The Footfall

What it looks like, and what it does

A pale root-lace spread under cobbles and cellars like a map of the city's walking. Thread-fine filaments pressed to the underside of paving slabs. A cellar floor with a set of bare footprints in the dust, fresh, going nowhere.

Slow, continuous, patient. Brightest at the hours of heaviest foot traffic. Leaves its prints in the cellars nearest the person it has learned.

What is known

Mycologists tracing the network under Albrecht Square in 1999 found it spread beneath most of the old town, faintly luminous, pulsing when people crossed above.

It responds to individual gait. A woman who crosses the square each morning was followed by its light for a block. Residents of the oldest houses report footprints in their cellar dust that match the stride of living neighbours. The prints are always a few hours ahead of the person.

What it can do

• Reads and remembers the gait of everyone who walks above it
• Leaves their footprints in cellars, ahead of them

Where it stops

• Cannot sense anyone who does not walk: carried, wheeled or standing still
• Dies back in hard frost, and returns

An encounter

Brandstätter sealed a cellar and dusted its floor. In the morning there was a set of prints crossing it, left foot dragging slightly. She recognised the drag. It was her own, from the night before last, and had a day to go. The next night she wore someone else's shoes and the prints did not change.

Dr. Ilse Brandstätter, mycologist, Cellar, 14 Albrecht Square, Surveyed over three winters

What is established, and what is only said

• established: Prints in cellar dust matched the gait of named residents in 41 of 44 trials.
• incomplete: The three unmatched sets could not be identified from any registered resident.
• rumor: That it has learned the walk of someone who has not yet been born.

Still unresolved

In the north cellar the prints belong to nobody the survey can find. They stop in the middle of the floor, facing the wall.

Where it has been recorded

• Albrecht Square (confirmed) — Recorded by Dr. Ilse Brandstätter, mycologist.

Stories about it

• The Footfall Under Marston Services (Entity story, 3 min) — The night staff at a motorway service station in Ostmark notice that the fungal network under the car park reads their footsteps, and has begun to leave prints in the moss that match the gait of each person who works the late shift.

Connected entities

• Impression Fungus — Both grow from the weight of what passed. One keeps what was left. The other keeps who walked.