an excerpt from a novel in progress

Prologue

Etan Blum stretched out on the toxic earth amid a ring of wild mushrooms. The sylphlike nine-year-old had unzipped the hood from his suit and propped its crystal visor under his head for a pillow. He’d removed his gloves, too, and set them on his chest to quiet the suit’s panic-flashing lights.

A brisk and contaminated afternoon wind stirred awake the border forest of wizened birch. Etan listened to their creaky daydreams as he watched the sun clot mildewed hues through its caul of clouds.

The margin of raked dirt that separated the birchwood from Community 17’s looming, matte-silver dome felt wide open to Etan—a thin strip of land made vast for its solitude, precious and rare.

He was glad he’d decided to sneak away from recess and his classmates’ nervous chatter. Everyone was so on edge today.

Etan may have crept farther along C17’s curve… but for the fairy circle. He’d laughed aloud when he found the ringed formation of mushrooms—today of all days. It felt like more than a coincidence. It felt like a wink.

He laid his hands on the arid soil and wriggled his fingers into the ground like they were the fungal roots from this morning’s fast-motion Biology film. A grub-white net of mycelium had been projected on the schoolroom wall, writhing and spreading at dizzying magnification, sickening speed. Connective shoots of fungi had branched in lightning patterns from floor to ceiling, ceiling to floor, thick as extension cords, frantic in time-lapsed genesis. Several children had recoiled in their seats. A few in the front row had screamed. Their parents and guardians were in attendance to comfort them, the adults having been warned by Professor Welk that the morning’s lesson would turn, at last, to fungus. To the Spore.

Etan’s adult wasn’t in attendance; he hadn’t expected Doctor Mom to show up to this particular lesson.

Outside now in the dirt, the breeze reached Etan. It smelled sharp and minty, like the tube of old-world toothpaste that Welk kept around class so that everyone could have an instructive sniff of what a Condition Red Emergency smelled like. Someone had written in marker over the original label, and the tube’s flavor now read “sporemint.”

Etan imagined how his classmates would panic, if they ever caught him out here like this—barefaced to the zephyrs, as Doctor Mom called it, her tone one of warning, not whimsy.

He’d cause a scene when he got back today, his Outsides by now thoroughly contaminated. Sanitation would need to run the whole suit through the scrubber—his, and his classmates’ gear, too, by the rules. Etan himself would spend an hour in the negative room, his hair on end, the ozone filter too tight over his nose and mouth. Doctor Mom would frown through the little double-paned window. It would be a giant hassle for everyone.

Well-behaved students’ Outsides, Professor Welk had once said to Etan, back when he still bothered to scold the boy, just need a soap ’n hose about the boots after recess. Bleach is finite, you know.

Etan didn’t fear talkings-to, these days. Doctor Mom had made it clear to Welk that her son needed to wander. That it was therapeutic. That Etan was unique, among his “dome-born cohort,” in appreciating solitude. Welk had escalated his complaints to the top level, but Leader Mason had deferred back to Doctor Mom, his respected Chief of Medicine.

After eavesdropping on this conversation Etan had looked up several words. Cohort, in particular, stood out as important.

Today was a milestone for his classmates but Etan had already seen far more thrilling and graphic films about the Spore. Doctor Mom used to try and discourage his wandering with select screenings: most people who saw, for example, the shroomer-attack footage, were in no rush to leave C17 lest they, too, should be swarmed by the hostile, shrieking things.

Most people aside from Etan, that is, who’d reminded Doctor Mom that the predominant spore culture in our region doesn’t foster shroomers. He’d made sure to quote her precisely on that point. The Chief of Medicine likewise quoted herself in reminding her precocious, darling son that aspiration of any variety of spore culture risks infection, whether the body lives on as host, or not.

Doctor Mom had stopped the scare tactics around the time of Etan’s third or fourth suitless truancy. Back when they had both realized that Etan—alone, among all—was immune to the Spore.

Etan sunk his fingers deeper into the soil. He smelled stale chlorine.

The mushrooms around Etan were stunted and malnourished; he was surprised they had been able to sprout at all—someone must have slacked their sterilizing duty.

He didn’t feel any roots, but they’d be fine, delicate, mere threads. Or even smaller, microscopic: the morning film’s zoom had no context. But Etan knew there were mycelia alive under him, here where he lay—the fairy ring proved it.

The morning’s film did have something novel to offer: it had talked about the kinds of fungi that came before the Spore, the not-always-bad kinds. It speculated that mycelia form a network that’s bigger than any single ring of fairy seats like this one—a network that spans the globe.

He wondered if the mycelia could sense him lying there.

Would it’s strands, over time, poke up into his fingertips, if he left his hands in the dirt? Would it take hours or days or weeks for the little shoots to slide under his nails, beneath his skin, past each knuckle, through his palms, up his arms, into his heart and belly and back out through his mouth and nose and eyes?

Or would the hairlike fibers snare Etan underground fast-forward quick and snap his bones with dry-branch echoes off the dome and birchwood as down and down he went?

Would he be in the fairy circle’s network, after?

Tears traced his temples and leapt to the earth. He drew a deep breath of sporemint air, crisp and sweet. The breeze felt denser than it had when he first took off his hood. A storm was brewing.

He stilled his half-buried hands. He closed his eyes.

“Go on,” he said. “Do it.”

He braced to feel pin-pricks, or pressure, or something.

Green lightning strobed against his eyelids.

“Etan,” said a voice on the wind. “Etan!”

It came from the gate. Etan sighed. They were looking for him, already. Probably the lightning; Gerald the youth assistant would jump at the slightest chance to retreat inside the gates.

Another voice, this one even more youthful, called his name; It sounded like Gerald had riled up Etan’s classmates to goad him home.

He ignored them for the moment. The class wouldn’t venture out this far—Professor Welk would have, but Gerald was as nervous as he was crafty. He’d wait out Etan’s public shame before he’d stray from the gate himself.

Etan kept his eyes closed. “Go on,” he said. A whisper to the earth. To the mycelia. To the fairy circle. “Please.”

“Etan!” came yet another child’s voice, high pitched and urgent.

A chorus of nervous laughter followed the shout. Etan’s imagination wouldn’t be the only one running rampant and decidedly grim this afternoon.

If Gerald chose today to be a responsible adult and found him out here, Etan knew he’d face worse than the negative room. With another sigh, he cradled his loose gloves against his chest and braced his other hand against the ground to rise.

Something sharp dug into his palm.

Etan dropped his gloves and twisted away to his feet.

Dust rose in his wake but the earth was still, undisturbed. He examined his hand. The skin was unmarked.

Lightning flashed again, muffled thunder on its heels. The breeze tipped toward gust.

Etan’s classmates were frantic, his name no longer legible in their cries. Gerald’s adolescent crackle sounded nearer than before.

Etan stepped gingerly back into the circle to gather his hood and gloves. He was relieved to see he hadn’t trampled any of the mushrooms in his panic.

He blushed as he pulled his hood up and zipped the seal. The filtered oxygen was flavorless. His hands shook as he tried to get his gloves back on. He couldn’t keep his eyes off the ground.

A few deep breaths behind the crystal visor filtered the fresh, deadly spores from his lungs. The lights on his suit now glowed blue and content.

Etan stepped carefully over the toadstools and started back toward the gate. He planned to return just as soon as he could.

Those who remained in the fairy circle watched him go.