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SUNLIGHT SPLAYED IN a field of daffodils, ramparts topped with royal standards, spice
smells and girls in mordant market-places: Quilff was as pretty a Queendom as you'd find in
all Creation, but its tranquility was beginning to impose an inverse feeling of fret upon
Bjork's sweet heart. All she seemed to do these days was fight. Even her halcyonic friendship
with Croon was starting to disintegrate, and she was worried that not even mushrooms
could bridge the growing rift. Croon was a young duke, and like all boys in Quilff he was a handy chef. His speciality was pancakes, which he made entirely from mushrooms. He mashed the 'shrooms into a kind of dough, speckled with morels, and on top of that pile tonnes of pores, sulphur mushrooms, chanterelles, puffballs, egg-fried oyster caps... plus whatever was growing in the feudal fields. Then he'd fry up some off-world fungus, douse the lot with molten butter, honey. Goo-faced, Bjork noticed a jar of bright red mushrooms on top of the pantry. <<Why didn't you add those mushies?>> she said. <<This could have done with more colour.>> <<You can't eat them>> Croon said. <<It's forbidden.>> Bjork laughed: she could be terribly churlish. <<That's stupid! Why keep them in your pantry if you're not allowed to eat them? I think you're an idiot.>> <<They're bad mushrooms, that's what my father says. Make you sick, they will.>> <<Your dad must be an idiot, too. Have you ever eaten them yourself? No, then how on earth do you know if they make you sick?>> <<It's against the law!>> Croon saying it with some sincerity. Bjork stood up on her chair and used a fruit basket as a crown. <<Look, freaky, I'm the Queen of Quilff and the rules begin and end with me. I make and break the law.>> <<Go on then, eat 'em. I hope they poison you.>> Bjork had a better idea. <<Let's play Alice in Wonderland!>> <<Ok, but I want to be the rabbit!>>
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