“As for the saint of this pool … in the Scottish Highlands, a pool like this would … er … belong to the local saint. Here, I think it’s only that people sometimes come to pray, because it reminds them of places like this in Scotland. But I suppose they might pray here to whoever they thought might help them.”

“And do you think the dead concern themselves with the living?”

I hesitated for a moment, but while I was in total ignorance of the mechanics, I didn’t doubt the fact.

“Yes, I do. So do most Highlanders. They have a very intimate relationship with their dead.” Out of curiosity, I asked, “Do you? Think that the dead concern themselves with the living?”

“Some of them do.” Rising, he beckoned me to follow him. The fungus in question was growing a short distance away, in a crevice in a dead beech log. There was a large cluster, the individual mushrooms balanced on long, delicate stems, both crimped caps and stems a noticeable shade of purplish crimson.

“I’ve seen these before,” I said, gathering up my skirt in order to squat beside him in front of the log. “People call them bleeding fairy helmets, or sometimes just blood-spots.” They were, in fact, just about the shade of venous blood, and if you cut the stems, a very convincing bloodlike liquid oozed out of them.

“I don’t know if they’re poisonous, but I wouldn’t feed them to anyone.” Assuming any of the Highlanders on the Ridge would try one. Having grown up in a food-deprived habitat where oatmeal was not just for breakfast, most of the older people were deeply suspicious of anything strange-looking or unfamiliar—particularly things of a vegetable nature.

“No,” the Sachem said thoughtfully. “Their blood is sticky—like real blood, you know—and I’ve seen that used to help seal small wounds, but I’ve never seen animals eat them. Not even pigs.”

“So you are familiar with them?”

“Oh, yes. It’s that, that I have never seen before.” Crouching beside me, he extended a long, knobbly finger toward an isolated patch of the mushroom. The caps had opened fully, like tiny umbrellas, but each one sported a tangled headdress of thin, slightly iridescent pale spikes, as though the cap had suddenly grown a crop of tiny needles.

I didn’t touch them, but took out my spectacles for a closer look.

The Sachem smiled at me. “You know the big owls?” he said, sticking his forefingers up beside his ears. “The ones who call Hoo-hoo, and then another answers Hoo? You hear them most in the early days of winter, when they breed.”

“Hoo,” I said gravely, and bent closer. Seeing in better focus, I could just make out tiny ball-shaped sporangia at the ends of the tiny spikes.

“I don’t know what it’s called, but it looks like a parasite—you know what a parasite is?”

He nodded gravely.