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Advice is LikeA Mushroom

D o I even want to go home?

Maewyn swallowed back that question as others burst in her mind.

What was left for her in Goulmead? A mother who eagerly handed her over for sacrifice, a lover who had never meant the words he whispered up against her skin in the dark, a single shelf of well-loved books that didn’t even contain proper instructions to kill a fae?

There was a crack in her chest, but it was not the familiar sensation of deferred tears. This was like the crackling she’d felt in the air at the fae’s transformation. This was… magic .

A gust blew through the branches above, the sound startling.

When the Limindhwer had closed to the Harvest Way behind her, something had sparked inside her as well.

Magic was exceedingly rare in the human realm, and it wasn’t meant to be trusted, a thing she’d learned all too well in childhood.

Yet this feeling inside her now was warm and welcoming—everything the stories professed the fae realm was not.

Maewyn shook her head. What was a pang in her innards compared to a lifetime of choice ripped away?

Her intent had been to kill the monster who had no objections to being given her, and then she would flee.

She might have failed, but the monster was gone, and now there was only the fleeing part left.

But Maewyn’s plan hadn’t really gotten much more sorting than that. In all fairness, squirreling away a spare bit of iron with the prospect of royal assassination was a lot .

Night had fully descended, but the fae wood was alight with its own magic.

She scrutinized the depth of the trees around her as a critter snuffled through the fallen leaves.

The fae realm was divided into four corners as far as she understood, and from the looks of things, she was squarely in the center of autumn’s heart.

Croaking creatures sang and branches creaked in unfelt wind, but then that all fell away when she saw the eyes.

Blue in the blackness buried deep in the wood, the eyes watched her.

The outline of something large and looming filled in around those eyes, a head with elongated jaws and a back that lifted with silent breaths.

It didn’t approach, at least fifty paces away, but it tracked her, a hulking mass of a canine beast covered in fur.

Maewyn wished her sight would fail her, that the beast would slink back into the wood and be gone, but all she could do was remain caught in its gaze and step slowly backward. One step, and then another as a hollowness drove itself into her mind.

Hunger, fear, desolation…

“Is a human lost?”

Maewyn gasped, gaze darting down to her feet from where the voice had come. A mushroom stood there—a talking mushroom, apparently, but still red-capped and white-stalked and generally mushroomy.

The forest’s sounds all came back at once as Maewyn lifted her gaze again to the place she had seen the eyes, but there was no large, lumbering shadow still watching. The strange bleakness that had gouged at her heart was gone as well.

“Very lost, it seems,” said the mushroom, who didn’t appear to know there had been a blue-eyed beast so close. Had there been? Or had she imagined it?

The mushroom cap tipped back to reveal two black, bulbous eyes hiding beneath its gills.

Tiny arms and legs were hiding under there too, and an even tinier sack was slung over its shoulder.

Maewyn hadn’t met a talking mushroom before, but it was much better than something that could tear her to bits.

“Are you a faeling?” she asked. She’d read that the fae realm’s beings were varied and distinct, but that the small speaking critters were kind and harmless.

Perhaps she should have had her doubts, but she’d once saved a rabbit-like one from a hunter’s trap and watched it disappear through a tear in the veil.

If only she’d known then she would eventually be ushered through the Limindhwer herself.

“Is a mykiis a faeling?”

Maewyn shrugged.

The mushroom shrugged back.

“My village sent me here as a sacrifice to the fae king,” she said with a spiritless sigh because it was dull news now that it was over. “You know, that ginger-haired asshole who makes himself into a bird?”

“You must mean Prince Roan.” The mushroom tapped a hand-like protrusion against a chin-like bulge on its stalk. “And that would make you a prince’s human bride.”

“Oh, no, I’m not anyone’s bride.”

The mushroom bent itself to either side, then made a little gesture with its cap. “I don’t see how a prince intends to circumvent the law, but a human should come with me anyway so as not to get eaten by an umbrabrute.”

Her eyes flicked once more to where the wolf had been. “What’s an umbrabrute?”

“Old thing,” he said with a gesture as he started off into the wood. “Shadow thing. Devours all.”

“Oh, yes, well”—she swallowed, following after and attempting to remain composed—“with the way the evening’s going, I might just welcome being eaten.”

The mushroom, who called himself Agar, carried a twig with a buzzing glow on its end.

He led them into the darkened depth of the forest, his staff’s speck of light enough to illuminate the way.

The journey was short for Maewyn, though likely much longer for her companion.

They came to a stop at a fallen log, the trunk as thick as Maewyn’s hip was tall and covered in dark knots and patches of moss.

“Suppose a human won’t fit,” said Agar. “Have a careful seat here.”

Maewyn perched herself on a rock and watched Agar tromp up to one of the knots to swing it open and disappear within.

The sounds of the forest were louder when she found herself again alone, and she tried very hard not to think of what an umbrabrute could possibly do, focusing instead on a cluster of purplish orbs just near her feet.

She reached down to the soft-looking spheres and gave one a poke.

There was a squeal, and the orbs scattered, some finding their way to the log and disappearing into other knots, but one ran right into her rock and bounced off to land on its back. She could see its face and limbs then, just like Agar, albeit with a very thin stem body.

“Oh, look at you!” Maewyn immediately scooped it up, overcome with curiosity, and the underside of its rounded, purple cap glowed with all the colors of a setting sun.

“A mykiis is not for eating!” it shouted, and its cap bubbled with something frothy.

Maewyn gasped and gently placed it back on the earthen floor—maybe she was the umbrabrute. “No, no, I wouldn’t. You look rather poisonous, to be honest, but beautiful too. Apologies.”

The mushroom stood so still she wondered if she’d imagined the enchantment entirely, but then its cheek-like area went bright orange.

“It’s all right,” called Agar’s voice as a knot on the log swung open. “This is the human bride and future queen.”

Maewyn blinked, more mushrooms she had thought were only spots of color shaking off leaves and moss to gather about. “Uh, human? Yes. Future queen? No. And I thought you said he was a prince.”

Agar made a shrugging movement as he gathered things unseen from inside the log where a bright light glowed behind him. “Titles come with the inevitability of time.”

“Not for this human.”

The homes of the mushroom critters inside the log glowed, and Maewyn’s gaze darted from window to window where there were tiny chairs crafted out of twigs and pebble hearths.

They had to be faelings, the small enchanted creatures who often slipped into the human world and then back, their magic unlike the true fae who were almost entirely relegated to this realm, power too great to cross the veil.

“And kingship isn’t inevitable for this Prince Roan either,” she said with a snort. “Immortality being what it is.”

Agar chuckled, and many of the others followed suit. “A prince told a human he is immortal?”

“Sounds like Prince Roan,” said a blue mushroom.

“A prince probably thinks he is,” snickered another.

“He isn’t? Really, he didn’t say , it’s just what we believe on the other side of the Limindhwer.

” Maewyn pursed her lips, trying to look into as many faces as possible for the truth.

“Humans are sent a demand for a new bride when the whim strikes your king, and in trade, the Autumn Court blesses our crops until the whim for another wife strikes him again. Fae think of it as a fair bargain, but we either do as they say or starve. The last demand came over one hundred and fifty years ago, and none of us live that long.”

In Agar’s window, a wispy line of smoke rose from a bubbling pot. “Nor do fae. Not anymore anyway. Not since the old ones.”

Maewyn scooted right to the edge of the rock. “Explain.”

“There were too many, their needs and hunger too great, and the umbrabrutes ate too much,” said Agar as he dropped chopped up herbs into his pot. “So the old fae are mostly gone, and the new fae are only as long lived as humans.”

“So there isn’t just one immortal king of the Autumn Court, and he doesn’t keep replacing his human wife over and over?”

Agar shook his head. “There are new kings and queens, some better and some worse, but every seventh generation, the heir to each throne must wed a human.”

“This is the agreement the courts have come to,” another mushroom added. “And the courts don’t agree on much.”

“A human says the last demand came one hundred and fifty years ago. Seven generations.” Agar nodded with finality.

“But it’s no surprise Prince Roan would not wed this one.”

Murmured agreement spread amongst the gathered.

“Wow, okay, rude,” she groused.

“This is not an insult, not to a human.” Agar collected a bowl the size of an acorn top and ladled in some of his stew before disappearing from his window.

The voice of another mushroom stole her attention. “Prince Roan has plans.”

“Romantic entanglements with the Spring Court, I hear.”