“We’re gonna save the world!” Tristan declared, face plastered with a too-wide grin and eyes practically glowing. As if the world needed saving. As if two farm boys could save it if it did. But then, Tristan could always be counted on to come up with some ridiculous game or quest.

I’d been out back chopping wood when he showed up, unexpected as always.

“Caleb!” He appeared out of nowhere, his long, thin arms waving as he called my name, and I nearly dropped the axe on my foot.

“Tristan! Don’t do that.” I swore Tristan was part cat. Never a sound, not so much as a footstep to warn he was sneaking up on you, until he was right there behind you yelling your name or waving a stick and shouting, ‘The goblins are coming! To arms!’

“Haha, sorry.” He obviously wasn’t.

“Need to put a bell on you,” I muttered as I picked up the axe again. Not that I expected to get much done with Tristan there. With him, a smile like that was never a good sign. “Don’t you have your own work to do?”

“Nah, my uncle’s out.” He flapped his hand dismissively. “Besides, this is more important.” I considered asking what he meant by ‘out’, but he didn’t give me the chance. With a flourish, he leaped up onto the piece of wood I’d been about to cut, somehow balancing there on one foot, arms spread and wobbling precariously. “The fate of the world hangs in the balance! The Dark Lord has appeared, his minions gathering around him, and soon all the world will fall under his shadow. Only the chosen heroes, two seemingly ordinary farm boys, joined by other companions along the way ---”

I looked up at him “Is that us? What are we going to do?”

“We’re gonna save the world!”

I glanced at the stack of wood I should have been cutting, wondering if my brother Jay would think world-saving was important, then pushed Tristan off his perch. “Can it wait ‘til this afternoon?”

Arms windmilling, he stumbled and caught himself. “You can’t save the world in an afternoon! You have to go on a long journey and endure many hardships! Face enemies, win allies, discover ancient, long-forgotten secrets --”

“This is going to be like the dragons again, isn't it.”

Hunting for dragons in the mountains had been Tristan’s last big ‘quest’. We hadn’t actually made it into the mountains, of course, just the foothills, and the closest thing we found to dragons was a snake that almost bit me. Without proper supplies, we’d mostly gone hungry and had to huddle together at night trying not to freeze. We eventually limped home in defeat after I sprained my ankle. It was not a good trip, and this sounded like more of the same.

“It’ll be different, I promise. I’ll bring food this time.”

“I could barely walk for weeks!” Food or not, there was no way I was about to go running off who-knows-where for a game.

“Caleb, please.” Quieter. Pleading.

I sighed. The truth was, I’d never been able to say no to him, no matter how absurd his plans were. And none of them had killed me yet. “Fine. We’ll go find and beat the Dark Lord and his evil army.” How long could saving the world take?

Which was how the next morning I found myself standing under an old dead tree in the blue twilight before dawn. The bare, twisted branches above me shifted and rattled in the breeze. It had been hit by lightning a few years before, burned black but somehow, against all odds, still standing, and was exactly the dramatic sort of thing Tristan would choose as a meeting spot, never mind that there were plenty of better, more convenient places.

And times. I stifled a yawn. I needed to watch the road for him so he didn’t sneak up on me again.

“Hey, Caleb! Wow, you’ve packed a lot.”

I started, and the weight of my backpack almost pulled me over. As usual, he hadn’t made a sound, and his own pack looked worryingly light, with an odd wrapped bundle sticking out the top. “Hey Tristan. You haven’t packed much at all.”

“I’ve got the important things.” He took them from his pack one by one, laying them out. “Food, see?” A loaf of bread, most of a block of cheese, and some apples. Better than I had expected, at least. “And water. And Bardak, of course.”

I couldn’t help but grin at the last one. Bardak the Destroyer, whose full name took at least a minute to say and which I was convinced was different every time Tristan said it. A small, very worn stuffed dragon his mother had made for him. The red fabric had faded to pink-gray, its button eyes no longer matched, and I’d helped sew it back together more than once, when a seam had split or an eye come loose. We’d fought with and against Bardak plenty of times over the years. “I’m sure he’ll make a good ally against the Dark Lord,” I said.

“Hold on, I’ve got something even better.” He pulled out a long, thin bundle wrapped in an old blanket. As he carefully unwrapped it, I prayed that it wasn’t what I thought. It was.

A sword. Not like the swords from the stories, but long, thin, the hilt and scabbard decorated with polished brass. Elegant, almost, if anything owned by a man like that could be elegant. Because I knew exactly whose it was, and where it had come from. It was his uncle’s sword. The sword, everyone said, that Rhett had brought back from his time in the army, along with scars and bitterness and a pouch of silver. The sword that hung on his wall, the only well-maintained thing in Tristan’s house, the only thing his uncle owned that he cared about. The sword that Tristan had, for some reason, taken. For a game.

Of all the poor decisions Tristan had ever made, and there were many, this had to be the worst. I took a deep, shuddering breath and tried not to scream.

“Are you crazy? Your uncle is going to kill you!”

Tristan wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You can’t be a hero without a sword. It’ll be fine. He hates it anyway, he’s always yelling at it, and he was so drunk when I left, it’ll take him days to even notice.” He looked back up. “Anyway, what did you bring?”

Rhett was obsessed with the sword, and drunk certainly didn’t mean not dangerous. “Tristan…”

“What adventuring supplies did you get? C’mon, show me!”

“You need to…” But he was dancing around me, trying to dig through my pack while it was still on my back. “Fine! Just stop that, okay?” I was only a year older than him, but sometimes it felt like five, the way he never took anything seriously.

“So, what did you bring?”

“Just the essentials.” I didn’t know where this adventure would be taking us, but I was going to be prepared this time. “A change of clothes, a good coat in case you take us mountain climbing again, two spare pairs of socks and another for you because I know you haven’t brought any, enough food to last us two weeks if we’re careful, a canteen, flint and tinder, a knife, basic cooking supplies, a spoon, cup, and bowl, a lucky rock, needle and thread, a sling, fishhooks, twine, blankets, a tarp in case it rains, plenty of rope, some bandages because I know this is going to end with one of us getting hurt… what?” Tristan was staring, wide-eyed.

“Look at it!” He flung out both arms to gesture at me, or at least my pack. “You’ve got so much stuff it’s hanging off the sides! A house’s worth of stuff! You’re like a turtle! It’s bigger than you! How are you even standing?”

“I don’t know, it works as long as I don’t think about it. Let’s just get going. Before your uncle wakes up and kills both of us.”

The road out of town was never busy, but we did dive into the bushes a few times that day, whenever we thought we spotted someone coming. It wasn’t as though adventures to save the world, or just get away from home for a few days, were explicitly forbidden. We just didn’t want to have to answer questions. Like where we were going, or why we had Rhett’s sword.

The weather was good. We walked under a clear sky, listening to birdsong and the wind in the trees. Our feet kicked up clouds of dust from the roads, and we made up stories about what the Dark Lord and his minions were up to. Well, Tristan made up stories. His voice rose and fell, his hands waving for emphasis.

They spread plague in the cities and drought in the country. He convinced a mad lord to build him a castle, with walls so tall and thick no army could break through, and spires and spikes everywhere just because. He crashed one of the King’s balls, and carried away his daughter, and no one had seen her since. His servants frightened old ladies and made them faint, and they were really the ones who had stolen Pell’s chickens, too.

But meanwhile, a resistance was growing, a secret organization to defy the Dark Lord. Our paths would cross eventually, but not yet, of course. Not until we had earned a reputation as fellow enemies of evil, and they sought us out, to lead them into battle.

We camped that night a little ways off the road. Tristan built a fire, and I got some food together. A simple stew, made from the stuff I’d brought that wouldn’t keep as well. I kept Tristan away from it until it was done. He was a good hunter, but he’d never figured out how to cook. Rhett couldn’t either, and I honestly didn’t know what the two of them eat.

After dinner, we laid back and stared up at the darkening sky.

“Think anyone’s noticed we’re gone yet?”

“Not my uncle,” Tristan said. His uncle was probably passed out somewhere. “But I bet they’re wondering where you are by now.”

“Pfff. My parents don’t even know how many kids they have.”

He laughed. “They don’t notice when I come over.”

I imagined my house, the warm glow of the room as everyone gathered around the table to eat. Jay would be yelling at someone who had tracked in mud, the younger ones shouting and pushing, fighting for the chairs so they wouldn’t have to sit on a stool, Gran chuckling from a corner at her own jokes. I couldn’t remember whose job it was to cook that night. Maybe Dace? One face more or less in that chaos wouldn’t be noticed, and sometimes people were busy and missed meals. It had taken almost a week to realize that Shaw had left, when he’d run off to find work in the city.

Crickets and cicadas filled up the quiet and buried all the things that weren’t said. Somewhere in the dark an owl screeched.

I asked, “Do you know where we’re going? Because I’ve never been past the ford.”

“Eh, I’ve seen maps. We’ll figure it out.”

I fell asleep trying to piece together a picture of the roads and where they led from vague memories of maps and stories.