Stars, glowing wine and living lights
A Christmas SAPLING
A thin layer of melting snow dampens the sound of her footsteps on the flagstones. When Reya turns her face to the sky, it feels like it is caressing her cheeks, one snowflake at a time. Melting gently, they settle on her nose and on her forehead. She licks them from her lips.
All around her, the city is quiet and grey in the bleakness preceding dawn. There are streetlamps sputtering, and shadows stirring in the darkest corners among the garbage.
Michal’s map of the city is in the pocket of her coat. She pulls it out now and then. It doesn’t take long to reach the city center. There, elegant garlands of light are connecting opposite facades.
It would be even cosier if there were a bit more people around. But secretely, Reya doesn’t mind the quiet. She recalls the city by day to be a very busy and overwhelming affair. And she can walk faster, now, too.
A big green fir tree filled with glowing lights is sitting in the middle of the square. It is nowhere near as big as Yggdrasil, but suddenly, Reya finds herself thinking back to the library, in a different time, decorating a portion of that giant tree with Robin. The memory warms her heart but pains her, too. For Robin is back in the greenhouses right now, working day and night and almost collapsing with exhaustion. Mendel is helping him tend to as many infected plants as possible, even if he is in fact still far too weak for such a task. They have no time to play at Christmas this year, they need help, from someone who has a way with growing things.
That is why Reya is in town. She is making for the House at the edge of the world, the place where Gregor and Demeter live. And Michal, who gave her this map, which she is trying to extract from her coat pocket with fumbling fingers. Gloves can really be a nuisance.
‘Watch where you’re going!’ She bumps into a man with a long vest and a trapper hat. ‘Can’t you open your… Reya!?’
A familiar face stares at her from under the trapper hat. It takes a moment before Reya recognizes it.
‘Michal!’
‘What are you doing here?’ His eyes move from her face to the map she’s holding.
‘I was on my way to your place!’
‘You came to see us? And on foot, again? Why?’
‘Mendel was going to send a message to Demeter. He must have done so by now, but I didn’t feel like waiting for the reply. So I came myself, anyway.’
Michal smiles. ‘You haven’t changed a bit. Wanting things to get a move on, don’t you?’
Reya shrugs, wondering why she’s so hot all of a sudden.
‘You can walk with me, then. I was just about done, here.’ Michal gestures towards the illuminated tree.
‘That’s your work?’ Reya gapes.
‘Not the tree. Gregor would never allow me to cut down something so old and beautiful. But do you see those lights? Go take a better look.’
Reya does as he tells her. From a distance, they look like flat glowing discs of milky glass, but when she moves closer, she sees they are shaped like mushrooms. And when she’s even closer still, she can see that they are mushrooms, elegant apparitions with slender, protruding necks and wide crowns, pale with a soft green glow emanating from between their gills.
‘That’s incredibly beautiful.’
Michal nods. ‘Ghost mushrooms. Living lights. Pretty hard to grow, but I have figured out how to do it now. The town loves them, I’ve run quite out of stock.’
Reya frowns, recalling the mushrooms sprouting everywhere on tree trunks felled by the plague. ‘Don’t fungi digest the very material they are growing on?’
‘Quite so.’
‘So what do these feed on? They aren’t slowly eating the tree, are they?’
Michal laughs. ‘No, the city council wouldn’t much appreciate that. Can you see those slender lines? Theye are stuffed with cable bacteria. Those will…’
‘I know what cable bacteria are’, Reya nods. ‘We have them in the greenhouses.’ Knowing where to look for them, she can see the long, slick threads weaving their way through the branches. ‘I had no idea they could be used for something like this, though. Mendel usually runs them through halls that are too moist for ordinary wiring.’
‘Fungi are smart. And they will adapt in the most incredible ways, if you only know how to ask them.’
He almost sounds like Robin. Reya looks up at Michal’s serious face in the glow of the living lights. ‘I didn’t know you were into this kind of thing.’
He grins. ‘I do more than tend Gregor’s vegetable patch.’
A nasty wind catches on. Reya hides deeper in her warm coat. ‘Can we go?’
‘Sure. It’s that way’, Michal gestures. ‘Do you want something hot for the road?’
‘Please!’
He rummages in his work bag and extracts a thermal flask. As soon as he opens it, a warm, sweet smell rises. He pours a bit of the liquid in the flask cap and hands it to her.
‘Merry Christmas.’
‘Thank you!’
Reya sniffs the cap that is now a cup. ‘What is it? It smells delicious.’
‘Glowing wine. Demeter’s recipe, of course.’
The alcohol and the hers tingle and sting all the way up her nostrils, sweet and sharp. She takes a careful sip.
It’s even stronger than it smelled. She suppresses a cough.
‘It’s good’, she breathes.
Michal frowns. ‘Are you actually old enough to be having glowing wine?’
Reya pulls the straightest face she can muster. ‘I drink soil liquor, too, you know.’
That it is Robin who knows where Mendel keeps his stash and that the two of them now and then secretly share one little cup after the old man has gone to sleep, is not something she feels like sharing.
They walk away from the square. From time to time, Reya takes a sip from the hot cup. Michal tells her about his parents and life in the House at the end of the world. Reya can picture them as he talks: Gregor in the wild park that shields het House from curious eyes, Demeter at work in the big kitchen filled with pots, cupboards and herbs, the place that must be the glowing heart of the house in this season.
‘Sometimes I wish I could have stayed with you.’ Michal looks at her in surprise. Reya shrugs. ‘But I also want to be where I am now. In the greenhouses, I mean.’
He smiles. ‘You are destined for more than the greenhouses. That is clear as day.’
It’s snowing harder now. Reya can feel snowflakes land on her face and in her hair. When she looks up, she can see them swirl in the glow of the streetlights. Are they dancing more exuberantly than an hour ago? Or is it just the effect of the glowing wine?
She sticks out her tongue to catch them.
Michal grins. ‘Tasty?’
Reya nods. Snowflakes are living lights, too, only icy ones, she thinks. They taste of the great web of light in the night sky. And the darker it gets, the more clearly you can see that.
We hope you enjoyed our Christmas SAPLING. We consider it a chapter that bridges the end of De wortels van de wereld (the second book in the Greenhouses-series) and the third, yet untitled, volume. The fully lay-outed version of the Dutch original can be found here.
The SAPLING series is a joint project with artist and illustrator Jurgen Walschot.
Saplings are creative sprouts. I will write to the images, he will draw to the words.
