Jack enters the courtyard of Kinoko’s old home and descends the spiral stairs inside the well. He follows the trickle of dark water to a large cavern below the vinegar factory. Moonlight streams over the room from gaping holes in the collapsed ceiling. His eyes adjust quickly because of the mounds of white snow covering the ground. But it isn’t snow. It’s a thick layer of fungus.
A large figure in white lace and a veil is seated in the shadows at the back wall. Its flesh is grey and bloated. Her head grotesquely misshapen, like a mushroom cap. A crumbling skull is buried in the pallid mushroom flesh.
The nearly featureless head is crowned with a multitude of mycelial stalks, protruding from its eyes and tunneling into the cavern walls. Some stand upright and sway gently toward Jack as if pushed by a spectral breeze. It is horrifying and inviting.
On the tip of each thick strand is a large drop of clear liquid with a sour floral odor, like rotten grapefruit. It was the same peculiar smell as the sake he’d tasted with Kinoko after the mushroom festival. Kinoko.
The mold is covering lumps that looked like human figures kneeling with their heads on the ground. Some clutching at the figure’s legs. White fuzz flows from the figure and over the bodies prostrated before her. Hundreds. The train of her dress diminished into thick cords, then thin strands of mycelium that bore into the walls of the subterranean chamber. How far did she reach?
A sunken depression the size of a human face seemed to open in the mold at her feet. Small tendrils waved and danced happily, beckoning Jack to the spot. What is that? He needs to get a closer look. Jack steps closer and kneels.
A splashing sound came from behind him and he attempts to stand with a renewed sense of fear, but is horrified to find that he is held in place by white tendrils bursting out from within his own flesh; burrowing into the floor and entwining with hers.
Kinoko’s voice comforts him wordlessly with primal images. Like a carnivorous plant seduces a fly. Without argument. Without logic or coercion. Jack feels warm acceptance.
His gaze focuses on the depression in the mother’s body. It’s the shape of his face. Outlined with wriggling tendrils like hungry worms. Smiling, he presses his face into the hole.
Jack and Kinoko are naked in a grove of pale trees. Jack hears his own giddy laughter. Shrill and euphoric. Their bodies entwine hungrily. He wants her to take all of him and he wants to take all of her. Her flesh is cool and damp. Her face is fluid as the expressions of a Noh mask. Jack sees faces in her flesh. He sees faces in the trees. Faces from town. Faces he knows.
Making sake, we don’t add all the koji rice at once. The fungus likes to build up in small batches. That ensures it will become strong. It can’t be rushed. Fungus spreads through spores and sometimes it takes a lot of spores for the colony to survive. We need to feed it and prepare the proper environment.
We are preparing the environment now for those who will come after us. We are their hands. We are their palaces.
Jack thinks as he looks through the eyes of an old farmer in a rice paddy.
Trapped in a prison of pleasantness. My body is below the vinegar factory, slowly fermenting the aspirations of my soul. My body decays, but my mind is free to roam the network and inhabit the hosts mother gathers for us. I am flooded with constant joy and satisfaction, simply by existing with her. For her. She drowns us in chemical rapture. Pickled in our fantasies.
The village is small and I am hungry.
Some people say that the master brewer returned with a new kind of drink. Not sake or vinegar. Something special. It tasted sweet. The village couldn’t get enough and they all disappeared. Transformed by the ichor of their dreams or maybe just departed for other towns. Establishing new networks.