There wasn't a whole lot in the book Nicky brought about how to get back. There as a simple incantation, but it said it wouldn't work until we had learned what we came for. I was a little worried about that since I didn't know what the heck we expected to learn. We decided to give the incantation a try, but of course, it didn't work.

"I guess we had better start walking," Nicky suggested.

For some reason, I took Tommy's hand. I guess the big sister instinct to protect him. Amazingly he squeezed it and didn't let go. Any other time he would have thought it was gross to walk around holding my hand. "Everything is going to be fine," I told him trying to smile as I said it. He nodded and kept walking.

After maybe twenty minutes Nicky stopped, looked from me to Tommy then said, "Are we going in the right direction?"

"How should I know," I said thinking we're in the middle of the freakin' desert. Besides the occasional palm tree, nothing was there to help us figure out anything about where we needed to go. Nicky stood frozen like he was now afraid to go the wrong way. "Look, this incantation, whatever it is, brought us here. It has to be leading us down the correct path, doesn't it?" I was hoping he would agree just so I would feel better.

"Yeah, I guess you're right," he agreed and to started to walk again.

"So why are you going in the opposite direction now?" I asked.

"What?" he said looking confused.

"We were going that way," I said pointing in front of me and Tommy.

"Sorry," he says then does a one-eighty and starts walking again.

We walked for several more minutes in silence until I couldn't take it anymore. "What do you hope to learn on this adventure?"

"Quest," he corrected.

"Fine this quest?"

"I don't know. I don't even know what Gilgamesh did," he answered truthfully.

"Maybe one of us should be reading this book, as we walk," Tommy suggested. He's now carrying the book I checked out of the library.

"How can we read and walk at the same time?" I asked remembering the time I knocked over the Christmas tree because I couldn't put down my copy of The Hunger Games.

"What are you gonna run into out here?" Tommy asked.

"He's got a point," Nicky said with a laugh.

"I'll read it," Tommy offered.

"Maybe somebody who will understand it better should read it," Nicky suggested.

"You calling me stupid?" Tommy asked with his feeling clearly hurt.

"No, I… I just meant that we're older and might understand it better," Nicky tried to explain.

"Fine," Tommy said handing me the book.

"Look you go ahead and read. If you don't understand something, ask about it," I said refusing the book. The last thing I wanted was for Tommy to start acting like a baby because Nicky was treating him like one. I've seen that too many times. Besides that, Tommy is an excellent reader, ahead of his grade level by a year, so I wasn't too worried about his comprehension. Since I had started reading the book, I knew it was a pretty easy read.

Now that Tommy was involved in his reading, I turned my attention back to Nicky. "Your dad has probably already come to pick us up and knows we're gone," I said.

"Probably has," he agreed. I didn't think he was going to say anything more until he said, "I hope they don't get too scared."

"My mom will be scared the second she knows we're gone. I'm sure she'll think we've been abducted or something," I told him since I knew my mom would never for a second think we would run away.

"I hope you're not mad at me," he says after a few seconds of silence.

"Why would I be mad?"

"I'm the one that found the book with the incantation. I'm the one that insisted we try it…"

"And you're the one that got us stuck with Gilgamesh in the first place," I reminded him with a smile.

"I don't remember hearing you speak up," he said defending himself.

"You know what happens to me sometimes," I said, but not wanting to get into an argument, I left it at that.

"What do you remember about Mesopotamia?" he asked me.

"Not much," I answered honestly. "I know it is where Iraq is today."

"I hope we don't run into any Iraqi militants," he laughed.

"I think we're a few thousand years yearly for that," I said laughing with him.

"Maybe we should figure out a way to leave them a note. Don't let anybody named Hussein take charge."

"We promised we wouldn't try to change history," I reminded him.

"It was a joke, but it would save a lot of lives don't you think," he said with a wishful look in his eyes. Nicky has an uncle in the Marines that spent a lot of time in Iraq. He's in Afghanistan now, and I know he worries about something happening to him.

"Does something up ahead of us look different?" I now asked. It wasn't like a village or anything. Nothing rose on the horizon. It was still flat, just different.

"It looks shiny," he agreed. "What else do you remember, about Sumer I mean?"

"It was where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers come together. I also remember they build temples to their gods. That's about all," I told him. "What about you?"

"They were the first known civilization, with the first writing," he says.

"Cuneiform," I said remembering what the writing was called. "Is that water?" I asked now pointing up ahead of us.

"Yeah, I think it is," he said then took off running. I followed after him leaving Tommy behind us still reading.

It took a few seconds for him to realize we were running ahead. "Hey, wait for me," he yelled then started running as well.

"It's a river," I said noticing it was running and not sitting still like a lake would.

"Do you think it's the Euphrates?" Nicky asked.

"I don't know, but I'm thirsty," Tommy said reaching his cupped hand into the water. With that Nicky and I realized that walking through the desert can take a lot out of you and started doing the same thing.

We eventually took our shoes off and put our feet into the water in an effort to cool off some. As I looked out across the water, I said, "I bet you couldn't do this in this river today."

"Probably not," Tommy agreed. "It's dammed in a lot of places. This could be under water or almost dry where we're at."

"How do you know that?" Nicky asked surprised at Tommy's input.

"We were studying water sharing," he said casually. Nicky shrugged and looked out over the water like he was trying to remember this spot for future reference. Of course there wasn't anything special about it. There definitely weren't any landmarks around to find on a map.

Once we decided to keep moving, we had to make a decision on which direction to go. "Uruk is on the Euphrates River," Tommy now informed us, "So we need to follow it."

"What is Uruk," I asked.

"Isn't that what they called the Orc things in Lord of the Rings?" Nicky asked.

"They were Uruk-hai," Tommy said, and he would know. He's got the video game. "Uruk is the city that Gilgamesh was the king of," he went on to explain.

"Okay, so are we upstream or downstream of Uruk," I wondered out loud.

"Flip a coin?" Nicky asked pulling a quarter from his pocket.

"Heads we go upstream," I agreed. I figured that flipping a coin was as good a way as any to decide, and if we were on an incantation driven quest, maybe we were getting some super natural help that would control how the quarter landed.

"It's tails," Tommy said, "I guess we go downstream."