The Lost Journals: An Official Minecraft Novel

by Mur Lafferty

  He grinned down at Max. “Looks like it didn’t matter anyway, since you and Alison are doing exactly what we had done.”

  Max winced. “So that’s why Grandma Dia limped?”

  Nicholas shook his head. “That was just age catching up with her. I told her that was the case, but she didn’t like that very much and decided to blame me, even though I was the one who fought the skeleton off her. Still, she wouldn’t have been in the Nether if it weren’t for me. If she knew you two were here right now, she would be an avenging angel, limp or no limp, coming to find you two.”

  Max laughed, picturing Dia swooping in to save—and scold—them, then grimaced. “You and I might be too similar, actually.” He told Nicholas the story of the cursed armor, both the armor he himself had cursed, and the faulty armor he had looted from Nicholas’s house.

  Nicholas grasped his shoulders “Oh, my boy, you were not to follow in my footsteps! My footsteps are weighed down by cursed boots and fermented spider eyes!” His eyebrows came together, making his face look like a thundercloud, reminding Max forcefully of his mother. They looked very much alike right then. Then Nicholas relaxed and was himself again. “I’m so grateful you’re alive. Just promise me you’re learning from my mistakes.”

  Max thought about the failed experiments. “I’m learning from yours and mine, yeah.”

  “As long as you’re learning. And alive.”

  “But my enchantments work! Sometimes,” Max added. “And I’m learning more and more.”

  “That is more than I can say, sadly. Right now, the only thing I’ve achieved is a new use for cursed armor. I’m amazed you’ve managed to make some items that were successfully enchanted.” Nicholas inspected Freya’s boots. “Did you enchant these?”

  “Oh yeah, among a bunch of failures.”

  “Well, that’s how you learn!” Nicholas said, delighted. “You learn all the ways to not do something, and then you find the way to do it. I’ve found many, many ways not to enchant armor. I just recently learned that step one is not to curse the armor with binding. I will eventually figure out step two.”

  “Until then you have a unique business model,” Freya suggested. “Just jam one of Nicholas’s Cursed Caps on the heads of any mob following you and they will be unable to get it off, leaving you and your family safe and secure!”

  Nicholas thought for a moment. “That might work, actually.”

  Max swallowed, nervous all of a sudden. “Then does that mean you’re coming home with us?”

  His uncle’s face darkened again. “The Overworld doesn’t have Dia in it. We were good friends.”

  “But it does have Mom. And me, and Alison,” Max said, hurt.

  Nicholas smiled and hugged Max. “True. Let’s get to safety and we can talk more.”

  ALISON IS BOOTS ALL OVER AGAIN

  Alison didn’t know what to expect when they brought Nicholas back, but when he gave her a look that was nothing but compassion, and she realized he was missing her grandma as much as she was, she burst into tears. Nicholas opened his arms and she ran in for a hug.

  “I keep feeling like I could have stopped it,” she whispered.

  “And I keep feeling like I could have helped if I hadn’t run away here,” he said. “But there’s probably nothing we could have done, in all honesty, Alison. I’m so sorry. I never got to tell your Grandma that she was right about almost everything. I still can’t believe something as mundane as a creeper took out that old adventurer.”

  He held her at arm’s length. “But you know what she would say to us right now, don’t you?”

  Alison sniffled. “Probably something like, A lady never cries at an inopportune moment. Now wipe those tears off your face. You can cry when you’re home safe.”

  Nicholas smiled. “Exactly.”

  “So, wait, you knew about your grandparents and my uncle?” Max asked as he watched them.

  “I only just figured it out after you left,” she said, holding up the book she’d been reading. “I found her journal.”

  Nicholas smiled as he looked at the well-preserved book, gently taking it from Alison and turning it over in his hands. “She’d want you to keep this safe,” he said after a moment, handing it back to her. He gently patted her on the shoulder, then turned to Max. “We need to get you kids safely home. What do you have ready to go?”

  Max looked sheepish for a moment before explaining that they’d used most of their supplies to find him. Before Uncle Nicholas could say anything, Freya began listing what they’d need and giving jobs to everyone. Alison shared a grin with Max behind Freya’s back before she turned to her assignment: inventory current supplies in the various chests. She reached into her pack and pulled out a list she’d already made, but everyone had already started busily working on their own jobs. Bunny Biter sat at Freya’s feet as she brewed potions in the corner, Max prepared food, and Uncle Nicholas unpacked the supplies he’d brought as he patiently answered the questions Max peppered him with as he worked.

  Alison watched as Nicholas shelved the enchanting books he’d brought with him. He did it with the care of a father putting a baby to bed. She was nervous; knowing what she did about this man now, and the kindness he’d shown her, she didn’t want to be a thief, but she had also seen the wreckage his enchanting had caused. She didn’t want to see him enchant something that put them all in danger, even if he did it by accident. Her mind wandered back to all of the havoc he had inadvertently caused with fermented spider eyes, and she shivered. Yes, she was impressed with Nicholas’s innovation with the cursed armor, but he still made her nervous.

  And even though the stories Nicholas was telling them about his adventures with Grandma Dia were very entertaining, she had to admit that one common thread connected them all. Grandma Dia hadn’t trusted Nicholas to make good decisions on his own. Not when they were younger, and not when they were older.

  Then again, no one had expected Alison to make her own decisions either. And she was actually careful.

  She owed him the benefit of the doubt, hoping he had learned from all the disasters. She certainly had. She walked over to one of the chests, opened it, and replaced the eyes of ender that she had originally planned to hide from him. They belonged to Nicholas. Boots was no longer around to guide him, but Alison hoped he would make good decisions anyway.

  Finally the group relaxed on the floor, all of them free from the confining armor—except Max—with spare banners beneath them to make it more comfortable.

  “You know I ran before they found you,” he said sadly. “I was so ashamed, I couldn’t look Rose in the face. I had gone to the Nether several times long ago, but each time was with Boots. I had ventured there a few times more recently by myself, and was more and more interested in taking you there. Once you were gone I lost my head a bit, enchanted a bunch of things, and then I just ran through the portal. But now you’ve found me and we can go home.” He took a drink from his canteen. “I think I’m ready.”

  Alison was about to interrupt, but Max perked up and said, “You’re coming with us?”

  Uncle Nicholas nodded. “You need someone to escort you there, and I owe you some actual guardianship rather than just being a bad example. And I’ve already failed you so many times. Even when I wasn’t around,” he said, gesturing to Max’s still-equipped armor. “It’s what Boots would expect from me.”

  Alison chuckled. “She would not! She would say you were a fool for coming back here and likely getting yourself into your own mess.”

  Nicholas held up a finger. “Ah, but what would she say once she was done yelling at me? Just get those kids out safely so I can—”

  “—be angry in the privacy of my own home!” Alison finished, and they both laughed. “I guess you’re right.” She cleared her throat and grew serious. “But the portal is gone. We have no idea where it is. We got chased, and l
ost, and now can’t even begin to backtrack. What do you suggest we do?”

  Nicholas scratched at his scraggly beard. “What would Boots do?”

  “After she was done yelling, she would take inventory, get the bare minimum of obsidian, or—” Alison thought hard, the answer right at the tip of her tongue.

  “Or make it,” Max said. “We’re surrounded by lava. All we need is a source for lava and a diamond pickaxe.”

  “We’ve got the pickaxe,” Freya said. “And we are definitely not short on lava. We just need to find the source of one of these lakes.”

  “That won’t be hard.” Nicholas got to his feet, looking tired but determined. “Who wants to go home?”

  ALISON AND MAX WISH THEY RAN TRACK IN SCHOOL

  As they checked their equipment and readied themselves, Alison thought back to the stories Grandma Dia had told her. She wondered how many of the wild and then my sheep got lost and I had to go far away to find them stories that Alison had heard had been cleverly disguised Nether stories. Tears pricked her eyes again as she wished her grandma was still around.

  “Where are we going to build this?” Max asked. “Right outside?”

  “We build it wherever we can find the lava source,” Nicholas said. “We’re not hauling the obsidian back here. No point. We’ll just hope we avoid any attacks along the way.”

  Freya shook her head sharply, testing the string on her bow. “You don’t avoid attacks in the Nether. You fight them, delay them, or hide until you starve. I usually choose to fight.”

  Alison handed Freya the last bow. “I will be so glad to get home.” She wondered how life would be different now, with Nicholas back, trying to reconcile with Max’s family, and Max working to learn more enchanting with his uncle. She felt an unexpected double-edged pang of jealousy, since Nicholas returning would give Max another adventuring partner, and Max would have gotten his wish and had his family member returned, while she was still alone.

  She shook her head. She wasn’t going to begrudge Max his beloved uncle. And besides, she would have to help Freya get acclimated to wherever she wanted to settle.

  “When we get back to the Overworld, what are you going to do?” Alison asked Freya, who sat with her pack on the floor against the wall, petting Bunny Biter.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t have a family, or a home, do you? Did you have a plan?” Alison paused, and when Freya didn’t answer, she said, “You could come live with me. I don’t have much of a place: my house needs rebuilding, but I could use the company. Max will be busy with Nicholas for a while, I expect. I think his family should figure out how they work together on their own. They have some fences to mend.”

  Freya was still silent. Alison raised her head to see what was wrong. Freya had buried her face into Bunny Biter’s fur, and the wolf made a low whine in her throat.

  “Freya?”

  “I’ve been worried about returning to the Overworld. Maybe I’ll just stay here,” Freya said.

  “But there’s no reason—”

  “Yes, there is. If I am here then I’m always busy fighting for my life and I don’t have to face the fact that I’m alone. When I don’t have constant mob attacks to worry about, then I have to worry about my reality. My family is gone.”

  Pity and an all too familiar ache rose in Alison’s chest, and she put a hand on her friend’s arm. “I know what you mean. But you’re not alone anymore. You have us,” she said.

  Freya lifted her face from the fur. She looked vulnerable and very sad, and Alison realized just how alone Freya had been.

  Freya took a deep breath, then nodded. “All right. I’ll live with you. You’ll need someone to protect you from those creepers. Seems your area is infested with them.”

  There’s the old Freya. Alison grinned wider and started to figure out what she could carry in her nearly full pack. There were a lot of things to take back home.

  She glanced across the room to Max and Nicholas. They were poring over books and speaking in low voices with a bow between them. Alison checked her equipment to make sure they weren’t enchanting her bow—good, it was in her pack already.

  The enchanting table hissed, and Nicholas groaned. “Do not pick that up,” he commanded, and swept the bow off the table using a stick.

  Alison sighed and hoped they would make it home in the first place.

  * * *

  —

  “I don’t want you fighting,” Nicholas said, flipping through an enchanting book.

  “What? I’ve been doing fine so far!” Max protested. His uncle had been in an increasingly parental mood since they had reunited. Max had once wondered how his uncle and his mom could be siblings, but now he saw it.

  “Yes, and you’ve been hit several times,” Nicholas said, pausing to look up and point to the nicks and scorch marks on Max’s armor that showed his past few days’ adventures. “You will wear that armor until the last hit, when it will fail, and then it will disintegrate. After that, what are you going to do? Ask the mobs to wait a moment while you run out of the battle to put on more armor?”

  Max shrugged. That was exactly what he had planned. He could change armor and weapons pretty quickly.

  “We will need to make it through this, and then we can figure out a way to carefully damage the armor to get it off you safely,” Nicholas said. “Until then, you need to stay out of the line of fire.”

  “Freya just wanted to dangle me in lava to burn it off,” Max said bitterly, but thinking that it might be a better choice than just sitting around waiting for it to rot off.

  “That is about as good an idea as sending you into battle with leather armor,” Nicholas said.

  “Then what am I supposed to do? Just wear this for the rest of my life?” Max said, exasperated.

  “No, when we get back home we can push you down several times until the armor just pops off,” Nicholas said.

  Max stared at him. “I can’t tell if you’re kidding.”

  * * *

  —

  The mood was not as upbeat as they’d have liked when they left the fortress, weighed down by considerable supplies and extra equipment. Max was highly distracting, running purposefully into the walls and nearly pitching himself down stairs before Alison grabbed his arm.

  “I regret suggesting this,” Nicholas said, closing his eyes as Max fell flat on his face and got back to his feet. Max ran ahead, followed by Nicholas and Alison, with Freya bringing up the rear.

  “It could work,” Alison said doubtfully. “But what happens if only part of the equipment pops off?”

  “Exactly,” Nicholas said.

  Alison sighed. “We’re in danger, and you suggested he run into walls until the armor falls off?”

  “To be fair, I suggested he do it when we get home.”

  “We should stop him,” Alison said. “We don’t want him charging at more magma cubes.”

  Speaking of magma cubes, Nicholas caught sight of about four of them far to the left, leaping up and down a cliff as if gravity didn’t apply to them. The group elected to skirt around them widely to avoid catching their attention. Alison was interested in trying her pit-trap idea again, if she were to encounter more magma cubes, but they all agreed that not engaging was the best plan.

  “We avoided that fight,” Alison told Freya as they left the danger behind them.

  “Sure, until the next time,” Freya said, aiming her bow at a zombie pigman wandering around nearby. It ignored them, and she slowly relaxed.

  “So, about that wither skeleton prison,” Freya said, and Nicholas turned to her as Max fell in at his uncle’s side.

  “It was highly complex and probably too much effort if the pigmen could get out like that,” he said. “But when they started spawning in my storage room, I built a tunnel to the mushroom farm. They’d follow
the tunnel and get trapped in the prison.”

  “Why didn’t you just take down the mobs?” Max said, panting slightly.

  His uncle looked at him like the answer was obvious. “Because I’m a builder, and it’s easier for me to build a tunnel and a trapdoor than fight a roomful of wither skeletons.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense,” Max said. “You’re still dealing with monsters in your storage room before they decide to wander down the tunnel, and you get more and more monsters; but killing them where they come from means only fighting once.”

  “Not much down here makes sense,” Nicholas said.

  * * *

  —

  Max’s armor was starting to chafe.

  Actually, it had started to chafe hours before. Right now, it was downright painful. And his body was bruised from falling down so much. It sounded like good logic, getting rid of the armor before a fight, but now he was sore and it showed no sign of weakening. His uncle wouldn’t let him do much more than that; there was too much danger. If the armor absorbed just a little bit of a blow before it fell off, his body would take the rest of the attack’s damage. And that didn’t sound like fun at all.

  He shifted, trying to readjust the cursed pieces, and gritted his teeth. If he complained about it, they’d all say that he’d brought it on himself. Which he had done, but that was beside the point.

  He wasn’t sure what the point was, anymore. He had his uncle back; he just wanted to get home. The annoying armor situation was starting to get to him, and the heat wasn’t making his frustration any easier to bear. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead and into his eye. He gave his eyes an irritated rub, and when he looked back up, he saw a magma cube hopping toward him from the top of a hill.

  Max and Uncle Nicholas ran up the hill, hitting the occasional magma cube that hopped into their path. Uncle Nicholas had said that if you struck them as they were about to land on you, then you could bat them away, damaging them in the process. He missed Bone Bane’s enchantment and had to use sheer force to make the cubes sail into the distance, but it was a good way to vent his frustration. Whacking the things away made fights much easier, as long as they were alert.