Page 69 of Shroom for Improvement

“Oh, gods, is that what you’ve been worrying about?” He actually laughed. “I got the feeling you were holding something back from me. I’m already well aware, though.”

“But . . . how can you . . . ?”

“How can I be so calm? How can I carry on with the research knowing I’ll never be able to share my complete findings?”

“Well, yes.”

He laughed again, and this time I swear I felt the warmth of him reaching out to me like tendrils. “Because the purpose of my paper is merely to prove the existence of the connection between shroom magic and soil health. Once I can categorically say,‘Yes, it exists,’I leave myself open to further fundingopportunities to explain the glamour in more depth. The paper’s not about the how, it’s about the why.”

“And forgive me, the EHK Society will publish a paper about archaic shroom magic without detailing what that magic involves?”

He shrugged again. “We’ll see. That’s my dream. But I’m willing to settle for a lesser subscribed, more specialist paper if that’s the case. The research is far too significant to keep to myself.”

“Your dream is incredible.” I slipped farther under the covers. “My dream, comparatively, is crap. Was crap.” I mean, I didn’t even really have one. My dream was to exist exactly as things were. To achieve nothing grand or revolutionary. To alter nobody’s life but my own.

“Thank you,” Sonny said. “What was your dream?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“It’s embarrassing?”

“Embarrassing doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

“Aw, you can tell me. I won’t judge you.”

I already knew he wouldn’t judge me. He was Sonny. Sonny was not at all inclined to criticise others. We were so different.

Regardless, I screwed up my face because saying it through clenched muscles would make it easier. “Before I came to Stinkhorn Manor my dream was to get a bigger telly, and buy some expensive chai tea.”

I peeled my eyes open one at a time and found Sonny staring at me, a curious expression on his face. One I couldn’t quite place.

“Sometimes having realistic dreams is much more important than having pie-in-the-sky fantasies about saving the Eight and a Half Kingdoms.” He was always going to saysomething stupid and lovely like that. “So, you achieved those dreams? Or they’ve changed? What’s your new dream?”

“I guess I’ve achieved them. Jenny has given me a huge telly, and Willow and Oggy have the nicest chai lattes I’ve ever had the pleasure of drinking, but...” I shrugged, not sure how to answer his last question.

“No new dream?” Sonny asked, his voice laced with sorrow. I shrugged again. “Does that make you feel sort of hollow?”

“Yeah. I guess it does,” I agreed.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s okay to not have a dream. There’s nothing wrong with not having a dream. Besides, things change so often, I’m sure you’ll find something.”

“Tell me more about your paper,” I said, because I was dangerously close to telling him I already had. Found something, that was. A new dream.

“Okay. Since my second article is a follow-on, let me tell you about the first.” He smiled again, and I closed my eyes.

And I listened as Sonny explained the most favourable conditions for mycelium reproduction, and how humans and fae alike were poisoning the soil with artificial fertilisers and chemicals, intensive crop production, over-farming, soil-surface exposure, the burning of trash and fossil fuels, too much digging. He described a bunch of ways that we could counter this. No-dig gardening, lactic-acid bacteria (whatever that meant), compost tea (if I heard him correctly), diversifying the microbes, indigenous microorganisms (again, whatever that meant), worms worms worms, his pee-bale.

At which point, because I was over-sleepy and feeling somewhat childish, I developed the giggles.

“All I’m saying,” Sonny said, between his own bouts of laughter. “Is you put the goodness back into the soil and nature will take care of the rest.”

“The goodness that comes from your body?”

“Exactly.”

A Situation Has Arisen . . . Again

Claude

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