Networks
‘What do you think of the new dam?’ Ayesha shielded her eyes from the low sun as she stared across the water.
Zelda ducked under a willow branch and tried not to slide down the muddy bank. She stepped onto a level patch of ground and followed her grandmother’s gaze. Beavers had stripped the bark from a nearby sapling and felled it, blocking part of the river. Forest debris had accumulated around it, diverting the water in multiple directions. ‘It’s messy.’ She brushed spiderwebs from her face.
Ayesha shrugged. ‘It’s not up to us to decide how nature should look. Besides, that dam has brought in creatures I’ve never seen here before, so I’m really not bothered about its appearance.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘Don’t move that.’
‘Why not?’ Zelda withdrew her hand from a log she’d almost tripped over.
‘There’ll be insects underneath it.’
In Zelda’s opinion there were too many bugs in the forest as it was, and she highly doubted that disturbing a handful of them particularly mattered. Something whined past her ear and she swatted at it. ‘I read online that scientists could get rid of mosquitoes through genetic engineering. If it’s that easy I don’t see why they haven’t done it by now. I’d be happier without wasps too.’
‘Bees aren’t the only insects that pollinate food crops,’ Ayesha said. ‘There are consequences when we start messing with the balance of things.’ She crouched down and peered into a clump of reeds.
Zelda looked around for somewhere dry to sit but there wasn’t anywhere. Since she’d last been to the farm it had become overgrown everywhere, plants seemingly encroaching on every space that wasn’t already occupied by a building. On the first day of her current stay she’d got her leg caught in some brambles, ripping a hole in her favourite jeans, and she had begun to resent her grandparents for not mowing and weeding like normal people. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and snapped a photo of the tangle of undergrowth behind her, then sent it to her college friends with the message, I’m trapped in a real-life fairytale. Can someone hack down this mess and rescue me? The phoned dinged a few seconds later and a laughing emoji appeared.
‘Zelda.’ Her grandmother’s voice was sharp. ‘If you’re incapable of ignoring that thing when we’re together, I’d rather you went back to the house.’
‘I was only…’
‘Chatting with your friends. Yes, I know, and it’s disrespectful. To me and to the forest – noises like that don’t belong here.’
Zelda reddened as they clambered back up the bank. No matter how old she got, her grandmother still had the ability to make her feel like a child. There was another ding and Ayesha’s head whipped around. ‘It’s okay,’ Zelda said quickly, ‘I’m turning it off.’ She muted the sound and shoved the phone into her pocket. ‘So what are we collecting today?’
They walked into a clearing surrounded by oak trees, the boughs far above them casting dappled light on the forest floor. Ayesha scrutinised the ground, then pointed to a patch of funnel-shaped mushrooms. ‘These.’ Next to them she spotted another cluster, this time of round-capped fungi. ‘And these.’ She picked one of each type and examined the undersides, holding them up for Zelda. ‘You’re looking for gills like this. Only pick the biggest ones, and remember to leave at least half where they are.’ She pulled a couple of hessian bags from her coat pocket, handing one over before disappearing behind a gorse bush.
The woods smelled like sweet organic decay, an aroma Zelda found surprisingly pleasant. The soil under her fingertips was loose and rich, overlaid with a mat of slimy leaves and lichen-encrusted twigs. She carefully twisted each mushroom until it detached, then dropped it into the bag. Years ago, when she’d first gone foraging with Ayesha, she’d tried to dig them out of the ground with a stick until her grandmother had noticed and quickly stopped her.
‘Mushrooms are only the flowers,’ she’d said. ‘There are millions of tiny roots called mycelia underground. Networks of them spread for miles under the soil, like the veins of the earth. They communicate with each other and help the forest stay healthy. It’s important we try not to damage them.’
Zelda remembered feeling overwhelmed by the idea of that invisible maze beneath her feet. If it could truly talk, what would it say to her? Her younger self had worried about hurting it, apologising in a whisper for everything she picked. She smiled as her childhood wonder briefly returned.
When their bags were sufficiently full, they made their way back to the farmhouse. The path had grown boggy since the rain, and Zelda wrinkled her nose at the sudden stink of rank water from the ditch. She kept her eyes on the ground as they squelched through the mud, trying to avoid the divots the pigs had made in the pasture and the droppings they’d left in their wake.
There were more mushrooms nestled in the grass; these were smaller than the ones they’d collected in the forest, with conical caps and an ochre tinge to them. She stopped to pick some, then caught up with Ayesha. ‘Can we eat these?’
Her grandmother peered into her outstretched hand. ‘Yes, but they’re not best for breakfast,’ she said, with a mischievous smile. ‘I don’t think Grandpa could cope with the hallucinations at his age. Throw them over the fence there.’ She gestured to the ditch, then tramped off towards the farmhouse.
Zelda walked to the fence and stood next to it, pretending to fiddle with the zip on her jacket. When she was certain Ayesha had gone inside she dropped the mushrooms into her pocket.
In her bedroom that evening she scrolled through various social media apps, then posted some of the photos she’d managed to take while her grandmother wasn’t looking. Muddy wellies. Hens pecking at kitchen scraps. Desdemona the sow rolling in a puddle. The seeded loaves she’d made with her grandfather. She was immediately validated by a flurry of likes.
An owl hooted somewhere outside, diverting her attention from the screen to the open window. The sounds here seemed so much louder than those of her hometown, the nights blacker than she’d thought possible. When she’d woken after the first night of her stay she’d forgotten where she was. There was no glow from streetlights or her clock radio, nothing at all illuminating the landmarks of the unfamiliar room. She’d felt her heart pounding until she found her phone, immediately calmed by its light and the comforting presence of messages waiting to be read.
On the second morning, however, something strange had happened. After waking again before dawn, she hadn’t reached for her phone. She had simply drowsed until the light came, listening to birdsong in the absence of a single conscious thought. The knot that she’d believed to be a permanent fixture in her stomach seemed to have loosened, and the whirring of her mind had slowed like clockwork running down. In stark contrast to the grey air she’d been breathing at home, the breeze drifting through the window that morning had smelled green, and with each inhalation she had felt a growing sense of ease that she couldn’t remember experiencing before.
Now, in the cool of the evening, she started as her phone dinged and the screen lit up. She muted the sound and turned it face-down on the armchair next to her bed before grabbing the jacket that lay bundled on the floor. She rummaged in the pockets and retrieved the mushrooms she’d found in the pasture. An earlier web search had enabled her to identify them, as well as directing her to a forum that told her how many to eat and the conditions recommended to ensure she didn’t freak out.
They tasted earthy but not disgusting, and as she lay back and waited for something to happen, she focussed on the shadows cast by the lamp on her side table. Her gaze grew soft, softer still. And then, ever so gradually, she saw a faint twinkling in her peripheral vision. Colours emerged from the shadows and she squinted as they danced before her, feeling herself drifting towards them, merging with them.
Orange-red to purple, to grey and green, to the brown of the earth. And it is in this brown that the mycelial network begins to reveal itself. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, until she screams through it like an electrical impulse through nerves. She is a ball of pure energy, collecting glowing elements that warm her when she touches them. She carries them through the network, delivering them to trees and plants, until she becomes the trees and the plants, the earth and the sky and the oceans.
She transcends her mortal body to occupy the space between stars. She feels fear escape from her into the universe, and when she is finally empty of it she drifts back to the land. Here she is connected to every grain of sand, every invertebrate and mammal, every flower and every leaf and every fruit. She is a vital component in this network of the physical world, a network whose richness fills her with so much sensation that she can barely contain it.
This is what real life feels like, the network tells her, being part of us.
She sees it cleansing polluted soil, nourishing the creatures within it, creating microbial communities that thrive and multiply. She watches it expanding and burgeoning in spite of the concrete poured over it and the machines that cut into it. You have lost yourself, it says. Come back, and remember your place. She feels the immense power of it lifting her, until she sees the shape of her body represented by coloured strings of light that lengthen and reach for the strings of everything else. They sear themselves together with a warm burn, and she feels herself surrendering.
Zelda wakes up wearing her jeans and t-shirt, an aura still glittering around the lamp. The owl hoots outside. She gets out of bed and stands by the window. The sun is creeping above the land, the shimmering horizon the colour of copper. She lets her gaze soften again, encouraging the memories from the previous night to percolate into her conscious mind. She waits for them to organise themselves, then reaches for her phone and begins to type.
Last night I saw the true nature of all things. Through the roots of trees, through the networks beneath them. We are intimately connected to it all, even though we may not see it. We talk of ecosystems in terms of those visible to the naked eye, but there are so many more. All of them must be cherished to ensure our survival. We are their custodians, and we have neglected them for too long, abandoned them in favour of insidious virtual worlds. In doing so we have neglected ourselves, begun the slow demise of our souls. When we forget our place amongst the multitude of creatures with which we share this tiny planet, we can never truly flourish. Go outside. Find the truth for yourselves.
She posts the text underneath a photograph of the remaining mushrooms, then slides the phone into her jeans pocket.
She opens the window fully and cold air floods the room. She can feel it so keenly now, on her skin, in her hair and her lungs. She savours the gooseflesh prickling on her exposed arms, whispers thanks for the air she has taken for granted for so long.
With her feet bare she leaves the farmhouse and walks across grass fresh with dew, ignoring the gradual numbing of her toes as she truly listens to the world around her. She can hear things living and growing and dying, birdsong engulfing her like a tidal wave of sound. Her heart seems to swell inside her chest, and she feels as if the energy of every creature is propelling her forwards. She allows it to take her.
When she reaches the forest she enters the clearing and stares up at the treetops. In her pocket her phone vibrates, then again and again. The message is travelling through her own network, the one she had not realised was responsible for the mess of tangled thoughts inside her head. For her loneliness in spite of her purported connection. The phone continues to buzz. She takes it out of her pocket and nestles it in amongst loose soil, dead leaves and twigs. The phone vibrates again, again, again. With every notification it sinks further into the debris, the digital network gradually subsumed by the physical.
Category: Writing