Winter solstice part 3
They drove through the night to Ellis CreekRoad. Jayden looked over to Matt as he was driving. They turned into an orangegravel road. It was jarrah forest, deep and funky with fungi. He could smellthe damp settling in for the night after a day’s meagre sunlight. ‘Close now,yeah?’ He asked Matt. The forest was crowding them now. Jayden could feel itclosing around the car. Forget Matt’s bikie family, the trees were enough. Theystopped the car at the pine plantation growing in the middle of the jarrahforest.
‘This is the spot,’ said Matt.
‘Hey, we’ve got these,’ Jayden handed Matt anMDMA tab. ‘Special occasion. Let’s go picking.’ The two young men stuffed somebeers, rollie papers, water and plastic bags into their backpacks. Jaydenlocked his car and they walked into the pine forest.
The moon was fully over the trees now andmaking shadows of them. Their boots trod quiet upon the pine needles. Snufflingof roosting cockatoos and the scampering of critters up trees. A bird flewoverhead and screeched at four points of the compass. ‘Owlet nightjar,’ saidJayden. ‘How do you know that shit?’ Said Matt. Jayden couldn’t explain that.Too many references to his Mum’s knowledge would be getting weird now.
‘Do you think anyone’s out here?’ said Matt. ‘…oh hey hey here we go, Jay!’ Matt’s whole dank demeanour changed into a caperingCatweasle. In the groove of the trees, he shone his phone torch on a grove oftiny mushrooms. They poked out of the pine needles like tiny fists, all yellowyand nippled in their centres.
As they both stared at the psilocybin mushrooms,Jayden felt his trip coming on. It was almost as though by looking at them,they communicated their properties to him. He bent down to one of them andtapped its cap to loosen the spores into the earth before he picked it. Hisback teeth began thrumming as the MDMA kicked in. He closed his fingers aroundthe stem of the mushroom. He could feel the muscles in his crouch and the moon’sbenevolence. He knew the owlet nightjar was watching him. His balls weretingling and the forest was saying, ‘Best leave now, son!’ The mushroomscreamed as he broke it.
Jayden picked just one magic mushroom. Thenoise of his plastic bag in the moonlight, as he dragged it out of his backpackand put the mushroom inside, felt deafening. Matt was running between channelsof pine trees and shouting in a kind of whisper. ‘Oh my God, Jay, Jay! There’sfucking heaps of them.’
Then Jayden saw lights and he wasn’t sure ifthe lights were behind his own eyes or in front of them. But then Matt wasrunning towards him, his backpack jogging on his back and a white plasticshopping bag swinging to one side. ‘Turn off your light man,’ he said. ‘Gotplenty anyway. Turn off your light.’
Matt was on his own trip, Jayden realised. Butturning off their phone torches was probably a good idea. They walked together upa slope in the pine plantation until they got to a peak where they could seedown to a water reservoir.
Jayden tried. ‘You know Matt, we’ve been matessince like forever.’
The full moon lit up the water.
‘What the fuck,’ Matt said. ‘Dad killedsomeone. He’s going to jail, Jay. He killed someone.’ Matt began to weep.
Jayden put his arm around his friend’sshoulders. ‘Mum will really like these shrooms too,’ he said and then rememberedthat night out poaching, when he felt scared and small and cold and his Mum wasranting about poetry or something and about the end of the world.
