Mushroom Marion and the Bucket of Sun

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Written 10/13/2024
Typed   10/23/2024
Author  Tucker Whitney
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    Had anyone been there, beside Marion as she stooped, ankle deep in torpid 
bog water, immune to its fetid odor, delicately picking mushrooms off the side 
of a half-rotted log and dropping them into a worn burlap sack——had anyone 
been there listening to the incessant twittering and cawing of songbirds and 
magpies in the branches and boles of nearby trees, the birds' cries would have 
struck them as discordant, mawkish, the stench of the swamp would have 
overwhelmed their nostrils, and the oppressive stillness that stretched in all 
directions, fading into a thick fog after only a score of paces, would have 
begun to drive them slowly mad.  Marion, however, was immune to all of it.  
Perhaps the swamp had already sponged up what sanity remained to her when she'd 
first come to build a home, a life, in this lonesome waste.
    In fact, should the afore-to posited observer have shambled after Marion as 
she moved on across a patch of slightly drier, firmer muck to another promising 
stump, they might indeed have been surprised to hear issuing from her lips a 
song——a rather charming song, albeit quaint——sung by a rather 
arresting, one might even venture 'haunting' voice.

    "Mushrooms, O mushrooms, I'll put you in my sack.
    Please be not affrighted, I know you shall grow back."

    As she sang, she moved on to a likely-looking clump of trees, a couple of 
them possibly still alive.

    "Mushrooms, O mushrooms, I'll cook you in a stew.
    Without my dear mushrooms, I can't think what I'd do."

    Watching Marion step lightly amongst the darkened husks of the trees, 
stooping here and there almost like a bird, perfectly at ease, her every motion 
evincing a deep, all-enveloping peace, it would have struck the observer that 
the young woman must have inhabited this swamp all her life.  And indeed, it 
felt precisely this way to Marion herself.  Some part of her remembered that 
there _had been_ a time before the swamp, but when she thought of it at 
all——which was seldom——that bare fact alone was the most her memory was 
willing to proffer up.  And so she continued about her life, collecting herbs 
and mushrooms, repairing her modest hut, making and mending her clothes rather 
inexpertly from what oddments the swamp provided, and, it may be admitted 
without much fear of bias, out-singing the song-birds.
    Knowing all of this, the ever-watchful observer would then be forced to 
conclude that, were this young lady's present circumstances the result of some 
curse, it were a rather benign curse indeed.  Few in the long history of this 
world are they that could boast a greater sense of peace, of contentment than 
those evidently possessed of dear Marion.
    Alas, all things must change.  Marion herself well understood this truth.  
She knew the swamp's every mood.  Had watched as it grew, shifted, and morphed 
over the years.  Just as some part of her was aware that she herself had grown, 
had changed.  There was nothing untoward, nothing troublesome in this.  As 
parts of the swamp had dried up, had in-effect died, others had grown more 
damp, more boisterously fecund, filling with all manner of fish and fowl, with 
riotous growths of cattails, pussywillows, mosses, berries, frogs, snakes and 
the like.  So too, Marion knew that she was alive, that some day she would die, 
and that the world around her would continue, growing and changing.   Such 
thoughts little-troubled her.
    Making her way idly back to her hut, stooping to pick mushrooms and pluck 
berries as she went, she continued to sing.

    "Mushrooms and berries, oh won't you sing with me?
    Else you'll never know all the joys a song can bring!
    Berries and mushrooms, please yoke your tongues to song.
    I'll help you with the words, O I'll help you sing alo——"

    She let the song trail off rather abruptly, as something off to the side of 
the narrow path she walked caught her eye.  It was something metallic, gleaming 
in the rays of mid-afternoon sunlight that had finally begun to burn through 
the fog.  She could not stray too far off the path here, for fear of plunging 
deep into the mire, never to escape.  But she moved as close as she dared, 
peering at the mysterious 
object, glinting a half dozen paces further in the muck.  At once, an idea 
struck her.  She turned and continued on home, still humming softly to herself 
as she went.
    Soon she was stooping between curtains of swamp-grass, entering the dim, 
musty interior of her hut——one hesitates to call it a hovel, though only 
out of a sense of charity for her efforts.  Inside, she set down her sack of 
forage, forgetting it instantly, and began rummaging in a pile of rubbish and 
oddments stacked near the pallet of moss, wood, and leaves that served as her 
bed.  Soon she'd found what her hands sought in the pile: an old, frayed, but 
partially serviceable net of hempen rope.  In an instant she was back out the 
door, nearly skipping as she hastened back to the spot where she'd spied the 
mysterious object.
    There it remained, glinting yet more brightly as the fog continued to 
recede.  After several attempts with the net, she began to doubt that she could 
retrieve the object.  The strands of rope seemed to slip right over it without 
gaining purchase.  She continued to draw the net back, carefully lay it out, 
gather it, and cast it again.  Finally, after nearly a dozen tries, the net 
seemed to snag on one edge of the object.  With great care she gradually pulled 
in the net, drawing the object with it.  Soon it was within a couple of 
arm-spans from her and she could see that it was some sort of bucket, 
overturned in the muck.  Two more steady, measured tugs and she was reaching 
down, elbow deep into the thick soupy water, grasping the bucket by its edge, 
and prising it from the swamp's sucking grasp.  She plopped back into the limp, 
slippery grass, bucket in her lap, and with something approaching gleeful 
anticipation, turned the bucket over, peering inside.
    Out of the slime-strewn pail, a blinding flash of golden light, rays warmer 
than the sun's, catching her full in the face.  She reeled back, startled, 
blinded, eyes clenched shut and a strange, bewildered gasp fluttering limply 
like a wounded bird from her lips.  Instinctively she'd tossed the bucket from 
her, to land face down by her feet.
    Slowly, cautiously, she unclenched her eyes, lifted her lids.  And moaned 
again, for she could not see.

    By something approaching a miracle she managed to find the grassy curtains 
of her hut, bucket and net clutched in her hands, and crawl inside, just at 
dusk.  She knew it was dusk from the fading warmth on her skin, the chill 
breeze that often began at the closing of day, and moreover by certain changes 
in sound from the swamp itself:  Nocturnal creatures coming awake, birds 
twittering as they feathered their nests, bats swooping for insects close by.  
Usually these sounds filled her with tranquility.  This evening she was only 
faintly aware of them as she collapsed onto her pallet and began to do 
something she could not ever recall having done in the past: sobbing.
    It was no easy task, adjusting to her new condition, even from a practical 
standpoint.  She dropped mushrooms on the floor, had to search for them with 
her fingers.  She scalded herself more than once on the rim of the old iron pot 
she used to prepare her stews.  When, after several days, her sack almost 
empty, she knew she'd have to venture out of the hut, she was terribly 
frightened that she would get lost and never find her hut again.  Or that she 
would stumble or slip unseeing into a deep patch of the treacherous bog.  In 
her mind she could picture the thick murk closing over her head, drowning her, 
and she would sit, shuddering and moaning, petrified. But at last, hunger and 
thirst gnawing at her, she crawled outside.  It was morning, she could tell.  
Some part of her had instinctively kept track of time.  First she set about 
gathering what dry kindling and wood she could find in the grassy clearing 
around her hut, questing with her hands, for she'd all but run out of fuel for 
her cook-fire as well.  The relatively fresh air of the swamp felt wonderful 
after the smoky, damp interior of the hut.  She piled her stock of dried 
grasses, bits of bark, branches, twigs, and small chunks of log next to the 
curtains of the hut.  Then, steeling herself, she set off in a cautions, 
half-crouched gait down the thin trail she herself had worn over the years, 
sack clutched in one hand.  In her mind she pictured every twist and turn that 
led to the copse of half-rotted trees where one of the richest crop of 
mushrooms was to be found this time of year.  She thought of the sounds and the 
smells she would encounter along the way, how in certain spots the ground would 
grow soft and spongy, ans she must be very careful indeed.  How when she neared 
the trees she'd hear the trilling of the several types of song-birds that made 
those rotted trunks their homes.  Filled with a small measure of confidence, 
she continued on.
    After what felt like half a day of careful progress, but may only have been 
a hundred or two dozen heartbeats (she'd quickly lost count) she stood, one 
muddy toe dipped in the water, hesitating before the most treacherous part of 
the journey.  She would have to cross a stretch of knee to waste-high water, 
navigating around the deeper parts, usually visible as patches of darker murk, 
only from memory.  She'd made this crossing many times, and could picture it 
well.  Still, one misstep....  She lifted the foot, moved it forward, then 
stopped, brought it back to firm ground, gripped by sudden fear.  Lifted it 
again.  Hesitated.  Began to move it forward into the water.  And stopped 
suddenly, startled, as a voice broke the stillness of the swamp, close behind 
her.
    "Might I offer some assistance?"
    She turned instinctively towards the voice, despite her blindness.  "Who is 
there?" she croaked, her own voice not having seen use in several days.
    "Only one who would offer assistance," the slightly silky voice rejoined, 
now to her left instead of behind her.
    "And who are you?"
    "Alas, I'm not permitted to say."
    "Why not?  Who won't permit it?"
    "My own memory, I'm afraid," with which he offered a strange cackle 
somewhat at-odds with his silky voice.  "Like yourself," the voice continued, 
"any memory of who I am or was seems to have fled me.  Only, in my case it's 
much worse.  You, at least, still seem to be aware that you are a young woman.  
Alas I can't say the same for I'm afraid I haven't a clue _what_ I am."  Here 
the voice sighed, musingly.  For several moments Marion was at a loss for 
words.  The voice seemed to wait, patiently.
    "Well, why would you help me?  And how can I trust you?"
    The voice seemed pleased.  "Both of _those_ questions I can answer, 
honestly, in one sentence:  I find the thought of an innocent creature such as 
yourself drowning in a bog... utterly distasteful.  Although I can't say why 
that should be the case, or why I should care one moldy stump for a creature 
like yourself, nonetheless it is, and I do."
    For one who could not ever recall having had a conversation, the torrent of 
words flooding into her mind left her confused, facing a congeries of new 
emotions also foreign to her memory: thoughts of companionship, of trust, 
fellowship.  And alien concepts like deceit, treachery, ill-will.  And yet, 
through it all, the thought of stumbling alone, blind into the deeper waters 
filled her with more dread than that of trusting the strange voice.
    "Alright, I will accept your kind offer.  But——"
    "Wonderful.  In that case, you must proceed into the waters, but _I_ shall 
proceed _you_, and I will call out at once and direct you, should you be near 
to stepping away from the safest route.  Now, please commence."
    Seeing no other option, except eventual starvation, she drew in and 
released a long breath, preparing, picturing in her ind the route she had taken 
so many times before, without a second's thought.  If the voice tried to trick 
her, she reasoned, she would know.  She raised her arms for balance and stepped 
slowly from the bank into the shin-deep water.  One step.  And then another, 
feeling the mud oozing between her toes.  Another step.  Another.  The water 
began to deepen.  Another step.  A sharp stick poked the side of her foot.  
Just where she remembered it.  Another step.  Then she paused.
    "Are you there?"
    "Indeed. I'm but a few steps ahead of you," came the silky voice.  Suddenly 
she was filled with far more fear, verging on terror.  For she hadn't heard the 
source of the voice make a single sound, passing before her through the water.  
She forced herself to take another step, then another, saying nothing.  Another 
step, angling to the left, following the vision in her mind.  Further left 
around a deeper section.  Still, the water was at her knees, the mud high up 
her shins.  Each step took more effort, prising one foot from the muck, moving 
it forward, lowering it even deeper into muck, repeating with the other foot.  
Slow.  Deliberate.  She was around the first of the treacherous pits.  Several 
more steps in what she could only hope was the right direction.  In in a few 
more steps there should be a dead tree projecting up out of the swamp at a 
sever angle.  Another step.  Another.  She groped with her hands, nut felt 
nothing.  Another.  There!  She felt a flush of triumph as her hands found the 
spongy trunk.  Th mud here was nearing her knees, the water risen accordingly.
    "You're doing quite well, I must say," came the voice.  "perhaps you shan't 
need my help at all."
    She remained silent, focusing.  This was the last landmark she would find, 
until she reached firmer ground on the far side.  She pictured the route, took 
a deep breath, forcing it shuddering through her lips, and set out from the 
trunk.  Two more steps.  She began to angle right, to avoid the next deep pit 
of mud.  The distance between the mud and the top of the water decreased, as 
the mud itself grew deeper and more cloying.  She struggled on.  Around the 
second pit.  She was close now, but this next part was the trickiest of all.  
There was a narrow strip of higher, firmer mud, between two deeper holes.  
Beyond that only a few paces was the bank.  She continued on.  Yes.  Small bits 
of gravel, sharp beneath her feet as they sunk down into the mud.  She was in 
the right spot, at the start of the thin strip.  She lifted a foot strenuously 
out of the muck for another step.
    "Caution!" came the voice, a little ahead and to the left of her.  "you're 
straying too far right.  Come just a little ways towards me."
    She paused, considering.  Then decided.  Gingerly she lowered her foot, 
where it was, into the muck.  And kept lowering it, while struggling to keep 
enough weight on her back foot to retract the front.  Any further ans she would 
know.  If she pressed down and her foot continued to plunge, she was lost.  If 
the ground held firm, she still had her bearings.
    "Not there, I'm warning you!" came the voice again.  She wriggled her foot, 
minutely.  And could feel bits of gravel.  She pressed down.  It held.
    "One step farther in that direction and you'll surely drown.  I won't be 
able to pull you free," cautioned the voice, a little further to the left now.  
She ignored it, took another step.  More gravel, thicker.  With building 
confidence, a third.  A fourth, and she was through the strip, she knew.  She 
continued with slow steady steps, felt the ground begin to firm up, the water 
to lower as she gradually climbed from the bog.  And finally, in front of her, 
she felt slippery grass on a firm bank.  She climbed up and sat panting, 
feeling warmth on her face, more winded than she'd realized.
    "After a while the voice spoke again, close by her on the bank.  She was 
startled, almost having forgotten it's existence.
    "I see I wasn't able to trick you back there."  It sounded nonplussed.  
Dejected even.  "All the more must I applaud your skill, and moreover your 
faith in yourself."
    "Why?  Why would you want to trick me?  To drown me?"
    "Well, you see, I wasn't entirely lying to you earlier.  I truly have no 
notion of who, or what I am, or where I came from.  One of the few things I 
_am_ certain of is that I find the thought of an innocent creature such as 
yourself drowning in a bog... utterly delicious.  Although I can't say why that 
should be the case, or why I should care one moldy stump to trick a creature 
like yourself, nonetheless it is, and I do."
    She shuddered at the silky ease with which he voiced such utterances.  
"Please," she said firmly towards the voice, "leave me be."
    At this the voice let loose another eerie cackle.  "Leave you be?  Simply 
leave you be?"  He sounded incredulous.  "That's... simply not how this works, 
my dear.  I made a mistake earlier.  I thought you were truly helpless.  Now 
though, I must redouble my efforts!"
    "Why would you tell me that?"
    "So that it will weigh on your mind, of course.  So that you'll lose sleep. 
 With that, I must be going.  But you'll be seeing, or rather hearing from me 
soon!"  The voice was already drifting away across the marshes.
    "Wait!" Marion cried.  The voice merely cackled in the distance.  "Wait!  
I'll make you a bargain!" she shouted after it.
    "A bargain?" asked the voice, suddenly quite close.  "A bargain?  What 
could you possibly have to bargain with?"
    "I have something very special.  Something very strange.  It's what made 
me——" She stopped herself.  "It's what made me able to hear you, I think."
    "I can see that you're not lying.  Curious.  Still, why should I care more 
than a rotting log about your very special, very strange something?"
    "Well," she hesitated, "aren't you bored?  Isn't that really why you're out 
here trying to drown me, or make me go mad, or whatever it is you're trying to 
do, in the first place?"
    "Hmm," mused the voice.  "You may have a fair point there."
    "Besides," Marion continued, "if it turns out to be not worth the trouble, 
you can always return to trying to trick me into drowning myself."
    "Yes, that is true," the voice admitted.
    "But if it _does_ turn out to be as strange and as special as I say, you 
must agree to leave me be, forever after."
    But there's one problem, my dear.  I already know exactly where you live.  
I've been trying to trick you for years.  But it wasn't until today that you 
could finally hear me.  So, what's stopping me from merely whisking away to 
your abode, to check out this strange, special something all on my own, no 
bargain required?"
    "Well, because it looks perfectly ordinary.  Only I know how to use it."
    The voice was silent for a few moments.  "Oh, alright.  You have a bargain."
    "Bargain, she echoed, nodding affirmatively.  Then she began gathering up 
mud into piles to either side of her.
    "What are you doing?" asked the voice.
    "I need to mark this spot, so I know just where to cross when we return 
back."
    "But you're sitting right there.  Let's be on our way!"
    "I've come all this way to gather mushrooms and berries.  If I don't pick 
any, I'll starve."
    "I see.  I sometimes forget about such things."
    She nodded, stood, and moved to the trees, groping for mushrooms with her 
hands as she went.  Soon enough, she had about as much as she thought safe for 
the worn old sack to carry, and a few handfuls of the hard red berries that 
grew in the swamp mixed in besides.  She returned to the two small cairns of 
mud and stood between them like the threshold of a doorway.
    "Alright, time to return home.  Don't even think of trying to trick me this 
time."
    "Fret not, I shan't," replied the voice with silky cheeriness.
    Again she concentrated, picturing the layout of the stretch of bog.  Then 
she set out, forage-sack hoisted high on one shoulder, knotted at the end.
    "You're right on the path," came the voice as she entered the thin 
dangerous strip.  She felt the gravel pressing sharp and reassuring into the 
soles of her feet.
    "I know."  She continued on.  The return crossing was not as tricky as she 
had expected.  Everything reversed, she had half-expected to make a wrong turn, 
or drift slightly off-course.  The voice offered several truthful, but 
unhelpful words of encouragement.  Unhelpful in that they made her second-guess 
herself.  But, soon enough she felt the ground begin to firm and rise before 
her, and then she was once more on the bank.  She sighed with relief as she 
wiped some of the mud off of her feet on the wispy grass.
    "Excellent," proclaimed the voice with a touch of impatience.  "Now, let's 
be off."
    She nodded and set out, frequently reminding herself to slow down, go with 
caution, as they made their way back toward her hut.  It was late in the 
afternoon when they finally reached the clearing.  Throughout the trek the 
voice had been muttering animatedly to itself, just out of earshot.  Several 
times it had asked her questions about the 'strange, special something,' but 
each time she'd refused to elaborate.
    "I don't want to spoil the surprise.  Then it won't be as exciting or 
interesting for you, and I'll lose my bargain!" Each time this managed to 
silence the voice for a while, but then he would begin pestering her with 
questions once again.  Now, in sight of her hut, she could almost _feel_ his 
agitation.
    "We've arrived!  We've arrived!  Now show me this very special, this very 
strange something," the voice persisted.
    "Alright.  Come with me, into the hut."  She lowered herself and crawled 
inside.
    "Where is it?" asked the voice, close by in the cramped interior.  She had 
set her sack down and was groping with her hands.
    "Here," she said, pulling the bucket to her with the opening pressed firmly 
against the ground.
     "A bucket?" the voice asked, filled with disappointment and some disdain.  
"A bucket?" it repeated.
    "No, silly.  Its what's _inside_ of the bucket."
    "I see," said the voice, sounding only slightly reassured.
    Everything hinged on this next part.  She honestly had no idea what would 
happen.  "Now listen," she said, "this next part is very important.  You must 
do exactly as I tell you, or this isn't going to work.  Then we'll both have to 
wait a _long_ time before we can try again."
    "I'm listening," the silky voice responded.
    "I'm going to count to three then I'm going to flip the bucket, like this," 
she mimed with her hands.  "You must be right in front of the bucket.  The 
secret, special, very strange something only shows itself for an instant, so 
you must be sure to be looking directly into the bucket."
    "I understand," came the voice, impatient, from directly before her and the 
bucket.
    "Alright. On three.  One.  Two.  _Three_."  She flipped the bucket, 
screwing her eyes tight just in case.
    "Aaaiiiiieeeeeeeeee!" shrieked the voice.

    ~

    In the coming weeks, Marion became more sure of herself.  She found she 
didn't need her sight to move about the swamp or do the various things 
necessary to keep herself alive.  Though she did miss seeing the bright plumage 
of the song birds, or watching the golden rays of sunlight breaking through the 
fog out over the swamp, or the shadowy shapes of bats flitting between trees in 
the silvery moonlight.  There were a hundred things she missed.  But she would 
survive.  Soon enough she found songs once more rising to her lips.  Silly, 
carefree songs like before, as she foraged in the forest, or struck sparks from 
an old flint in her hut.

    "I'm listening to my voice, and my voice listens to me.
    I and my voice, my voice and I, we're happy as can be."

    She paused to put a handful of ripe berried in her mouth.
    "Marion!" called the voice from across the clearing.  "Marion!  Where are 
you?"
    "I'm over here, silly!" she called back.  "Can't you hear me singing?"
    "Oh.  Is that what that was.  Why do you do that?"
    "Because I like to.  It makes me happy."
    "I see.  Or rather, I don't.  But if I could, I'm sure I would."
    She smiled, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face.

Fin