The Warlock

13 | an orchard

A monstrous worm is curled in a city block-sized crater, its massive rubbery folds and spines blossoming with moss and towering fungal growths. Without seeing the lamprey mouths and manifold eyes of its blunt head, an observer might believe that my sister Saoirse is a chaotic garden, or a festering fen, so intermingled is the decay and renewal pursuing itself across her. Bina's main body is already here, roosting next to her. My younger sister's spiracles trill a cheerful greeting.

I drift over Saoirse and send a cautious hail, a request to manifest in her demesne, and the smell of fresh earth after a storm. She returns a flood of serene affection and a fond invitation, along with a detailed description of everything she's currently cultivating across her huge and fructiferous body.

I'd reproduce it here, but I'd need a couple thousand pages and I worry I'd bore you. This sort of instant transfer is a useful part of being a creature like me. I'd love to give my story to you this way, so that you could ascertain, in the space of an instant, every minute detail of every scene in its telling, from its barometry to its ambient noise threshold. Unfortunately, our language would cause your brain to denature and pour out of your nostrils. So I suppose you'd better keep reading instead, my delicate audience. Remember to take regular breaks to combat eye strain.

I hastily reconfigure my Irene body with skin that can survive Saoirse's caustic environs and lungs that can filter her many spores away. No offense to my sister, but we have different ideas about closeness, and I don't fancy the idea of spitting bits of moldy lung out when I'm back inside myself.

Then I enter Saoirse's kingdom of decay.

I pass slime molds and glowing redcaps; I maneuver around fungi oozing fecund poisons. Lattices of protein and pupae, ripe with the sickly-sweet scents of many thousands of life cycles devouring their own tails, bloom to rot to bloom to rot again. With every step, I crush dozens of tiny chutes and growing things; they fertilize my footfalls, such that new colorful bursts of ever-mutating life mark my passage. This is not the place for you if you have trypophobia, or mycophobia, or mysophobia, or really any kind of phobia. Even my well-tempered resistances find repulsion here and there.

But Saoirse is beautiful, as all my sisters are beautiful. Even Eight, menace she may be, has a great and terrible beauty.

Saoirse waits for me in her largest growth chamber. Her tumescent form is suspended gracefully over a churning terrarium, drifting spores from manifold species into her latest project. A forest of jewel-toned dragonfly wings, spreading from her like a woven cloak, keeps her aloft with a harmonious buzz. Imagine, if your stomach is fortified for it, a glamorous fairy queen made of death caps and teratomas.

Surrounding her, each in their own cell of a vast honeycomb, are her blooming servants. Her newest is still identifiably human, his face a picture of restful repose as the fungi which feast on his brain flood the gaps they leave with endorphins.

I genuflect to her. "Sister. Thank you for welcoming me in."

The pinpoint lights within her weeping eyeholes burn brighter as she smiles. "Irene. Dear heart. Hello."

"Where's Bina? I saw her outside."

Saoirse waves a knotty hand toward one of the overgrown channels tunneling through her titanic body. "Exploring. She was waiting faithfully until I mentioned a fruit orchard I've been growing. She got excited. Shall I call her back?"

"That's our Bean for you," I say. "She can take her time. Let's catch up."

"Of course, darling." Saoirse floats to the chamber floor. The delicate hem of her dress is a curtain of mycorrhizae, which curl into the loam around her as she sits on the lip of her terrarium. "You are here, I think, to negotiate. And I am here to listen. Nectar?"