The Origins of a Mycophile

Sonny

“SONNY?! IN HERE!”

Claude! He was here!

I had arrived at the ley lines and Claude wasn’t there. Immediately, I pulled out the compass and followed that. It took me to the pool. But he wasn’t there either. So I started screaming his name.

And he yelled back.

His voice came from the little cave beyond the waterfall, or at least, that was what it sounded like. There was no way to get to him without going through the water, so I tugged my trainers off, let them land wherever they landed, and I dove in fully clothed. Then I swam up to the edge, pulled myself up, and crossed through the deluge of runoff.

Claude peered up at me with wide, watery eyes. He was mid-stripping off his clothes, presumably to get to me. His shoes and socks were off, his jacket in a heap on the rocky floor, his shirt unbuttoned to his belly button. I barely had time to consider why he seemed mostly dry and why he was undressing before he cupped my face either side and pulled my lips down to his.

A million questions popped into my head—a million things to say—but they could wait.

It had felt like forever since I last kissed him. And like I might never get another chance to do this.

He broke the kiss. “Why aren’t you in Remy?”

“I know what the ritual is!” I said. I hadn’t known how I would tell him. I’d been practicing trying to say the words aloud, but every time I attempted to vocalise them, only nonsensical sounds came out. I’d concluded I’d have to show him, and oh no, wouldn’t that be terrible? But I needn’t have worried either way—

“I do too!” He laughed. “No wonder my father didn’t want anyone besides his current girlfriend there.”

“Right?” I kissed him again.

He pulled away, and I saw the worry etched in his features. “Why aren’t you in Remy? You’re going to miss your appointment.”

“Because... because you are the magic, Claude. I’ve waited so long—years and years—for a chance to publish this paper, and I’ll get another opportunity, but I’m not prepared to wait a second longer to be with you. I love you. Like stupid amounts. And I cannot miss this ritual. I need to be here for you. I choose you. I’m always going to choose you.”

Claude butted his forehead against mine. “I love you.” He laughed. “And I have for a while. I’ve just been too afraid to tell you, in case... in case you didn’t want the burden of me, and this house. I don’t know how we’ll make things work with you in Remy. Maybe we should try long distance—”

“I want to move in here with you,” I said, and then immediately regretted yet another outburst. “It’s your home, though. I can... wait until you’re ready. I’m sorry.”

He kissed me again. “No, don’t be sorry. I love it when you say whatever the fuck you’re thinking. I want you to live here. I want to wake up next to you every single morning and I want to go to bed with you each night. But how will it work with uni? Don’t you have students who need you?”

“I have second years, yeah. I will need to speak to the dean, and see if I can take a sabbatical, or if I’ll need to wait for my students to graduate. But it’s only a couple of years until they do, so at most, we’d only have to do two years of long distance. But maybe there’s something else I could do. It worked pretty well doing my one-on-ones virtually. Maybe more of my lessons could be conducted or organised virtually or... I dunno...”

“We’ll figure it out,” he said. “I can’t believe you’re here. I need to introduce you to... some new friends.” He turned and looked into the dark cavity at the back of the cavern.

“Folks, you can come out now.” Nobody appeared. Claude side-eyed me. “Sonny won’t hurt you. He’ll probably love bomb you instead.”

“Um, who are y—”

Claude held his finger over his lips, sshing me. “You’ll see. Come out, folks. You don’t need to be shy with Sonny.” He walked farther into the space and dropped to his knees next to a semi-flat rock.

In the corner of my peripherals, a blur of red flashed by, followed by another on my other side. My heartbeat started racing again, but not through fear. Through excitement. It was like being a child waking up on Winter Fest morning.

I heard a squeak, similar to a rubber chicken, but softer. And another. And suddenly my vision was overrun with little red blurs and the cave filled up with squeaky chirping.

Tiny mushroom folk everywhere. They were naked and had chubby, cheruby bodies with rosy cheeks. They stood atop the flat rocks and in recesses and cracks in the cavern walls. Some of them even began swimming in the deeper puddles.

And all the emotion from earlier in the day—from being kidnapped, escaping, from the terror of driving for the first time, the heartbreak of saying goodbye, the relief of being here with Claude again—caught up to me, and I started sobbing. Tears fell freely onto my shirt, which was soaked anyway, so they made little difference.

I swallowed my sob, wiped my cheeks with my wrist, and knelt next to Claude. “Hi.” I whispered because they were very small. I waved.

“Sonny, these are the Earth Bells. They told me what the ritual is. Earth Bells, this is Sonny, my...” Claude looked at me, his brow creased, his expression a question.

I nodded to let him know he could absolutely, categorically, one hundred percent use the word poised right at the tip of his tongue.

“My boyfriend,” he finished.

My smile was immediate. A fresh wave of silent tears rolled down my cheeks. “Your boyfriend,” I repeated in a whisper.

“That feels so good.” He grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

We stared at each other for a few seconds, before I remembered the hundreds of eyes gazing up at us.

“They like shells,” said Claude. “And watching, erm, intimate moments.”

“I mean, who doesn’t, right?” I said. The squeaking in the cave took on an amused quality.

I wanted to stay here all night and find out all about these wonderful creatures, but my wet clothes were chilling my bones, and I was acutely aware of the approaching dawn.

Claude must have felt the same because he asked, “What time is it?”

I tilted my head backwards to look through the gaps in the cavern wall. “Evening. Probably eight, or nine. It’s difficult to be certain.”

“Is your phone with your shoes?”

My phone! “Oh, my gods, I have so much to tell you.”

“I also have a lot of gossip. We should go back to the house and get changed. Get ready for the ritual.”

I crowded into Claude’s space. “I know we can’t talk about the ritual, but I just want to say how excited I am for it.”

Claude laughed, then kissed me, long and slow and sensual. And my body—mostly my dick—responded. I rocked my hips against him, but he pushed me away.

“You’re soaking wet.”

“Your ass is wet, too,” I bit back.

“I didn’t piss myself!” he blurted.

I snort-laughed. “Fuck, I love you.” I pulled him close again, and planted a kiss on his forehead because if we kept this game up, it would lead to somewhere we couldn’t risk going so near to the ritual.

I knew the Earth Bells liked to watch, but we needed Claude fully loaded for sunrise.

“We can go through this tunnel so we don’t have to get wet again,” Claude said.

“But my shoes are on the other side of the waterfall.”

“There they are.” Claude pointed to the ground, where my trainers hovered three inches in the air, moving towards me.

The Earth Bells had fetched them and brought them to me, and okay, they were very damp now, but I was suddenly bursting with emotion again. I pulled them on, and Claude, led by some of the mushroom folk, showed me the way out through the tunnels.

It was pitch black inside, my eyes adjusting only to the silhouettes Claude and the Earth Bells made—a blacker black, denser against the dark of the walls. From touch alone, I learned the tunnels’ floors, walls, and ceilings were lined with something smooth—smoother than rocks—and bumpy, and I hoped to gods it wasn’t teeth. We had to crawl most of the way until the shadows became less heavy and I could stand, though still crouching, inside a grotto.

Shells. That was what lined the walls. In the evening sun, the shells glittered like opals and citrines and rose quartz.

I willed myself not to cry again, but it was all so incredibly beautiful.

Mushroom folk, living in a shell-lined underground labyrinth.

A sentient mushroom palace that catered to my every whim.

A new family of bonkers but lovable folk. Jasper aside.

Claude. My boyfriend.

I couldn’t go back to Remy.

Not now. Maybe not ever.

We bid the Earth Bells good evening and followed the compass to the house, where we found Oggy, Willow, and John passed out in the dining room in various states of undress, and Mrs Ziegler reading a travel brochure. She stuffed it down the side of the cushion when she saw us.

“Figured it out?” she said. But didn’t give us time to answer before she nodded and said, “Good, good. I’m off to bed then.” Then she left.

It was eleven p.m. when we reached Claude’s room. We stripped off and showered together, focusing on washing our bodies, and only pausing to kiss now and then. We tried to keep this as touch-free as possible, even though both our dicks were clearly ready for more.

We dressed. Claude put on a beautiful linen suit, but left his jacket off. Since the suitcase with all my clothes was still in the rental monster truck a few miles down the road, Claude loaned me some more of his too-short pyjama pants. He fetched a hoodie that he’d tucked under his pillow. It was one of mine. My Don’t Be a Spore Loser hoodie.

“It smells like you,” he admitted, his cheeks glittering with his silver freckles.

“Stealing my things.” I tsked , and wagged my finger at him. “I must be rubbing off on you.”

We moved to his couch, because the bed felt too dangerous. Either we’d end up fucking, or sleeping, and we could afford neither of those situations right now.

“There’s four hours until sunrise. Do you want to nap? I’ll stay awake and make sure you’re up in time for the ritual,” I said.

“No, let’s keep each other awake.”

I poured myself a triple-shot black coffee and Claude a ready-mix chai latte in my little kitchenette, and returned to his room. He was staring at the grandfather clock, but when he spotted me walking in, he sat on the sofa and patted the space next to him. I made myself comfortable, leaning back, legs up, slotting under Claude’s arm.

Claude cradled his tea in one hand, the other draped over my chest. He buried his nose and mouth in my hair and breathed in deeply. “Tell me what happened when you left this morning.”

This morning. Gods, had it really only been this morning? It felt like an absolute lifetime ago.

I took a deep breath and told Claude everything that had happened from the moment the taxi pulled away from the Stinkhorn gates and I’d changed my mind. The almost crash. The kidnapping. The millennia of car games. The petrol-station toilet. The compass. Driving.

And Claude told me all about the estate agent and the councillor. John and Mrs Ziegler. Oggy passing out. The Earth Bells, and finding me.

The enormous clock bonged twice. There were just over two hours until sunrise.

“Tell me why mushrooms, and shroom fae. What started your fascination with them?” Claude said, his fingers twisting gently in my hair.

“My fascination with”—I tilted my head up, so I was looking into his beautiful brown upside-down eyes—“mushrooms began when I was a boy, age one hundred maybe. I became obsessed with fae in general and learning about all the different types of glamours. And how, for most of us, our glamour is essentially harnessed through nature. You can already see where this is going, right?”

“I can.” He closed his eyes. I was a little worried he’d fall asleep. This was how so many evenings had gone previously—Claude drifting off as I chatted about nothing and everything. A warm ache spread throughout my chest knowing my voice brought him so much comfort.

“Anyway, one year, when I was just going through puberty, there was a huge village Harvest fayre. It was the biggest festival, and fae used to come from all over the district. There was a man there, a newcomer. He had brown skin, and copper-coloured hair, and these beautiful silver freckles that sort of glittered in the sunlight.”

“Beautiful freckles?”

“So beautiful.” I smiled to myself, knowing Claude wouldn’t see it. “Nowadays, I’d recognise him as a shroom fae, but at the time, I had no idea what type he was. And although he joined in with the dancing and the pie eating and the traditional Harvest fayre kisses, I noticed he never really spoke to anyone.

“Being like, only a hundred years old, I didn’t know any better, didn’t understand other fae cultures. So I approached him and he took me into the marquee and we drank this strange, spiced mead. I wasn’t even old enough to drink. I guess things were different back then. He told me he was a shroom fae, and I asked every single question I could think of about your kind and your glamour. The guy answered about ten percent of my questions.

“He just kept saying things like, ‘I’d love to tell you, but I can’t,’ and ‘ Even I don’t know how that works.’ I told him I thought if all the different types of fae worked together and harnessed our unique glamours, we could save the Eight and a Half Kingdoms. Drought, flooding, famine, the burning of fossil fuels, climate change—we could end it all. I was convinced of that.”

I laughed. It was ridiculous. I’d been so foolish and naive. “I’m still convinced of it.”

“You’re amazing,” he said. The fingers on his left hand eased down the neckline of my hoodie to rest on my bare chest. It wasn’t quite where my heart was, but I got a feeling that was the area Claude was aiming for.

“Humans too,” I added. “And orcs and warlocks and merfolk and all the other species, but I think due to the sheer number of fae and humans versus everyone else, it’s largely up to us. Though everyone should play their part.”

“But what can humans do? They don’t have any glamour.”

“They do. It’s just not as obvious as a fae’s. Do you remember all the ways I told you we can improve our soil without magic? Well, not completely without magic, because magic exists in every living thing, but without fae magic?”

“Pee-bales and worms and compost tea and diversifying microorganisms or something, yeah?”

“Yeah,” I choked out. He really had been listening to me during all those talks.

“So, you think we could save an entire planet by changing the soil?”

I sighed, and tried not to ruminate on every other way the Eight and a Half Kingdoms was fucked. “No, but yes. I think it’s a great place to start.”

“Then I’ll help you start it there.”

The clock bonged again—three times—sending a spear of adrenaline to my stomach, and jolting Claude’s arm against my chest.

“It’s time we started to get ready.”