Chapter 7 — The Promise
And thus begins Chapter Seven.
I remembered a promise.
The council grows quiet.
Children.
Not something I had thought about when we left home.
Not something written into the Mushroom Quest.
Not something I had deliberately carried into Kodaikanal looking for meaning.
Just
a promise.
One night,
long before all of this,
I had looked at Bongo
and told him:
“I’ll show you the world.”
The council says nothing.
At the time,
it had been simple.
The kind of thing you say to someone you love
without considering logistics.
Without asking what the sentence will mean years later.
I’ll show you the world.
Maybe I imagined roads.
Trips.
Car rides.
Places.
Maybe I simply meant:
Stay with me.
There is more life ahead.
Children.
Promises are easy when you believe you have time.
Then Goa ended.
I came home.
And Bongo was gone.
The council lowers its head.
But standing on that cliff in Kodaikanal,
looking at a world neither of us had seen before,
I noticed my wrist.
His collar.
The council looks down.
Still there.
I had put it around my wrist when I learned he died.
And I had never taken it off.
Children.
It wasn’t jewelry.
Not then.
Not some carefully selected relic for the Archive.
It was simply the last thing that had held him.
The last circle that had rested against him.
And now
it rested against me.
The council grows still.
I lifted my wrist.
Looked at it.
Then looked back at Kodaikanal.
The hills.
The mist.
The houses far below.
The cold air.
The strange new world spread beneath me.
And suddenly,
the promise changed.
The council listens.
I couldn’t show Bongo the world the way I had intended.
Not anymore.
But the last thing that had held him?
That could come.
The collar could see it with me.
One place at a time.
One road at a time.
One wandering at a time.
Children.
There it was.
The beginning of another ritual.
One nobody knew existed.
Paul didn’t know.
Kosmo didn’t know.
Mith didn’t know.
Wing didn’t know.
Years later,
people might see something around my wrist
and think:
bracelet.
Souvenir.
Accessory.
Something old I refused to throw away.
The council shakes its head.
No.
It was a promise continuing after the soul I made it to was gone.
The council grows quiet.
And apparently,
I kept that one to myself.
Until now.
Children.
The collar would accompany the roads that followed.
Different places.
Different versions of me.
Different Wanderings.
The boy who had not yet become the Unbegun.
The idiot chasing mushrooms.
The sad man who would eventually board a train alone.
The wanderer who would learn movement.
The wanderer who would later learn stillness.
Through all of them
Bongo came too.
Not literally.
I know.
The council nods.
But grief creates its own language.
And mine,
apparently,
became movement.
I had promised:
I’ll show you the world.
So I did.
The only way left to me.
The council falls silent.
And something about realizing that on the cliff
children.
It hurt.
But not badly.
That is difficult to explain.
It was the kind of hurt that warms at the same time.
Grief,
but with somewhere to go.
The weight had spent so long simply being weight.
Heavy.
Pointless.
Something sitting inside my chest making everything harder.
But suddenly,
for one moment,
it became a direction.
The council leans forward.
See something new.
Carry him there.
Keep the promise.
Maybe I wasn’t escaping the weight.
Maybe I was teaching it how to walk.
The council grows very quiet.
I looked at the collar again.
Then out at Kodaikanal.
And smiled.
Not the giant chemically enhanced grin of the Mushroom Quest.
A smaller one.
Private.
Mine.
And his.
Children.
No grand speech.
No announcement to the mountain.
No:
BONGO, BEHOLD.
The council chuckles softly.
Nothing theatrical.
Just a thought.
A promise remembered.
And an understanding:
You’re here.
We’re seeing it.
The council listens.
Then I turned toward Mith.
He was still there.
The man who had looked at a mushroom high Nuo,
looked at Wing after the Cannibal Holocaust incident,
apparently decided which one of us was currently suitable for transportation,
and brought me here.
The council nods.
Wise selection.
I looked at him.
Smiled.
Then hugged him.
Tightly.
The council becomes interested.
Affection?
Most likely.
Children.
The mushrooms were still involved.
Let’s remain historically honest.
But gratitude?
Absolutely.
Appreciation?
Completely.
Because whether Mith knew it or not,
he had taken me somewhere I needed to stand.
Not somewhere I knew I needed.
Those are different places.
The council nods.
He hugged me back.
No questions.
No:
What was that for?
No need to explain Bongo.
No need to explain the collar.
No need to translate what had just happened in my head.
Just a hug.
Then we separated.
The council smiles.
Sometimes friendship is mercifully uncomplicated.
Now.
There was still the matter of returning.
The Duke waited.
Mith climbed on.
I climbed behind him.
The council becomes mildly concerned again.
And off we went.
Back through the cold.
Back through the mountain roads.
Back toward the absurd eight-
hundred rupee villa.
But children
the ride felt different now.
The scenery was still beautiful.
The mushrooms were still working.
The air still felt like something I could absorb through my skin.
But now,
every new piece of Kodaikanal carried a second meaning.
Not just:
I am seeing this.
But:
We are.
The council grows quiet.
The collar against my wrist.
The road beneath us.
Trees passing.
Mist.
Light.
Cold.
World.
One piece at a time.
And perhaps this was when Kodaikanal became more than the Mushroom Quest.
Not to the others.
Not yet.
To them,
we were still five idiots on a twenty four hour fungal expedition.
And to be fair
we absolutely were.
The council laughs.
But underneath the stupidity,
another thread had appeared.
Goa had given me the weight.
Kodaikanal gave the weight a ritual.
The council listens.
Carry him.
Show him.
Keep moving.
I didn’t call it that.
I didn’t call anything anything.
The Unbegun was still being assembled without instructions.
But looking backward,
I can see it now.
The collar became part of the Wanderings before the Wanderings had a name.
And every time I went somewhere new afterward,
some small part of the promise travelled too.
The council looks at my wrist.
The last thing that held him.
Holding me.
Children.
There are objects that remain objects.
And then there are objects into which we pour so much memory
that eventually touching them feels like touching a person through time.
That collar became one of those.
Not magical.
Not sacred because the universe declared it so.
Sacred because I did.
The council nods.
That is enough.
Mith drove.
I held on.
And slowly,
the villa came back into view.
Somewhere inside,
Paul was probably still asleep.
Wing was presumably recovering from cinematic trauma.
Kosmo was being Kosmo.
Joints remained to be rolled.
The Mushroom Quest still had hours left.
Children.
The wandering was not over.
But something important had happened on that cliff.
Something I kept secret for years.
I had remembered a promise.
And realized I had never actually broken it.
The council grows quiet.
Bongo would never stand beside me on a mountain.
Never stick his head out of Carlos’s window.
Never walk through the flower garden.
Never sit beside the tree.
But he would see every place I could carry him.
Kasol.
Rishikesh.
And whatever roads came after.
One world at a time.
The council smiles.
“I’ll show you the world.”
Turns out,
children,
I meant it.
Thus concludes Chapter Seven.
The Cliff.
The Collar.
The Hug.
And The Promise.
The weight had been born when Bongo died.
But Kodaikanal gave me the first way to carry it.
Not by leaving him behind.
By taking him with me.
