Every Nowhere Leads to Somewhere
by Emmie Christie
In Hailey’s view, the tree roots formed steps and tables and desks and all kinds of furniture. She paraded around the wooded backyard with her pinkie held up, bowing to the mushroom growing next to the birch: “Very nice to meet you, sir, and how lovely your suit looks this evening!”
The mushroom responded, “And what a gorgeous comprehension you have. The better to see me with, my dear!”
Hailey, startled, fell backwards on her rear. She was ten, and mushrooms had never deigned to talk to her before. “My apologies, good sir,” she said, using the language from her mum’s old pioneer romance movies she watched from behind the couch when she was supposed to be in bed. “I was not expecting a response. Pray tell, what is your name?”
“I’m Ole Gary,” the mushroom said. He was a greyish-purple mushroom with green spots. He lifted his cap, and now she could see him just fine! He had green cheeks and greyish-purple skin, and he sauntered up a few tiered roots like they were the steps on a grand staircase and bowed. “I do hope you’re not bringing a gaggle of other humans along with you. They quite terrify me.”
“Do I quite terrify you, too? I can leave if you like.” Hailey bit her lip. She did not want to leave. Rather, she did not want to return to the stuffy vacation house, where the TV played movies nonstop, and the pills lay scattered on the counter like strange candy. She’d tried eating one once, and it had tasted horrible. “My mum says we won’t stay long. Just long enough to get out of the city for a bit.”
“I’m not afraid of you. If you can see me, then you’re not a part of the human tales, the ones that talk of stomping on mushrooms in a tall tantrum or tearing down spider webs for no reason.”
Hailey crouched next to the mushroom man. His wrinkled skin still resembled a mushroom stem with imperfections all around. “You have stories about us? They sound bad.”
“They are, they are.” Ole Gary folded his cap in half, then half again. “Terrible things, the humans are, present company excepted, of course. I’ve only lived here on this side of the human realm a few months, and I was hoping not to run into any, you see. But maybe not all tales are as tall as they sound. Feel free to look around.” He grinned up at her and stomped on the top of the root.
Hailey had not thought about the underparts of trees before, but in the backyard of the little vacation house, they formed a tiny house all their own, as if the dirt had pulled away from the tree. She could see the house now, just like she had seen Ole Gary, like she’d pulled aside a curtain to peer out a window. “The trees and the roots look so pretty, like stairs going everywhere, and nowhere, at the same time.” Where did they go? Where did they not go?
“You have a good eye. A comprehension, we mushroom folk say. The stairs do go places. Lots of somewheres, and nowheres, too. Into my realm, down under the ground, in the dirt and old things.” He hopped a few feet over to another root, brushed off where it seemed to form a tiny seat, and plopped down. “And some of the roots are just shelves and chairs.” He gestured for her to sit next to him.
“I love what you’ve done with the place.” Hailey repeated the phrase from one of the old movies her mum watched. “The crown molding is especially good.”
“Ah, yes, the crown molding. It’s the effect of us mushrooms, you know. We break things down so we can build other things. It’s my job here in the human realm.”
Hailey set her chin in her hands. “What kinds of things do you break down?”
“Oh, old, dead trees, fall leaves. Sometimes other things.” Ole Gary eyed her. “Things we sense are going bad and need to be recycled.”
“Can you show me?” The words burst from her like water from a twisted garden hose. “We’re leaving soon. And—and I want to know more. Dear sir. Please.”
Ole Gary scratched his cheek. “I don’t know, my dear. You’re still a human. Can you walk on this stair?” He leapt up and bounded up a small, tiered root, no larger than her finger. It seemed to show her an open door at the top, one that even had a little welcome sign.
She thought of going inside the vacation house, where her mum sat in front of the TV. Had sat there for days. She swallowed and reached her hand out to where Ole Gary had shown her and walked her fingers up the stairs. She reached the top and the staircase had grown— no, she had shrunk, down to Ole Gary’s size.
“Oh!” she said.
Ole Gary had his hands on his mushroom hips. “Well, that’s a new tall tale and no mistake,” he said.
“I’m a short tale, not a tall one,” she said. “And now I can’t tromp on you or any spiderwebs.”
“That’s true, that’s true.”
She glanced up at the tree. Its greenery filled her vision with a relief she hadn’t felt in a long time. Guilt wasn’t far behind. Was she happy, leaving?
“Will I be able to grow back up?”
“Can’t see why you wouldn’t, once you walk back down those steps,” he said. “The roots show you what you want, you know. And if you want them to show you as small, or big, they oblige. Very accommodating, tree roots are. We mushrooms like working with them.”
She strode up to the door with the welcome sign. Through it, the roots descended into the earth below, and silvery strands grew off them. Ole Gary ambled through first, grinning, putting back on his purple-greyish cap. She followed him down, down, and the door didn’t close behind them but seemed to shrink, only a little sunlight shining through. Yet, the silver strands glowed like moonlight woven into yarn. They showed thousands—no, lots more than that—of paths to stroll on, deeper than the tree roots and farther, much farther.
“Aren’t we down in the dirt?” Hailey asked. “How are we walking through it?”
“The strands are part of us mushrooms,” Ole Gary said. “It’s the biggest part, really. I’m just one fingernail of the whole body of mushrooms in this backyard. But I can travel through the other parts, and I’m letting you tag along.”
He touched one of the strands. It reverberated all along its length like a taut wire, and a ringing echoed through the underground.
“What’d you do that for?”
Ole Gary grinned. “I had to send a message for my work, you see. It’s how I talk to the other mushrooms, far over in the other fields, in the other places of the world. We’re all connected in some way.”
Something glowed up ahead, bigger than a single strand. Ole Gary led her to where the strands clustered around something in the earth. A mouse.
A dead mouse.
Hailey clapped her hand over her mouth. It smelled. The strands entwined everywhere, around and through the mouse, yet this was a nowhere place, where no one was supposed to go.
Ole Gary doffed his mushroom cap and held it before him. He looked back at her. “My work,” he said. “I know. Crown molding isn’t as pretty underground.”
“You did this?” She turned away—tried to turn her thoughts away from—from what she’d run from all this time. Why did she venture down here in the first place? She struggled to speak and ended up using the old phrasing from movies she’d watched for so many hours. “For what purpose have you shown me this?”
Ole Gary sighed. His green eyes did not blink. “You know why, dear human. You have the comprehension for it.”
She ran. She ran along the glowing path, away from the glowing cluster of death, and Ole Gary hurried after her. She dashed, then, in a blind fury, turning and turning and moving her feet. She said we wouldn’t stay long. She said so. She said so!
But the pills on the counter had said other things. They’d shown her the crown molding of her mother slumped in the chair, unmoving. The smell had unveiled something she hadn’t wanted to see with her comprehension, so she’d run outside to play pretend.
She stopped. Ole Gary’s footsteps stopped behind her.
“Are you going to recycle her, too? My mum?” She spit the words out like olives. She’d hated olives ever since she had tasted them thinking they were grapes.
“Not unless you put her in the ground,” Ole Gary said. “Generally, we wait for that, as a sign. We don’t want to anger the humans.”
“But I am angry,” Hailey said, spinning around.
Ole Gary waited, his green eyes unblinking, glowing in the dark soil world that surrounded them. They held the fear of trampling in them, that fear he’d told of tall anger. Yet he didn’t budge.
“I’m angry she’s gone. I’m angry that she decided to leave. She didn’t have to.” The tears rushed down her cheeks, and that made her angry too, because she wasn’t done yelling yet. “She didn’t have to! It was supposed to be a vacation, to get away from the city, not from me.” She bit her lip till it bled. “We humans are terrible,” she said. “Your tales were right about us after all. I want to stomp on everything.”
And then her anger ran out. She’d spent it all. This place recycled it out of her, maybe for fueling other things.
Ole Gary’s hand shook, but he patted her shoulder. “Let me show you one more thing.”
She followed him without another word. She’d spent them all in that one outburst. She’d started down here to escape her “comprehension,” as he might’ve said, and he had shown her the truth of things anyway. Now what? Where do I go? No. Not that. Where do I not go, from here?
The strands of silver led them up, up into the light again, and out they stepped into the backyard. The sunset lit the forest in orange-yellow light. They’d come up on the other side of the tree where Ole Gary had first appeared to her. A cluster of lacy white flowers waved in the breeze, tall as anything compared to them now. “This is what I’m growing,” Ole Gary said. “This is what I’ve built, out of what I’ve had to break down.” He paused. “Every nowhere leads to somewhere. That’s the truth of it, my dear human. This is the crown part of the crown molding.”
Hailey licked dry lips. She glanced towards the house, where that room waited for her, and that smell. She trembled.
A van pulled up in the driveway. Two people in uniforms got out.
Ole Gary gifted her a sad smile. “I would not send you on a path back into that house, unaided,” he said.
Understanding flashed through her. “The message you sent. How did you—”
He shrugged. “You are not the only one who possesses comprehension.”
One of the uniformed people knocked on the door, and Hailey knew what she had to do. She could see the shape of it, the furniture of her future, arranged like Ole Gary’s house in the backyard.
“I’m ready.” She glanced about for the staircase, and the roots shifted for what she wanted. She plodded down with determination, and she grew and grew. The two uniformed people knocked again on the door and shook their heads.
Hailey swiveled on her heel. Ole Gary waited there, so small now next to the birch tree. “Thank you,” she said. “What you said? It really helped. I hope—will I see you again? I didn’t scare you away, did I?”
Ole Gary tilted his cap to her. “Wherever you find a nowhere,” he said, “I’ll be there to lead you somewhere else.”