It was a crisp spring morning in the village of Thistlebarrow, the kind where bread baked faster and gossip traveled slower on account of the air being just thick enough with promise to slow it down. And up the winding path, past the gooseberry hedges and the crooked fence that leaned left because no one told it not to, young Elbin Waywater trudged up to the house on the hill with a parcel under his arm and a squint in his eye.

The house in question belonged to one Mister Hallowbrand—though most folk simply called him that old coot with the visions. It was a squat, stone-walled cottage with a mossy roof that leaked only when it rained (or when Hallowbrand forgot to patch it, which was always), and a chimney that seemed to puff whether the hearth was lit or not.

Elbin didn’t really want to be there. But his ma had made three honey-oat loaves too many, and she insisted Hallowbrand ought to have at least one before he started chewing on his own windowsills again.

He reached the door and knocked once. The door creaked open, not because someone opened it, but because it had never learned the meaning of privacy.

“Elbin Waywater,” came the voice from within. It was gravelly and deep, like thunder in a barrel, but just a little too theatrical.

Elbin peeked inside. “How’d you know it was me?”

“I see things,” said the old man, who was sitting cross-legged on a threadbare rug surrounded by incense that smelled suspiciously of burnt licorice. He gestured with both hands as though inviting fate—or maybe indigestion.

“You saw me walk up the path from your window,” Elbin muttered.

“Maybe,” said Hallowbrand, stroking his beard with a hand that trembled just enough to seem important. “Or maybe it was destiny.”

Elbin stepped in cautiously. “Ma says you ought to eat more. And less tree bark.”

“I eat only what the path provides,” said Hallowbrand. “And the bark was maple.”

He stood slowly, joints cracking like old scrolls unfurling. “But you didn’t come here for bread alone, did you, hero?”

Elbin blinked. “I’m here because Ma—”

“Aha!” cried Hallowbrand, pointing dramatically with one finger while the other hand clutched a bent wooden staff that had never once been straight in its life. “You are the one.”

“I’m the what now?”

“The hero,” he said, with reverence, as if the word itself might sprout wings and fly off if he said it too harshly. “I have seen it. In dreams. In the stew bubbles. In the way the goose in town hisses at no one else but you.”

“That’s because I kicked it when I was six!”

“Destiny often begins with a kick,” Hallowbrand intoned solemnly.

Elbin set the bread on the cluttered table and looked around. The place was a graveyard of teacups, half-melted candles, and scrolls that appeared to be grocery lists with ominous footnotes. Milk. Honey. You will forget the cheese again.

“Look, Mister Hallowbrand,” he began, “I’m not a hero. I work at the mill. I’ve got blisters on me palms and hay in me boots.”

“Exactly,” said the old man, eyes wide and shimmering like puddles that think they’re deep. “No hero thinks they’re the hero. That’s what makes them worthy.”

“That’s what makes them confused,” Elbin muttered.

But it was too late. Hallowbrand had already pulled a rusty dagger from a pile of unrelated brass objects and was holding it up like a holy relic. “Take this blade, forged in silence, quenched in moonlight, and lost to time. And also to the cushions in my chair.”

“I’m not takin’ your rusty cutlery.”

“Then take this!” he cried, reaching for a leather pouch. It jingled as he pressed it into Elbin’s hand. “Twenty-seven coppers and a button with a goat on it. Use it wisely.”

“I don’t want your coins!”

“Then take this prophecy!” He held out a scroll tied with twine and sealed with what might have been jam. “Read it under the third full moon, beside the stone that hums, and—”

“Mister Hallowbrand,” Elbin interrupted, carefully placing the scroll on the table as if it might explode, “I have to go now. I’ve got flour to sack.”

He turned to leave, brushing cobwebs off his sleeves.

But before he could close the door behind him, Hallowbrand called out, voice suddenly softer, almost wistful:
“Someday, hero. You’ll see. When the clouds weep fire and the bell in the woods rings thrice... you’ll remember me.”

Elbin paused. “There’s no bell in the woods.”

“Yet.”

And with that, the door creaked shut behind him.

Down in the village, life returned to its usual rhythm. Elbin went back to the mill, the bread was eaten, and the goose still hated him. But up on the hill, in the crooked house with a leaky roof, Hallowbrand stared out the window at the winding path, a smile on his wrinkled face.

“I’ll get you yet,” he said to no one at all. “Don’t you worry.”