He had his hands shoved in his pockets and strolled along with nonchalant ease, as if he had no expectation of finding anything. Anna suspected he was as clueless as she was.
‘Hele!’ called Michaela and turned to beckon to them. ‘Look.’ She pointed down at a mustard-brown mushroom with a creamy bulbous stem, so well camouflaged among the leaves that Anna wondered how she’d seen it. ‘It’s a porcini and a good size.’ Carefully Michaela cleared the leaves around the satsuma-sized mushroom and dug along the stem before cutting it off close to the ground, leaving some behind. With a triumphant grin she held it up. ‘Here.’ She handed it to them to take a closer inspection. ‘See the spongy underside. These mushrooms don’t have gills. This is a good size. If they’re very small then leave them. This type of mushroom can grow quite big.’ After taking a sniff, with a blissed-out expression on her face, she popped it into her basket. ‘Now we look around because they often grown near to one another.’ She crouched and her hand scrabbled through the leaves, gently brushing them back.
‘And more,’ called Jan from less than a metre away, and scuffed back the undergrowth to reveal two more mushrooms.
Now that she knew what she was looking for, Anna’s confidence grew and she diligently scanned the ground, suddenly determined to find something, driven by the competitive spirit that had been drilled into her. With her cousins, everything was always a contest, the fastest, the fittest, the strongest, the loudest. And Anna the slowest, the weakest and the quietest. She never quite made the grade.
Unfortunately, the harder she looked, the more elusive the mushrooms seemed to be, and she began to feel frustrated, especially now that Michaela and Jan seemed to be on a roll, bending to scoop up their finds with increasingly regularity.
After half an hour, her neck aching a little, she stopped and huffed out a breath. This was hopeless – she was never going to find anything. The familiar sensation of inadequacy began to envelop her, pressing down on her shoulders, as she slumped under the weight of failure. With a sigh, and as much to stretch the muscles at the back of her head, she looked up, and watched a solitary leaf quiver at the very end of a branch before losing its tenuous hold and, with a dying breath, flutter down to the forest floor.
When she looked up she found Jan watching her.
‘Do you think that leaf was worried it was one of the last to fall?’ he asked with a whimsical smile.
With a shrug, she lifted her shoulders, staring at him uncertainly, not sure whether he was making a point or not. ‘I’ve no idea. Do leaves have feelings?’
‘Lots of folklore features forest spirits – the Leshy, Dryads, Nymphs, the Ents. Why not?’
He looked so earnest, Anna had to smile, and rather than tease him, she gave into her own musings. ‘Actually, do you ever get the sense that there are things here, just out of sight, and when we turn to catch them, they hide?’
‘Always,’ said Jan, his eyes widening a little. ‘Throughout Europe there are lots of fairy-tales set in the woods.Hansel and Gretel,Goldilocks and the Three Bears,Little Red Riding Hood…Beauty and the Beast. The location is always outside the safety of the village. They represent the unknown, beyond the boundaries.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.’
Anna shook her head. ‘I don’t need protecting. And I don’t believe in fairies and witches.’
Leo, appearing at Jan’s side, shook his head. ‘No, you’ve never needed protecting. But everyone needs a little looking after now and then.’
Anna didn’t like the direction the conversation had taken and deliberately wandered away to the right, her eyes studying a patch of ground by a fallen log.
‘Aha!’ said Leo and she turned to find him dancing on the spot, his hips wiggling triumphantly. He looked ridiculously pleased with himself. ‘I found one. I found one.’ He held up his knife as if he were about to perform a ceremonial sacrifice and knelt down. ‘Come to Papa, little one,’ he crooned as he carefully cleared the leaves around it and gently sliced through the stem. Cradling it gently in his hands he studied it. ‘My first ever mushroom.’ He grinned.
Anna’s first instinct was to say, ‘I hope it’s not a poisonous one,’ but at the sight of his broad beam, the words shrivelled on her tongue and she was once again reminded of his capacity to find joy and happiness in the simplest of things.
Instead she smiled back at him. ‘Congratulations. Would you like me to take a picture of you with your mushroom?’
Leo’s grin widened. ‘Yes, please,’ he said and immediately struck a pose, pretending to kiss his mushroom as if he were a chef.
As she took the picture on her phone of Leo standing in one of the shafts of sunshine slanting through the trees, the light glinting on his blonde hair and his eyes shining with happiness, she felt a little zing in her heart. A burst of warmth blooming as she acknowledged that he was gorgeous, both inside and out. What you saw was exactly what you got. There was no side, no hidden agenda with Leo. A pure spirit. For a moment, she wondered if she’d ever truly appreciated that before. He certainly wasn’t the least bit competitive.
What was wrong with her? Clearly, the forest spirits were messing with her, making her soft. She chased away the fanciful thoughts and turned her attention back to the task in hand. If it was the last thing she did today, she was going to find a bloody mushroom.
‘Anna, Leo. Come see this.’ Michaela called from the other side of a small glade and they hurried over. She pointed to a taller, pale mushroom and then, keeping it at arm’s length, gently tapped it. A tiny puff of green genie smoke billowed out of a small hole in the top of the cap.
Anna stepped back. ‘What’s that? Is it poisonous?’
‘It’s a miracle of nature,’ said Michaela. ‘It’s a stump puffball. It’s not poisonous when it’s young but this one is too mature, so it wouldn’t taste so good. This is how it spreads its spores. Mushrooms are fascinating.’
‘Don’t get her started,’ said Jan, taking her elbow and helping her rise to her feet.
They wandered on with the sun heating the day. The concentration was starting to give Anna a headache when suddenly she spotted something. She frowned and quickly glanced sideways to make sure Leo hadn’t seen it. Stealthily, as if it might make a getaway, she approached the large brown lump. It was huge, the size of two fists, but it had the same colouring and texture as the mushrooms Michaela had been collecting. Anna felt a burst of excitement.
‘Look,’ she called. ‘I found one. Is this one edible?’
Michaela came over to check. ‘Oh my, Anna. That is one big porcini,’ she said throwing her arms around her with a big hug. ‘The biggest I’ve ever seen.’
‘Go Anna, go Anna,’ called Leo, punching her arm and doing another one of his daft dances.
With a blush of pleasure, she knelt down and carefully sliced through the slightly spongy stem.
