Page 148 of Under Story

Tess rarely spoke about her love life. Delicately, Laurel asked, “Have you ever…?”

“Had relationships? Here and there. But nothing stuck. Don’t get me wrong—I like being unattached. I have financial freedom; I helped my parents open their gallery. My grandparents want to set down roots in Mexico. I can help them do that, too. My life is full.”

“It is,” Laurel said. Tess was always on the way to a film screening, or a pottery class, or dinner with a friend.

“Still, it gets old, doing everything alone. Nice to have someone to cook for once in a while. Hence the commune,” said Tess. “Maybe it’d be better as a fantasy. But maybe I’d actually enjoy being less independent.”

“I’ve heard of a place,” Laurel said. “A commune, where women farm mushrooms. I think it was called…”

She swept her memory. Tess One entered the Rhizotron, magnetic with her short hair and Doc Martens. A small tattoo hid in the bend of her elbow. It was a circle, segmented. Two words curved around the circumference.

What does that say? Laurel had asked.

And Tess had said—

“The Center,” Laurel told her.

Tess wiggled her eyebrows. “Sounds culty.”

In the woods, there was a sudden stillness. Then came a timpani of rain, as if the sky had been holding its breath.

“Shit,” said Tess. She covered her head.

But Laurel was staring at the tree.

“Tess,” she said, squinting.

Laurel had only ever seen the gas in the ORBs turn one of two colors: the green of the fungi, or—just briefly—the red of the tree. Something different was happening now. Green became olive; red leaned toward umber; until, at last, all turned bronze, as if the red and green had blended. The spheres juddered with tension.

The Pie began to beep. Laurel fumbled for the screen. The peaks on the main graph leapt over the top of the frame.

—

Laurel woke Gloria.

Dawn was at least an hour away, the sky an ashen blue. They ran to meet Tess in the cave. The ORBs there had turned the same color as the ones in the tree—and every rhizomorph was glowing.

Gloria reached for the Pie. “I’ll stay here.”

“I’ll stand in the middle, at the entrance, so I can see all of the ORBs,” said Tess. “Laurel, you should go to the tree.”

They took their places. Laurel breathed shallowly. How many other members of these woods could sense that a change was coming?

There was a low rumble of thunder, and then, like music, it began.

—

This is what Laurel knew.

She knew that animals compose in layers, from the inside out. The hardest part—the skeleton—comes first. Then the soft ones: tissues, organs, skin. Blood flows. When enough of its cells have formed, the clock of the heart starts to tick.

Only the brain remains dormant until the end. It forms like any other organ, but it does not animate. And so the body waits like a planet for its star—for a boost of power so explosive that a central switch turns on.

Laurel could not prove that she saw this happen in the tree. But as she stood there, she believed that she was witnessing a birth. The ORBs at the roots were the first to transform. The bronze plumes shone brighter, louder—and then, in an instant, they turned crimson. The rest followed in an upward flush. Red flowed from the lowest branches to those at the top, like blood to the cheeks of someone gaining consciousness.

It would be too simple to say that independent meant “separate.” The tree and the fungi would always be connected. Still, there was an unmistakable calving, as one cell becomes two.

The tree quivered. To Laurel, it seemed to be singing.