We both looked into the water of the tarn. He looked at the grass and then up at me, indicating that this was not the quality to which he was accustomed. Hob, my horse, was grateful for the rest, but seemed annoyed by the surroundings. Madeline’s letter had taken over a week to reach me, and no matter how urgently worded it had been, five minutes more or less would not matter. I felt vaguely guilty about pausing in my trip to dismount and look at mushrooms, but I was tired.
I had a strong urge to step back from them, and an even stronger urge to poke them with a stick. They grew out of the gaps in the stones of the tarn like tumors growing from diseased skin. The caps were clammy, swollen beige, puffed up against the dark-red gills. Perhaps it would not have been so unsettling if the mushrooms had not looked so much like flesh. I had seen it any number of times in dead deer and dying soldiers, but it startled me to see it here. The mushroom’s gills were the deep-red color of severed muscle, the almost-violet shade that contrasts so dreadfully with the pale pink of viscera.
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