A festival story. The characters are imagined; the clothes are real.
At 8:14 p.m. the forest floor woke up, and Hedda's radio woke up with it.
She was kneeling under the sugar maples when the threads came on. Four thousand of them, laced beneath the moss and the ferns and the old stone wall that wandered through the trees, each one no thicker than a guitar string. They didn't switch on. They spread, outward from her palms like ink in water, violet first, then ember orange, then lime and teal, until the whole slope glowed from underneath like a city seen from a night flight. Two years of solder burns on her fingertips. One night to run.
Every footstep made the light ring outward. Down in the meadow, the trance stage was sound-checking, one long pad rolling up through the trees, and a hermit thrush answered it from the hemlocks, note for note.
Then the radio.
"All stations. Lost Sprout from the Sprout Grove. Ivy, six years old. Yellow rain boots, purple dress, star sticker on her nose. Last seen 7:55 at the craft table."
Hedda sat back on her heels.
She knew Ivy. Ivy had sat in the front row of her talk that afternoon, cross-legged on a hay bale, while Hedda, in her rainbow cloak, held a magnifying glass over a single root tip so twenty kids could take turns seeing the fungus wrapped around it like a sleeve.
"This is the forest's kitchen," she'd told them. "The big trees send sugar down these threads to the little ones growing in their shade."
One hand shot up, straight as a birch. "Even little trees that aren't theirs?"
"Even those."
The girl glanced back at the woman behind her, keys on her belt, face held very still, then turned to Hedda again. "Where's the biggest one?"
Hedda had pointed up the hill. "The old hemlock, at the very top. Past where my lights go."
Now she looked up the hill.
Halfway up the slope, far from every path, one small trail of light was pulsing through the moss. Quick and uneven. A child's steps, heading up.
And past the last of her threads, where Hedda had never laid a single one, the light kept going.
✦
Ivy had a plan, and the plan was going great.
The food went up the hill. You could see it. Every time her boots squished into the moss, color bloomed under them and rushed away uphill in little rivers, like it was late for something. She was only going to look at the biggest tree and see if it was true. She'd be back before Jo finished talking to the clipboard lady.
Fireflies blinked in the ferns, like the forest was taking her picture. She climbed over a stone wall somebody had built a hundred years ago.
Then the rivers ran out.
The forest went blue, and then darker blue, and very big. The music was a hum, far away. Fog came up out of the hollow smelling like Christmas trees and wet dogs, and the cold licked her arms, because her dress was a summer dress.
Ivy stood still. Then she did the thing Jo had taught her in the car, all four hundred miles, until Ivy could say it in her sleep. If you can't find me, find a tree. Hug it. Sing. I'll follow the singing.
The biggest tree was right there, so wide her arms only went a little way around. The bark was shaggy and cold against her cheek. She hugged it, and she sang the counting song, loud, the one that goes all the way to a hundred.
At forty-one, under her boots, the ground began to glow.
✦
"Old hemlock," Hedda said into the radio, already climbing. "Small track heading up past the installation. I'm going. Channel two."
"Copy. Rangers moving in from the north trail. Mom's with Grove staff, coming your way."
The threads flared violet and orange under her boots, and then she passed the last spool and the ground went dark. Mostly. Along the rotting logs a faint green glow breathed in and out, the cold light of foxfire, a fungus she had read about her whole life and never once seen. Or never noticed. She didn't stop to decide which.
The radio crackled again. A new voice, low and very steady. "This is Ivy's mom. Jo. If she can't find me, she sings. Listen for singing."
Hedda stood on the slope with her mouth closed and her ears wide open. Fog. Dripping leaves. Then, high up in the dark, thin and stubborn and a little off-key:
"…sixty-six, sixty-seven…"
She ran. A brook cut across the slope, ankle deep and so cold it made her gasp, the stones slick as soap. "…eighty-one, eighty-two…"
Then the counting stopped.
✦
The hemlock stood at the top of the hill like it was holding up the sky. Around its roots the moss was glowing, a pool of soft color circling the trunk and two small yellow boots, and there were no cables here. Not one.
Ivy was hugging the tree with her eyes shut and her ear pressed flat to the bark.
"Ivy." Hedda stopped a few steps away and crouched low, to be small. "It's Hedda. The mushroom lady."
One eye opened. "Shh. It's humming."
Hedda thumbed the radio. "Found. Old hemlock. She's safe." Her voice did something odd. "She was singing."
On the other end, a whoop, and under it the sound of someone sitting down hard.
Ivy's arms were all goosebumps. Hedda unzipped the cloak and held it open. "Want to borrow my rainbow?"
Ivy let go of the tree and stepped in. The fleece swallowed her to the boot tops, and the hood fell over her eyes until she pushed it back: one small face in a ring of violet and flame orange.
"Is this the biggest one?"
"This is the biggest one."
"Does it feed the little ones? Even ones from somewhere else?"
Hedda looked down at the seedlings crowding the hemlock's roots. Maples, birches, a beech. Not one of them a hemlock. "It's been doing that for three hundred years."
Ivy nodded, satisfied, like a scientist. "I came from somewhere else," she said. "Six weeks ago the judge said forever."
Below them, footsteps burst into light on the slope, one set running far ahead of the rangers' lanterns. Jo came over the last rise and stopped at the edge of the glow as if it were a doorway. Then she dropped to her knees in the moss.
"I hugged a tree and I sang," Ivy told her. "I got to eighty-two."
Jo opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Her hands found the zipper of the borrowed cloak and held on.
Ivy patted her cheek. "It's okay. The big ones feed the little ones even if they're from somewhere else. Hedda said. It's science."
Jo pulled her in, cloak and all, and pressed her face into Ivy's hair. Hedda looked up at the hemlock to give them the moment, and found her own face wet.
"You're my big tree," Ivy said, muffled, into Jo's shoulder.
✦
At ten o'clock the meadow belonged to trance.
Hedda sat on the stone wall at the top of her hillside, the cloak back on her shoulders with a star sticker now stuck to its zipper pull. Below her, hundreds of dancers swayed in the dark, glow sticks and fireflies tangled together, the pads swelling at 138 beats per minute toward a breakdown everyone could feel coming.
Near the sound booth stood Jo in a cloak of her own: lavender, mint, peach and pink, a soft pink mushroom rising up the back. Ivy rode on her shoulders in pink ear defenders, yellow boots tucked inside the open front. Jo had explained on the walk down, laughing and wiping her face: she'd ordered it the week the adoption papers went in, to wear to Ivy's first festival, and it goes to Ivy the year it fits. Ivy had already measured herself against the hem twice. Pastel against Hedda's bright, like a seedling's colors under an old tree's.
The breakdown hushed. A thousand hands went up, and two small ones went up highest of all, from the top of Jo's shoulders.
Then the drop hit. The light ran out of the meadow and up through Hedda's threads, spool after spool, and kept going past the last one, up the dark slope where nobody had laid a thing, until a soft ring of color glowed around the old hemlock at the top of the hill, as if the biggest tree had heard the song and was sending something down.
The rainbow from the old hemlock
Hedda's cloak is the Shroom Flower of Life Ultra Rainbow women's festival cloak ($250): flame-orange and red mushroom caps rising up a central spine through deep violet and indigo, with lime and teal arcs, a small Flower of Life emblem just below the hood and a spiral medallion near the hem. It's our ode to the forest floor, where fungal threads quietly link the roots of a whole hillside. Jo's cloak, the one Ivy will grow into, is the Shroom Flower of Life Pastel Rainbow men's festival cloak ($250), the same mushrooms and circles in lavender, mint, aqua, peach and pink, soft as a seedling's first leaves and made to be handed down.
Both cloaks: micro-mink outer, ultra-soft faux-fur fleece lining in black or white, listed fabric weight 200 g/m², double front zipper, heavy drawstrings, four pockets (two interior stash pockets, one zippered, plus two deep side pockets), unisex fit XS–5XL.
Everything is made to order, and US orders of $70 or more ship free. For outerwear, our FAQ suggests sizing up, sometimes even two sizes, to fit warm layers underneath. More from the forest floor: women's cloaks · men's cloaks · hooded blankets
What do you wear to a trance festival in the woods?
Wear something you can dance in for hours, in the trance palette of pastels, rainbow color and shimmer, then add a warm hooded layer for after dark. Forest festival nights in summer often settle into the 50s and 60s °F, with fog rising out of the hollows, so a fleece-lined festival cloak earns its place by 10 p.m.
- The trance dress code: pastels and electric blue, iridescent and holographic shine, kandi cuffs, fluffies and a fan flag worn as a cape. The trance family dresses for the breakdown, when every hand goes up.
- The enchanted forest festival outfit: mushroom and moss art, sacred geometry and flowing hoods look magical under trees and fireflies. Pick prints that sing when a lantern or headlamp catches them.
- Bringing kids (general advice): pack ear defenders, write your phone number on your child's wristband, snap a photo of their outfit each morning, and teach a simple stay-put rule like "hug a tree and sing." Each festival's own kids' policy comes first.
- The science under the mushroom art: most trees trade sugar with root fungi through mycorrhizal networks, and some fungi give off foxfire, a soft glow in rotting wood. A mushroom print at a forest festival is a nod to the life under your feet.
For real forest nights, Elements fills the forest and fields of the Poconos in early August (Aug 7–9 in 2026, with Above & Beyond on the bill and a Neon Forest zone) on nights in the 60s, and Pickathon's Woods stage sits among the firs at Pendarvis Farm near Portland in late July and early August, with nights around 55–60°F.
Frequently asked questions
What should you do if your child gets lost at a festival?
Go straight to the nearest staff member, security post or info booth and give your child's name, age, clothing and the time and place you last saw them. Festivals run lost-child procedures by radio, so stay where staff ask you to. Before each day starts, write your number on your child's wristband and teach them to stay put.
Do trees really share food through fungi?
Partly. Most trees partner with mycorrhizal fungi, which wrap or enter their roots and trade water and minerals for sugars. Some studies found carbon moving between trees through shared fungal networks, which inspired the popular wood wide web idea. How much big trees actually feed seedlings this way is still debated among forest scientists.
What is the difference between the Ultra Rainbow and Pastel Rainbow Shroom Flower of Life cloaks?
They share one design: mushroom caps rising up a central spine, a small Flower of Life emblem below the hood and a spiral medallion near the hem. Ultra Rainbow sets flame orange, red, lime and teal on deep violet. Pastel Rainbow softens it to lavender, mint, aqua, peach and pink. Both are $250, fleece-lined and unisex, XS–5XL.
Written by Magus & Lylyth Fawn, the Los Angeles artists behind Magus Fawn. Magus makes VR and digital visionary art and produces Psy EDM. Lylyth makes fractal digital art and runs design and customer care. We've been selling wearable art since 2020 on Etsy (4.7★ from 144 reviews as of October 2026) and here at magusfawn.com. Come say hi on Instagram @magusfawn.
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