Page 132 of Shroom for Improvement

Did I have Jenny to blame? Or to thank?

I was silent for a few moments while I ate and mulled over everything. Willow returned to the kitchens to help Oggy.

And then a thought occurred to me. A terrifying, stomach-churning, horrific thought.

“Willow?” I tried to keep my voice even... tried, and failed to stop the squeak at the end.

Willow popped their head around the door frame.

“The house... how do I know when it’s lying to me or telling the truth?” I asked.

“What about?”

“Well,” I picked at the edge of the tablecloth. “It told me it couldn’t say whether I’d figured out the ritual. It could only tell me when I had it wrong.”

Willowhmmed.

I continued asking my question. “So, now I’m wondering, has it lead me to believe wrongly?”

“About the ritual?”

“Yes.”

“What do you believe the ritual is?”

My heartbeat spiked, my pulse ticked wildly at the base of my neck. I felt like I was going to throw up Sonny’s breakfast. “That the rhizome ritual which must be performed twice a year—or it will die and you will be sent into the ether—is to glamour a bolt of lightning onto the ley lines...”

I held my breath, waited for Willow to say anything, but they simply stared at me, their eyes brimming with unshed tears.

“Fuck,” they whispered, as the realisation came crashing down around me, too.

My vision tunnelled. Everything except Willow and the table cloth swooped into blackness.

Holy shit. How had I been so stupid?

If lightning was the ritual, I would not have been able to say any of those words out loud. None of them. The ancient mushroom laws would have prevented me. Zipped my mouth shut like it had done with my mother.

I had said it over and over again to Sonny, but that would not have been possible if it were the real ritual.

“Oh, shit,” I said, standing so abruptly my chair toppled over.

Willow continued to stare open-mouthed at me. Tears now fell freely down onto the front of their tunic.

“Willow?” I said, fighting back my own tears.

Nothing.

“Willow?”

Still nothing. Total shock shut down.

“OGGY?!” I yelled, and Oggy came racing into the dining room, lilac hair contained within a net and a stripy pinny around her waist. “You need to get Willow something for shock.”

“What’s happened?” she asked.

“See to Willow first. I don’t want the same thing happening to you.”

Oggy ran off to fetch a sugary drink and a blanket while I paced the dining room, muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.”

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