A terrible shriek of despair echoed around the ender dragon’s island. And then, like thunder after lightning, the long, low laughter of the dragon followed.
Is there anything we can do against such a weapon? wailed Lopp.
Is there any way to know which of us are truly endermen? thought Karshen, staring intensely toward the edge of the island. Toward Kan and that blasted note block.
There is not, admitted Kraj. They were listening now, weren’t they? Oh, yes. Now they paid attention. Kraj reveled in it. We must be careful. Never travel alone. Move in groups of four at least, and more if you can gather them. We have never needed one another so much. Fortify yourselves. Have faith in the Great Chaos. It will guide and protect us. It will visit ruin upon our enemies. Place shulkers everywhere you can. They are coming, if they are not already here. We must be ready. We must protect our land from the interlopers.
Tapi frowned, but kept her thoughts to herself.
But there must be a way to tell, thought Karshen. His eyes narrowed into magenta slits in his black head.
Is he looking at us? Fin thought, terrified.
He’s looking at us, Mo thought back. I wish we hadn’t come. He’s crazy.
Karshen glared at them. Through them. It is impossible that the humans have invented something so effective that no enderman can see through their deception. Humans may be strong, but they are wicked and stupid. They use their mouths to talk, like animals. The same mouths they eat with. No one who talks with their eating hole can best the noble enderman. There must be clues that would reveal the spies! If you look closely enough.
I did not say there were spies, thought Kraj hurriedly. Only that there may be. Do not rush to suspicion. The true servant of Chaos accepts all possibilities.
But Karshen ignored the cruxunit. A clue, the hulking hubunit growled in their heads. If only someone was wise enough to see it. They would not be like us. Oh no. They would be different. Freaks. Outcasts. Monsters. People who simply cannot act normal, no matter how you try to accept them. People with no respect, no manners, no love for the End. People who reject the endergroup altogether and run off to be…to be…by themselves. UGH! Humans could never understand the meaning of family. They are the same alone or together: ugly, dumb, unpleasant, annoying, and cruel. Karshen had worked himself into a fury. His slick, dark shoulders quivered and began to burn red. The berserker rage of the enderman who has a human in his sights. And LOUD, he finished.
Stay away! Mo yelled. You don’t know us! You don’t know anything about us!
Please, Karshen! Fin scrambled up. A few blades of grass and grains of sand skittered off the edge of the island, tumbling into the void. We’ve eaten with you and drunk with you! You took us in when our hubunits got caught in the rain! You do know us! You’ve known us since we were little! We don’t even know what pumpkins are!
Karshen bellowed the enderman war cry and bolted toward them, screaming, shrieking. The sound was like a horrible mechanical siren.
KAN! the hubunit roared. He swung his long arms, knocking Mo and Fin aside like black dolls. He kicked the note block off the ender dragon’s island into the night with a yelp of joy and triumph. Kan cried out after it, white tears streaming in his mind. It fell silently, slowly, until it disappeared into the dark. Karshen grabbed his fragment’s head and smashed it against the earth as though he meant to crack it open. Surely no pumpkin could withstand more than a few blows like that. I knew it! I knew it all along! Everything makes sense now. You are not my fragment! You have never been my fragment! You are a HUMAN BEING WITH GREEN EYES!
Kan gave up. He lay on the ground beneath his hubunit and cried.
Fin and Mo carried Kan back to their ship. They each put a shoulder up under one of his slender arms and flashed through the island chain with a couple of easy teleports they barely felt. They didn’t want to jostle him too much. It was quiet on their ship. The roar of the Endmoot lay far behind them. Only the flicker of end rods and the slow thudding of Grumpo’s box like a heartbeat deep within the end ship welcomed them home.
Is your head okay? Mo whispered.
Kan moaned. They heard it only in their minds, but a moan in the mind is much worse than one you hear with your ears. You can’t try to moan less loudly so your friends don’t worry about you when they can hear the inside of your head. You can’t hide anything.
Sit here, Fin thought. I’ll get something to clean you up. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a potion of healing around here somewhere.
Why are you helping me? Kan thought bitterly. You heard him. I am a filthy, disgusting, ugly, loud human. Stop helping. You do not help a spy once you have caught him. You interrogate him. I am ready.
Grumpo’s box thudded several times. They heard muffled laughter.
Listen when Grumpo hates something, the shulker chuckled. Told you. Told you. No one listens to Grumpo’s hates. Grumpo has the best hates. He hates for good reasons. Ha, ha, Kan, I hate your face. I want to bite your face so hard. Do you want to know a secret? If you let Grumpo bite who he pleases, life will be so much better for everyone.
Shut up, snapped Fin. Not now, Grumpo.
You can bite me, Grumpo, Kan thought miserably. I deserve worse than the bite of a shulker.
Oh, Kan. Hush. Mo rummaged behind one of the barrels in the hold for a minute. When she emerged, she was holding something in her hand. She gave it to Kan. Eat this. You’ll feel better.
It was a golden apple. Mo had only two. They were terribly precious. She’d found them in the back alleys of Telos, on top of a pile of dust that she assumed had once been a human. Caught thieving by a righteous enderman, no doubt. They’d probably been trying to heal themselves by eating the apple when the good citizen rushed them. Served whoever it was right. Mo had laughed at the dust. You died, she’d thought. Dummy. Only dummies die.
Kan ate the apple slowly. His jaw obviously hurt. But slowly, the purple blood dried up and flaked away. The bruise on the side of his head faded and vanished. The enderman sat up straight again.
He didn’t look any different. He was as black and beautiful as ever, the angles of his face sharp and clean. His eyes were the same bright, glittering green they were so fond of. There was no sign of pumpkin anywhere. Not one bit of seed or stringy pulp.
Karshen’s wrong, thought Mo. Of course he’s wrong. How could you think for a minute you didn’t belong here? You’re an enderman, just like us. You’ve always been an enderman. Your hubunit is just…
An idiot, Fin finished his sister’s thought. And a bully.
But if I was human you would not be able to see it! Kan protested. I would look normal to you! I am human. I am. It explains everything. My music. My…my eyes. It is the only thing that makes sense. The enderman sniffled and wiped his eyes as though he wished he could wipe them away completely. Humans love music, you know. Oh…he remembered suddenly. My note block. It is gone…gone.
A memory flashed between them: Kan finding that note block on one of the inner islands years ago. Little Kan with his little shining green eyes, wandering alone on a little scrap of land floating in space with one measly tree on it. Alone because he couldn’t stand his house anymore. Because his fellow-fragments had called him greenboy again that morning and he hated himself. Hated that he’d cried. Hated that they hated him. Hated his eyes for their greenness. Wishing every day he’d wake up and they’d be pink. And then he saw it, lying on the yellowish earth next to a pair of boots, a broken sword, and a packet of apples and cooked cod, like destiny waiting for its person. He hadn’t even known what it was at first. He’d just touched it. Innocent as anything.
But when Kan touched that silly brown block, it sang.
And now it was gone.
Kan, no pumpkin in the world could survive what your hubunit did to you, Mo thought.
You do not know that. Do you even know what a pumpkin is?
Well, not exactly. Almost. Kraj said it was a gourd. I suppose that is some kind of fruit?
See?
Fin shook his friend by the shoulders. Kan! How could you POSSIBLY be a human? Remember that Endermas when we were all five? Your hubunits let us come to your settlement and share the Enderfeast of Divine Chaos. It was the only year they let us past the home perimeter. Do you remember?
Yes, Kan mumbled.
Do you remember why they let us?
Because I begged. I promised to put away the note block for a whole month if they let you feast with us. I told them the Great Chaos approved of all lonely people, because they could wander around and make anything happen. That it would be the most Chaotic Endermas ever if you two were there with us. And no one should be alone on Endermas. Rain could happen to anybody. It was not your fault.
Yeah, you did. Because you’re a good friend. Almost as good a friend as a musician. And that was seven years ago, Kan. If you’ve been a human spy for seven years and no one ever even suspected, well, honestly, I think we should just make you king of the End right now, because you’d deserve it. That is a long game. We were just little babies back then. Babies can’t be spies. It’s ridiculous.
I guess you are right, Kan sighed.
He is, Mo agreed. Your hubunit is just defective. That’s all.
But what about my eyes? No one else has green eyes. You have to admit, it is terribly hard to explain that away.
Neither of the twins said anything. It was hard to explain.
Just because we can’t explain it doesn’t mean it’s wrong, Mo thought delicately. It doesn’t make you a monster. Some things are just different, that’s all. Some fruits aren’t quite the same as other fruits, some trees are a little taller or a little shorter than other trees, some cities are bigger and more beautiful, some people are…
But that is just it, Mo, Kan insisted. Some people are not. No one is different in the End. Maybe in the Overworld, what you are saying is true. But here, everyone belongs. The chorus fruits are not different colors. Some cities are not more beautiful. Everyone looks the same. Everyone is the same. Except me.
And us, Fin added. I guess we’ll just have to be different together. Isn’t that what the Great Chaos is all about? Should be all about, anyhow.
No one thought out loud for a long while. That is to say, they were all thinking, and quite a lot, but they chose not to share it. They made their minds quiet and still as the night sky.
But you are not, Kan thought finally. Not really. You were just like everyone else until your hubunits were caught in the rain. You are different, but your difference happened to you. And maybe when you grow up you could even fix it. You will get big and have an End of your own and you will not be different at all anymore. Everything will be fine for you. You used to be normal endermen. You will grow up into normal endermen. My eyes were never pink. And they never will be.
I hate pink, grumped the shulker in his box. Thump-thump, thump, thump-thump.
Thanks, Grumpo, Kan thought gratefully. Very kind of you to say.
I hate green, too. Thump-thump, thump, thump, thump. The sound of Grumpo’s box opening and shutting was uncannily like giggling. Might bite green later.
Kan ran his hands over a golden chestplate leaning against the side of the hold. I just do not think we can rule it out. My being secretly human. Not yet.
Fin threw up his hands. Kan, just forget about it! Now, look, you can stay here as long as you want. We’ll protect you. We’ve got plenty of weapons and some explosives so don’t worry about that. But I don’t want to hear any more about you being human. It’s sick. Just a sick joke.
Mo shook her head. You can’t be, you just can’t be. It’s not possible.
Why not?
Because humans are terrible monsters. They’re cruel and ugly and greedy. And you’re…you’re wonderful.
The twins saw the white sparkles falling slowly from end rods in their minds again. As they fell, they turned from white to red. They understood their friend was crying in frustration. He rubbed his face with his long, black fingers.
Do you not get it? I want to be human! I hope I am human! Somehow, somehow, I hope my hubunit is right. Because then everything would make sense. Suddenly, I would understand everything that has ever happened to me! My whole life would be like a story, the kind of story where in the end the person reading it thinks: Of course! It is perfect! How could I not have seen it all along? Everything would fall into place. I would know who I am. I could go somewhere and no one would look at me when I passed them on the road. No one would even care because I would be just like everyone else. I would be normal. And when I played my music, when I played…they would listen.
Kan kept rubbing his face, pulling hard at his cheeks. Scratching. Shoving his fingers miserably into his skin. Mo realized he wasn’t rubbing at all. He was clawing. Clawing at the invisible pumpkin he desperately hoped was there.
Fin grabbed Kan’s hands and stopped him. Hey, he thought gently into his friend’s mind. Don’t do that. Just breathe.
Mo jumped up. She’d remembered something. She hadn’t thought of it in ages. Of course she hadn’t, there’d never been a reason to think of it. It’d just been another bit of loot to add to the hoard. She’d found it lying next to a scorch mark that used to be a poor, dead, foolish human who must have tried to go up against ED and failed. The ender dragon had circled overhead, laughing coldly. That particular human had carried quite a lot of treasure and weapons with her into the End, which meant a good day for Mo. Where had she put it? Mo climbed over a pile of enchanted books, loose emeralds, and bows and arrows. One day they really would have to organize all this. But not today. Today, Mo remembered where she’d put things by her own mixed-up system, her own small service to the Great Chaos. Books made her think of paper, which made her think of music, emeralds made her think of Kan’s eyes, and whenever she heard her friend play, she felt like an arrow had struck her in the chest. It all made sense, if you were Mo.
And there it was.
Mo pulled something hard and brown out of the mess, dislodging a lot of arrows and emeralds and several old books she fully meant to get around to reading eventually. She knelt next to Kan and put it into his hands.
Here, she thought softly. See? Everything can be fixed. If you have your End and all its fragments. Anything can come back again.
It was a note block.
Kan sniffled. He didn’t touch it right away. He was almost afraid to. Afraid to believe it was real. Afraid to hope. His glowing spores fell around it like purple fireflies.
The young enderman let his fingers fall onto the note block. He closed his poor, tired eyes. And began to play.
They were all asleep when Kraj boarded their ship.
He did not come alone. Of course he didn’t. Alone, who was Kraj? Nobody. Not even a cruxunit.
SOMEONE IS APPROACHING THE SHIP! Grumpo’s voice exploded in Fin’s, Mo’s, and Kan’s heads, ripping them out of a deep sleep. A LOT OF SOMEONES ARE APPROACHING THE SHIP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! OH, I HATE SOMEONES! WAKE UP! PROTECT ME FROM THE SOMEONES!
The ancient cruxunit Kraj approached the stern of Fin and Mo’s home surrounded by eight tall, strong endermen. Fin could see them through the portholes, drifting up over the starboard side in powerful silence. He shook his head to clear away the last of his sleep. Mo rubbed her eyes, her heart racing. Kan hung back, glaring uncertainly. None of Kraj’s people opened their minds and thoughts. Their hearts were blank and dark as their long, lean bodies.
That’s not Kraj’s End, Fin thought, a clear, thin, laser-focused thought sent only to his friends. I know his fragments and his sub-fragments and his sub-sub-fragments. The Great Chaos knows he has enough of them. There was a reason Kraj was so wise, wise enough to survive so long. With an End as big as his, always around him, always u
nderfoot, Kraj’s mind was clever beyond imagining. Never unstacked. Which was why no one liked listening to him. Even endermen got annoyed with know-it-alls.
The eight endermen arranged themselves in formation around Kraj. Two stepped forward to flank the elder. The other six took up positions on the deck.
Proceed, sir, they thought in unison, a loud, hard thought very much meant to be heard over the whole of the ship. We will protect you and prevent their escape, should they attempt to harm the one or perform the other. All hail the Great Chaos!
May the Great Chaos smile upon you, proxy-fragments, Kraj acknowledged their obedience, utterly without emotion.
He has a new End, Mo thought, peering out at them. They’re soldiers. They’re an army. A little army. Still an army.
Fin frowned. But we’re…we’re all on the same side. Why would Kraj bring soldiers to our ship? Why would we want to escape? Why in the world would we want to harm Kraj? If there’s an army to fight the humans, we’ll be in it. Won’t we? Are they here to give us our orders? I don’t understand what’s happening.
I do, Grumpo thought dejectedly. You are going to hate it. I already hate it. But it is your fault because you would not let me bite even one person in the face when I told you to. Now it is going to be terrible and stupid all over you. How boring. And terrible. And stupid.
The End: An Official Minecraft Novel Page 5
