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Marilin blinked at him for a moment, obviously trying to put his words into context. “Make noise? No.” She shook her head. “We are in bears’ home. We are guests. If we see bear, we slowly and respectfully back away while it goes on about its business.” Her brow creased. “You yell at bears where you come from?”
“There are no bears where I come from.” He pointed toward the scat. “I just … I’ve seen their piles before in America.”
“Okay. Well good that we stop here. I show you.” She leaned down with a sharp blade in her hand. When she stood, she had a large mushroom in her fingers. “These are chanterelle mushrooms.” Deftly, she sliced off a portion of the stem, saying, “Yes, this one is good. You should taste it.” She handed a piece first to Titus, then worked her way around to the other team members. “People come from all over to go into the Estonian bogs at this time of year for hunting mushrooms. Russians come. You see their cars parked along the road of the forests.”
“Russians?” Titus bladed his hands onto his hips. “Do they ever create issues in the bogs? Anything my team needs to be aware of?”
“No.” She pointed beside him. “Right now, your team needs to be aware of this mushroom.”
There, beside a bush, was a little cluster of red mushrooms with white spots that Halo had seen in almost every child’s fairytale illustration. His gran would call the outcropping charming and turn them into a watercolor.
As the men turned and formed a semi-circle, Marilin said, “This is called ‘fly agaric mushrooms’ or ‘Amanita muscaria.’ These are how they say, ‘magic mushrooms.’ They contain psilocybin and psilocin that works as a hallucinogenic.”
“Is it illegal here?” Thorn asked.
“To have it in your pocket, yes. To try to sell, yes. If someone picked it up and ate it in bog?” She shrugged. Then added emphatically. “Don’t pick it up and eat it in bog.”
“Why? What would happen?” Halo asked.
“Depends. Each mushroom has a different, how you say? Different toxicity. So dangers depend on how specific mushroom grew. Depends on person’s body and mind. Depends on quantity.” She adjusted the straps of her pack. “I don’t touch them. I don’t want to rub my eyes or pick a berry with those fingers and accidentally ingest it. Any of it. So why? Many things. It makes you feel like you are in a dream. Maybe like you leave your body. Sometimes, people think they can see clearly for the first time in their lives. Sometimes, the five senses are jumbled up. People smell music. They hear colors. Sometimes, their vision gets blurry to be effectively blind for a time. Watery nose. Dripping eyes. Wet, you know? Lots of sweat and too much saliva in the mouth. Some Estonians use this for medicine. But you have to be knowledgeable, learning how to do it right way from your grandmother. You don’t wish to make mistake.” Her blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “You know, they think this is where Santa Claus story comes from. The people eats the mushroom and sees the flying reindeer.” She bent again to cut the stems on the other chanterelle mushrooms at her feet and put them in the basket, dangling from her left elbow. She stopped and closed her eyes, breathing in deeply. “You smell that? A little bit lemony?”
The team stopped and sniffed.
“Yes, this is Labrador tea smell. It is a plant that is all over. It is hallucinogenic also. It is the reason many come out to the bog. It makes you feel good, relaxed. You lose sense of time. So make sure you have a watch. Maybe set an alarm. Time drifts when you smell this plant.”
“Is it dangerous, too?” Thorn asked.
“Sure, it’s like most things, right? For one person is fine. If you have an allergy, this is not fine.” She pointed. “See there? More fly agaric. Little bit different coloring.”
“Huh,” Thorn put his hands on his hips. “Let’s say one of our group read up on the possibility of finding the fly agaric mushroom out here in the bog and sampled it, how long would it be effective in their system? Would they need medical care?”
“It could be very bad, you know?” Marilin said. “The person would have to be very sure that they are eating the right mushroom. If they make a mistake?” She shrugged. “They could die. There is deadliest of mushrooms out here. All over.” She turned and pointed at a mushroom that Halo couldn’t tell was any different from the mushroom he’d just tasted.
“The nightshade. You hear this in the news?” Marilin asked. “There was a woman in Australia yesterday convicted of three counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder. She made a beef Wellington that she served to her guests, and it was made with the nightshade mushroom.”
“In Australia?” Halo asked. “Yeah, we have nightshade mushrooms in the wet areas. We have to watch that our dogs don’t get into them,” Halo said, thinking with nightshade and fly agaric, he’d need to keep Max on a tight lead. The rattlesnake was scary enough. But then there was antivenom. Halo could do nothing to protect Max from poisonous mushrooms other than keep control of his nose.
Titus caught Marilin’s gaze. “And we just ate …”
“Chanterelle. I am very good at identifying them. I collect them for my friend who has a restaurant. Nobody gets sick. No police knock on my door.”
“When we have the tour go out, perhaps point out the mushrooms and label them, but let’s not have them taste-testing them,” Titus said.
“Are you sure?” Marilin asked as she started down a path not readily visible. “I will only hand out safe mushrooms.”
“Most Americans get their mushrooms from the store,” Titus explained. “They won’t necessarily be aware of the subtle differences that you see. If you handed them one and another looked similar, I could see someone from my culture picking it up and putting it in their mouth.”
Marilin looked bemused. “We just tell them to leave the red mushrooms alone.”
“All of the mushrooms,” Titus said.
“Okay. Well, over there, you see? Those are wild raspberries. Will you allow the people to eat those?”
Chapter Eight
September Third
Haute Nendaz, Switzerland
