Mushrooms

It hardly could be said that the Quest II had begun, maybe later, not now, but this time, at the trip, Clem was not alone; we were two together. Going to bed, I was determined to get up at dawn, and I succeeded only thanks to Clem who came to my room when the clock said 5 a.m.

The shotguns and baskets stood in readiness. Clem refused to take one of the guns as a heavy burden, and I took a gun and I checked up it, but I refused to have a basket as an inexperienced mushroom picker; then Clem took a basket and his usual staff-like stick was in his hand; thus, we took the road.

Last night was dewy, and the water flowed down from foliage like rainwater at ties on our way. Clem said that one could not expect mushrooms in low places, after a dew-fall like that; howeer, mushroom picking was not exactly my intention. "Never mind," I said, "If not low places, we shall go somewhere uphill." I pointed to the right, where a wooded hill showed blue at a distance. Leaving a sweet roundelay of a meadow-lark behind, we went through the shrubbery, off road, and it took us some time to find a pathway. The sandy pathway seemed to go uphill.

Indeed, the landscape went higher and higher as we went, and the forest got more and more picturesque. The old pine-trees, whose odoriferous presence always pleased me, and the knotty venerable aspen-trees were sparse but looking magically impressive, creating the proper shade for the rich tall ferns. A quarter more and we were on the top of the hill. There, to the left of the ferny pathway, underneath the bared, reddish and thoroughly intertwined roots of four-century-old pines, an extinct stream created a washout in the ground.

The cornice of the soil over the roots looked like a top of gates to the sunrise. The air was piny smell saturated, greenish, yellow and cool. The old trees seemed to dance in rings with branches in tiers going heavenwards; among their kingly calm foliage, we saw a tall stump. Trimmed with velvety moss and studded with honey fungus all over, the stump seemed an altar in a temple. The stump seemed raised from under the ground by a mysterious power. Being under the familiar power of zymosis, the stump was ready for turning to ashes and being added to the ground whose colour it adopted. Over the half-destroyed knotty texture with innumerable micro lives, pale soft mushrooms crowded like exotic flowers or frozen gnomes.

Brittle and graceful, with the shaky thin stems and shammy caps, the mushrooms were covered with a soft rosy shine. Myriads of the mushrooms were over the side of the washout as well. Their disorderly and unsteady crowds were a continuation of the great colony of moss going from some lower layers of the earth; perhaps, a subdued sound of the Earth gave vibration to their shaky flesh, and it looked like a usual activity of some unusual chthonic beings, in or beneath the earth. Behind my back, Clem said, "Foxhole..." with his staff he dag up an underground passage, "There are some more, I guess…" he made three steps away from me and said that he found two holes more. Fern-covered, the holes apparently looked unusual to him, since he said, "It's not foxholes." He looked in the washout, and his expression changed. I approached to see the unexpected, which surprised him.

On a big mossy boulder, among the tall grass of the bottom of the washout, a stag was lying, half on side, half on back, motionless, dead. The frozen stag's bent legs were up. He apparently fell from above, since one of his antlers was stuck in the ground. And the holes were his hoof-prints. A stag. Something more unusual. Broken branches of trees. It looked like the stag's trace as he ran. It was a wild run and the antlers broke branches high. And finally the stag made the fatal misstep and died as though something disoriented the mature animal of the forest. What had happened to him? Was the animal a wolf's prey? Apparently, some questions crowded in Clem's head too, since he began descending into the washout.

And I looked up and saw that the broken branches were much higher than our head level. It looked like the running stag jumped from time to time so high. Clem harried, descending to bottom of the washout, but one of the stones failed under his foot, and Clem fell, sliding down, along with his staff.

In reply to my call, he gave his voice from the washout saying that it hurt him and he could not get up at once; moreover, the way of his fall down looked hardly possible for his return.

"I'll throw something to you and you'll get out of there," I said, but soon, I saw I had nothing to throw.

He said, "Go further. And I'll find another side where I can get out of here."

"All right." Seeing him limping down the washout, I went further in the forest.

We reunited where the washout turned into a grassy ravine. "Hurry up, hurry up…" I heard. The grass moved, and I saw Clem's head. Contrary to his own words, he was slow getting out of the ravine with the aid of his staff. Eventually, I could pull him out of the place that could become a mantrap for a stranger. His leg was not all right. The ankle-joint not broken but swelling. Bad case. Our expedition had finished. I shouldered his right arm and we went home.

On the way, he said that he had time to examine the dead animal. The stag was killed by a predator, most probably, judging by something like signs of fangs on the animal's neck.

Whose claws and fangs did kill the stag? The way of attacking from above reminded of a lynx. However, it was difficult to think over a problem when walking in the way like we, with him feeling the pain in his leg and me feeling the lumpish heaviness of his body on my shoulder, so, we kept silence. Luckily, we quickly found a pathway, which Clem recognized as right, and presently, on the approach to home, he announced that he was about to return to the stag as soon as the swelling on his leg permitted.

Saying this, he simply forgot that soon we should go to Brumburg for visiting the Book Club and for any information of his mother. Besides, Clem didn't know that some new circumstances would make him forget of the dead animal, next day.