The Green Mushroom Hills

It was a June morning. Furrstota felt heavy-eyed from the previous night's festivities. His yawn was as wide as the promise of the day. But his spirit was merry, and the sunshine refreshed him. "I'll be back soon, Mama," he shouted through a crooked window, the door closing behind his heels. His message sailed like a tumbling wind from wall to wall. And his mother, Peggy, scrambled as she cleaned dirty dishes piled in the sink. The faucet was loud; water spilled over silverware and crusted plates. And she was becoming deaf as the years passed. So, his speech got lost.

Furrstota had never mentioned a specific time or date, or even the hour of his return. And he wouldn’t be back in minutes. Unless he had forgotten his keys or his rounded mushroom hat made from amadou. It resembled a horse’s hoof, which he wore everywhere. But he accounted for both items: one in his furrowed pocket and the other squashed onto a blonde tuft of hair.

A couple of days later, Peggy rocked in a rickety chair. A thought seized her by the bun of her hair. She scratched her scalp with a fingernail, curious. ‘It’s awfully quiet around here. Where’s Furrstota? I haven’t seen him in two short days. Where could he have gone? How rude of him not to leave a message! When he comes back, I’ll spank him with a ladle. Then he’ll learn to leave a note.’ Peggy’s eyebrows crunched as she searched the dark, distant woods beyond the fields. Fireflies swirled around blades of grass, illuminating wet patches in the valley. Unbeknownst to Peggy, she would never see her son again. This thought would never cross her mind as she shifted back and forth on the porch.

Furrstota meant to return that evening, but he got carried away like a feather in a storm. It was fateful that he did not eat breakfast that morning. His stomach rumbled, protesting emptiness. A few eggs, a glass of water with some rye bread smothered in butter could have done the trick. But he consumed nothing. As Furrstota traveled through the valley, heather underfoot, his appetite grew.

Furrstota reached the pine-lined threshold. His churning stomach guided him further toward a growth of spotted mushrooms, overgrown by a thicket of shrubs. He had never seen such beautiful mushrooms. They sprouted white gills, a bulbous purple sack, and a red ring on the stem. They were bursting with flavour. In all his junior years, he had never heard of stories from farmers, or sailors from the wharf, or haggard women poisoned by a feast of mushrooms, drying up into the soil. And so Furrstota snatched a handful and chewed, his teeth gnashing. 

After a short time, Furrstota felt lightheaded. He could have sworn his feet were floating. Far away, he saw his house through a glint of trees, a stone bungalow. It was radiant in the sun. Its apricot shingles glimmered in a haze, adorned with weathered moss. The whole thing sat low on a patch of hill. Peggy, a dot, could be seen tending to a garden. Furrstota rubbed his eyes in disbelief. Peggy’s body had stretched and grown. It now reached the height of the roof and, to his amazement, the Carpeon mountains to the south. Dizzied by the hallucination, he tried to slap his cheeks. He hoped to rid himself of a sudden delirium. It had crawled on with a surprising kick. A paralysis gripped him. Unable to withstand the turbulence, he collapsed onto a tangled heap of branches.

And, as the story goes, Furrstota slept for three years in a bed of twigs and grass, under the blazing sun and the waning moon. He snored and babbled to the pines and the fowls, impetuous like a somnambulist. And, shivering at night, a cluster of roots unearthed threads. They covered him with a moss blanket. He blended with nature, appearing as a green lump. A fallen log. After three days, a search party scoured the quayside, the hamlets, and the forests of Henneth. But the boy was never found. And Peggy mourned a lost son.

But finally, Furrstota opened his eyes from a long slumber. Upon waking, his bloodshot eyes scanned his whereabouts. Nothing was familiar. The woods were dark. Gaunt trees lined the ashy soil, as if a fire had devastated the land. The season had changed. A flowering spring had become a withering fall. A cold wind swept Furrstota, whispering a forgotten tale. In a hollow wood, branches creaked and yawned. They taunted a poor fellow to bits.

Furrstota then recalled a dream. He had been digging the earth like a rascally dog searching for a bone. Instead, he found a shiny object caked in dirt: a copper coin. While digging, Furrstota remembered that some precious item had been lost, and recovering it was a matter of great importance. And he dug, concluding that nothing else mattered. Digging was necessary. At the bottom of the hole, the coin glittered in all its reverence and beauty, and he coveted the item. He cradled it in his palm before rolling it between his fingers. And wanting none other to find it, he swallowed it. Gulp. In a glimpse, he was in a village. A crowd of onlookers cursed him with all their might. Their teeth were bound with vitriol. Their gums foamed sudsy white. A pillory wrenched his body. And behind him, grassy hills bubbled and rolled into each other, nourishing the clouds. And above the flowing mounds, gold bars of dust lit the way north to a looming castle perched on a cliff. Then night fell like a curtain. A waxing moon lit a couple of weeping harlots. The mob of jesters was gone, tired from all the shouting. Rain fell and thunder roared. A bolt struck the pillory. A divine act, freeing Furrstota. Then the voice of his mother, Peggy, rang out in all directions, telling him to run like a hare.

Furrstota scratched his head, trying to make sense of everything. He looked about his surroundings; his home and his mother, Peggy, were gone. And her voice was no longer an echo. This land was unfamiliar, no longer the woods of his youth, but the woods of a serpent, listless and wrought with a hammer of woes. He imagined a monster seething beneath the soil. “Is anybody there?” Furrstota cried out, his shrill words bounding through the night air. He pinched himself, and it hurt when he did. His skin flamed a bluish-red circle, which proved his existence, but not so well.

He felt thirsty, his tongue dry, and a stream was heard flowing to the east. He staggered and reached the water’s edge. The murky pool was pale grey and pasty like clay, but Furrstota relented and bent down, cupping both hands. It tasted like brass. He spat it out, the ripples casting out to the other side of the pond. As they receded, Furrstota saw a reflection in the pool. He leapt back at the sight, gasping at his wretched appearance. He wore a full beard, white and shaggy with time. The blond patch of hair had thinned. His eyes were opaque, and two dark onions replaced both of his eye sockets. He writhed a smile, and yellowish teeth smiled back. Overnight, he had turned into an old man. He had been asleep for only a couple of hours, or at least he thought. How could this be? What kind of trick was being played?

Furrstota felt confounded by these novel circumstances. This place, these grounds were unfriendly. Foul beasts roamed uncaring of the natural world. A loneliness gripped him by the throat. He tried to compose himself; his breath was shallow. Then a memory sprang up from the trenches like a white flame. It was interwoven as a mosaic. His mother, Peggy, wore long gardening gloves while tending a row of sunflowers, fig trees, and chrysanthemums. Dust befell her eyes. Dirt hardened the bun of her acorn hair. A tall pine kept her cool in a canopy of shade. And, to the south, high in the azure sky beneath a ball of fire, snow melted from the jagged peaks of Carpeon. But the darkness overwhelmed him; the memory ripened to a finish. He began to cry, unable to contain his helplessness; droplets of tears fell onto the shore, some into the grey water.

Slurp. Slurp. — “Delicious.” A voice rang out.

Furrstota sat upright, eyes bound, crudely awakened by the voice. “Who's there?” He rubbed his sodden eyes. Another straggling tear fell into the clay.

Slurp. Slurp. — “Salty. Acidic. Delectable.”

Furrstota searched once more: the dark woods, the pond, and the acrid air. Nothing; no shape, no ghost. Nobody.

Sigh. — “Down here, silly.”

Furrstota looked at the grey water. Something stood out. Two orbs, bright like infernos. They were the shape of clementines. They blinked, like a human would, and contemptuously eyed Furrstota. It is hard to guess whose eyes were bulging; in the spirit of competition. Both, equally. Both contestants.

“Let me be frank. You mustn’t be so frightened — I am but a sweet fish. And a fish, as far as I know, has yet to kill a man. I could be wrong.” The clay water boiled as the fish spoke.

Furrstota shrieked. The complexity of a fish speaking perfect English was more than puzzling.

Without a warning, the fish with blazing eyes crept from the pond. He stood upright, dripping ghastly water — proud in all his glory. He stood on two slimy legs with webbed toes. A bite of his tail was chewed off by an oppressor. His scales gleamed a shade of eggplant.

“I am Bogg.” He coughed. “Are you thirsty? I know a great milk bar at the end of the marshland. It’s a little waterlogged, but you should be fine. What do you say?” Cough. Cough. Furrstota felt dumbfounded by the question, but quickly submitted to the uncouth fish. What else could he do? Considering these foul lands.

And into the marsh they went. A thin meadow stretched in an eerie mist. Tall reeds lined the sides. Sludge water filled the bottom. Bogg swam through the thickness with ease; a fish in his natural habitat, flying at the helm. And his emphysemic cough had vanished too. Furrstota struggled to keep up, his pants soaked to the knees and his back aching. It was difficult being an old man. He wasn’t used to it. He swatted hungry mosquitoes as big as gnats. At one point, he growled at them. It seemed like they had been going on for miles until a light shone at the end of the wetland. It was faint.

And finally, their expedient efforts had come to a halt. Furrstota crawled out from the spongy bog. His pants were soaked to the waistband. He wheezed like a punctured bag of wine. “Nothing but a bagatelle,” Bogg retorted. A milk bar hunkered onto a mound with a neon sign above its shaggy door, flickering and glowing blue: Sour Goat. The bar’s perimeter was bogged with ugly water. It seemed deserted, and a gloom hounded the delicatessen. Closing hour was long ago.

Upon closer inspection, Bogg pressed his nares against the windowpane as he knocked on the paneling with his fin. The atmosphere was dim; shelves of sourdough bread and chocolate lined the outer walls. “I guess he finished early. That boob. That GILL!” Cough. Cough. Bogg then handled the door and pushed it hard, thinking it was locked, but it swung without a hitch. “I’ll kill him. That Gill. Never locks the DOOR!” Cough. Cough.

Dirt water flooded the linoleum floor. Furrstota's feet splashed, kicking wetness over the chairs and the stools at the bar. “At least the place doesn’t look too bad.” Bogg felt relieved at Gill’s effort to keep a clean shop. He disappeared behind the counter and quickly opened a refrigerator. The top shelf held dusty canisters of milk. The wallpaper was peeling. Picture frames decorated it. One held a photo of a goat grazing in a pasture. Another showed an American toad handling a mop. The last was of Bogg in front of the Milk Bar: Sour Goat. Its proud owner.

“Here. Drink to your health.” Bogg pounded a bottle on the counter.

“What is this place?” Furrstota stammered.

“Oh! Did you miss the sign out front? This is the famous Sour Goat.”

“No, I meant this place.

“Ahh! This place. This foul land. Well — I don’t know, to tell you the truth. You see, a long time ago I was a man; a prisoner; an unspeakable foe; a usurper… but really, I was an alchemist… “

And Bogg prattled on about the story of his life as a man, well, mostly the end of it.

“… and the crowd below stared at me, their eyes rounded and wide with anticipation, cast upon the soon-to-be dead man on the scaffold. Most of them knew me by reputation; stories of outlandish stunts and jests which had ruptured King Ozul’s throne. Some called me a necromancer, a potion master, a crooked-eyed lunatic. Some townsfolk even had the gall to weave up a tale or two about the likes of a madman. Hollowitz the madman, who howled on rooftops in the dark and peeped through windows while grinding his teeth. Hollowitz the Devil, who laughed at old women for being elderly, poor, and ugly. Hollowitz the drunken huckster, who drank blood and wine in a diseased cup and charged a pretty pearl just to speak words of poetry and filth. His pockets full of loot and his teeth black like soot, they'd say. Most of these stories traveled by daylight. They spread from one hungry mouth to the next until night cast its long shadow, and I would run like a harrowing wind slithering from the ground up through chimneys, uprooting the Kingdom of Hollen…”

Furrstota stared at the fish, wide-eyed. He listened intently while drinking chunky milk.

“…and of course, none of these stories were true. But the people floundered me with all their gossip, and I decided enough was enough. And I escaped the executioner’s axe by a hair; by Providence and a little cunning. And one night, solemn, I drank one of my potions and turned into a fish. And I don’t much remember the metamorphosis, but it took a long while, and I ended up in a pond, and the land was forlorn."

Blaahhgg — In a whirl, Furrstota splattered the counter with bile and milk curds. "How old is this milk?" The old man wiped his lips sheepishly.

"I don't know. It was in the refrigerator when I bought the place."

In the middle of the milky stew lay a copper coin. Furrstota picked it up with interest. In the centre was a sculpted head, his profile etched to the side with a bowed nose. And above the head, a name: Ozul.

—

In the delicatessen's backyard, a towering tree clung to a precipice. Its skeletal figure was tall, its white leaves faintly glowing in the caustic sky. A gulf fell from its roots and stretched on in the endless dark. On the other side of the chasm, there was a hill with grim trees, a graveyard of sorts.

Furrstota noticed a marking upon the bark. It appeared like a small fissure. An inscription was carved at its crown with a sharp tool: Kingdom of Hollen. And without thinking, he inserted the coin into the slot, knowing. It made a sound as it fell. Clink. Clunk. In an instant, a boom of light blinded the party of two.

Furrstota’s grey eyes flashed. Upon opening them, a picturesque scene of green mushroom hills plucked at his aging heartstrings. A bridge cascaded over a pool of crystal, connecting the milk bar to the land of Hollen. And it lured Furrstota just as much as the cries of hostility dissuaded him; but a dream is just a dream. Now, run like a hare, she said.

And right then, the old man rushed across the bridge in a stiff trot but with the vigour of a young boy. And before he knew it, he did turn into a young boy.

--

Let those with adventure in their hearts and courage in their veins be the bearers of the present day, bold enough to leap into the gulf, full mast. And let the heavy stones of the past lie wherever they may. Tomorrow is an eternal resurrection. It may bring to the willing adventurer springs of possibility.

Bogg wrote a note on a napkin, seated at the milk bar.