Black Mould - Eighteen - Knitting Together Threads of Passing Time

My mom grounded me for a month.

An interminable month, spent locked up in our little home, with nothing to do but knit and practise my meagre reading skills on the few books we had.

I hated knitting.

I knit an entire sweater for my mom. An angry sweater.

My anger and frustration redoubled when, a week into my punishment, my mom added another two weeks. She, being clever and conniving, had tied some string to the door so that it would signal her when anyone opened the door.

I had just gone to check on my farm! Some of my mushrooms were ready to harvest, and if left to grow for too long, I’d miss out on… none of my excuses mattered.

The day of my fourth birthday came and went with little fanfare. My dad got me some yarn, and my mom a small pile of books. It was actually a nice gift; though they were worn and well-read, that only meant that the last owner thought them entertaining.

One was a book about the history of textile manufacturing in the city we lived in. It was dry and a little bland, but I got a glimpse of the world’s history, or at least, a very edited and polished look at said history. I didn’t believe half of what the book claimed.

Still, some facts would be easily verified. The land was once a kingdom, part of a greater empire which essentially colonised the entire surface of the world. I couldn’t decide which empire back on Earth it reminded me of the most. Maybe some weird French-English-Spanish-Portuguese cross?

Eventually, my punishment ended, and I was allowed to return to work on my farm.

Fortunately, most of the mushrooms I had could survive a couple of weeks without tending. Some had died and rotted away, but that wasn’t too terrible. It provided some compost for the next generation of the same mushroom to grow in.

What interested me the most were the grafted mushrooms that had grown out of my notebook.

One was outright dead, but the others weren’t so shrivelled that I couldn’t observe them.

So, four surviving samples, five including the one I’d already planted. I rubbed my hands together to warm them back up. My little farm was surprisingly warm, at least compared to the chill creeping up on the city from outside.

The dead sample was the combination of brown chanterelle and bug agaric. That wasn’t too surprising; it was an outright miracle that so many of the other grafted samples had worked at all. It was certainly unscientific. These fungi were probably not even close to being in the same family, so there was no way they should have been able to combine in any reasonable way.

But magic, it seemed, didn’t care much for my scientific knowledge.

Or… I paused and considered it.

No, the scientific method was still valid. It was just that magic was a new variable that needed to be taken into account.

Brown chanterelle and dead man’s fingers created a mushroom that looked… I tilted my head left and right and tried to find a way to describe the mushroom that didn’t sound terribly phallic. There were no two ways about it though, especially when I used [Druid Sight] on it.

[Dead Man’s Member] - Common

A common growth near rotting woods. The dead man’s member is a mushroom that can act as a mild aphrodisiac, though it also gives the eater digestive issues if eaten raw.

The world was messing with me, I just knew it. That wasn’t going to be one that I’d be growing, I don’t think, not unless I found a way to start producing it as a tincture of sorts. There was a possibility there, but I didn’t have the infrastructure to start making and selling potions or herbal cures. Maybe I could make it a point to meet a potion-maker?

The brown chanterelle and horse-head mix wasn’t in my notebook, as it was the first graft I’d made, and it had a spot on one of my racks.

The mushroom looked too fresh to be the original. I suspected that the first flowering had happened, died, then regrown in the same spot. So, the fungi was at least viable, and it was possible that the spores were breeding true, or maybe the fungal body was just keen on regrowing.

[Brown Horse Head] - Uncommon

A cultivar of two popular mushroom types. Grows rapidly and is nutritious. Can be found next to decomposing meats.

I plucked the mushroom and popped it into my mouth. My eyes closed and I let out a contented hum. It was good. A little earthy, but with the texture of a soft meat and a smoky aftertaste. It was far superior to both the brown chanterelle and horse head. I’d definitely start farming these instead of the other two.

The next to look at was the combined [Bug Agaric] and [Dead Man’s Fingers]. The mushroom was long and narrow, with a small red cap on the very tip of it. The cap was speckled with white dots, and was actually rather cute.

[Dead Man’s Agaric] - Uncommon

A highly toxic mushroom. The spores cause the lungs of mammals who inhale them to inflame, and consumption of the mushroom’s meat causes internal haemorrhaging within two days of the time of consumption. Leads consumers to a heavy trance-like state where they will hallucinate vividly.

Oh, shit.

I carefully brought the mushroom across the room, thinking about how I had been entirely unaware that it was just sitting on my workbench the entire time. Had the spores spread already? My lungs weren’t exactly strong to begin with.

I disposed of the mushroom in a bin that I used for composting, then I tossed some dirt atop it. Hopefully it wouldn’t regrow just yet.

There was a temptation to keep it. I could use some sort of weapon, and using it as a trap of sorts wasn’t the worst idea, but… well, I needed to breathe too. I didn’t want to die to my own mushroom.

Then again…

I could remember what Stew had said, about developing resistances. If I could dose myself with some poisonous mushrooms for a while… maybe I could develop a skill that would keep me safe from their own negative effects?

Then I could liberally grow that kind of mushroom without having to worry.

It was an idea.

Two types of mushroom combinations remained. Bug agaric and horse head produced an edible mushroom that was nutritious and mildly poisonous to insects. That was interesting, but not immediately useful. I didn’t have a bug problem in my farm. If I did, then an insect-resistant cultivar might be more tempting.

As it was, the new [Brown Horse Head] was just better in nearly every way.

The last mushroom was the strangest looking one of the lot. I suspected some magical interference of some sort was at work.

[Dead Horse Head] - Uncommon

A magical mushroom that is high in nutritious content and has a smell that will tempt mammalian creatures into consuming it. Very mildly poisonous.

The mushroom looked like a knight piece from a fungal-themed chess set, if a little malformed. I wondered if I could cultivate mushrooms to complete the set… A thought for the future, perhaps.

I plucked the mushroom and eyed it a bit.

This was poisonous, but it didn’t seem to have the same level of lethality as the [Dead Man’s Agaric]. In fact, this seemed downright tame compared to that.

I chewed on my bottom lip as I thought.

If I wanted to develop an immunity to poisons, then I’d need to survive some poisoning. I was pretty healthy—afflictions aside—young, and in decent shape.

I could probably live through a bit of cramping.

Still, it wouldn’t be smart to consume a large dose of a poison. I’d have to work on starting small first.

I split up the [Dead Horse Head] with a knife, creating a thin cutting of it that was no bigger than my pinkie.

Most of the more lethal mushrooms back on Earth weren’t really as dangerous as people thought. Death caps were probably the most lethal, and it wasn’t all that common that someone who ate one died. Not in the modern day, at least.

I went about picking things up, harvesting a healthy amount of mushrooms to bring back home in a sack (way more than we could eat over the course of even a whole month) and then I wasted a few points of mana here and there.

The [Brown Horse Head], I decided, would replace my other mushrooms as my main growing stock. It would take a while for me to have enough to replace everything else though, so I’d do it in small stages.

Once I was done for the day, I picked up the tiny sliver of [Dead Horse Head] and plopped it into my mouth.

It was actually pretty tasty!

With a smile on my lips, I ran back home with my bounty.

***