We’re looking for a fern that blooms,” said Pärtel, although I was nudging him with my elbow, because I’d started to believe that Uncle Vootele and Ints were right—that the fern really did bloom only in legends. So it was embarrassing to admit that we’d been wandering so far all night for the wrong reason.
As I feared, Meeme fell to jeering at us, until he was choked by the wine catching in his throat.
“A fern that blooms!” he crowed, spluttering with laughter. “Weren't you looking for a green fox? I hear that such an animal has been seen in these woods.”
“We’ve heard there’s a key in the blooming fern,” explained Pärtel, taking no notice of my nudging—or maybe not understanding it and thinking that I was simply twitching from tiredness. And he told Meeme everything.
Meeme was no longer laughing, but merely snorting scornfully.
“We simply wanted to try,” I said then, apologetically. “Of course it was silly. Obviously there isn’t really a key at all.”
“That’s not what I said,” replied Meeme with unexpected abruptness. “The blooming fern doesn’t exist.”
“But there’s a key?” I asked.
“So they say,” answered Meeme, in his former drunken tone again. “But there’s no sense in looking for it. The key will come into the right person’s hands when the time is right.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“That’s what my blind grandmother told me,” replied Meeme, starting to laugh and cough again. “She also said that you can walk along a rainbow to the moon, and that if you eat a handful of earth, you change into a cuckoo. My blind half-wit of a grandmother told me all sorts of things. Go and figure out whether they’re true or not. Anyway, I haven’t eaten soil, because I don’t want to become a cuckoo. Cuckoos don’t drink wine; they have to lay eggs in other birds’nests, but what I want to do is drink. Your health, boys! I assure you wine tastes a lot better than fly agaric!

(Andrus Kivirahk "The Man Who Spoke Snakish")