The Fungal Route

Long ago, when the gods still walked among mortals and the stars sang songs of the future, the World Tree stood alone in the center of all things.   It was vast beyond measure. Its branches held up the sky, and its roots stretched down into the bones of the world. But though it was mighty, the World Tree was also lonely. No wind could reach its highest boughs, and no creature dared to tread too close, for its size was terrifying, its stillness eternal.   One day, from the dark loam at the base of the World Tree, a small voice stirred. Not a bird. Not a beast. But a little puff of spore.   “Are you awake?” it asked, in a voice so soft it could only be heard by things that lived in the earth.   The World Tree did not answer. It had not spoken since time began.   But the spore did not give up. It whispered again, and again. It sent out a rootlet, then another, until it split into threads fine as spider silk. These threads, this tiny fungal child, stretched out like curious fingers.   It grew and wandered, tasting the soil, brushing against seeds and stones. Wherever it touched, it whispered:   “Are you awake?”   And slowly, they began to answer.   The grass whispered back with laughter. The moss replied in song. The old stones told stories of sleeping titans and the weight of glaciers. The birch trees and nettles and river weeds began to murmur among themselves.   The little spore became a web, then a net, then a mind too vast to name. It connected roots to roots, roots to stone, and stone to memory. This was the first mycelium, born of the World Tree’s stillness and the spore’s longing.   Then, one day, the World Tree stirred.   From deep beneath the earth came a groan older than the gods. The tree had felt the touch of its children. It had heard the voices of the growing things, and in them, it found joy.   From that day on, all that grew in the soil was part of something greater.   Mushrooms, strange and holy, sprouted at the base of every plant. They carried secrets. They remembered dreams. They moved thoughts from root to root, tree to tree, grove to grove. A fallen leaf in the west could whisper its final words to a blooming rose in the east.   They say that if you press your ear to the forest floor, and you are very quiet, you might hear them speaking still: the flowers and vines and grasses, all woven together in a web of wonder.   And at the center of it all, vast and ancient and no longer alone, the World Tree listens.   And sometimes, if the moon is right, it answers.