Page 19 of How Does It Feel?

Mere moments after I had pulled up the mushroom and a few thin roots to cultivate, the oddest thing happened.

The gray began to clear from the sky above like a light switch had flipped.

The air began to clear, suddenly feeling less thick. It was as if we had popped the cork of the storm’s drain and it slowly dissipated in front of our very eyes.

“C’mon, Callie. You got that one? We should go, they aren’t ready,” Earl murmured, looking around with an uneasy look on his face. “This was a bad idea. I shouldn’t have told you about this.”

“What do you mean they aren’t ready?” I asked.

“They form a circle of mushrooms when they are fully grown, this must be the beginning. They call them fairy rings,” he mumbled, looking around nervously.

My body stilled but for my shaking hands that touched the V-shaped scar of my memories. “Fairy rings?” I asked cautiously.

“Yea. They believed they were a portal to the human world from the other worlds, that the Fae used them to travel. You’ve never heard that?” he asked, looking at me as if I were daft.

“I’m not sure . . .” My voice trailed off.

“I’ve seen some dark things around these particular mushrooms, though, so if it were a portal, it’s definitely to somewhere evil, not like the agaric mushrooms I’ve seen.”

I stared open-mouthed at him as I attempted to sort my thoughts out.

I suddenly felt sick; my nerves had gotten the best of me.

I needed to talk to my family, to the sweet woman that was the closest thing to a mother I had since my own had passed. I needed to ground myself, get a firmer grip on things. I’d been working too much, and now it was catching up to me. Had they written? It had felt like ages since I’d heard from them.

Though the air had almost fully cleared, Earl began to shove things in my bag in an attempt to hurry me along. If someone had wanted to shock my nerves and frighten me into a heart attack, now was the time. My body was so on edge I nearly forgot how to zip my bag, unsure of what was real anymore and what wasn’t.

We threw our supplies on our backs and quickly headed out the way we had come. Only the hurried footsteps on the forest floor sounded as we quickly shuffled through the wild forest to get as far away from the area as our feet would carry us.

Neither of us spoke the entire way. My mind was too full of questions to sort out a sensible one to ask Earl. It wasn’t until we were in his car on the way home that I settled myself enough to speak.

“You’re not crazy, are you?” I asked quietly. “I want to know every unbelievable thing you know about the destroying angels. I believe you,” I said with a shaky breath.

I could easily understand how Earl had been trapped in his dedication to finding out more about these mushrooms. It had been two hours, and my mind was in overdrive, trying to make sense of everything.

“No,” he stated. His wrinkled face looked tired now as he stared at the road ahead.

“No, what? No, you’re not crazy? I know, I don’t think I ever really thought you were. I think we should contact the North American Mycological Association and see if they can’t send some others out this way to locate more—” I rambled.

“No. I don’t want you telling anyone about these things, and you won’t be working with me on them anymore. I’m sorry. This was a mistake, Cal. I thought I wanted you to see them, but I don’t. I don’t want you anywhere near the darkness,” he stated, not removing his gaze from the road.

The air went out of me like a balloon. Did he just not want to share his discovery with anyone else? I was stubborn and knew I would wear him down so I brushed it off, not wanting to upset him further. He seemed really upset ever since we had been near them. I would convince him at dinner tonight to let me help.

“Let’s talk about it at dinner tonight. We have so much to celebrate. We should go to Marion! I know it’s two towns over, but they have that good steak house, and I really want to get dressed up!” I said excitedly.

The gloom and unsettled air were brushed off completely.

His demeanor instantly shifted from grumpy statue to boyishly charming. “Roadhouse? I can get us a senior discount there! You sure you want to waste a dressing up on me? I’ll be the luckiest man in Marion,” he said with a wink.

“Do you have anything nice you can wear?” I asked, hoping it didn’t sound too harsh.

“I have a suit I haven’t had a reason to wear in years. Taking a smart, beautiful, kind woman out to dinner sure seems like a good reason,” he chirped, still smiling. “But Callie?” he asked, his face suddenly falling. “Don’t go back to those destroying angel mushrooms, okay? If you do, I’ll never forgive myself. We will find another way to get you what you need,” he cautioned.

I nodded, knowing he was just worried and looking out for me. I already had all the information I needed, so there was no sense in upsetting him.

“Earl, if you were thirty, heck, twenty years younger, I think you would be causing me a lot of trouble right now.” I beamed at the older man as he puffed his chest out a little.

Earl dropped me off at my house and left to get a haircut straightaway with the plan of picking me up for our fancy dinner at eight. I offered to borrow Cecelia’s car and pick him up, but he vehemently declined, muttering something about women driving a man around in his day. I couldn’t help but feel like a burden making him drive me all around town, even though he said he enjoyed the company. He was old and worried about me driving at night. Aside from being frail, though, he did seem to be incredibly healthy, and the few times I’d needed help from him, he was surprisingly strong despite his frail-looking features.