I said—almost whispered.

Magpie fae will always be magpie fae.

Sonny sighed.

“What else have you taken from me?” I asked.

He sighed again. “Can we talk about this in your room? I have a lot to say and I’d rather sit.”

My eyes travelled over the entirety of him, from the tips of his still-pink ears to his hands rooted in his pockets. By the way he dug around in them, you’d think he was trying to reach his knees.

“I’ll return everything I’ve taken from you, I promise. It’s in my bag, in my bedroo—lab, whatever.”

I said nothing.

“I never meant to steal those things from you,” he said, finally meeting my gaze. “It’s just... with you...” Sonny shook his head a little. “This magpie-ness is part of me. Like a part that I can’t separate or extract, it’s just there. A part of who I am. My past and my present and my future, and as much as I don’t want to steal from people—especially you—it’s going to happen. It’s part of my DNA.”

Something about his words, and the way he delivered them rang through my chest.

Part of who I am.

Part of my DNA.

Especially you.

Was I not in this exact predicament with the house because of who I was? Because of my DNA? I stood aside. A silent invitation into my room.

Sonny gave a tentative smile and slid through the doorway. His mossy incense scent brushed my nose, temporarily overriding the sensible part of my brain and flooding me with the sudden urge to seize him by the shoulders, slam him into the door frame, and bury my nose into the crook of his neck.

Luckily, when I came to my senses, he was already seated on my leather sofa. I sat on the other end, as far away from him as I could possibly be, but even then my right knee brushed his left. Was it because of Sonny’s ridiculously long limbs, or was my couch... somehow... smaller than it was an hour ago?

“It’s railway station, by the way,” I said.

“Huh?”

“In your email, you said, ‘I’m at the train station.’ You meant railway station.” I knew I was being pedantic, but it irked me when people got that wrong.

Sonny sucked in a breath and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Railway station, right.” He licked his lips and there was a strange tugging sensation in my chest. Like someone had tied a string around my stomach and was trying to pull it through my sternum. “I have so much to say, and I’ve been waiting a very long time to say it.”

I glanced at the grandfather clock, but never bothered to notice which directions the hands were pointing. “Go ahead.”

“Okay. I’m going to tell you everything. Start right at the beginning. And you’re going to think that I’m some kind of... stalker. But please, I need to tell this to you. I’ve been trying to talk to you for years. Then you can kick me out, okay? Because... Urgh! Fuck, I’m sorry.”

I nodded and for some bananas reason, my heartbeat rose by a few notches.

“I work at Remy University. I’m a research fellow and a lecturer. My area of expertise is mycology and fae glamour.”

Again, my heartbeat grew quicker, tapping away at my ribs like a dancing gull imitating a rainstorm on a grassy bank.

Sonny couldn’t lie. He could spin the truth if he wanted to, but the guy I was looking at now—with his hair sticking out in clumps, his cheeks and ears all pink, and the way he plucked at the loose threads around the knee-holes of his jeans—was being earnest.

“I’m writing a paper. Have been writing it for so, so long. It’s about shroom fae and shroom fae glamour, with particular emphasis on how that glamour may benefit the soil and the soil structure and all the microorganisms that live within the soil.”

“Right,” I said, having understood maybe two-thirds of that sentence.

“It’s a... speculative research project. I’ve been unable to find out much more than old wives’ tales and strange folklore. Folklore pertaining to other species, I should say. Nothing concrete from shroom fae lore because, well, there isn’t a lot of shroom fae lore.

“Over the past two hundred and fifty-ish years, I developed a... an obsession with trying to find out more, but it seemed like the more I found out about your type, the less I felt like I knew. I studied mycology, and ecology, and dendrology—all the ologies. I spent so long studying in the fields, growing things, farming mushrooms, testing out theories, trying other types of glamour with... varying results.

“But because of what I understand about fungi and its significance to all life, it stands to reason shroom magic is—will be—unparalleled in its latent potential.”

I knew then what Sonny wanted from me. What he’d wanted from me all along. All those times he’d asked me to get coffee with him, and I’d responded with a curt, “No . ” Something heavy dropped deep in my stomach. I’d always assumed he was taking the piss. He’d have that jokester smile stretched across his face, and every time it had transported me back to the playground bullies.

“You talk to him. No, you talk to him. Ask him what his house is like. Does he live in a toadstool? Ask him why he’s so shit at glamour. I’ve seen carp with more magic. Pretend you like him, go on.”

“I understand your plight,” I said. “But I won’t be able to help you in the ways you think I can. I know nothing also, and even if I did, there are forces that would prevent me from telling you. And to make matters a hundred times worse, I’m something awful with magic. Terrible, actually.”

Even though I really, really didn’t want to, it felt like something I should admit, given the likelihood of the ritual being something glamour adjacent. Sonny should at least have a heads-up there.

Amazingly, after I admitted all that, Sonny smiled. “My own glamour is not much use either. Turns out a magpie fae is only useful if they want to acquire shiny things without paying for them.” His cheeks grew even pinker.

I had the absurd urge to reach over and... I didn’t know. Smooth the frown lines from his brow with my thumb? Gently press my lips against his until the tension melted from his features—no, dammit. Bad Claude.

I’d admit it wasn’t the first time I’d thought about kissing Sonny. About what those improbably puffy lips would taste and feel like against mine, but before, at least I could fool myself into thinking perhaps he might be curious about me too.

That was before I learned he only cared about what I was, what I could bring to his research, rather than who I am.

“About a decade ago,” he said, pulling me from my spiral. “I made a breakthrough with my studies. With mycelium. You know mycelium?”

I looked at him blankly, and Sonny wiggled his fingers, then linked them together.

“Ah, the universal sign for a mass of thread-like, branching, underground fungi,” I said.

He pursed his lips. “I should know better than to explain mushrooms to a mushroom fae. You know mycelium can communicate with trees? They basically create a network where they can share nutrients and water. I’m convinced that the network can also be used to transport and share glamour. I just need to find out what that glamour is.”

“Well, I had rather hoped you could help me, by telling me what that magic was.”

Sonny opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. Furrowed his brow even more. “This was why you emailed me with a dire need of assistance?”

“Yup.” I tried to laugh, but couldn’t quite get it out. “This house—manor, palace, whatever you want to call it—and its occupants, are reliant on my ability to perform a biannual ritual to keep it alive. Only, I have absolutely no idea what that ritual is, or how to perform it. I only know where I need to perform it.”

He continued to stare at me, his big black eyes flicking over my face as though looking for the clues in my words. Or cracks in my story.

“A flat stone in the middle of a deer-poo-infested paddock, as it turns out,” I added.

Sonny’s voice was almost a whisper when he spoke. “So, you need to perform a ritual... twice a year, or once every two years?”

“Twice a year.”

“Sure. Twice a year. Or this house will die, and maybe the occupants too?”

“Oh, I think the guests will just lose their home, but on second thoughts, I should find out for definite. I mean, if they died too, that would be...” I trailed off, unable and unwilling to finish my thought. Oggy and Willow’s bright little faces swam through my mind.

It didn’t bear thinking about, and it would be all my fault.

Sonny was obviously on the same page as me. His arm shot out to cradle my bicep. “I’m pretty sure sentry magic doesn’t work like that. And the other people here are guests, right?”

I said nothing.

“Right?!”

“Uh, I think so,” I hastened to say.

Sonny’s hand left my arm to iron the wrinkles from his forehead, and I immediately missed its presence. It was something more than just the warmth, but I couldn’t say what. It felt like a chasm in my gut had opened. Probably all the worry of potentially killing a bunch of people who gave me the heebies.

“So,” he continued. “You have to perform this ritual, but you have no idea what that ritual is, and you were...” His dark gaze caught mine, and that chasm opened wider. “You were hoping I—as a fungi and fae-magic expert—could tell you what that ritual might be?”

I couldn’t find any words to confirm, so I simply nodded.

“Meanwhile, I have been working on a decade-long project that ultimately requires you to tell me all about your glamour rituals—about which you know nothing.”

“Yep,” I said.

“You need my help, and I need your help, for basically the same thing. And neither one of us can help the other.”

“That about sums it up.”

“Dang,” he said.

“What’s worse is that I need to find out what this ritual is post-haste. It needs to be performed at sunrise on the summer solstice, or the house...” I held out my arms to demonstrate all the things I could not find the words for.

“The summer solstice? When is that this year, the twenty-first of June? That’s like two months away.” Sonny placed his hands on his knees. His breathing became a little quicker, deeper, like he was trying to wrangle it. Was he having a panic attack?

I felt like I should comfort him, as he did me. Squeeze his arm or, I didn’t know, pat his head? I was useless at this sort of thing.

“I’ve spent decades, centuries even, attempting to uncover the secrets of shroom magic and nothing, and now we’ve got eight, nine weeks to figure this shit out or this beautiful house will die and it’s... interesting occupants might die, or at the very least will be misplaced.”

I should. I should just bring my hand down gently between his shoulder blades and rub his back. Or rest it there.

“We?” I said, instead.

He sat up straight, homed his black eyes in on mine. “I’ll have to call work. Get Mash to take over my seminars and lectures after the Spring Fest hols. Maybe I could do some virtually. Does this house get decent Wi-Fi? I’ll call Goldie, see if he can water my houseplants. Actually, no... Holly.” He nodded to himself. His eyes tracked around the room like he was looking for other obstacles to resolve.

“You’re gonna help me?” I asked, my voice a lot quieter than I’d intended. I needed his help. There was no way I could figure this out on my own. Would Sonny be able to figure it out? He’d already been trying for a decade and hadn’t come close yet.

And how tightly linked were our goals? It felt like there was a reason we were somehow brought together.

Sonny grabbed both of my hands, one in each of his. Heat licked up my arm, my breath stuttered. “We’re gonna help each other.” Then, just as quickly, he let go. Hadn’t he noticed my heart bursting through my windpipe?

I swallowed hard, then nodded. Couldn’t quite get my “thank you” past my lips.

“So, I’ll help you find out what this secret magic is so you can save the house, and in return, you will let me write about it in my paper.” Sonny held out his hand for me to shake.

I stared at it. He... he wanted to write about the magic? Share it with the world?

Two thoughts whirred inside my head. The first, an inexplicable urge to hoard the secret, to make him promise he’d tell no one. To take it to our graves. And the second thought was the realisation that when... if we found out what the ritual was, he wouldn’t be able to tell anyone anything.

Memories from a few nights ago flooded my brain.

I can’t tell you what happened. What the ritual involved. Even if I wanted to, I physically would not be able to get the words out. It’s protected. By ancient shroom law.

“Plus, I’ll return all your stolen possessions,” he added, obviously mistaking my hesitance for something else. Trust issues, which okay, fair point.

I might let Sonny the magpie fae help me this one time, but I’d definitely be hiding anything valuable from him. There was a loose floorboard near the dresser, and there was always the option of burying stuff under a tree somewhere.

I took his hand in mine and shook it, swallowing down the painful lump swelling in my gullet.

Shame. The lump was shame. I was an awful person. Entering into a verbal contract, knowing I’d only partially keep up my end of the bargain, and Sonny wouldn’t be able to pass on his knowledge to anyone.

He gave me a bright, glorious smile. My insides wobbled. I didn’t like the guy, but that didn’t stop me from noticing how magnificent he looked when he was excited. Cheeks flushed, hair shining like spilled oil, those full lips curled over brilliant white teeth. His chest rose and fell in a way that seemed much too quick for two blokes sitting around on a couch.

“Shall we start now?” he asked.

“Uh,” I replied, my brain sluggish. “Sure.” I shook my head a little. “Why don’t you tell me everything you know about shroom magic? Maybe you already have the answer. Maybe it’s a case of developing my techniques.”

Sonny scratched the back of his neck. “Sure. I mean, you could read my papers? Have you got an eSlate? Or a laptop?”