Mushrooms and Promises.

(What I wrote for yesterday's write-in instead of working on my NaNo novel.)

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Matty woke up very early the next morning.  As always, he laughed a little bit when he saw Halden, and made sure to pull the blankets over him carefully before he left.

"Halden," he said softly.  "I'm going out for a while, but I'll be back soon."

"Hmmph," said Halden.

Matty turned then and started walking.  He knew, if Halden had even heard him, that Halden thought he was going to do his morning exercises, as usual.  Something hurt a little bit at that thought, making Matty pick up his pace.  It wasn't a lie, right?  He wouldn't lie to Halden, right?

Matty went to the door, where his bag sat from the previous night, packed full of the bottles that were usually strapped to the inside of his pants.  He picked it up and remembered Halden looking at him strangely as he had carefully stacked the bottles together last night, first on the floor, then in the pack.  Matty hadn't liked that look.  It said that Halden knew something was out of the ordinary.  'Well, at least it won't happen again,' Matty thought as he put the bag over his shoulder and left the house.

The morning was cool and slightly foggy, but when the sun rose, it would certainly burn away the mist that collected on the ground, as it always did here.  Matty walked through the grass, listening to the silence and wondering how this place had changed since he last saw it.  He wondered if Feather was awake yet, and when he could talk to her.  He would like to do that before they had to leave again.

The path he took led away from the house, across a small lawn and through a wooded bit of land.  Matty suddenly felt a little anxious, leaving Halden so far behind--but then again, this wasn't something that he should see.

It had been a fact for so long, that there were things that Halden didn't know, that somehow over the years it had become a truth, that there were things about Matty that Halden did not and could not know.  Just like how Graven could never really know about Halden.

Matty saw the place from a distance, before he had left the trees.  It was the hilt of an oversized sword, the blade stabbed a third of its length into the ground in the center of a clearing.  The earth was carved out into a small hill that dropped off sharply behind where the sword stood.  Matty walked around that rise in the earth to the other side.  Nearly hidden from view was a stone door set in the side of the carved-out hill, overgrown with roots.

Frowning, Matty put down the bag, the bottles inside clinking against each other as he did, and began to clear the plant material from the door.  He wondered why Feather had let it get so overgrown.

Then again.  His hands paused as he realized.  It had been a very long time.

Slowly, Matty pulled away the dead stems until the door was free enough to open.  He pulled on it and it gave way, revealing behind it several stone shelves, fixed into the ground in the hill.

It was the type of grave that normally would be shared by a family, in which generations' worth of urns would be stored.  Matty sat back and looked at it.  There were no ashes in this place, as there had been no ashes to begin with.  The actual remains, Matty knew, were even farther beneath the ground, in a place that had only been reached through days of effort and pain and grief.  Instead, on the bottom shelf of this crypt stood dozens of bottled mushrooms.

And a promise.

One by one, Matty started pulling bottles out of the bag, each one containing a different mushroom, stacking them neatly on the shelf.  The bottom shelf filled as he did so, and he found himself moving up to the next one.

He hadn't thought he would be able to, but somehow he started talking.

"Hi, Graven," he said softly.  "It's me, Matty.  Sorry I haven't been by sooner.  I've been busy."

A bottle rolled away from his grasp and he had to fumble for it inside the bag.  "I brought a lot of mushrooms this time," he said.  "I still haven't been off this continent.  But I've been to a lot of new places and found lots of new mushrooms there," he said.  Suddenly, he hesitated.  "Well… not so much lately.  But I think…"  Matty sat back on his heels.  "I think you'd understand."

It was a few minutes before he reached for the next bottle.  "I guess I haven't told you about Halden," he said as he continued stacking mushrooms on the next shelf.  "Well, not properly.  Not… to you.  Anyway, Halden is the boy I'm looking after."  Matty paused.  "Um, I guess he's grown up already.  But I still need to watch him.  His family is powerful, so I have to make sure that nothing bad happens to him.  I guess I've done all right so far," he said, faintly smiling.

"I think you would have liked him, Graven," he continued.  "He's… not like normal people.  But I think he tries really hard at the things he does, and he tries to do right by the people who are important to him."

"I like to think that you would have gotten along…"

The bag was about half-empty now, and Matty had to look inside to find the bottles.  "Since I met Halden, I've been living in a big house and eating good food," he said.  "I didn't know there were so many kinds of food.  Also, I'm glad Feather told me about not being able to pee anywhere I like, 'cause they get mad at you in the city if you pee anywhere but the toilet."  Matty laughed a little bit.  "Actually, even when we're traveling, Halden gets upset about peeing where people might see.  I don't get it."

Matty stacked another bottle and sighed.  "I don't get a lot of things about this world, Graven," he said.  "I don't get why there are so many rules, and why people are so different in one place from another without really being different at all.  Kind of like these mushrooms," he said as he placed another one.  "I don't suppose I'll ever get it.  I don't see the differences in people that Halden seems to see all the time, and I don't know how to explain it to him."

"And I don't know how to explain to him things like… why I want him to do the things he wants to do, now, or live life importantly, or…"  Matty's voice faltered.  "I don't know how to teach him what you taught me."

"I guess I can't be… how I wanted to be like you."

Matty looked at the next mushroom.  It was round and white, with a thin stem, and dried beyond the point of being edible.  The bottle was scuffed from being carried around so long.

Graven had carried his end of the promise.  Always.

And finally Matty was able to say what he'd known he needed to say here today.  "I'm sorry, Graven," he said.  "I don't know if I can keep doing this.  I don't know when I'll be here again, or if I ever will.  'Cause Halden needs me around, and…"

Matty sat back on the ground and buried his face in his knees, still holding the bottle in his right hand.  His head ached in an unfamiliar way, and the smile he always worked so hard to keep going had disappeared.  "I'm really sorry, Graven."

"'Cause, Halden has to become king, and if he does, I don't think I'll be able to travel around so freely anymore, and even if I do, it can't be for something like mushrooms.  Because… Halden doesn't know why, why it's not really about mushrooms, and I don't want to weigh him down with something he doesn't have anything to do with…"

Matty's head really hurt now.  He didn't know how to explain it so Graven would understand.  He didn't know how to say it in a way that wouldn't be admitting that…

"I can't keep my promise to you, Graven."

Matty finally put the bottle on the shelf, his hands shaking so the glass slammed against the stone, but it didn't break.  His other hand was pressed against his left eye, which was hurting in a way he didn't understand.  "I can't do it," he repeated.  "I can't be both."

"Graven, of course I'll keep trying, but I… in case I can't do it, I… I'm sorry."

"I'm really sorry, Graven…"

There was only one mushroom left.  Matty picked it up.  It was an old one, so dried and withered that he couldn't even tell what kind of mushroom it had once been.  He didn't really care.

It had been a promise.

"Graven, I won't forget you.  I'll never forget you.  I know that much," Matty said, still holding the last mushroom.  "But I…"

There wasn't an end to that sentence.  There couldn't be, because Matty knew it would hurt too much to say it, that Graven was being left behind because Halden was here now and there was nothing that could be done about it.

And for an instant, Matty couldn't stand Halden, couldn't stand all the rules and regulations and laws that governed what people were and were not allowed to do, and why promises, like the promise between a child and guardian that they would travel the world and collect mushrooms and always, always be together, why promises that couldn't fit into that perfect grid had to be thrown away--

And then Matty wanted to cry, because Halden didn't deserve to be thought of that way.

The mushroom was on the shelf and the door was closed, and Matty was finally on his way to do the morning exercises that Graven had taught him as a child all those years ago, knowing that soon his head would stop hurting and he could forget and he would be able to smile again for Halden, finally.

For a while.