Chapter 6: Liberty Caps

      "Two should be direach mu dheis for a first trip," my self-appointed spirit guide explains, handing me a couple of spindly dried mushrooms.

"What do I do with them?" I ponder, sniffing their sweet earthy scent.

"Eat them, ye numpty-noo," he scoffs, stuffing a handful in his mouth. 

"You'll be alright with that many?" 

"Ye Americans are so unco guid."

"Just naive," I grumble, trying not to react to his tone despite having no idea what I'm being accused of. 

"Greasaibh oirbh!" he commands, scooting back around to the sunny side of the obelisk. "Solstice noon only comes once a year." 

     I sat there leaning against the cool stone and staring at the slender mushrooms in my palm. My mind was still boiling from the chase along the White Esk after a mid-morning whisky and beer. I was well into the second day of my genealogical excursion and only inching toward the Langholm churchyard cemetery I'd set out to find. Still, my Rasta friend might just give me a lift there if I stuck it out for his journey. 

     Telling myself it was just a microdose, I popped them into my mouth, chewed what tasted like moldy leather, and swallowed all the pieces in one gulp. As I waited to feel some effect, my eyelids got heavy and I let myself sink back for a little rest before joining him. Waking with a start after a few moments, the day had morphed into dusk in an apparent solar eclipse. I scrambled around to the sun side, and he was gone.

     "Which way did he go George, which way did he go?" I giggle, mimicking a dog from a childhood cartoon as a big black bird alights on a neighboring boulder.

"Path, path, path," I'm startled to hear it answer, and I look up from the heel stone to see a faint trail glittering in the semi-darkness and winding it's way away from the stanes.