Shittake's Step

Shiitake passed by the last wild flowers before he left the garden behind. The bright yellows, greens, reds and blues faded suddenly into the mist. Beyond the garden boundaries lay a forest, dark and formidable, yet alluring. Shiitake had heard Button and Portobello telling stories to the other mushrooms about fungus.

"They are wild" whispered Button "I've heard that they live untamed, latching onto anything that provides them sustenance, mixing with moss and beetles".

This was quite different to what the mushrooms experienced. They were grouped together according to their size, shape and colour and kept in large trays. Cold, dark and damp was all they knew.

"They spawn in crevices, feeding off of the decomposed and the dying." croaked Portobello. "If you ever see a misshapen stem, drooping ring or smell the pungent fumes the fungus secrete you better screw your cap on tightly".

The mushrooms quivered in their compost, huddling together, nervously glancing into the dark corners of their trays.

" Some kill you quickly. Some make you see things that aren't there, and some" paused Button, before continuing grimly "some absorb you, engulf you, making you one of them, so slowly that your roots will rot before the rest shrivels and pustulates into the monstrous thing that they are."

Unfortunately for Shittake this last part of the story did not have its intended impact, as he had heard it a number of times in his tray. Instead Shittake's attention had turned to Truffle, an old wised lump, who sat in his own box on a ledge listening to the nonsense below him.

Truffle would tell him tales of the forest, of the flowers that grew where they pleased and the trees which wandered wherever they wished to go. His wrinkled grimy face would crack into a smile every time he recounted the worms that would make polite conversation on their way to the surface. And excitedly recounted a number of occasions he had to convince a thick nosed pig to root somewhere else.

Shittake's stumpy legs shuffled through the long grass, hobbling over bits of twig and large pebbles. The immaculate lines of flowers were becoming more scraggly towards the end of the garden where small ladybirds and beetles could be glimpsed scurrying between the stems. The plants were becoming wispier and wilder, with thorns and scruffy leaves sticking out haphazardly. And although their colours were duller than the pristine red roses, they carried more life as their petals twisted in the breeze and stems interlocked with the weeds.

As he reached the very edge of the garden, just behind a row of hedges, Shittake peered out into the wilderness. Tall dark trees were shrouded in mist, bare branches reaching their gnarled fingertips into the air. A cold breeze swept around their trunks causing small creatures to scurry, hop and scuttle into crevices or burrow into the dank earth.

The yellow flower above Shittake's cap quivered in the breeze, as if waving a final goodbye.

Without fear he lifted one stump over the line that separated mushroom from fungus, and went off in search of the tales Truffle had told him and the freedom to grow where he wanted.