Milica curses the summer heat as she sets off into the forest with her empty backpack and wicker basket.

The basket is all aesthetic—it knocks into Milica as she walks and the twisted cane handle digs into her arms—as is her outfit: a deep burgundy dress with a full skirt and a mushroom-print apron.  But her followers don’t see the mud splatter or bramble tears, and ‘cute’ brings more viewers than ‘practical.’

Milica pastes on a smile and starts recording.

She thickens her accent and lets her precise grammar fall away for added authenticity. “Today I go into deeper part of forest. Mostly untouched. Locals avoid this area—say it is where forest spirits still hide. Lešij, vila, rusalija.”

That has a thread of truth. But Milica doesn’t know if the locals’ disapproval of her foraging stems more from superstitious nonsense or an unwillingness to share the forest’s mushroom supply with a social-media-obsessed sellout.

By the time Milica stumbles upon a well-hidden glade between the beeches, ground clustered with charcoal burner mushrooms, her hems are sodden with mud, her body sodden with sweat, and her forearms rubbed raw from her basket.

She rearranges her hair, plucks some mushrooms and places them prettily in her basket.

“Charcoal burner has special gills. They are soft and flexible, and do not break when I touch.” She runs her fingers over the greasy ridges. “This is how I know it’s charcoal burner, and not other Russula.”

She pauses the recording, and sets to gathering up all the mushrooms her backpack can hold. One beech tree, from its lower branches to its knotted roots, is lumpen with unfamiliar fungus. Milica kneels. She knows every mushroom in these woods—counts on it not to poison herself or a client. The fungus grows like chicken-of-the-woods, forming a series of shelf-like protrusions. But it isn’t bright orange or vibrant yellow. The growths are dark: black, blue, and green. Glabrous and glossy, like the surface of a still, deep lake.

Milica takes the patterned kerchief from her hair and ties it to cover her nose and mouth. Covering her hand with her apron, she breaks off a piece of the fungus. Spores puff out in a thick haze, and Milica jerks back, waiting for the air to clear. The mushroom’s flesh oozes a reddish latex, like sticky blood. But there’s something else in there too: a hard, white shard. Bone.

Small bones—of birds and squirrels—scatter the ground around the beech. And there, tucked into the roots and nestled in between the fruitbodies, is a carved doll.

It’s shaped crudely, into a head and a body with the suggestion of arms and breasts. Its face has only depressions for eyes, but a detailed, screaming mouth, complete with sharp bone embellishments for teeth.

Milica wraps it in her kerchief and drops it into her basket, fighting the urge to run away and abandon her harvest, to scrub herself of all traces of the forest.

“Here I made lucky discovery. This pagan idol is carved in local custom to protect from vengeful forest spirits.” People go mad for traditional folk stuff, and more money never hurts.

 That night, Milica dreams of dirt.

It presses in on all sides, comforting at first, then suffocating. Soil, thick and damp, clogs her nose and fills her mouth. She’s stuck like that, in a wide-open scream. Itching spreads over her body, but she can’t move to shake it free. Tendrils like hair—hyphae—push through her and out of her skin, questing for air. The mycelium fills her, replacing veins and arteries.

When she jolts awake, arms rubbing imaginary sporocarps away, Milica is almost surprised to see her mushroom harvest sitting right in the tub where she left it.

The doll is on her bedside table. Watching with pupil-less eyes. She lifts it to turn it away, but she has to pull hard. Sticky white strings hold it down. Milica scrubs it clean, and works on updating her shop website.

By night, the wooden table is fruiting with green brittlegills.

Milica films the patch. “Wow! Idol I found is for fertility and increased growth. See my website to purchase from this blessed harvest!”

Then she cleans away the fungus, careful not to breathe it in, and seals the doll away in the tub with the mushrooms. Hopefully the increase in income will make up for how creepy the thing is.

In the morning, meadow mushrooms carpet her bedroom like wildflowers. Bracket mushrooms climb the walls, and foxtails clump in the corners. Her sink is overtaken with blushing amanitas, and her pantry overflows with summer ceps and queen boletes. Presiding over it all from the middle of her kitchen table is the doll.

Milica snatches it up, releasing a spore cloud, and dumps the thing into her fireplace. Fire cleanses. She always has chopped wood at the ready, even in summer. It takes several tries to get the fire to catch, her hands shaking so wildly she keeps dropping the matches to snuff out on the floor.

Flames lick at the doll and make its eye-pits dance as if alive. But it doesn’t burn. It screams. An agonized wailing like a shot deer. The mushrooms vibrate at the high pitch. Porcinos, pearl mushrooms, and big sundews quaver at her feet. Then the room explodes.

This time there’s no dodging the spores, the air gone thick with them. Milica coughs, but inhales more than she spits out. It tickles at her eyes, at her throat, in her lungs and her stomach.

A bubbling rises to the surface of her, something warping her flesh. Milica presses hands to her abdomen, where silky black fungus has burst through. Ripping it away hurts like tearing off a chunk of her own body, and the insides drip with her blood.

She tries to run, but a ring of meadow mushrooms encloses her. Milica screams, and growths fill her mouth, forcing it into a permanent rictus of terror.

A mirror image to the wooden doll, staring from the fireplace.

* * *

Ⓒ Aggie Novak