“Ok, back to the Mother Tree?” I offered.

  Wol nodded.

  I didn’t want to say this because it would be in bad taste, because of the conversation we just had. But I did have one advantage over the others: Wol. No other familiar had his intelligence. Seoul didn’t seem like the brightest familiar in the box, and Spark… I had to wonder if he just looked like a lizard or had the IQ of one as well. With Wol, I could have an actual discussion and use him as a sounding board for ideas.

  “Let’s get this straight.So the Mother Tree needs to pass on to… pass on her mantle,”I said, pausing at the unexpected wordplay, “But she’s also worried that her other children will go all Cinderella on the mushrooms.Er, in reverse, I mean.”

  “That’s how I understood it as well,” Wol said.

  “You got that?” I said, surprised he caught the Cinderella reference. I shook my head, getting back on topic. “Do you think she wants to die or needs to die? Because if the mantle is the only reason she has to die, maybe we can look for a different way to pass it on. Then we have a new Mother Tree, and she can keep being tortured by the mushrooms. Win-win situation.”

  “I cannot speak to the specifics, but in places like this, it’s a common theme. A position of power held by a single or a limited number of individuals. It’s not that the individual is chosen for their power, but the position gives them that power. So a new being cannot be instated into the position until it is empty again.”

  “Damn it.”

  “It is the right thing to do, Practitioner,” Wol said without blinking. “One life for the good of the many.”

  “Yeah, but her children will be left behind,” I said. “They’re not even getting to say good-bye.”

  Wol’s eyes followed mine to the trees in the distance. He was remembering what the three of us saw together, the countless dryads asleep in winter.

  When they awoke, their mother would be gone.

  “They will live,” Wol said. “Ironically, her death will ensure it.”

  Right. Wol had that side of him. I decided to drop the topic. Bringing it up anymore than this would just upset me. I was already upset. I had balled my hand into fists without knowing, and the burnt hand ached fiercely.

  Her death didn’t sit right with me. I met her just today, but the idea of a mom dying and leaving her children behind was just wrong.

  Yeah. I know. I have issues.

  “Wol, how do we even euthanize her?” I said, looking over at the giant dryad. She was huge. “Maybe Victor can set her on fire. But what can I do?” Jesus, I couldn’t believe that this was a topic of discussion.

  Wol’s tail curled to the front, and he put his front paws on it. I think I saw a documentary once about cats that did that to keep their paws warm. “That would be the easy part. A basic application of thaumaturgy can take care of it. Especially on such a weakened and willing being. I would not be surprised if the Hudson Witch is willing to do the deed herself.”

  I looked away from the giant dryad, feeling sick. “That’s just cruel. This whole thing is fucked up. It’s like we’re discussing someone on a deathbed. I can’t… God, I don’t know if I can do this, Wol. And I’m not talking about whether this is wrong or not. I’m just not sure if I can even do this. It’s just too surreal.”

  “You must. And you will,” Wol said solemnly.

  “You know, people used to make this stupid joke about euthanasia,” I said, not sure what I was getting at. “They’re asking this question, whether you support youth in Asia or not. Of course, most kids said no, cause that was such a foreign concept. Then if you say no, they hit you with the stupid one-liner about why you don’t support youth in Asia.”

  “Focus, Jain.”

  “I know, Wol. It’s just all so real,” I trailed off, then stole another glance at the Mother Tree and her creepy mushroom kids. “The real question isn’t in how we kill her. It’s the kids. They’re the central theme here. That’s what our solution needs to address.”

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  “You have an idea?”

  I told him.

  Wol listened without commenting. He only spoke once I was done. “That could work. But the execution of it… I am not sure that you are ready. You simply do not know enough.”

  “I was hoping you knew, or you could help me look for a way,” I admitted. “But everything you told me about how the supernatural world works so far, it should work. The theory is sound.”

  “Bring out the books again, Practitioner.”

  I dragged the pink backpack over, bringing them out. “Musok: Shamanism, Shamanism: Spirits, and Death: Necromancy.”

  “Why these three?”

  “Well, it was either this or the infernal names, and I wasn’t going to pick that up,” I said. “Though I’m starting to rethink my choices. I don’t know. This whole thing with my mom it’s not a diabolist matter. It’s Shin shaman business. So I thought shamanistic thoughts. Ghosts, spirits, etcetera. You think these will help?”

  “What would really help is a book on abjuration,” Wol said, “but these might have what you need. The problem is that it could be in any of the three. Emphasis on could, my Practitioner. If they’re not…”

  “Then back to the drawing board. Except one hour isn’t enough time for that.”

  “Then we must choose. Invest our time to think of a different idea, or scour the books and hope that one of them has the information we need to make your idea into reality.”

  I bit my lip. “Let’s get to reading.”

  The natural world is scary. Nasty, vile, filthy, and most of all, nightmarish.

  I watch a lot of nature documentaries. My dad was rarely home, and even when he was, he went straight to his study. He’s not a mean man or anything, just absent. But I grew to keep myself busy with my studies, cooking dinner if we had enough money for groceries that week, and watching documentaries. It is one of my favorite pastime activities, besides reading books. Whether I’m eating, cooking, or just in need of general background chatter to make the apartment feel a little bit warmer, the documentaries were it.

  But watch enough documentaries, and you realize that there’s no need for horror movies from the imaginations of people. There’s no need for video games where fungi take over people’s brains and bring forth the mushroom-pocalypse.

  They’re scary enough as it is.

  People think of mushrooms as these harmless little bulbs in the veggie section at the supermarket. But fungi are one of the scariest parasites on the planet, in my opinion. There’s a misconception that they feed on dead wood. Cute little fungi that people make punny jokes with the word ‘fun guy’.

  Here’s a scary one: some mushrooms are carnivorous.

  I don’t mean carnivorous in the sense that they are decaying dead animals. There are active species of mushrooms that are predators. They can actively sense and trap prey. Don’t believe me? Use your friendliest search engine to look at nematode-trapping mushrooms. Better yet, watch a video.

  Then there’s the largest living organism in the world: a mushroom in Oregon. Combine that with the fact that plants talk to each other through the ‘wood wide web’, and there are enough keywords for a rabbit hole that no one wants to dive into. I eventually got around to it, though. It’s not mind-breaking or world-altering in any way. But the first time I truly saw the extent of just how complicated and scary mushrooms could be, I was deeply unsettled.

  In the end, mushrooms are parasites, and I think there’s a healthy fear of parasites in all of us. They’re creepy, they’re naked, they feed on us, make us sick, and most of them are just so alien from everything else.

  When I watched the Mother Tree interact with her mushroom children, that was all I could think of. That they were parasites in every sense of the word.

  When they played, they always played around the Mother Tree. Play fighting meant tearing open her skin —the bark— to get new swords and shields, playing tag meant climbing all over her, and breaking bits of her off. When they got sleepy, they’d settle under her leg or into her arms to sleep. Then, when they got hungry, they nibbled on her.

  They didn’t breastfeed. They didn’t say they were hungry. They just opened up their maws and bit down wherever they were.

  The giant dryad was covered in them.

  And they just laughed and laughed and laughed. They stuffed their fat cheeks; the voids in their eyes were never satisfied.

  I felt bad for her.

  I wondered if that’s how moms felt in general.

  The Hudson Witch said something, and I missed it. She repeated it. “The hour is up. Gather, and we will commence the trial.”

  Mina, Victor, and their familiars gathered at the foot of the Mother Tree, not so close that the mushroom children could get to them. I saw Mina edge away, her expression cold at the parasitic spirits. Victor, too, kept opening and clenching his fist.

  I was glad to know it wasn’t just me.

  “I remind you, young ones, that though this is your Trial, the things you propose here will shape the future of this forest for years to come. The choices you make today, the words you use and set loose, will touch countless lives. The consequences are not yours alone. You will not live long enough to see it, but that is the weight with which you should have deliberated this matter,” she said once I got there, and singled me out with a look. “You will each give the Mother Tree your solution. She will choose two initially. Whoever does not have their solution chosen will be eliminated from the Shin Inheritance trials. Understood?”

  I clenched my jaw so hard that it hurt.

  The sun wasn’t quite up yet, but it had already begun to paint the eastern sky in hues of light blue instead of fathomless black. The night sky was slowly fading, soon to be replaced by the bright air of morning. Still, it wasn’t quite there. If it weren’t for the torches and campfires, I wouldn’t be able to see more than two feet from where I was. The pitch-black darkness’s rule weighed on us with an oppressiveness that added to the burden of this trial, and its rule hadn’t ended just yet.

  The Mother Tree leaned over during the Hudson Witch’s sharing, her attention shifting towards us. Every time the massive dryad moved, the night stirred with her, and it was enough to give me megalophobia. We were standing closer to her than before, and I was getting an appreciation for just how her presence seemed to fill the air around her. The mushroom children were bigger than I thought, too, reaching my shoulder height.

  I had a stray thought where they swarmed us, gnashing their teeth. I tried not to look at them.

  “Who would like to go first?” The Hudson Witch said without preamble.

  Mina stepped forward before either of us could. Truthfully, I didn’t want to go first. I had an idea of what I might want to do, but I wanted to hear what the other two said first and maybe build upon it. But if Mina’s idea was unique, and Victor and I both said something similar, we’d end up looking like copycats. The Hudson Witch didn’t strike me as the type to ignore that.

  Either way, it was done. Mina began to speak.