The Willow Wren by Philipp Schott (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📕

It was easy for me to find a place in the forest where others were less likely to be because I knew the smaller, more hidden pathways. Moreover, I was no longer nervous to be there on my own. I had always felt very confident and in my element in the forest, but the deer slaughter and the talk of witches and the Rübezahl had unnerved me a little, if I am fully honest with myself. But now there was no wildlife left to hunt, so the chance of encountering hungry machine-gun-carrying Russians was much lower, and now that I was thirteen, I had decided to make a careful rational examination of my previous belief in witches. The conclusion of this examination was that the witch stories were probably based on real women who had an unusual knowledge of herbs and special plants and who were viewed as strange outsiders but who did not otherwise possess special powers. Moreover, they were no more likely to eat children than anyone else was, which was not very likely at all.

The boys at school had been trading rumours about cannibalism and they all involved people in the ruined cities driven mad by trauma, grief and starvation. In particular somebody in Dresden or possibly Hamburg or Duisburg — accounts varied — was scavenging flesh from dead bodies, processing it through a meat grinder and selling it as fresh ground pork. I was skeptical but took note that it was always in cities, never forests. I also took note that the perpetrators in these stories were always men, never women and certainly not elderly women. Consequently I was only briefly taken aback when I encountered a very old woman, stooped and using a cane, in a distant clearing in the forest. She had her white hair tucked into a red kerchief and her nose was long and hooked, so she looked very much like a fairy-tale witch. I did not notice a wart though. When she spoke to me her voice was soft and gentle, not at all like the screechy voice Mama used when she spoke the witch’s parts in “Hansel und Gretel.” She had been looking at a patch of chanterelles when we saw each other.

“Hello, how is your day?” she asked.

“It is good, thank you. And yours?”

“Good as well. It is beautiful and peaceful in here as always.”

The strict rule among mushroom hunters was that while it was permissible to exchange pleasantries, one could never ask the other person how the mushroom hunting was going, let alone ask where they were finding their mushrooms. That would be tantamount to asking them for the keys to their bank vault! Everyone wondered but nobody asked or tried to follow, not ever. The system worked well. She picked the chanterelles, wished me a good day and shuffled off into the woods to the east. This was the direction I had intended to go, but protocol and custom prohibited me from doing so. Instead I turned west. The old woman had come from there, but I reasoned that her vision was probably not very sharp and that she might have missed some smaller mushrooms.

The birds had been quite active and loud in the deciduous patch of woods behind me, although the wren was absent that day. Ahead to the west it was all pines with very little undergrowth and almost no birds, save a trio of chickadees who appeared to be following me, hopping from branch to branch, perhaps hoping that I would drop something tasty. This did not look like a promising area for mushrooms, but then one never really knew for sure. Mushrooms were mysterious organisms and the speculation around their ways was often distinctly irrational to my ears. Then I spotted a Fliegenpilz (fly agaric, Amanita muscaria). It was beautiful, and as if on stage, it was lit by a single brilliant sunbeam that penetrated the otherwise dark canopy. If you can picture a fairy-tale toadstool in your mind’s eye, you are probably picturing a Fliegenpilz. They have white stems and brilliant red caps dotted with slightly raised white spots. I did not pick it because it is not something you would want to eat. They are not deadly, but they are not eaten because in addition to a very bitter taste they can cause nausea, sweating and in some cases very vivid and unwelcome hallucinations! Seeing the Fliegenpilz here confirmed that the old woman was not a witch, even in the non-magical sense. I had read that the tales of flying witches came from those old women who collected medicinal plants nibbling on Fliegenpilz to induce a euphoric sense of flight. No wonder these people were viewed with suspicion and outright fear! I do not know where the broomstick part of the stories comes from though. I looked at the Fliegenpilz for a few minutes, enjoying the brightly lit red against the dark green and brown all around. The chickadees had left, and the forest was silent.

The key, and I think unique, part of my mushroom hunting strategy took place back at the apartment. For this I must give credit to Mama. Apocalyptic world war, or no apocalyptic world war, education and knowledge were priorities for her. In addition to having our library sent from Leipzig to our very humble accommodations in Colditz, she also had our microscope sent. Yes, we had a microscope. It was a small student model mind you, but I am confident in stating that we possessed the only microscope in the Colditz district. This gave me a strong edge in the mushroom hunting competition because so many little brown mushrooms look essentially identical. The features described so confidently in the book as being distinctive sometimes blur alarmingly between edible and inedible species in real life. The Boletus luridifromis and Suillelus satanas mentioned before are an excellent example. Nobody should fully trust the very subtle differences in appearance, let alone their “instinct”