A Halo of Mushrooms

Good writing! Inventive setting/plot -- Charles de Lint Once planted, it lives everywhere... In a place of origins, the first Fairie Ring withers. Worlds die. Wonder fades. As its last ripple reaches out, fell creatures barricade up the few remaining Bald Mushrooms and wars are fought for the right to possess what precious little remains…. Until Derik, a healer, creeps through lines of armies, thorns, and traps to steal one. Sacrilege. Tying the wonder to his hip in a sack, he finds himself alone on Earth in the gray, declining city of Clarksburg. Without friends, tools, weapons, and even stripped of the ability to read, he must escape pursuit and find refuge for his burden. A burden that stubbornly refuses every attempt to find it a new home. Shadows of war are descending and all Derik has to fend it off is a baker, a chemist, a cerulean sweet, and a withered hope. The chase is on....from world to world and from the Great Lakes to Malawi.