circling the fields, its support beams twirled like confectionery. “And there’s really water, Austin. I haven’t seen it yet, but I could hear a stream running. It’s really faint, almost like I was imagining it.”
Looking at her drawings, I begged Macy not to leave without me. Macy smiled and promised she would wait. I think, at that moment, she probably meant it.
I tried to catch up, but I couldn’t. A week later, I returned from Parthen as wine-red sunset flooded the apartment windows. Macy was stuffing clothes into a duffle-bag. I knew what it meant.
“Macy, don’t go.”
She smiled at me, picked up her sketchbook from the nightstand. “You’ll be ok. I’ve drawn every place you need to find. You’ll--”
“No.” I pushed the sketchbook away. “Just tell me how to get to Parthen permanently? Macy, talk to me, please.”
“I can’t explain it exactly. You have to talk to the Parthenites.”
I stared at her stunned. “Wh-what?”
Macy grinned. “They’re not dead. They’re waiting in the last ziggurat. They’ll show you what to do.”
She left. I rushed downstairs after her, but she was already in her car, pulling out of the parking lot.
I couldn’t lose Macy. I wouldn’t be left behind on this miserable world with its bottom rotted out. Grabbing my stuff, I drove out to Cherokee Bluff. There were kids yelling, fighting each other across the rolls of dead turf, but I didn’t see Everest or any other adults. I went through four houses, harvesting as much parthen as I could before the authorities discovered this place and tore it down. Without streetlights, the night was as thick as ink. In the darkness, a kid wailed, “But where’s momma? Where is she?”
At the apartment, Macy’s phone was ringing. It was her mom, so I let it ring. It wouldn’t be long until people came looking for her though, asking questions I couldn’t answer. They’d call the cops, then the cops would find parthen spores everywhere. There was really only one direction I could run.
Laying down, clutching Macy’s notebook, I ate the parthen raw. The tough flesh would sour my stomach, but I didn’t care. Sweat beaded up from my forehead like mushroom caps as I felt myself plucked off the Earth and sped toward Parthen.
It was hard, to not push forward too fast, to memorize every sight intimately before moving on. It took days to reach the Songbird Ziggurat. In between times, I hid in the apartment, eating noodles and drinking water, letting my flesh sag off my bones. The withering of my body made my soul riper, nearly ready to pluck.
I knew what to listen for in the Songbird Ziggurat, but I still didn’t quite believe it. The chitter of running water filled the great space. It was the only water anybody had found in Parthen. The thin stream tumbled into a natural chasm, an underground lake that had been here ages before the Parthenites carved the ziggurat around it.
The stream ran along the floor of a long tunnel flanked by stalactites and stalagmites. Standing at the mouth, I smelled a damp, fleshy smell. Not just stone and dry earth, but the smell of something alive.
People pushed past me to enter the tunnel, and I followed. Clusters of shiny dark globes hung on the ceiling between the stalactites. One swayed softly, but I couldn’t feel the wind moving it.
The last ziggurat might have been the first one the Parthenites inhabited. Unlike the others, it seemed mostly natural--a great sinkhole covered with a moon-pale dome. More of the globe clusters sat in niches and clung to walls. The air was damp, and purple moss grew on the stones. But it didn’t feel alien or exotic; it felt like home. I realized that--somehow--I had been yearning for this place long before parthen let me glimpse it. The mushroom had simply awakened an ache that had grown numb.
But where were the Parthenians? Where was the bridge between this world and ours? I started climbing up the stony slope to look around.
Below, a trembling voice said, “Hel... hello. My name is Jake. Do you understand?” I looked down. A man who had entered the last ziggurat ahead of me was talking to one of the globe clusters as it oozed toward him. The clusters were alive, they Parthenians! They were an evolved fungus. It’s why they lived underground, away from their sun’s terrible heat.
Jake touched the Parthenian’s slick flesh. One of its globes stretched into a flat-tipped tentacle. It felt his fingers, his arm, finally caressing his jaw. Laughing, Jake said, “You understand? Jake. My name is Ja--”
A dozen more tentacles bound Jake’s limbs. They squeezed his torso and head. He twisted back--fingers dug into fungal flesh--but the Parthenian enveloped him. I screamed in Jake’s place. Turning to help, I saw the other Parthenians sliding behind me, tentacles reaching out.
I didn’t dare touch them. I tried dodging between them, but the tentacles sensed me. I backed up to the slope edge and was working up the courage to jump when the tentacle caught my thigh.
The thing wrapped around my face, pushing into my mind like a tongue forced into my mouth. Suddenly, I occupied two bodies. I was in my body, and I was in the Parthenian’s, chemical-sensing pits along its tendrils tasting my own sour hormones.
I knew its history. I knew about the dying world and brilliant alchemist who created the mushroom. How dwindling resources were spent sending clouds of spores to drift through space. It took centuries. The spores must have fallen on countless dead worlds before reaching Earth. We had given up hope. Less than six thousand, five hundred and sixty-one of us were still alive, huddled in the last ziggurat. But finally, the humans had come, and we could escape. We could follow their astral projections back to their bodies waiting on Earth, a planet that wasn’t dried out and used up.
The Parthenian slurped my mind down like an oyster, trapping me in its own blind, deaf body. I tried to shriek, curse, cry, but was bound in silence. I’ve been here for weeks, or maybe just days. I can’t imagine what’s happening on Earth.
Crawling along the rocks, absorbing moss as nourishment, I sometimes brush against another human trapped in a Parthenian body. We huddle together, but we cannot speak. We can only trade chemical signals of fear and regret. I think most have gone mad. I force myself to stay sane for Macy. The thing that had kissed me goodbye wasn’t her, just a Parthenite wearing her skin. So I grope through the last ziggurat, searching for Macy, praying that if I do find her, I’ll somehow know it’s her.
The Drowned Forest, a young adult novel by Kristopher Reisz, arrives 2/8/13.
Click here to read the first chapter or go to www.kristopherreisz.com.
Holly and Jane have jumped off the bluff over their Alabama river hundreds of times. But one day, Holly's jump goes wrong. Her body never comes up, but something else does—a sad creature of mud, full of confusion and sorrow. Jane knows it's Holly, somehow, trapped and mixed up with the river. But Holly doesn't know she’s dead, and that anything she touches will die, too . . . even those she loves the most.
The Pilgrims of Parthen Page 3
