* * *
The next day, as he sat in Samuel Hoegbotton’s room writing out invoices for the past week’s exports—Saphant carnival masks, rare eelwood furniture from Nicea, necklaces made by yet another indigenous tribe discovered at the heart of the great southern rainforests, all destined for Morrow—he noticed something odd. He drew his breath in sharply. He pushed his chair back and stood up.
There, growing at a right angle from the green cloth that covered the cage, was a fragile, milk-white fruiting body on a long stem, the gills tinged red. It was identical to the mushrooms that had appeared in Daffed’s mansion. He cast about for a weapon, his gaze fixed on the cage. There was nothing but the bottle of port. Beyond the cage, the fungus that had infiltrated the cracks of the mirror appeared to have darkened and thickened. Irrationally, he decided he had to remove the cage from the room. The room had caused the fruiting body. Picking up a napkin, he wound it around the handle of the cage and carried it out of the room, to his desk.
He stared across the store, trying to locate Bristlewing. His assistant stood in a far corner helping an elderly gentleman decide on a chair. Hoegbotton could just see the back of Bristlewing’s head, nodding at something the potential customer had said, both of them obscured by a column of school desks.
Slowly, as if the mushroom was watching him, Hoegbotton slid his hand over to the top drawer of his desk, pulled it open and took out a silver letter opener. Holding it in front of him, he approached the cage. Images of the woman and her son flickered in his mind. He couldn’t keep his hand still. He hesitated, wavered. A vision of the mushroom multiplying into two, three, four came to him. Hoegbotton leaned over his desk, chopped the mushroom off the side of the cage. It fell onto his desk, leaving behind only a small, circular white spot on the green cover, as innocent as a bird dropping.
Hoegbotton pulled his handkerchief out of his breast pocket and squashed the mushroom in its folds, careful not to touch any part of it. Then he stuffed the handkerchief into the wastebasket at his side. A moment’s hesitation. He fished it out. Decided against it and placed the handkerchief back into the wastebasket. Fished it out again.
Hoegbotton realized that both Bristlewing and his customer were now standing a few feet away, staring at him. He froze, then smiled.
“My dear Bristlewing,” he said. “What can I help you with?”
Bristlewing gave him a disgusted look. “Mr. Sporlender here was interested in a writing desk, for his son. We’ve a good, solid chair but nothing appropriate in a desk. Anything in storage?”
Hoegbotton smiled, extremely aware of the dead mushroom in his hand. The irritation caused by the handle of the cage flared up, pulsing across his palm. “Yes, actually, Mr. Sporlender, if you would come back tomorrow, I believe we might have something to show you…” Or not. Just so long as he left the shop—now.
Hoegbotton nudged Bristlewing out of the way and guided the man toward the door, through the crowded stacks of artifacts—babbling about the rain, about the importance of a writing desk, about anything at all, while Bristlewing’s disgusted stare burned into the back of his skull. Hoegbotton had never been more impatient to reach the rain-scoured street. When it came, it was like a wave—of light, of fresh air. It hit him with such force that he gasped, drawing a sharp look from Mr. Sporlender.
As they stood there, on the cusp of the street, the iron door at Hoegbotton’s back, the man stared at him through narrowed eyes. “Really, Mr. Hoegbotton—should I come back tomorrow? Would you truly advise that?”
Hoegbotton stared down at his hand, which was about to rebel and throw the handkerchief and mushroom as far away as possible. Some of the early afternoon passersby already stared curiously at the two of them.
“I suppose you shouldn’t, actually. We don’t have a desk in storage or anywhere else … I have a condition of sudden claustrophobia. It comes and goes. I cannot control it.”
The man sneered. “I saw what you put in the handkerchief. I know what it is. Will I tell? Why bother—you’ll be dead soon enough.” The man stalked off.
Hoegbotton immediately began to fast-walk in the opposite direction, past sidewalk vendors, a thin stream of pedestrians, and an even thinner stream of carts and carriages, which the rain rendered in smudges and humid smells. Only after three or four blocks, soaked to the skin, did he feel comfortable tossing the handkerchief and its contents into a public trashcan. He already had an image in his head of the Cappan’s men searching his store for traces of fungi.
A man was throwing up into the gutter. A woman was yelling at her husband. The sky was a uniform gray. The rain was unending, as common as the very air. He couldn’t even feel it anymore. Everywhere, in the cracks of the sidewalk, in the minute spaces between bricks in shop fronts, new fungi were growing. He wondered if anything he did mattered.
* * *
Back at the store, Bristlewing was grumpily moving some boxes around. He spared Hoegbotton only a quick glance—watchful, wary. Hoegbotton brushed by him and headed for the bathroom, where he scrubbed his hands red before coming out again to examine the cage. It looked just as he had left it. The green cover was unblemished but for the white spot. There had been no proliferation of mushrooms in his absence. This was good. This meant he had done the right thing. (Why, then, was it so hard to draw breath? Why so difficult to stop shaking?)
He sat down behind the desk, staring at the cage. The inside of his mouth felt dry and thick. Nothing happened without a reason. The mushroom had not appeared by coincidence. This he could not believe. How could he?
Almost against his will, he reached over to the cage and pulled the cover aside, the green giving way to the finely etched metal bars, the shadows of the bars letting the light slide around them so that he saw the perch, gently swinging, and, below it, a pale white hand. Slender and delicate. The end a mass of dried blood. A vision overtook him: that he was Samuel Hoegbotton, staring across the dining room table at the cage, which was the last thing he ever saw … The hand, he had no doubt, was from Daffed’s wife. What would it take to make it go away?
But then his mind registered a much more important detail, one that made him bite down hard on his lower lip to stop from screaming. The cage door was open, slid to the side as neatly as the cover. He sat there, motionless, staring, for several seconds. Throughout the store, he could hear the hands of myriad clocks clicking forward. No mask could help him now. The hand. The open cage. The fey brightness of the bars. A rippling at the edges of his vision.
Somewhere, Hoegbotton found the nerve. He reached out and slid the door back into position with both hands, worked the latch shut—just as he felt a sudden weight on the other side, rushing up to meet him. It brushed against his fingers and chilled them. He drew back with a gasp. The door rattled once, twice, fell still. The perch began to swing violently back and forth as if something had pushed up against it. Then it too fell still. Suddenly.
He could not breathe. He could not call out for help. His heart was beating so fast, he thought it might burst. This was not how he had imagined it. This was not how he had imagined it.
Something invisible picked up the hand and forced it through the bars. The hand fell onto his blotter, rocked once, twice, and was still.