Truthseer by Jay Aspen

Author:Jay Aspen [Aspen, Jay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sandfire Publishing
Published: 2019-06-28T06:00:00+00:00

23

Jac watched as Fin stopped in a wide flat clearing and knelt on the bare ground, her hands pressed to the earth. Not knowing what else to do, she followed suit.

‘Fin, am I allowed to actually know what we’re doing?’

‘Looking for mycorrhiza. I need to find a spot with less defoliant residue so there are still enough healthy living strands to work on. This is good. If we clear this area first, it’s big enough that Hennek’s replanting next week should see them through at least till winter.’ Fin stood up, holding out the bag of collected soil.

Jac scrambled to her feet again. ‘Okay, I’ve heard of mycoremediation. We tried it when our neighbours got poison-sprayed a couple of years ago, next valley to our farm. It does help but it takes months to really get things back healthy again. How am I supposed to do it in ten minutes while the jeep fills?’

‘Absorb the poison through your palms and then neutralize it. You know how to do it now. Then you connect with fungus filaments in the soil and strengthen the catalyst you find there.’ Fin emptied half the bag’s contents into Jac’s cupped hands, taking the rest herself. ‘That’s why I took this from nearer the house where it got the heaviest dose.’

Jac prepared to go into lieth-focus, then looked at the yellowish, poison-laced soil in her hands and hesitated. The smell and feel of it was all wrong somehow.

‘Is this going to hurt?’

‘Probably.’

Deciding it might be better to just go for it rather than think about it too much, Jac squeezed the damp soil to increase contact with her palms and focused on the sour, acrid flow of defoliant molecules leaching into her skin. It wasn’t as painful as the snake venom but there was something rank and unnatural about it. Nausea filled her whole body as if even her limbs were trying to reject the stuff. She wanted desperately to pull away but somehow Fin’s dominating presence prevented her.

To her surprise the transmutation came suddenly, as if the memory of the process was already habit at a molecular level, even with the difference in the chemistry she was taking in. She sensed an echoing frisson of surprise from Fin, alerting her to follow her mentor’s lead and throw away the soil in her hands.

Fin caught her arm as the movement threw her off balance, helping her kneel on the ground again without falling, issuing instructions as she did so.

‘Now connect with the mycorrhiza in the soil and strengthen the catalyst they already have.’

Jac clawed her fingers into the crumbling soil, sensing the connection when her hands met the white tangle of mycorrhizal strands. This time her body-awareness recognized the catalyst they contained, similar to her own but subtly different. She closed her eyes and tried to relax enough to let her own antidote spread outward. It was difficult at first but once the movement started she found her awareness flowing into the millions of tiny white filaments running through the earth.

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