Where the Purple Mushrooms Grow

Spying a mouse scurrying along a wall, the barn owl lifted his wings and launched silently into the night air, flying arrow-true to the empty space where he and the quarry should soon converge. But at the last possible moment, the mouse dove into a hole in the wall as the owl’s talons closed and he coughed in frustration.

Not accustomed to prey eluding him, the owl remarked irritably, “Come, come, brother mouse, I have trapped you fair and square. Come out and make an end of it.”

“Thank you very kindly,” the mouse replied, “I am very fine where I am.” He began to gnaw on the wood inside the hole as the owl impatiently harrumphed at the mouse’s unwillingness to admit to the sad reality of his circumstances.

“We’re both hungry, I think. You, for the grain in the barn, and myself, for a fine fat, mouse.”

“Master Owl is hungry, maybe, but I am not.”

“Of course, you’re hungry. Mice are always hungry.”

“I have visited Mistress Willow by the stream where the purple mushrooms grow. I never hunger or thirst.”

I should very much like to never hunger or thirst, the owl thought. “But surely you are mistaken, brother mouse. Why do you scurry about in the night if you are not hungry? You could be safe in your little home underground, instead of trapped by me.”

“I have always scurried about and do not know how to stop, Master Owl.”

“I can fix that,” the owl said sourly.

But the conversation seemingly at an end, the little mouse grew quiet.

Eventually the owl tired of waiting outside the little hole and returned to his perch as silently as he had left it. His stomach complaining, he kept his eye on the hole where the mouse still hid. He tried to comfort his stomach by thinking, I will not miss him a second time. But the night ended without the mouse emerging, the now angry and very hungry owl blinking unhappily in the early morning light.

After the slow passing of the day, twilight blue finally surrendering to midnight black, the owl’s sharp eyes restlessly gazed at the hole from his perch. But when one hour and then two passed without so much as a whisker appearing in the mouth of the hole, the owl leaped from his perch into the air and flew straight to the mouse’s hiding place.

“Brother mouse, are you there?”

“Yes,” he replied with a yawn, “I am still here.”

“Why aren’t you scurrying about?”

“Master Owl has cured me of scurrying.”

“But aren’t you hungry? I am. I’m so hungry the mildewed grain the cattle left behind is starting to look good.”

“I’m not hungry at all.” Whiskers twitching, brother mouse’s bright, dark eyes appeared for the first time at the opening. “Mistress Willow cured me of hunger and thirst.”

I should very much like to never hunger or thirst, the owl thought a second time. “Where did you say Mistress Willow lives?”

“In the wood by the stream where the purple mushrooms grow,” he answered sleepily. Then he withdrew into the hole, rolled onto his side and closed his bright little eyes to nap.

The owl flew through the barn window facing the wood and soared swiftly into the night till he spied a stream coursing through the trees and followed it for several miles. When he finally reached the old willow hunched over the water’s edge, he landed at its base. The water lapped at the tree’s roots, pushed by a gentle breeze, while Owl wondered how one speaks to a tree as old as the willow seemed to be. After taking a few sips of rainwater that had collected in a depression where two large roots had merged, he sadly realized that he was hungrier than ever.

“Master, or is it Mistress? Oh me, I don’t remember,” he stammered, “I do not want to hunger or thirst ever again.”

“Drink,” Mistress Willow whispered.

The owl bent his beak to the rainwater a second time and took a few more sips.

“I’m still hungry.”

“Drink more,” the tree hissed.

The owl drank a little more, but each time he stopped Mistress Willow told him to drink again till all the water in the depression was gone. At its bottom grew a small patch of wet and bedraggled mushrooms.

“Eat,” Mistress Willow whispered.

But the owl, his stomach now sloshing with water, replied, “But I’m no longer hungry.”

“Eat!” the tree commanded, and the owl grasped the smallest mushroom with his beak and closed his wide eyes to force the bitter thing down his throat. Much as she had urged him to drink all the water, Willow now redoubled her efforts to persuade the owl to continue eating the nasty purple caps until none remained. And when the owl swallowed the final, bitter beak full, he flopped onto his back as though dead, his only thought that he did not want to eat or drink ever again.

If the owl had been human, he would have vomited the sickening mushrooms long before finishing them. But strictly speaking, owls do not vomit. Their digestive system filters out bones and feathers that they regurgitate later much as a cat coughs up a hairball. But the mushrooms were neither bone nor feather, their bitterness as he swallowed them a warning of consequences that he had failed to heed.

The stars and the moon spun and danced about the night sky as poor, brother owl grew increasingly ill. As he lay moaning, he devoutly wished he had never spoken to brother mouse or ever heard the tale of the willow where the purple mushrooms grow. But the gentle breeze began to grow to a mighty wind till it moaned in agony like a great, injured beast, the branches in the willow rattling like bones above the owl as they swayed. The sky darkening with storm clouds, a hard rain began to fall, brother owl helplessly whimpering “Oh me, oh my,” till Mistress Willow called out so loudly that terror silenced him, her words as angry in the moment as they were formerly gentle.

“Why?” her voice roared with the wind.

But brother owl closed his eyes, hoping she spoke to someone other than him.

“Why?” She demanded a second time.

“Whooo,” the owl replied, before clamping his beak shut in horror.

“WHY ARE YOU HERE?”

“To never hunger or thirst again like brother mouse,” he answered wretchedly, “but now I just want to get out of this rain and return to my dry loft and sleep.”

The wind and the rain began to let up as brother owl trembled in expectation of some terrible punishment. But instead, Mistress Willow’s voice returned, this time still and small. “You have had every advantage over brother mouse,” she said in quiet rebuke. “Your beak and talons are deadly sharp; you are stronger, faster, stealthier, and possess greater hearing than any of your animal brethren. And yet,” the voice said incredulously, “you envy brother mouse his full belly? I will not take back from brother mouse what little I have given him, nor will I take from you your hunger or thirst.”

Even though Mistress Willow spoke with her former gentleness, brother owl helplessly trembled until she grew silent. He did not moan or whimper again through the remaining hours of the night for fear that her voice might return. In the morning, though greatly weakened by hunger, he felt strong enough to test his wings, and flew a half a mile to a meadow with a lone oak at its center. After landing on a heavy branch within its protective foliage, he immediately fell asleep, and did not awaken until the night sky had filled with stars. After two days without eating, he hunted voles in the meadow and caught three in a quarter of the time he had wasted conversing with brother mouse. Happily for brother owl, the voles had never thought to visit Mistress Willow by the stream where the little purple mushrooms grow.

Although the little mouse had never truly visited the ancient willow, he had heard the story told so many times that it seemed as much a part of his personal story as of the collective story of his family and their ancestor, the first woodland mouse to eat the purple mushrooms a thousand generations before.

The night that brother owl lay on his back and whimpered in self-pity, the little mouse and his siblings scurried to and fro between the little piles of grain to a dozen different mouse-sized holes in the walls of the old barn, their cheeks bulging.

The owl cannot understand why brother mouse does not experience hunger or thirst since he does not cache mice or water, nor does he store them in his fat like brothers’ bear or badger. Brother owl pays a heavy price for the light and lithe body that makes his swift and silent flight possible. When bad hunting or weather comes, as they surely will, he will always be one meal away from starving while brother mouse sleeps soundly, his belly filled with grain.