The secret ingredient

Scratches were the sign of an adventure. That’s what Alex told herself as the bramble tore into her arm. She couldn’t resist jumping in a puddle that sat unobtrusively at the edge of the path. Muddy knees were also the sign of an adventure. The muddier the better. She loved the sound of the splash; the squelch of her gumboots in the mud, and the little shiver of glee that made its way into the open through the giggle she was unable to repress.

Owen wasn’t in the mood for an adventure. He never was. She really wished she’d chosen a better side kick, but their little village was severely lacking in candidates. Her sprightly jumps and spurts of energy juxtaposed against his soft, lumbering gait. They made an odd couple as they traversed the forest together, with the last gasp of Autumn accompanying their trek.

‘Don’t go so fast,’ Owen whimpered, trying not to sound scared. He was older. He ought to be braver. He adored Alex and would follow her to the ends of the earth. Which in his sheltered experience wasn’t much further than the boundary of the forest line. If he didn’t adore her, there was no way he would be here. The forest scared him. Where Alex saw nests and little shapes that she was convinced could be fairy or sprite homes, Owen saw shadows and heard in the rustling leaves the implicit promise of danger. And not the good kind Alex was intent on confronting, with her belief of such things gleaned from comic books and cartoons. The bad type his hypervigilant parents had panicked him into believing was the tone for his childhood.

‘C’mon, O,’ she wheedled. A typical Alex sentence. Always in such a hurry to get to the end she took shortcuts. Dropping her Ts and squishing her words together, shortening names to their lowest recognisable form and running sentences one after the other without pausing for breath. ‘Gotta get to the clearing before the sun does.’ 

She didn’t know much about foraging, but what she knew counted. She didn’t know much about cooking, but she understood which plants yielded the most value. Things that required rules and lessons rushed past her and she daren’t put out her fingertips to grasp them. If she needed to know them, she intuited that convention would eventually dictate the knowledge in a language she could absorb. Hers was the knowledge of the heart. Hers was the trust of the senses. She loved fiercely, played roughly, shrieked with the wind and delighted in the fruits of nature. Owen’s mum wasn’t far off when she called Alex a grubby little urchin, but Alex basked in the description. If her dad hadn’t insisted on gumboots because of the rain, she would have been running through the pine strewn pathway in bare feet. But the rain was the key. That much she remembered. And being up at dawn. Mushrooms would be flourishing, little toadstools thriving in the shadows of a tree trunk. A mighty oak that sat just beyond the clearing they were heading for.

Alex had been foraging twice before, both times with her Grandma, when she’d moved in with them. When mum was sick. Grandma was a witch. Mum had told her as much. Alex had let the news sink in, nervous at the prospect, until she realised witches weren’t dark and demonic, but filled with light and beauty. Grandma taught her the healing properties of foods. How to steep herbs in vinegar to make shrubs. Her secret morning wake up drink of dandelion leaves, parsley and peppercorns, the latter ground up in her big marble pestle and mortar. And the power of mushrooms. Where to find them. How to know which were poisonous. Which woody ones were the best fried up for breakfast. How they tasted differently when paired with the various herbs bursting from the pots on the window sill. How to dry them and ground them to a powder to make a more delicious version of coffee. They were potent. And this morning, they were going to save a life.

‘Why are we even doing this,’ Owen grumbled, mostly to himself, but Alex with her razor sharp hearing and quick as a whip reaction spun around to confront him.

‘It’s important. We have to make the mushroom dish from the land of ties,’ Alex said, insistently.

‘The what from the what?’ He knew Alex sometimes got jumbled up, mixed her words, blended their meaning. 

‘When mum came back from the hospital she was still so weak. Then she and daddy went to the land of ties and she came back well. Or better than she was. Happier. I asked what their secret ingredient was and mummy said magical mushrooms.’

He remembered her then, Alex’s mum, when she came back from hospital. He’d only been a boy, not the manly pre-teen he felt himself to be now, but even then she was so brittle he felt he could snap her in two. Laughing and joking feebly in the hopes that Alex wouldn’t see her soul weeping. Slowly, she had recovered her strength, recovered her energy, but a sheen still sat across her that seemed so obvious to Owen, he wondered why no-one commented on it. A sickness that sat within her. Alex had been too young to notice. All she remembered from that time was Grandma moving in, both whilst her mum was undergoing treatment and later, as she was remembering now. A trip. To Thailand. A second honeymoon they had called it. But Owen wondered whether it had been a goodbye.

‘Remember O, the land of ties. I don’t know why they went there because daddy doesn’t even wear a tie. But mummy told me, they had these amazing mushrooms that held magical properties. And she would know, because Grandma taught her about the enchantment of certain ingredients. They ate them on a pizza. So we have to go find some mushrooms. We have to find the magic ones to put on her toast. Pizza base is basically bread. It should work the same way. Whatever she had in the land of ties mended her. 

‘And now she’s broken again.’ Her voice choked a little. The real reason they had got up at dawn, hurried from their neighbouring homes, her dad and his mum wearing dressing gowns on either side of the fence, giving their parental warnings in their different styles. 

She paused, then fixed those big, hazel eyes directly on him and said the word he couldn’t resist. ‘Please.’

Alex, in so many ways, was so grown up that the five year age gap between them was unnoticeable. At school his classmates laughed and made fun of him for being best friends with a little girl, but Alex had been born mature. So aware and awake, wild and free, so sure of herself and everything around her that he didn’t care. He forgot that she was still a child. And then a moment like this would make it all come tumbling back. Her blind belief in magic. Her usually curious mind closed to untruths told by those she loved the most. Her bravery and adventure, a front for the scared little girl underneath, quaking with fear about what was about to happen. The inevitable.

Years later, when he was older, wiser, yet no more popular, still pining for Alex, even though she was barely part of his life, still being tutted at by his mother for making poor choices, he would always remember this point. The loss of innocence. The realisation that had hit him at that very moment. Cowering in the forest, under the canopy of unfriendly trees, summer a distant memory and autumn giving into the barren decay of winter: Alex’s mum was going to die. It ran through him like a shiver. He didn’t know anyone who had died yet. He lived such an ordinary life, he had never stopped to consider how much of a blessing it was. How consistent and unchanged. He had thought it boring. But now he knew it was stable. Supportive. But he knew his friend’s life was never going to be the same again. She knew it too. The moment between them was charged; her eyes, pleading, whilst trying to remain defiant. He felt helpless. There was nothing he could do. How on earth must she feel? It was her mum. They were up against a force neither of them understood or could recognise. A disease that wouldn’t discriminate, couldn’t care. Wouldn’t think twice about taking away this little girl’s mum. Her childhood. Her hope.

But he was wrong, there was one thing he could do. It was small. But, for her, it was significant.

He slipped back into the role she needed. Lumbering old Owen, trundling through the undergrowth. 

‘Come on, then silly,’ he said, warm, affectionate, holding out a hand for her to playfully grab. ‘Let’s go find this secret ingredient.’