One Week of Wonder

6. Mabel's In a Jam

(August 24, 2015)

Part 3: Mushrooms and Jam

Teek and Mabel had reached a place where the creek broadened and curved, and they would have to climb the banks and set off through the woods again to reach the jam-making female Gnomes. On the grassy edge of the creek bank, in a shadowed nook, Mabel spotted a big cluster of off-white mushrooms sprouting on fallen tree trunks. They looked like fans stacked up in a shelf formation.

"Hold up," she said, pointing at them. "Are these poisonous?"

Teek stared at the mushrooms, reaching to adjust the glasses he no longer wore—an old habit. "I . . . don't know. I'm not a fungus expert."

"I know who is, though," Mabel said. She took out her phone. Only one bar here, but maybe . . . she speed-dialed Wendy.

"Mabes," Wendy said a moment later. "What up?"

"Put me on face time," Mabel said. "I want to ask you a question about something."

"Just a sec."

When Wendy's face appeared on her phone screen, Mabel said, "Take a look at these and tell me—wait, what happened to your hair? It's all messy."

"Wind," Wendy said, tossing her head. "Me and Dip are up on a hill, and it's breezy." She swept strands of red hair out of her face. "What am I looking at?"

"Breezy, huh?" Mabel asked suspiciously. No wind stirred where she was—admittedly, though, she stood on the edge of the woods, not up on an exposed hill. Leave that for later, though. She turned the phone, so Wendy could see the mushrooms. "What are these on the logs?"

"Get closer. You mean the mushrooms?" Wendy asked.

"Yeah. Are they poisonous?"

"Mm . . . no. Those are oyster mushrooms. You mean the brownish-white ones, right?"

"Right. Are they're edible?"

"Oh, yeah. Nutritious, too. Be sure that's what you got, though. Break a small piece of one cap off and smell it."

Mabel snapped off a dime-sized chunk and sniffed. "OK."

"What does it smell like?"

"Um . . . kinda hard to describe. Sort of spicy? A little like a red-hot, you know the candy? A little like, um, Dipper's dirty socks. Wait, wait, not like red-hots, more like licorice!"

Mabel could hear Dipper muttering in the background about the socks reference, but Wendy laughed. "Yeah, you got oyster mushrooms. They're OK to pick and eat. Want to know how to cook 'em?"

"No, they're not for us, they're for the Gnomes."

"OK. They're safe. While you're picking them, though, make sure you don't get into any poison oak."

"Gotcha. Go back to your so-called breeze, Wen! Thanks!" As Mabel put her phone away, she said, "I think Wendy and Dipper are doing some outdoor tussling! It's not that windy, but her hair was all tangled."

"Well, so is yours," Teek pointed out.

"But we've been traipsing through the woods!" Mabel said. "Got a handkerchief or something?"

"Traipsing?" Teek asked. "Um, handkerchief—yeah, here you go."

"Hold it like a little hammock. That's good." Mabel started to pick mushrooms. "Yeah, 'traipse.' It's a good word. It's like moseying, sauntering, ambling, you know, but sort of with an idea of slogging along, too. Move this way, I see another bunch."

"I don't know if this will hold many more," Teek said.

"Mm, yeah, I see. OK, let me tie the corners together . . . like this . . . and that . . .. Behold! A Gnome shopping bag!"

"But it's my handkerchief," Teek said.

"You'll get it back! Gnomes are crazy about mushrooms, but they've got a strange taboo against picking them! If some animal browses on mushrooms and drops some, Gnomes are all over it. Or if you want to trade with a Gnome, bring him a little basket of mushrooms and he'll give you the keys to his car!"

"Gnomes have cars?" Teek asked.

Mabel punched his shoulder. "Doy! It's a metaphor. It's like when the Dutch bought Manhattan Island from the natives for thirty dollars or something."

"That . . . never happened," Teek said. "It's a myth. Anyway, it's twenty-four dollars, and the value was a lot more than that back then. And the natives they thought they were buying it from didn't even own it to begin with. And to them it was more like a rental than a purchase."

"Yeah, bait and switch, that's New York for you," Mabel said. "Which way, now?"

"That way," Teek said, checking his GPS app and pointing. "But if Gnomes love mushrooms so much, why don't they just pick them? There's plenty in the woods!"

"It's a taboo! Like I said. Like if Wendy loves Dip so much, and he loves her, why doesn't she just jump his bones?"

"I—what? Bones? Mabel, what does that even—I mean, I think I know what you're talking about, but that's a weird thing to say!"

"It's old-timey slang I picked up from Grunkle Stan," Mabel said. "I see the smoke from the cooking pots! Where'd I put that acorn—oh, yeah, here it is! Come on!"

In another few minutes, they emerged from the forest into the clearing. The female Gnomes had evidently finished four more batches of their jam, because the collection of little earthenware jars had grown to a few hundred. "Hi again!" Mabel said. "Gnorma? Which one are you?"

"I'm right here," the head Gnomette said. "Did you see the Queen?"

"Oh, yeah, we did," Mabel told her. "Here. Jeff said to give you this to show that it's OK for us to have some jam." She held out the acorn, the point upwards, as Jeff had said.

"All right," Gnorma said, accepting the acorn even though she sounded uncertain.

"And as an extra added special gift, we brought you these!" Mabel said, untying the handkerchief and dumping the mushrooms onto a bare spot on one of the tables. "Ta-da!"

"Mushrooms!" Gnorma said.

The other Gnomes all stopped working and hurried over, crowding around and staring with greedy eyes. They were murmuring, "Niska, niska!" Mabel guessed that was their word for "mushrooms." Few Gnomes spoke English fluently, though Gnorma, like Jeff, seemed at ease with the language.

"What do you want?" Gnorma asked. "Anything! Name it!"

"One pot of each flavor of jam!" Mabel said. "That's all."

Gnorma said something in Gnomish, and a younger girl bustled around and brought over four of the little clay bottles. She said something, and Gnorma translated: "We tie little colored strings around the necks, see? Red is strongberry, blue is boobberry, purple is grope, yellow is graspberry. Ek twicka!"

"Twicka, twicka," murmured the younger Gnome, and she produced a Gnome-sized wooden spoon. Gnorma took it from her. "Here. You'll need this. When you try a jam, no more than one twicka! Sometimes young Gnomes eat too much, and it always makes them very sick!"

Mabel took the four tiny glazed earthenware pots—they seemed to be tightly stoppered, and none was leaking—and the miniature spoon. In human terms, it might have held somewhere between a quarter and an eighth of a teaspoon. "Thanks! The mushrooms are all yours! Nice doing business with you—hey, be sure to come to my birthday party next week, Monday, in the Mystery Shack! There's gonna be cake! And I'll make sure there are mushrooms, too!"

The Gnomes had closed in on the mushrooms, their hands opening and closing greedily. "Thank you!" Gnorma said. "I'll hand out the treats! Get back, everyone. I'll be fair!" In an aside, she said to Mabel, "You might want to go now. This could get ugly."

Teek and Mabel left, heading back toward the Shack—a long walk. Judging from the sun, it was early afternoon—maybe 12:30, maybe 1:00—and it would take more than an hour to get back on foot, even following the old lane where walking was relatively easy. At least the day was fine, warm but not too hot, and the lane offered plenty of shade.

"Wish we'd brought a picnic," Mabel muttered. "Well—at least I know where there's a pure water spring! We can get a drink, anyhow."

"Drink water that comes out of the ground?" Teek asked. He tended to be a little squeamish about things like that.

"It comes out of a rock," Mabel said. "It's just like well water. And it's pure. Wendy tested it to make sure it's safe. It's not far . . . over this way. Yeah, see down there?"

They could hear the tinkle of dripping water before they spotted it in the shadowed glen, half-hidden by a growth of rhododendrons. The water didn't gush but ran constantly from a vertical crack in a rock face, dropping down into a clear natural, small pool, and a rivulet wandered away from it, seeking the creek they had earlier passed, probably. Mabel cupped her hands under the miniature waterfall and sipped. "Come on, don't be chicken! It's good water."

Reluctantly, Teek followed her lead and found the water did taste good, bracing, cold, and just tinged, not unpleasantly, with minerals. When they had drunk as much of it as they wanted, they rested for a few minutes, sitting on a rounded boulder. Mabel had tied the pots of jam up in the handkerchief, and she took one out, the one with a red string around the neck. "Strawberry," she said, working the wooden plug loose and sniffing. "My favorite. What did I do with the little spoon? Here it is. Want some?"

"I don't think so," Teek said. "I'm not sure I trust it."

"Oh, come on!" Mabel said. "To listen to you, there's nothing safe to drink or eat if it doesn't come wrapped in plastic! Hey, I've eaten pine cones before! And wallpaper!"

"Just not hungry," Teek said.

Mabel held the miniature wooden spoon between thumb and forefinger and scooped out a tiny bit of the jam. "Well, I'm gonna sample this," she said. She put the little dollop of jam on her tongue and made a face like a wine connoisseur savoring a rare vintage. "Huh. It doesn't taste like strawberry. It's not even sweet, just sort of . . . bland. Kind of like unflavored gelatin and kind of like white glue. Not bad, but not what I expected." She replaced the stopper in the jar.

"We'd better go," Teek said. "You wanted to do a couple of other things this afternoon before I have to go home again."

"OK," Mabel said. "Let me rinse the spoon." She went over to the spring and took care of that, then stretched. "At least the rest's done me good. I feel great."

Teek stood up. "Let's go."

She grabbed him. "First I need another kiss!" she announced.

"Ugh—not so tight!" Teek said. "Mmnnph!"

Mabel broke the kiss with a loud smack, grinning. "Mm! Love it! That was a good one! Uh—Teek? You OK?"

Teek had turned faintly blue. "Can't breathe!" he gasped. "Put me down! Please!"

"Put you—oh, my gosh!"

Hurriedly, Mabel set Teek back on his feet. Without realizing it, without even knowing she was doing it, she had lifted him clear off the ground, she with her back bent, him with his toes dangling inches off the ground. "Whoo!" he gasped. "I think you bruised my ribs! What the heck, Mabel?"

"I didn't mean to!" she said. "Wait, let me try something. I won't hurt you. Relax."

She scooped him up, one arm behind his back, the other behind his bent knees, lifting him as if he were a baby, and held him in her arms. He didn't seem to weigh more than a pound or two. "Wow," she said, hefting him. "Amazing!"

"Mabel, what's going on?" Teek asked, his arm around her neck, holding on desperately.

"I don't know." She set him down, picked up a thirty-pound rock, and tossed it fifty feet into the woods. "Would you look at that? I don't know my own strength! Wait a minute. Strongberry jam. Strongberry! Teek, I think I've got superpowers!" She grinned. "Why—I could do anything I wanted with you! Play with you like a doll! An anatomically correct doll!"

"Mabel, you're scaring me," Teek said, backing away.

"Just messin' with you. But seriously, I feel great! Come on, let's go. I want to get back to the Shack." She set off at a trot.

And soon outdistanced Teek by a full quarter of a mile. She stopped to wait, impatiently, as he came jogging up. "Mabel—" he gasped, "not—so fast—I can't—keep up!"

"Oh, for crying out loud! Here!" She scooped him up again and, holding him in her arms, kissed him. "Comfy? Here we go!"

And carrying him without effort, she set off at a blinding pace for the Shack, feeling terrific.

And wondering what effect boobberry jam might have . . ..