The mycelium joined in: “There are seventy-five species of poison-dart frogs, in more colors than you have names for, with more than four hundred novel alkaloids in their skin.”
The first worm raised up some off the ground for emphasis. “You spend so much time mythologizing monsters! The vampire bat? Sure, it bites its prey, sucks the wound — but it also carries a unique anticoagulant in its spit. The vampire bat produces this substance you call draculin. Someday you’ll ‘discover’ that draculin is an effective agent for retarding clotting. But you’re too busy making up cutesy names and blaming the damn bats for your own idiotic diseases.”
Laisvė knelt down into the dirt.
The mycelium curled around her knees. “There are literally thousands of Amazonian fungi you haven’t even noticed yet. And all of you who don’t live here, who live in cities full of corporations and pollutants and death-driven, war-centered behavior, far away from the millions of people and billions of species of plants and animals who live outside those cities — what do you do? You let it burn.”
“Can I please help?” Laisvė felt infinitesimal. Not in size. In soul.
“Well,” the worm said, its tip leaning toward the tips of other worms as if conferring with them. “You could just pull up the tiger lilies around here. That way at least our work will be a little easier. But listen, word on the street has it that you’re after a lily of your own.”
Laisvė had already started pulling up flowers, strewing their carcasses in limp heaps, but now she paused. “What do you mean, worm? After a lily?”
The worm raised itself up from the dirt like a question mark. “Turtles sent word ahead of you. You’re after a girl, aren’t you? That’s your lily. She works about two miles from here, on foot, I think. But she’s not there right now. She eats her lunch nearly always at the foot of the fountain in the botanical gardens. Even when it rains! Stupid human. We don’t measure distances the way you do, but one or two miles on foot — that’s my best guess. We measure in eating and shitting and aerating soil, so our metrics won’t mean much to someone like you. Your kind should try it sometime.”
“Try what?”
“Eating dirt,” the worm said. A tiny chorus of worm laughter.
“Oh, that. I have tried it. When I was young, I used to eat handfuls of dirt, straight out of the ground. And apple cores. Seeds. Balls of paper. And pennies,” Laisvė said. “My father said it was pica. I never understood why it needed a name.”
“I see. Then we have some things in common. You should also try getting it on with the earth instead of destroying it with your own endless reproduction. You humans are all so full of yourselves! What a waste of being. Anyway. Go that way. Or just meditate on the word lily… I don’t know what kind of girl you are, but sometimes human-child spawn can travel differently, I’ve noticed. Once your species hits adulthood, it’s all over. Dead matter. Stasis. Stuck inside their own dramas.”
“I travel by water. Backward and forward in time,” Laisvė said.
“Well, there’s always the sewer system if you don’t want to walk. Unless swimming through shit is a problem for you. Humans are so… averse, to — what? Their own damn organic matter.”
A tiny group chuckle.
“All righty, then. Back to work.” The worm joined its worm brothersistermotherfather bodies in their labor. The sounds of their labor receding, Laisvė began to walk in the direction her imagination pulled her. In her mind’s eye, she could see a fountain with mermaids and seashells and turtles spitting water. She held it there as if it were a beacon.
On the streets, in this city and inside this time, garbage blew around on the ground. The closer she got to the buildings, to the city blocks in which they were arranged, the more the colors around her faded and a kind of monochrome took over; she felt surrounded by the smell of concrete and steel and hot dog stands and car exhaust. The more she walked, the more the cars multiplied. Streetlights and the clack of heels on pavement. Oddly curated lines of trees and shrubbery and lawns. A tidiness that made her tummy hurt. This time looked familiar — a history not so distant from her own, except that the buildings were intact and the electrical grid seemed functional and people looked to be engaged in things like jobs and driving to and from places and eating and business transactions — their labor hidden behind suits and high-rises and blocklike institutional buildings. The wind moved differently here, diverted by man-made things. By city being. The sound of the airspeak drowned out by engines, tires on pavement, horns, whistles, the occasional whine of a siren.
Laisvė heard the voices of people moving around her.
Then water.
Then she saw it: a fountain, as she had already seen inside her mind. Perched on the surrounding marble bench, a woman in a suit, her legs tucked under her like a doe’s. The fountain, more than the woman, drew Laisvė’s attention — the glory of it. Three Nereids, sea nymphs, served as corporeal support for basins above and below them. Atop the fountain was a crown, from which water spilled gracefully, falling from basin to basin below. The figures stood on a pedestal decorated with seashells. At the base, jets of water sprayed from the mouths of — yes, it was true, just as Bertrand said: “Look for a fountain with water-spitting turtles.”
A plaque on the fountain read the fountain of light and water, but in the sculpture, Laisvė saw only her mother. Not really her mother, but a kind of symbol, a reimagined archetype that set her mind and heart at ease. This was the place. She felt sure.
The woman seated there, eating a sandwich, looked rumpled — not her clothes, but her face. Something less than wrinkles but more than concern.
Laisvė walked up to the woman. She had a lanyard dangling from her neck, with a tiny image of her on a name tag — she looked crumpled there too — and a name: lilly juknevicius. Laisvė stared at her.
“Can I help you?” Agitation pricked the edges of the woman’s voice.
“No, but I have something important to trade,” Laisvė said.
“Oh,” she said, distracted, opening her bag as if looking for a scrap of food. “Listen, I—”
Laisvė persisted. “Do you have something for me?” She was certain what she needed was near. “Lilly, right?” Laisvė pointed to the name tag.
Laisvė watched as the woman rummaged around in her purse. At last, she sighed heavily, a nope, nothing here sigh, part performance, part relief.
Laisvė sat down next to Lilly. Lilly scooted over a bit, alarmed by the proximity.
“Try your sack,” Laisvė offered.
Lilly stared at Laisvė, who could read what she was trying to hide in her expression: Can’t a woman eat a fucking sandwich in peace? But something was happening within the stare this girl held her inside. Without looking away from the girl’s eyes, Lilly reached for an apple she knew was in her brown sack. She handed the apple over to the girl, who slowly, without speaking, reached into her clothing and pulled out a strange-looking purplish twist of unknown nature, as if some kind of trade was actually going down. Jesus. What is that, rotting meat? Some kind of dead snake? Just accept it and walk away, Lilly. At least you’ve given her something to eat.