Orange Medicinal Mushrooms

Pineneedle the pixie fluttered behind her grandfather as he poked at the soft, black earth with his walking stick. As they hovered over the ground and went around logs with multicolored fungus on them, her grandfather muttered to himself about how it looked like rain when the sun’s rays shot through the tree canopy, warming her wings as she fluttered through them.

She hoped Grandpa was wrong about the rain because the last thing she wanted was a rainstorm to dampen her already damp day. Grandma was ill and the “confangled doctors,” as Grandpa called them, couldn’t do anything to help. All they had done was prescribe five Bunny-ear leaves. They had also told them to give up all hope that Grandma would ever recover, and, in an attempt to comfort them, said that Grandma was very, very old (80 to be precise), so they had nothing to mourn or complain about when she inevitably died.

The doctors expected Pineneedle’s grandparents to swallow their verdict, and Grandma to swallow their Bunny-ear leaves. 

They were wrong.

Grandma had Grandpa put the Bunny-ear leaves in the fireplace so that the house would perfume the house as they burned, and Grandpa had told Pineneedle to grab a sack and join him on his quest for mushrooms.

Pineneedle had done as he said without question, though she was concerned. She loved to forage for food and herbs, but she never touched mushrooms, no matter how familiar they looked. Too many stories of pixies, nymphs, and other Folk dying from the consumption of misidentified mushrooms prevented her from taking her chances, even with a handy field guide.

But Grandpa was old and wise, though his wisdom wasn’t easy to understand all the time. He knew what he was doing…she hoped.

Her Grandfather stopped abruptly. “Aha! Here they are.” He smiled and pointed the end of his cane at a small lump of tiny orange mushrooms.

Pineneedle knelt and peered at them. “You’re sure these will make Grandma feel better?"

“Of course I am. They're the same ones my momma used to cure my papa of his fever when I was a wee boy, I reckon.”

Pineneedle turned to him. “What do you mean you reckon? Are you saying you don’t know for sure?”

“Course I know.” He rubbed his chin. “Unless my momma actually used a red-speckled mushroom. But either way, it doesn't matter much now does it?”

Pineneedle blinked. “But it does matter. Suppose we give Grandma the wrong mushrooms and she dies?”

Her grandfather waved a hand like he was swatting a bug. “That won’t happen. Now hurry on up and put ’em in the sack, sprout. Gently, now. Don't tear ’em up. That’s right."

Pineneedle gently plucked the mushrooms and put them in the sack. “But isn’t the color of a mushroom important to identify them?”

“Of course.”

“Then why wouldn't it matter whether the mushrooms your mom used were red and speckled or solid orange?”

“Because these types of mushrooms are Clementine Mushrooms.”

Pineneedle stood up and stared at him, her sack now bulging. “So?”

“So, Clementine Mushrooms are like roses.” He looked at her as if that answered all the mysteries of the universe.

Pineneedle furrowed her brow.

Her grandfather shook his head. “What are your teachers teaching you kids these days?”

“Grandpa, I’m homeschooled.”

“Then what’s my daughter teaching you? Of all the things you should know in this world, it should be mushroom identification! Bah! Never mind. My point is roses are all sorts of different colors, but they’re all still roses. These mushrooms we want are no different.”

“Are you truly, absolutely, positively sure these are the ones?”

Her grandfather sighed. “I’ve been walking on this planet for years and years before you were born. Heck, I’m so old, that when God said ‘Let there be light,’ I was there to flip the switch. Trust me when I say I’m one hundred percent certain these are the right mushrooms. Have I ever been wrong before?”

“Well, you did try to ride on that armadillo once by trying to use a fishing pole and—”

“I mean with stuff that’s really important, like the weather?”

Before Pineneedle could answer, the sunbeams vanished and the sky rumbled.

As a small raindrop fell on her head, Pineneedle glanced at the sack now stuffed with orange mushrooms. “No, I reckon you haven’t.”