It was too quiet. In the forest there had been the birdsong: robins, cardinals, blue jays, mockingbirds. They were such chatterboxes. And chipmunks—at first the Amanita thought they were birds because they chirped. And there were insects, crickets clicking and cicadas singing seven-year songs. Wind rushed through the trees. Rain pattered. Deer walked by, their hooves chik-chacking in the fallen leaves. In the marsh pond, at the edge of the woods, bullfrogs bellowed and peepers peeped.
It had been too quiet for too long. The last sounds the Amanita heard were mumblings coming from a place somewhere far away. It was hot and dry boxed up. The mushroom was dehydrating; its once-plump flesh was shriveled and discolored, and shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.
Back in the forest that the Amanita missed so much, it was raining and the wind was blowing. Not a big blow, more of a puff, or a tussle, which ruffled the leaves of the trees and sent the woodland creatures scampering. The wind was bored. It looked north. There was nothing going on up there. Down south it was hot and still, too late for spring floods, too early for hurricane season. It gusted over to where the fallen tree lay. There were those uppity poisonous mushrooms. The wind considered for an instant trying to knock them over, but they were glued down too tight. It probably wasn’t worth the effort. So instead it twisted itself into a figure eight and spiraled out again before heading west to the opposite coast where the peacock-blue waters of the Pacific were waiting.