She pivots and runs. I follow.
We dump our first haul into the ice bin behind the counter. Tavvi stares. The mushrooms hit the ice and shudder once, twice, then go still, their golden shimmer dimming to a dull bronze. Solene was right. Cold kills the bounce.
"Canvas," she says, already scanning my bar. "Heavy canvas. Burlap. Anything with weight."
I point to the storage closet. "Grain sacks. Back wall, top shelf."
She disappears. I hear her drag the step stool across the floor, hear the rough scrape of canvas being yanked down in armfuls. She returns with four massive grain sacks, the kind I use for bulk barley shipments. Each one could hold a grown child.
"These will work. You catch. I'll bag."
"Other way. You catch, I bag. My hands are bigger."
"Your hands are bigger, which means you cancatchmore at once."
"Which means I can hold the sack open wider."
Her mouth opens. Closes. The arithmetic wins again.
"Fine. Hold them open. Wide. Anddon't drop any."
We hit the street.
The scene has escalated. Golden spores hang in the air like a glittering fog. Mushrooms ricochet between buildings, off car hoods, against windows. Mrs. Ellison from the dry cleaner stands in her doorway clutching a broom, swatting at one that keeps bouncing off her awning in a persistent loop. Two teenagers across the street have their phones out, filming.
A large mushroom rockets off the sidewalk six feet to my left. Solene is already moving. She dives, snatches it at knee height, and pivots toward me in a single fluid motion. I hold the grain sack open with both fists. She drops it in. The mushroom hits the canvas, bucks once against the heavy weave, and goes still. Too much mass in the fabric. Nowhere to bounce.
"One," she says.
"Sixty-one to go."
"Seventy-one."
"Right."
A cluster of four comes bouncing down the sidewalk in a staggered formation, each one hitting the ground at different intervals, filling the air with a rapid percussive rhythm like someone firing popcorn kernels at a snare drum. Solene charges them head-on. She catches the first two, one in each hand, tucks them against her ribs, then hooks the third with her elbow and knees the fourth upward just long enough to trap it against her forearm.
I have never seen reflexes like that in a kitchen or out of one.
She dumps all four into my sack. The canvas bulges. I cinch the drawstring tight and grab the second bag.
"You played sports," I say.
"Volleyball. Division one. Setter."
That explains the hands.
A mushroom screams off the fire hydrant at a wicked angle. I lunge sideways and snag it before it takes out Mrs. Chen's front window. The impact reverberates up my arm, dense and electric. I toss it gently into the sack Solene now holds open at her hip.
We fall into a rhythm without discussing it. She reads the trajectories. I cover the range. My wingspan is nearly seven feet. I can reach across a full lane of traffic and pluck a mushroom out of its arc without moving my feet. When one goes high, I jump. When three come at once, I catch two and body-block the third, letting it bounce off me into the open sack she holds against my stomach.
She moves around me like I am a fixed point on a map. Darting left, darting right, always circling back. Her spatial awareness is surgical. She tracks six mushrooms at once and prioritizes by trajectory, calling out positions in clipped, rapid bursts.
"High left!"
I reach. Got it.
"Two low, coming off the bumper of the blue truck!"