by Mur Lafferty
She crossed her arms and looked at the great crafting hall with skepticism. This land was beyond inhospitable and had many rules that were downright deadly for no apparent reason. Again, she found herself really wishing there weren’t tempting beds upstairs; at this point she might lie down on one, because even if she exploded, she would at least die comfortable. And why were there beds upstairs? Whose idea of a sick joke was that?
This was not the best way of thinking, Alison conceded, and she started taking inventory of the chests again. Against her better judgment, she started with the creepy chest full of eyes. She opened it and took out the top one. She knew it wasn’t a “real” eye; this was smooth and cool like a stone, and not squishy the way she would have expected an eye to feel. It was green and shiny, and looked around the room as she held it.
“Now, what are you for, little eye?” she asked aloud, but it didn’t answer her. If it had, she wouldn’t have been surprised, not after the days she’d been here in the Nether. But it merely looked at her.
The precisely written journal might tell her.
She’d found it in the bottom of a chest, reminding her of Nicholas’s journal while being wholly different, in that it was clearly and carefully written.
She shuddered and put the eye on the table beside the journal, and flipped it open again.
The handwriting was painfully neat, in a way that made her hand ache to think about making such careful letters. The whole thing was methodical and orderly, almost obsessive, its pages crammed with as many words as possible. She read slowly to make sure she didn’t miss anything.
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“It sounds like Grandma Dia could have written this,” Alison said aloud, laughing.
Then she quieted. Realization washed over her.
The text was informative, snarky, and a little passive-aggressive. Concerned with doing the right thing and being a lady, and very stern. It certainly felt like her grandmother. But Grandma Dia had never been to the Nether.
But she knew Uncle Nicholas. And Uncle Nicholas had traveled to the Nether several times in his youth.
He’d said his expedition companion was named “Boots.” Not Leocadia Stiefel.
Leocadia.
Grandma’s name is Dia.
Her mind raced as she turned the journal back to the beginning and read the opening, this time imagining Grandma Dia’s voice as she read the words.
How was this possible? Alison felt dizzy as she wondered what in the world had made Grandma Dia travel to the Nether with Uncle Nicholas, back in the day before their families grew.
She returned to the journal.
* * *
—
On page eight, Nicholas was named. On page twelve, she admitted that her hated nickname was “Boots,” since that’s what her last name meant.
Grandma Dia had changed her name when she’d married Grandpa Robert, long dead.
It was all coming together.
“What would you have done if you’d known your old friend had exiled himself to the Nether?” she whispered aloud, wishing her grandma were here so she could ask her. She missed Dia, and the rest of her family, badly at that moment, and slid the journal away from herself, trying to get ahold of her emotions.
A lady doesn’t spend her time adventuring around, Grandma Dia had said after Alison came home one day covered in scratches from wandering through the woods with Max. But if you are going to decide to not be a lady, always prepare yourself with the proper tools.
Her throat tightened. Grandma Dia hadn’t been obsessed with being a lady; instead she’d been giving her advice. Grandma Dia always told her to go out with at least a pickaxe and shovel. Grandma Dia always insisted she watch the time of day. Grandma Dia always had faith in me.
Grandma Dia believed she could handle anything. She believed that Alison shouldn’t go adventuring, but never told her she was unable to do so. Grandma Dia hid her advice in a lot of stern reprimands; Alison hadn’t been listening closely. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” she whispered aloud, a tear dripping down her face.
If Boots had been there, they would have found Nicholas, convinced Freya to leave the Nether, and been home by dinnertime.
After pacing the room, taking deep breaths, Alison felt she had control again. She went to the crafting table and got to work.
* * *
—
These skeletons were not the ones that Bunny Biter had led away. Max could tell Freya was getting worried, since they had yet to find the wolf, but the skeletons they approached were acting oddly all the same.
They neared the mobs cautiously, weapons ready, and found the skeletons weren’t chasing something, but milling about in a confused manner, waving their swords and bows around.
“What are they doing?” Max whispered, edging closer. He gripped his sword tighter, convinced this had to be a trick.
“Never mind that; what are they carrying?” Freya asked.
These skeletons looked like skeletons usually did, either in an occasional piece of armor or wearing nothing but bones—but some carried colorful banners instead of weapons.
The skeleton closest to them was carrying a garish pink banner with the image of a blue horse on the front. Max recognized it with a shock: Alison’s mother had made it.
Alison’s mother had loved to knit with the brightly colored wool her sheep produced, and she gave the banners out on holidays. Max owned two himself, but he had packed them away, as he didn’t want to upset Alison.
But now he felt his own grief well up in his throat as he realized the blue horse banner had been a gift from Alison’s mother to his own Uncle Nicholas.
“The banner. It was Nicholas’s. Alison’s mom made it,” he said to Freya in a strangled voice.
“What is he doing to those skeletons?” Freya asked, scrunching up her nose. “Has the Nether made him lose his mind?”
“What if that skeleton is Nicholas?” Max said.
She shook her head. “Nah. That’s not the way it works. Skeletons are not some silly reanimation of a dead person. They are monsters that spawn in dark places. That’s just science, Max.” She looked at Max with something akin to intellectual pity, like she was sorry for him because he fell asleep in class too often.
“Besides,” she continued. “Your uncle is behind this, for sure. Check out its helmet.”
Max had been so distracted by the colorful banner that he hadn’t noticed the reason the skeleton had been staggering around: it wore a helmet backward on its head. It swung its banner through the air like a sword, flailing about, clearly unable to see anything.
It pulled at the helmet with its free hand, but the thing wouldn’t budge. Freya laughed. “That’s your uncle’s enchanting, right there. I don’t know why he’s got them carrying banners. But Nicholas is around here somewhere.”
Max’s grief evaporated into something like hope as he realized she was right. With a quick slice of his sword, he took down the skeleton; it fell to the ground and disappeared, leaving its stone sword, the cursed helmet, and the banner behind.
Max picked up the banner and stowed it; he left the other stuff on the ground.
There were more skeletons, all wearing cursed armor that hindered them more than helped. Max and Freya found it easy to cut through them, heading in the direction the mobs were coming from.
Nicholas had to be sending these skeletons out; the only question was, why?
* * *
—
If the eyes of ender were in her pack, that meant they couldn’t look at her, right?
Alison patted the pack nervously, trying not to think of those eyes flicking around in the darkness. They were too valuable to leave behind, but they sure were creepy.
She continued to inventory the supplies, stowing away water, obsidian, and
stacks of food to keep the weird eyes company.
She needed to be prepared for anything. Boots would have told her a lady was always prepared, even if what it took to get prepared was unladylike.
Boots was unconcerned with paradox.
NEW USES FOR CURSED ARMOR
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* * *
—
Bunny Biter was there, barking furiously at a skeleton carrying a blue banner, when Max and Freya found the dark corner where the monsters were coming from, nestled in an alley between a newer simple one-room building and a crumbling wall. The wolf had dropped (or eaten) the skeleton leg along the way, and looked to be searching for another snack. She’d dart in, nip at the skeleton’s heels, and then dart out, barking. She seemed confused by the skeleton’s inability to attack directly, and thought barking was the safest bet.
When her mistress called her, she perked her head up immediately and teleported to Freya’s side. Freya took a moment to kneel and hug her wolf, whose tail was wagging furiously, and then she stood.
The blinded monsters milled about outside the small building, some looking in windows as if they didn’t have a helmet stuck the wrong way on their heads, others wandering away in confusion. “I’m betting your uncle is inside there,” Freya said, pointing.
“Do you think you and Bunny Biter can take care of these skeletons out here while I clear out the mobs by the path to the door?” Max asked.
Freya gave him a withering look. “Do you really need to ask?” She winked at him. “Bunny Biter, sic tibia!” she called to the wolf, who was immediately off again, aiming for the nearest skeleton’s leg. Freya raised her bow and began loosing arrows one after the other.
Max took a moment to admire her, wondering how long he and Alison would have lasted in the Nether without their new friend. Then he ran in a wide arc around the little shelter, avoiding the mobs and looking for their source.
He saw immediately that the shack was built amid the ruins of a crumbling fortress. This one had to have been here much longer than the others he had noticed, as it had no roof, and more walls than not were skeletal representations of their old strength. But monsters could still spawn in this old fortress, and they were doing so with a vengeance.
His pack contained his good armor just in case he found a way to lose the cursed items, some food, a few minor pieces of loot picked up from the skeletons, and the diamond pickaxe Alison had made for him. He stashed his diamond sword and gripped the pickaxe. He had to clear out the monsters and get some torches on the wall to make the area safer. He just needed to trust that Freya and Bunny Biter would do their part of the job.
Max put down some blocks of netherrack and climbed to a ledge at the mouth of the alley, where he could see the entryway into the small building. From his vantage point, he saw with a pang of regret the vast expanse of the fortress. It must have been truly amazing when it was whole. Now it was just a dangerous ruin. He gave a thought as to what his mom would say if she were here, and he grinned sadly. He missed even her yelling at him.
He wished Alison could see him now—he was being careful! He crept a few blocks forward until he was looking down on the milling skeletons, thickest in the dark alley between the newer building and the crumbling fortress wall. A few options ran through his mind: he could try to build a walkway above the mobs and all the way over to the door; he could try to stick a few torches on the walls to drive them out of the alley; or he could fire down a few arrows from his hiding place and pick them off from there. Each plan had its pros and cons, but before he could decide, one skeleton finally noticed him and shot an arrow in his direction.
Max abandoned his method of careful planning and jumped straight down into the fray of skeletons, whooping and swinging his sword with his right hand. With his left, he waved a torch around until he saw an opening and stuck it to the wall.
Bunny Biter snarled behind him, and he heard clacking as another skeleton went down. His diamond sword bit into skeleton after skeleton, severing skulls and whacking swords out of bony hands. He was in a brightly lit area now, and the skeletons were starting to run from the wolf.
Something punched him from behind and he stumbled forward in surprise, whirling to see a skeleton that had snuck up behind him. It waved its sword at him, and Max raised his own sword too slowly, his arm aching.
Behind the skeleton, the shelter wall crumbled as the tip of a pickaxe came through the loose stone. The skeleton’s blank face disappeared behind a leather helmet. It staggered forward, suddenly unable to see. Max took the opportunity and gave a mighty swing of his sword, felling the skeleton.
“Max?” said a strangled voice from the darkness of the building’s interior, but Max didn’t waste time. He put up the remaining torches and made sure no more skeletons were coming from any dark corners. Then he turned, breathing hard, and grinned at the figure looking through the hole in the wall. “Hey, Uncle Nicholas. Ready to go home?”
* * *
—
Max was enveloped in a hug so tight he couldn’t breathe, and he had a bizarre flashback to when he was drowning, but thankfully his uncle let him go. Nicholas pulled him through the hole he’d made in the wall and quickly patched it back up.
“Max! How— Why— When—” He was unable to get anything out. Max just grinned at him.
“Is there room for two more in there?” The door opened on the other side of the room, making them both jump. Freya and Bunny Biter came in.
“Freya?” Nicholas seemed even more baffled to see her. “What’s going on here? How do you know each other?”
“First, are you okay? Injured or anything?” Max asked. His uncle looked like he could use a comb and a bath, but otherwise seemed whole and healthy.
“I’m fine, but—” He looked from Max to Freya, confusion and delight warring on his face.
Max began to give him an account of everything that had happened, starting with the “drowning” and discovering Nicholas’s cabin. “And then Alison and I went back home and—”
“Wait,” Nicholas said, “Alison is living with you?”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot that part,” Max said, glad that Alison wasn’t there to see him squirm over the fact that he’d forgotten about her family. “Soon after you, uh, left, her house was destroyed by a creeper. She’s the only one left.”
Nicholas looked like he had been struck in the chest. He staggered backward, stunned, and leaned against the wall. Max remembered that he and Alison’s grandma had once been friends.
“Everyone?” Nicholas asked. “Even Dia?”
“They didn’t find anyone after the explosion except Alison,” Max said softly. “So Mom invited her to move in with us.”
Nicholas rubbed his face and sighed, looking very sad, and then returned from whatever nostalgia he had been visiting. “Go on,” he finally said.
Max told the story of the second creeper attack, the chicken jockey attack, Freya’s rescue, and how they had hunted for him.
“Hey, I have a question. Why did you put a bunch of mobs in a glass box?” Freya asked him.
“Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Nicholas said. “I built three sides, then lured them over there. Inside is a trapdoor that I escaped through. It kept me busy making the island safe, but then the mobs would still spawn. It was a waste of time.”
Max finished the tale of their adventures with leaving Alison at the fortress and coming to find him. “And now we can take you back and figure out a way to get a portal home!”
Nicholas sobered up. “I don’t know, your mom made it pretty clear she didn’t want me back.”
“Then move to another house, one that isn’t in the village,” Freya said. “There are a lot of places that aren’t the Nether, you know. You don’t have to live in this desolate place.”
Max cocked an eyebrow at
her. “I thought you had chosen to live in this desolate place?”
Freya grinned and shrugged. “Alison reminded me that I missed the color green.”
* * *
—
Both enchanters had wanted to explore the crumbled fortress because of the treasures that could be inside, but Freya reminded them that Alison was alone and waiting for them.
On the way back, Max asked Nicholas why he was so upset about Alison’s family. “I mean, I was sad too, but you took it personally.”
Nicholas sighed. “It was a long time ago. She never wanted us to tell you. Many years ago, Alison’s Grandma Dia, her Grandpa Robert, and I were close friends. Robert had no taste for adventuring, though; he wanted to stay home and keep his animals safe. Dia had a strong curiosity but also an aversion for danger, so she came with me but complained the whole time.” He smiled fondly at the memory. “She didn’t want to admit she enjoyed it. But I would craft items and make our shelters, and she would enchant the items and do whatever alchemy we needed. She hated visiting the Nether, though, but went because she said she had to keep me out of trouble.”
Max listened, his mouth hanging open. He was dimly aware of Freya scanning their surroundings for monsters as he stared at his uncle. “Are you serious?”
He nodded sadly. “I called her ‘Boots’ because that’s what her last name meant. We stopped adventuring when she started a family, and she became very maternal, not wanting any of her kids to explore the same places she had. One more time, when her children were young, she and I went to the Nether. Her leg was badly injured in a wither skeleton attack, and I got her back home. She made a full recovery, but from then on she would have nothing to do with the Nether, and made me and Alison’s grandfather swear never to tell the families what we had been up to in our youth.”