by Jack Thomas
“I don’t mean to be rude,” Trallis interrupted, “but can you please stop talking? I like to travel in silence so as to not alert my enemies to my whereabouts.”
“What? Enemies? You don’t have any enemies, with a cloak and… hair like that. No. Dan, on the other hand, had some enemies, I’ll tell you. Seemed like everyone he ever hung out with was just uncomfortable and rude to him. Almost spiteful! I wonder why that was. I liked Dan. He was a great guy. Hey, who are they? Friends of yours?”
“Trallis spun around and saw that he was being pursued by two orcs. Their blades were drawn and they snarled at him menacingly.
Well, he thought to himself, it may be horrendously annoying, but it’s still the most powerful sword in the world.
“Sword,” he commanded in his most authoritative tone of voice, “slay those orcs!”
The sword paused hesitantly.
“Ehhhhhh… I don’t think I want to.”
“What?” Trallis did not like where this was going.
“I don’t know, Dan… Killing’s not really my thing…”
“You’re a sword! Killing is your only thing!”
“Yeah, but you know…”
“No! I really don’t know! Fly over there and slay those orcs right now!”
“It’s the blood, you see. I’m not really into the blood, and stuff…”
“Oh, heavens!”
To the sword’s constant objection, Trallis pulled it out of its sheath and slayed the orcs himself. When he placed it back on his back it was stunned, its eyes wide. He continued walking and was blessed with a few more moments of silence, but soon the shock apparently wore off.
“Dan, dude, are you gonna clean me?”
“I already wiped you off.”
“I know, but dude, I can still smell it. Oh man, that was so gross… Oh lordy, I think I’m gonna be sick.”
“What?”
“Yep, definitely sick. This is happening.”
“Can swords be sick?”
“I am whirlin’ towards a hurlin’ right now.”
“This is ridiculous. You can’t get sick.”
“I got a ticket for the Barf Train…”
“Just put your mind on something else.”
“Next stop, Taco Toss Station…”
“Stop thinking about it.”
“Four-three-two-one Upchuck Avenue, Yarksville, Chunderland…”
“Seriously, stop talking about it. You’re not going to be sick.”
“Oh man, speaking of being sick, this one time I ate a bunch of reeeeally colorful cereal…”
“Oh my goodness…” Trallis put a hand on his forehead.
“And I ate sooooo much, and… and…”
“Listen. Sword. You’re—”
And then the sword threw up, much to the confusion of Trallis.
*****
Trallis didn’t sleep much that night.
He lay in the inn bed, staring up at the ceiling. The sword lay on the ground in the middle of the floor.
“Heyyyyyy hoooooo,” it sang, “mommm-na-s’gotta goooooo! Hey, and the birds, and the thing, they went some-thing over to the—HOOOOLLIDAY farm! Yeah they dance in the woods and the trees with their LIIIIIIITTLE beads of hey, and that naaah-nah nah, hey heyyyyyyy! I don’t know the rest of that song. Wheeeeennnn the little birds are NAAAAAHHHH! When you get—I can’t sleep with that cow mooing outside!”
Then the sword began to snore very, very loudly. It did so throughout the entire night.
Trallis wondered many times how much he might get for the sword, or if anyone would even buy it.
*****
The next day was basically the same.
“Hey Dan, did you know that Dan has pants that same color?” the sword asked.
Trallis only trudged through the woods, weary from lack of sleep and far beyond attempting to silence his new companion.
“Seems to be quite the popular color…” it continued. “Brown! What other colors of pants do you have? Oh my gosh! This one time Dan’s hair caught on fire! It was soooo funny! He didn’t think it was very funny, but I laughed and laughed… For days! I literally laughed about it for several days! It was the funniest thing ever! Oh my gosh! You know what’s the funniest thing ever? Dan had this friend, and he had a dog, and you would say, ‘Chipchip!’ Chipchip was his name, you see, and you would—”
“You told this story already,” Trallis said, though his words never got through.
“say, ‘Chipchip! Dance!’ And he—HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAHHHHH! HE WOULD DANCE! Hahahahahahahahaha, ohhh ho ho, heehee! It was the funniest thing ever! Hooh, boy… HOLY LORD!”
Trallis jumped and looked around frantically.
“What? What? More orcs?”
“You do not even know how hungry I am right now!”
Trallis sighed and continued walking.
“Don’t startle me like that! Only do that when you see a monster or something!”
“Dan, seriously, I am like, so hungry right now! You got any more meat or something?”
Due to his overwhelmingly bad stroke of luck, Trallis should have expected right from the get go that his sword would not only be an enormous mental burden but also require manual feeding… yet somehow he hadn’t. Twice now he had had to feed it, and its appetite was remarkably large.
“No. You ate it all. There’s none left.”
“Well I need to get something in me quick, or I might pass out…”
Trallis smiled slightly as he considered this.
“Or throw up…” the sword said.
The smile dropped from Trallis’ face. “Well I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. There’s no more food.”
“You just walked past a fruit tree! Pick me some of those fruits, man.”
Trallis turned back and spotted an odd-looking tree a few feet off the path. It had scraggly branches with bright orange fruit hidden amongst the large black leaves. Trallis didn’t know an incredible amount about trees (nobody’s perfect, right?), but he had been in these woods long enough to identify this as a borange tree.
(Historical Note: The borange tree was discovered in 26495873 by Chesterel VonPerpsy. When the obvious question arose as to why he chose such a name, he replied, “I was just so tired of ‘orange’ not rhyming with anything!” Three more words rhyming with “orange” came into being over the many years to follow (being giebergorange, a cave-dwelling beast; canorange, a genus of orange canary not to be confused with the orangenary; and kefarstelorange, an emotion that is a particular mix of befuddlement, bedragglement and slight hunger), but VonPerpsy’s discovery was nonetheless a majorly important historical lyrical event to the songsmiths.)
“That’s a borange tree,” said Trallis. “Don’t clingbats live in those?”
“That is both untrue, a myth, and stupid,” said the sword with uncharacteristic assurance. “Just go up and grab some boranges, nothing’s going to happen if you just pluck a couple off real quick.”
Trallis thought about it for a moment.
“Well… okay, I’ll—”
Suddenly a black object zoomed out of the tree and struck Trallis directly in the face, clinging on tightly. Trallis screamed and pulled at the clingbat, but its grip on his face and hair was too strong for him to wrench it off. His shouts and curses were muffled by its fuzzy body.
“Boy, I gotta say,” said the sword, “there is no possible way that I could have been more wrong.”
Trallis wrestled with the clingbat, trying to pry its claws from his face.
“Not one single percent of what I said was correct,” the sword continued.
Trallis flung his head from side to side, slapping the bat on the back and screaming even louder when it only tightened its hold.
“It’s remarkable, really. Like, just how massively incorrect I was. Completely wrong. All the way. One hundred percent.”
Trallis stopped thras
hing when he heard a loud crash echo through the forest behind him. He couldn’t see a thing from behind the little black mammal clinging to his face, but he got the succinct impression that whatever was making the sound was getting closer.
“Sword, what is that?” he asked with a muffled voice.
“OH SWEET POTATO BERLINGTON MASTER BANANA FAT!” the sword screamed into his ear.
“What? What is it?!” The crashing grew louder. He could hear stomping and thumping and the snapping of branches.
“OH HEAVENAL RAT-SMACKING SIX RICK GRABLE STABLE FARM!”
“STOP SAYING WEIRD THINGS AND JUST TELL ME WHAT IT IS THAT’S CRASHING THROUGH THE WOODS AT US!” It was almost deafening now—a cacophonous din that could surely be heard back in Trotwornd.
“GREAT MARBIN BOAT FACTORY, MY DEAR SWEET FRIEND! RUN!!!”
Trallis screamed and bolted off through the trees, holding his arms out in front of him.
“Sword! Sword, you’ve got to be my eyes!”
“I can’t! I’m turned the wrong way! Oh my goodness, it’s enormous!”
“I’ll take you out and turn you around!”
“There’s no time! You have to keep moving! Just run backwards! Dear heavens, so hideous!”
Trallis didn’t argue. He jumped and did a midair spin, landing with a stumble that he quickly righted. He continued running backwards, pumping his arms furiously.
“Dan!” the sword shouted over the approaching crashing. “You’re going to hit that tree! You’ve got to turn right!”
Trallis turned right and struck a tree.
“OW!” his muffled scream issued from behind the bat. He rounded the tree and continued running, rubbing his head. “What’s wrong with you? I turned right!”
“I meant my right! Oh man, turn left now!”
Trallis turned left and smacked into another tree.
“OW! Come on, sword!”
“I thought we had established a system!”
“No! Just do it the other way!”
“Okay. Your left!”
SMACK!
“OW!”
“You were just too slow that time. My right!”
SMACK!
“OW!”
“I was perfectly clear that time!”
“Don’t change perspectives!”
“Right!”
SMACK!
“OW! COME ON!”
“Sorry, what I meant was, ‘affirmative’.”
SMACK!
“OW!”
“Woops! Wasn’t paying attention. Left!”
SMACK!
“OW!”
“Wait, which one is left again? Quick, put your hands in two ‘L’ shapes and hold them back here!”
SMACK!
“OW! No! You’re a horrible navigator!”
“Maybe. I’m pretty sure you’ve hit every single tree so far. It’s actually really amazing...”
“Well what’s next?” The crashing hadn’t grown closer, but it hadn’t receded either. Trallis’ lungs began to burn, and he wondered if he had any chance of outrunning whatever it was that was pursuing him.
“You’re actually coming out of the trees now!”
SMACK!
“OW!”
“’Kay, that was the last one. Okay man, you’re coming to some water now!”
“What? How much water?”
“Oh man, that thing’s getting closer! Dan, you’re gonna have to jump! Oh, just so much warts and hair!”
“Jump where? Where am I?”
“Do it now, man! Leap as far as you can!”
Trallis bent his legs and launched himself backwards with as much force as he could muster. He flew several feet before landing in ankle-deep water. He continued barreling backwards, assuming that he had covered the majority of the water with his jump. The splashing didn’t stop after several long seconds however, and he soon grew annoyed.
“How much water is there? How did you expect me to clear this?”
“You almost had it, man!”
Trallis was about to argue further, but a foreign splash from several feet away propelled him onward with a startled shout. The water didn’t let up yet, but in fact grew deeper to the point where he was actually wading through. It was several more moments before it finally grew shallow and gave once more to dry land.
“Okay sword, what’s next?” Trallis was panting and dripping wet from head to toe.
“Alright. I’m not gonna lie to you. There are some trees ahead. But you’ll be fine if you go right!”
“Wait a minute…” Trallis said. “Why the heck am I listening to you?”
He jumped and turned forward once more, taking a hard right. He ran into a tree with a SMACK and fell onto his rear end. This time it was his face that took the majority of the impact and he screamed into the clingbat, which gave an unhappy shriek of its own.
“What, you just don’t trust me now?” the sword said.
The clingbat wriggled and Trallis yanked at it. Finally it released its grip and flew from his face, darting off into the trees. Trallis took a deep breath of air and rubbed his face.
“OH DEAR LORD, DAN! IT’S HERE!” the sword screamed. “OH IT’S HORRIBLE!”
Trallis whirled around and grabbed for the sword’s grip.
Standing in front of him, also dripping wet, was a small monkey holding a very large stick. He stared at it, dumbfounded, for several seconds.
“Sword!” he finally shouted. “What’s wrong with you? That’s just a ruckus monkey!”
“Did you kill it yet?” the sword asked from behind him.
“No! I’m not going to kill it! It’s not a big monster like you said! What… Why did you say all those things about its warts and stuff?” Trallis studied the ruckus monkey. It only stared back at him with a vacant stare, holding its ruckus stick limply at its side.
“What, you’re saying it doesn’t have warts?”
“No, it doesn’t! I mean, none that I can see…”
“But it’s pretty huge, right?”
“No! It’s very, very small, actually!
“You know what? I think I might need glasses. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if something is huge and really far away or small and really close…”
A butterfly suddenly floated past the ruckus monkey and in an instant it was giving chase, crashing through the brush and striking everything around it with its enormous stick. Trallis watched it go, rubbing his bruising face and wishing he had a muffin
*****
“What do you think trees are made of? I bet you couldn’t eat five hamburgers. I could, but I’d throw up. I’ve learned that lesson on at least four separate occasions. Oh man! You know what’s great? Red pants!”
Even in light of Trallis’ extreme anger, the sword hadn’t for a moment stopped talking. Trallis could only trudge through the woods, trying to tune out the annoying voice and ignore the dull throbbing in his temples.
“One time there were all these birds that Dan was looking at,” it continued, “and I made a fart noise with my mouth and it scared them all away! It was awesome! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a swan before… If you put all the cabbages in the world into one big box, do you think that would be cool? I sure don’t. Cabbage is way gross! I can knock a piece of paper off a table just by blowing on it. I just thought about those orcs again…”
Trallis frowned a deep and sorrowful frown.
“Oh man, do you remember how gross it was?” the sword asked. “The blood, and the B.O… Oh man, I’m getting dizzy. I’m seeing double! Two huge, ugly birds with bald, orange heads diving at us!”
“What?”
Suddenly a huge, ugly bird with a bald, yellow head (the thought that the sword might be colorblind did not cross Trallis’ mind at that moment) swooped down out of the sky and snatched the sword right off of Trallis’ back.
“DAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!!” it shouted as the bi
rd took to the air and soared away above the treetops.
Its voice echoed for several moments and Trallis only stood, unsure of what to do. For the first time in the last twenty-four hours he was surrounded by quiet, and it felt absolutely amazing. But one of the most priceless treasures in the land was flying away from him, heading fast for Lost Forever. He looked to the place where the bird disappeared, his face scrunched up in painful consideration, his insides threatening to buckle under the weight of what was most likely the most difficult decision he had ever had to make in his life. He danced in place, made aggravated groany sounds through clenched teeth, ran his fingers through his hair.
Eventually he shouted, “Oh, gruffmutter!” and took off after it.
He ran through the woods for several minutes, thinking that the bird was probably long gone. He had a stroke of luck however (or nasty luck; he wasn’t certain of which at the time) when he reached the bottom of a cliff and looked up to see a large nest resting on its pinnacle. Being an excellent rock-climber (but you could have guessed that one, certainly) he leapt onto the cliff and started to scale its face.
He clomb and clomb, the forest stretching out further and further below him. Soon the trees were little poofs of green and the lakes and ponds little blorbs of blue, and still higher he clomb. When he was nearly to the top he thought he heard the sword’s voice, but then realized that there were indeed two different voices. He closed the last several feet of cliff face and pulled himself onto the ledge.
At the top of the cliff was an enormous nest, twenty feet across—perhaps even as large as a Barrely Burb’s Mountainous Funnel Cake. It was positively filled with various weapons and armor and trinkets and even some tacky and ornate furniture. The huge bird was nowhere to be found, but lying in the middle of the nest was the sword. It was sharing a conversation and laughing with another sword right beside it.
“And you would say, ‘Chipchip!’” the sword was saying. “That was his name, see. And you would say, ‘Chipchip! Dance!’”
“And he would totally dance?” the other sword said, sounding positively amazed.
“He would totally dance!”
“Ahahahahaha! No way! Really?”
“Hahahahaha! Yeah, really!”
“That’s so funny! You would be like, ‘Chipchip, dance!’”
“Yeah, and he would dance!”
“Ahahahahaha! That’s incredible, bro! Really?”
“Yeah!”
“HAHAHAHAHA!!!”