Mushrooms symbolize European colonialism and its many damaging effects, particularly on the environment and on Native Americans. Mushrooms form fairy rings, which, within the world of the novel, allow people to travel long distance nearly instantly. However, Ring travel is closely monitored and regulated, and for the most part, only people who are descended from fairies—that is, descendants of European colonizers—are allowed to use this method of transport. It irks Ellie that even though there are Ring Centers all over the U.S., including on ancestral Lipan Apache land (and ancestral land of other tribes), she’s not allowed to use Ring travel because she’s Lipan. This mirrors how, in the real world, European colonization of the Americas saw settlers not only pushing Native Americans off their ancestral lands but then denying those people rights, services, and access to land and resources that once belonged to their tribes.
Willowbee takes this symbolism to the extreme, as the town is dotted with mushrooms and can itself move from place to place. It has, over its 200-year history, moved all over the U.S., and it can settle wherever it likes with no regard for who the land belongs to or the fact that it’s hogging precious resources, particularly water, to keep its lush grounds and mushrooms alive and green. Additionally, Willowbee’s doctors have, throughout history, habitually transferred injuries to Native Americans and other vulnerable people, highlighting again how colonialism damages both the natural environment and the land’s original stewards.
Finally, the kind of magic that mushrooms use pollutes the environment by releasing greenhouse gases. Ring travel is one of the dirtiest forms of transportation, despite its convenience; and Trevor’s ghost suggests that Willowbee is also responsible for polluting the land. With this, the novel suggests that colonialism, and the technologies that colonists develop, don’t benefit anyone but the colonists themselves—and, indeed, are extremely harmful to indigenous peoples and the environment.
Mushrooms/Willowbee Quotes in Elatsoe
Hopefully, it happened through a police investigation that led to an arrest that resulted in a successful trial by jury and a murder conviction. However, the justice system was imperfect. Many crimes remained unsolved, especially violence against Natives. Plus, Trevor’s death was so strange, magic might have been involved. That was a potential death blow against justice. Magic, as energy from another realm, corrupted and altered the fabric of reality. The defense for Abe Allerton could argue that any trace of magic at the crime scene negated his chance for a fair trial, since there was no way to trust the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Nine times out of ten, that argument worked for people with million-dollar lawyers. Strangely, it rarely worked for anyone else.
It took a while, but the Leech was finally dead. Ellie had finished Six-Great’s task.
It should have been a proud moment, but Ellie also felt profoundly sad. The Leech was the last of its kind. The monsters of her ancestors had been replaced by different threats. Invasive creatures, foreign curses, cruel magics, and alchemies. Vampires were the new big bloodsuckers.
Ellie couldn’t use the rings, however, because all portal travel had to be approved and facilitated by fairy folk, and fairies didn’t like “strangers.” Strangers, in their opinion, constituted anybody without familial ties to at least one interdimensional person, commonly known as “fae.” That wasn’t Ellie. Every time she had to pay for an expensive airline ticket or miss a field trip, her disdain for the otherworldly snobs increased. It seemed cruel that humanoids from a different realm could discriminate against her—and others—on her own homeland. The “fair” in “fairy” didn’t stand for justice, however, and they didn’t care about any rules but their own.
The lawn was speckled by white polka-dots, the heads of round mushrooms. Didn’t mushrooms usually sprout in moist environments? Exactly how much water did Dr. Allerton waste on his grass every day?
“Nathaniel Grace learned a lesson from the fire. He made friends with other Pilgrims by hurting the people who frightened them more than he did.”
Page five continued, with a picture of a boxy building, “Nathaniel Grace made a hospital with the money he earned. He saved many lives.”
[...]
The final page displayed an anatomically accurate drawing of a leech. It belonged in a biology textbook, not a historical biography. Brett concluded: “Nathaniel Grace is a great American because he saved the lives of many people like presidents and war heroes. Without him, the country would not be the same and there would be no Willowbee. He founded the town to be a good home.”
If the US had also controlled an army of dead hounds, there’d probably be no Lipan left alive. It was difficult enough to survive their deadly magic, powers that weren’t the same as ghosts. Magic came from an alien place, and the use of too much corrupted the natural state of the Earth. That’s what scientists were reporting, anyway. [...] In fact, that year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Magic Use, which was backed by over two hundred scientists, published a warning that excessive magic posed an existential threat, one nobody understood completely and very few people seemed to take seriously.
Ellie’s ancestors had known—hundreds of years before any report by an intergovernmental group—the damage magic could cause.
“He’s just one man.” Trevor leaned forward, rooted to the grave. “There are millions more who will continue to treat our family and land like garbage. Think of them like pests.”
“Pests...”
“Termites in your house. Locusts in your field. It doesn’t make any difference if you crush just one insect. The swarm will devour your home.”
“Everything I do tonight will be for him. For justice.” The exorcist corpse’s head flopped to one side, as if trying to study Ellie with its cloudy eyes. “He loved you,” the emissary said. “He loved all his family.”
“I love Trevor,” she said. “Always will.”
“Someday, you’ll be reunited,” the emissary promised. “If you want that day to come sooner rather than later, interfere with my vengeance.”
“Vengeance?” she wondered. “Didn’t you say ‘justice’ a moment ago?”
“In this case, they’re the same.”
“I am a neutral force,” Dr. Allerton said. “My healing balances my harm. Ellie, I tried to help you and your family. Did you know that I collected scholarship money for Trevor’s child? Well? Enough to pay for college! For grad school! You just wouldn’t let it go. Everything is a mess now.”
“Shut it,” Ellie said. “All the scholarships in the world can’t be a father to Gregory.”
“There’s a lot I want to learn,” Ellie said. “My mother, her mother, and my grandmother’s mother taught me about the way of our land, our dead, and our monsters, but the times have changed. I need college to prepare for the next Willowbee.”
Mushrooms/Willowbee Symbol Timeline in Elatsoe
