One morning the first golden leaves appeared among the green. Then a tree flamed into crimson. The fields were stubbled gold, morning mists hanging over them, burned away slowly by the sun. Hot, blue summer sky slowly turned the deeper blue of autumn, as if it reflected, from another country, cold northern lakes and storms that did not touch us yet. I found great cobwebs everywhere, hung like chandeliers with prisms of dew. I brought home nuts and apples and bright sprays of leaves for Laurel. I found elderberries and juniper berries for Beda, and every kind of mushroom, until she asked, as she did every year, if I was trying to poison them all and inherit the lot. But the distorted shapes and unexpected colors of mushrooms fascinated me; I prowled through shadows and under bracken looking for them. They were ancient, wild things. No two were ever alike, and they had no roots to tie them to one place; like curiosity, they wandered everywhere. So did I, that brief, rich season between summer heat and autumn rain, when the light took its shades of gold from the dying leaves.
