…or, Morel Exemption

Knowing I didn’t have to sweat my paper, I was looking forward to the next period. Last week Bryony had told us were saying goodbye to the clearing. On Monday we hadn’t even gone into the woods. She’d dismissed class at the shed.

Now, I’d gone deeper into the forest than a 100 level class would take us, challenge rating or no challenge rating. But while I didn’t feature myself being graded on my lightning worm evasion skills, I had no objection to some moderate excitement.

“Alright, everyone, I’ll take your papers here,” Bryony said when the whole class was assembled. Seven of us turned them in. Iason just stood back. He looked smug. It was hard to say if that had anything to do with the paper. “Now that’s taken care of, anybody who doesn’t have their weapon can turn around and go back to their dorm. If you have yours, hold it up and let me see how pretty it is. You’re fine, Mr. Bowman. We all know how pretty your weapon is.”

Thomas Zachary, the brunette girl Sarah, and the dark elfblood Kira had all come unarmed.

Zach slunk off without a word.

Kira stood impassively, daring Bryony to say something.

Sarah was less impassive.

“Are you even serious?” she said.

“I am,” Bryony said. “You should be, too. You know it’s a fifty silver fine if a guard catches you without it.”

“Yeah, right, when one hassled me, I told him I forgot it,” she said. “Why do we need weapons for an herb class?”

“I told you on the first day you needed to have your weapon handy,” the professor said. “This is a high challenge rating class. We’re going to be going a little farther afield than we have been, and on top of that there have been reports of ghouls.”

“But ghouls don’t come out in the daytime,” Sarah said.

“Ghouls don’t come out into bright sunlight,” Bryony corrected. “That’s why they stick to the trees. But even if there weren’t ghouls, there are plenty of things in the woods to watch out for. Points to anyone who can name something.”

“Green men,” I said.

Sarah and Hannah both snickered at this.

“Excellent example,” the professor said. “Green men, or as my folk have it, ‘the jolly ones’. Not the most dangerous thing you’re likely to encounter in the woods, but as it happens it is one of the things you actually are likely to encounter in the woods. They’re easy enough to avoid, on two conditions: one, if you know what to look for, and two, if you look for it. I guarantee you in a class of eight, at least one of you will have to be pulled out of a jolly one before the semester’s through. Tell your classmates what to look for, Mr. Bowman.”

“It’s a tree, a little bit taller than a man,” I said. “It’s got whippy branches like a willow and it shambles around on two tiny legs. Not very fast, but they can be creepy and quiet. They’ve got a itchy paralyzing touch, and if they catch you with it, they’ll hold you until you die and use you as fertilizer.”

“It’s a slow death,” Bryony said. “You want to avoid them, not engage them, or else they’ll puff out clouds in self-defense. They’re more dangerous in the spring and summer than the autumn months because in keeping with the wonderfully evocative name tallfolk give them, the green men are green. They’re leafy trees, but they keep their leaves year round.”

“If we’re not supposed to fight them, why do we need weapons?” Sarah asked.

“Because in a place where even the trees are trying to kill you, it’s best to be prepared,” Bryony said. “Now, if you’re not about to produce a sword or axe or something, you’d best be off.”

“Oh, fine!” Sarah said. She stomped off.

“You, too, Miss… Ms. Andrews,” Bryony said to Kira.

“I do not carry weapons,” Kira said.

“Check your course description, love,” the professor said. “It’s required.”

“I walk in the peace of Anankha,” Kira said.

“You can walk that way,” Bryony said, pointing back up towards the main campus.

“I have a moral exemption. It is against my conscience to go about armed for killing.”

“I find that most people have exemptions to their morals,” Bryony said. “And you’ll have to make one if you want to continue in this class, because it’s against my conscience to let anyone walk into the woods without so much as a walking stick to protect themselves.”

“Fine!” Kira said, and she strode off, not back up the path but towards the edge of the tree line. She glanced around on the ground, bent over, and picked up a stout branch about three feet long. She came back, spearing the ground with it as she walked. “I have a walking stick to protect myself. May we get on with it?”

“It’s your head,” Bryony said.

“That it is,” Kira said.

“Well, troops, I guess that’s it for preliminaries,” Bryony said. “Let’s move out!”

We followed her down the main path. She moved fast for such a short person, but when we’d worked in the clearing, it had been possible–advisable, even–to rush ahead of her, given the short class period. This time we no choice but to let her lead, especially when we came to the fork of where the loop started and she went the other way, catching most of us off guard.
We didn’t stay on the main path for long. Bryony called out, “Everyone still with me?” and then plunged into the woods, following a path that was barely there.

Through it all Iason hadn’t said a word to me.

“How do you think you did on your paper?” Mattie asked me.

“Okay, I hope,” I said. “I put in a solid effort. I think it deserves at least a B.”

“Really? I put so much bullshit in mine,” she said.

“Yeah, me, too,” I admitted.

“Alright, then!” Bryony called out. “Everyone hold up!”

We all stopped.

“Now, if you’ll look around,” she said, “you’ll see that we’re in the thick of the trees. You’ll notice that a few fewer types of plants take root here than did in our sun-drenched clearing. But not everything that grows likes the same conditions. Some plants do not thrive if they get too much sun. Then there are mosses, mushrooms, slime molds. Your assignment for today, and you’ve got about twenty minutes to do it, is to find me three out of four of the following: something growing on a living tree, something growing under a tree, something growing on the ground that’s not grass, and something growing on a dead tree. Find all four for extra credit, but in the time they give us, I’ll take what I can get.”

She pulled a wooden box out of her vest and opened it up. A bouncy, cheery pipe organ song came out of it. She set the box down on the ground.

“Keep the music in your ears. Meet back here in twenty minutes. You can work together. If you work alone, try to keep in sight of someone and make plenty of noise when you’re moving around. That means you, Mr. Iason, Mr. Bowman, Ms. Andrews.”

She didn’t need to tell Kira to make noise when she walked. She was still stomping around, making more noise with her walking stick than Marlot did.

I took the “on a tree” one first, since there was plenty to choose from. A lot of the trees were mossy. Quite a few of them had some had some gross mold. A handful of them had ridge-like mushroom caps sticking out of their sides. I took a bit of clinging vine, though. It seemed the cleanest.

“Morels,” Iason said, suddenly at my back.

“Morels to you, too,” I said, not bothering to face him.

“Would you like some?” he asked. “I only need to give one to the professor. I could keep them all, there are other choices, but I think she would appreciate it for the culinary significance.”

“What am I going to do with morel mushrooms?” I asked, turning around. He had his entire floppy-brimmed hat full of the pointy brain-like things.

“Cook them, I would expect,” he said. He shrugged. “It is the usual thing. Perhaps you know another use for them.”

“You’re trying to get me to cook your mushrooms for you,” I said.

“Your unreasonable suspicion knows no bounds, Iamie,” he said. “You thought I wanted you to do my paper for me, even after I told you I had made other arrangements.”

“Look, I don’t cook,” I said. “You’ve seen my food stash. All warm-up meals.”

“I cook, of course,” Iason said. “There’s little enough point in hunting if you do not know what to do with the game once you have it. I just thought I would share my trove with you, and it seemed like it would be more convenient for you if we divided it up here than if you had to accompany me to Treehome on two feet.”

“There’s a kitchen in the dorm,” I said.

“Are you asking me to come and make dinner for you?”

“I’m pointing out a fact,” I said. “You can do with it what you want.”

“You burn so coldly, Iamie,” Iason said. “Very well. If you are to be coy about it, I will simply ask: would I find you at home if I looked for you there tonight?”

“You told me you wanted to do something,” I said.

“But you make it clear again and again that I can take nothing for granted with you.”

“Yeah, okay, I don’t have any plans,” I said. “If you want to come over and make dinner, go ahead.”

“You need not do me any favors, Iamie. If you would rather eat your greasy beef patties, just say so.”

“Look, I said yes,” I said. “What more do you want from me?”

“I don’t know about him, Mr. Bowman,” Bryony said. “But if that twig of a vine in your hands is all you have to show for the past eight minutes, I want at least two more samples from you. And don’t you be handing me any morels. Teamwork’s encouraged, but the emphasis is on ‘work’.”

“Sorry, Professor,” I said.

“Incidentally, where’d you find those?” Bryony said to Iason.

“There is a scar, a short distance to the north and west,” he said.

“I know it,” Bryony said. “Short? I told you to keep the music box in your ears, Mr. Iason.”

“I did,” Iason said.

“Well, I suppose you can look out for yourself in the woods,” she said. “Carry on, then.”

Discuss this story on the Livejournal feed.