Something was wrong with their pockets. They could pull anything out of them. Stones, food, weapons, anything. It was like they were wearing his whole ship, as it had been before Kraj and his goons, and shoveling items out as they needed them. It was magic.
“By the Great Chaos,” Fin whispered. No one heard him. They had way too much to do.
Roary had half a wall up before Fin knew what he was looking at. She got up on a rise of rock to work on a doorframe. Jess sat cross-legged on the inner side of the new wall, sawing chorus wood up into furniture. Koal dug down into the island earth for a good foundation and started hauling redstone blocks out of his trousers. It was so ridiculous to look at, yet so terrifying. Could all humans do this? Could Fin do it?
None of them seemed to miss Jax at all.
“Well, of course he’s our friend,” Jess said when Fin asked about it. She didn’t bother to look up from the stone wall she was building with breathtaking speed. Her pickaxe was a blur. “But he’s got his whole mission and he’s very focused on it. I’m not about that life. Neither is Roary.”
“I’m a little about that life,” Koal said.
Roary made a gesture with her thumb and forefinger and a tiny space between them. A little. She grinned.
“What life?” Fin asked.
Jess bit the inside of her lip. It made her mouth go all crooked. “You shouldn’t worry about your sister or Jax. They’ll be back. Any minute.”
“That’s what you told me when they left,” Fin said impatiently. “I know. I’m not worried.” He was worried.
“No, I know, it’s just that when I tell you about Jax, you’re going to worry, but you shouldn’t. He’s not a bad guy.”
Fin scratched the back of his head. He couldn’t get used to having hair. It wasn’t right. It was unnatural. “It worries me that you’re saying that, because nobody said he was bad, but you’re already defending him.”
Jesster sighed and put down her tools. “Jax likes killing things.”
“That’s horrible,” Fin said.
Jess shrugged. “Is it, though? What do you eat around here?”
“I dunno,” Fin said uncomfortably, even though he did know quite well. “Chorus fruits.”
“Right, so you kill things all the time. And that’s okay, as far as you see it. As long as it’s vegetables. And what about endermites? I bet you stomp them as soon as you see them.”
“That’s not the same thing. Endermites are nasty little pests. They will bite the black out of you as soon as look at you. They’re nothing. They’re so stupid they barely know they’re alive. They’re basically mean, walking meat popsicles. It’s not like we eat shulkers. And chorus trees are just plants.”
“Plants are alive. It’s still killing. And I’d bet, if you could get an endermite to talk, they’d have some words about who is a mean, walking meat popsicle.”
“But you can’t get an endermite to talk. Believe me, I’ve tried.” I’ve been lonelier than you can even think of, in your beautiful blue world up there, where everything you could ever want fits in your pocket, Fin thought, but didn’t say.
Jess laughed. “Sure, but you can’t get a pig or a sheep or a creeper to talk, either. Jax just…Fin, he wants to be safe. He’d never admit it, but that’s all it is, deep down. He wants to be safe. He wants us to be safe. And you don’t know what it’s like up there. What comes for you when the sun goes down. We’re all on our own in the Overworld, unless we band together, like the four of us. And nothing up there will hesitate to kill us.”
“If it’s so normal to kill, then why are you acting like Jax is special?”
Jess picked at the corner of the table she was making. “Look, it’s fun to fight, okay?” she said defensively. “If you’re good at it. And Jax is good at it. We all are, but he’s really good. So after a while, nobody wanted to mess with him anymore. Even the endermen avoided him. It just wasn’t worth it, I guess. So he started wandering out into whatever distant territory he could find. He’d just keep going and going until something attacked him. He became fascinated with hunting rare creatures…unique monsters. He took home souvenirs and hung them in his hall. He’s a collector. Everybody’s got to have a passion, you know? But he’s not a bad guy. He wants to be strong and he wants to be safe. Everyone wants that, don’t they?”
Fin remembered why they were here. He didn’t like it at all. “How did you meet him?”
“Oh, Jax and me’ve been friends since forever. But we only met Koal and Roary last summer. Jax likes to hunt and fight. I…I like to build. I’m the reason he’s got all those houses. I taught him how to make something a little stronger and more interesting than a bed with a roof over it. Before me, he was just making big, dumb, plain wooden cubes with a bed inside. No style at all. No flair. I love making something out of nothing. Just a wide green field full of trees and boulders and then—presto! Jess happens to it, and it’s a pirate ship or a palace or a racetrack. I look at random stuff and I see civilization. Order out of chaos, you know?”
Fin felt a little sick. “I do know,” he said, trying to hide his disgust. Chaos was beautiful and alive. Order was ugly and dead. Every enderman knew that. It was like listening to a demon tell him how wonderful living in fire could be. No, it wasn’t wonderful. It burned your skin off.
“But even though I like to build stuff,” Jess went on, “doesn’t mean I don’t like a good fight or a good hunt. I met Jax in a beach cave. He was cleaning out the cave spiders so you could spend a minute on that beach without having one jump on your head. Horrible things, cave spiders. Poisonous. I was looking for materials to build a library. A place for all the books I find. You can make glass out of good enough sand, you know. A glass library. I liked the idea of that. Anyway, Jax was about to be spider lunch and I gave him a hand. Almost got our heads handed to us. We were just starting out then. He wasn’t that good at…well, anything. Neither was I. We’re loads better now. We traveled together a lot. It’s safer in numbers. And last summer we were out hunting skeletons because wouldn’t a whole castle made out of bones be fantastic?”
“I guess?” Fin said. It sounded gruesome.
Jess looked at him like he was crazy. He didn’t need telepathy to read that look. It was fantastic, her eyes said. How could he not agree?
“Well, we followed a skeleton into this huge, amazing swamp. It just went on forever.”
Roary jogged over. She settled down next to the half-built table. “You talking about last summer?”
“Yeah,” Jess said. “Fin wants to know how we met.”
Roary pulled a cooked apple out of her—apparently cavernous—pocket. She munched on it. “You guys saved us from the witch. It was awesome.”
Jess shuddered, getting into the spirit of her story. “The swamp was huge and soggy and mucky and full of snakes and birds and the moon and quiet. But there’s not much good building material in swamps. Not like orchards or mountains. Not for what I like to make, anyway. We couldn’t quite get a good shelter up before dark. And as the sun dipped down out of the sky, she appeared in her little swamp hut all lit up with swamp-gas lights. Have you ever met a witch?”
Fin shook his head. There were so many different kinds of creatures up there. He couldn’t imagine it. Everyone down here was the same. He never had to worry about seeing something he didn’t understand, like a witch or a skeleton or a cave spider.
“They’re like chemists with terrible outlooks on life,” Roary piped up. “That’s why me and Koal were there. I’m sure Jess told you she’s a builder, Jax is a hunter—well, I like crafting. Mixing things up and seeing if they explode or create something totally new and totally useful. It’s the best thing in the world. Like solving a mystery, but you don’t even know what the mystery is while you’re solving it. Kind of like you and your sister. So the point is, witches have potions, and potions are great, and I
wanted them. You know”—Roary leaned in confidentially—“I think I might chuck it all and become a witch myself someday. I could if I wanted. I’m pretty cranky about most things most of the time, I dig swamps and wearing black and filling up potion bottles with horrible chemicals and horrible magic and horror just generally. If this End thing doesn’t work out, it’s my backup plan.”
By then, Koal had seen them talking and put down his axe to join the group.
“Koal came along because he’d never been to a swamp before,” Roary said. Koal nodded.
“I like exploring,” he said. “It gets me a little bit of everything—collecting, hunting, crafting, building, or at least looking at buildings. And every once in a while you find gold. Or even diamond ore. A little bit of diamond will keep me happy for a week. But it turns out witches are very selfish and they just want to keep all their magic for themselves. One captured us. She put us in a cell made out of hundreds of poison potions. If we’d tried to escape, we’d have shriveled up and she’d have made people soup out of us. Witches are the worst.”
“Well, to be fair, you were going to rob her,” Fin said.
“Yeah, but she was gonna kill us! That’s what I call overreacting. She could always make more potions.”
Fin thought about Kraj and his soldiers carting everything he and Mo had ever loved out of their ship and how he’d felt. How angry he’d been. If he’d had hundreds of bottles of poison then, what would he have done?
“Jax and I stormed the place,” Jesster picked up the story. “The witch wasn’t alone. She had a bunch of creeper friends and a zombie butler. Took us all night to get everyone. Then dissasemble the poison bottle jail and let them out.”
“You killed all of them?” Fin’s face was doing all sorts of things. He’d never had one before, so he didn’t know how to just look interested and attentive without showing everything he felt. He frowned, his eyebrows went up and then down again, he grimaced, he squinted, he scratched his head. Their story was ridiculous. All those things he’d never heard of, all those places. They were messing with him. They had to be. Or at least exaggerating. Making themselves sound a lot more dangerous and exciting than any twelve-year-old really could be. Fin and Mo were still just waiting for their lives to start. These humans couldn’t really have done all this, could they?
Jess looked uncomfortable. “The zombie butler was already dead…” she said with a half-hearted shrug. “Technically.”
“She’d have killed all of us if she could. They come out at night. They hunt us. Up there, it’s everything in the world against humans. Just surviving is a win. You’re so judgmental. Has anyone ever hunted you? I didn’t think so.”
He hadn’t ever been hunted, of course he hadn’t. But that didn’t make it right, did it? A lot of the endermen in the End were tremendously mean, but he didn’t kill them. Mo didn’t kill them. And yet…when the humans talked about the Overworld, the swamp and the witch, the beach cave and the poisonous spiders, the castle made out of bones…it all sounded so…so exciting. So different from the End, where every day was exactly the same, and every night, too. Imagine living in a place where you could never know what might happen next. Imagine living in a place where colors other than yellow, purple, and black existed. In a place where the biggest adventure you could find was something much, much more interesting than training in the Enderdome.
“They’re just monsters,” Koal mumbled. “It’s no big deal.”
All those visions of the Overworld vanished from Fin’s head. “Just monsters? Just monsters? Like endermen, you mean?” he shot back, much louder.
Jess rolled her eyes. “Yes, actually, exactly like endermen. Endermen are strange. They’re alien. They’re hideous. They’re violent and angry even when you’re just minding your own business not bothering anyone. But if you commit the high crime of looking at them, as if looking ever hurt anyone, they’ll get you. You have to get them first. That’s all there is to it. Survival of the quickest. Once you’ve seen an enderman, it’s usually too late. They’re the worst thing I know about. Do you have any idea how many humans endermen kill up there? Because it is a lot. And it’s not even like they’re doing it to get our loot. When we go down, and regen at our spawn point, we leave everything behind, but they never take it. And let me tell you, respawning is no fun. It hurts like I don’t even know what. You’re so weak. You can barely move. Everything just throbs. Unless you’ve got medicine on hand and a good friend, or a totem to stop your respawn from happening in the first place, you won’t feel like yourself again for a long time.”
Fin felt his cheeks burn. “Then what are you doing here? It’s nothing but endermen down here! Why couldn’t you just leave us alone? You’re the monsters, not us. You just show up in our territory and expect to do whatever you want, however you want, with whatever you want, and you don’t care if it belongs to you or not. Humans are all the same!”
Koal got red in the face. He was embarrassed. He was angry. He was insulted. “If humans are all the same, you’re bad too! You’re human, you idiot! And if you had a ship full of loot, I bet a bucket of gold you got it by marching in somewhere, seeing what you wanted, and taking it without asking just like all the other nasty, no-good humans. If your ender-friends knew what you were, they’d treat you the same as they treat us and you wouldn’t think they were so great then! Get a grip, Fin, deal with your situation, and face the facts! If humans are monsters, you’re a monster, too.”
Fin fought desperately not to cry. “According to you, endermen are the monsters. So I’m one either way!” he screamed. “Just get out! Go away! If you hadn’t come I’d still be in my ship with all my stuff and my twin and my best friend and I wouldn’t have any problems! I’d still be happy! What are you doing here? Why can’t you just go back where you came from?”
“It’s COMPLICATED!” Roary yelled back. “Just calm down. We’re just regular people, Fin, just like you.”
“Not like me. I never invaded anybody. And Kraj is right. That’s what you’re doing, even if you’re only an army of four. Why do you think you have the right to just show up on someone else’s land and start doing and taking whatever you want from whoever you want?”
“That’s just how it works in the Overworld,” Koal said. “Everybody does it.”
“Then the Overworld sucks. And so does everybody.” Fin crossed his arms over his chest and let out his breath.
“Did you ask before taking every piece of your collection from the place you found it? Even the rocks and the ore and the wood?” Koal fired back. Fin had nothing to say to that. He hated that he didn’t.
“It’s complicated,” he mumbled.
Roary tried to explain. “You want to know why we came? It’s not just one thing. We aren’t endermen. Every human is completely different from every other human. Yeah, yeah, Jax wants to kill the ender dragon. Big whoop. Lots of people do. It’s like how lots of people see a mountain and some of them want to paint it and some of them want to live on it and some of them want to mine it, but most people just gotta climb it. So Jax wants to climb it. But we planned to come to the End for a lot of reasons. I wanted to find new materials. I guess that makes me the miner. There’s stone and food and treasure down here you can’t find anywhere else. Koal wanted to see a place that’s pretty much nothing but a legend in the Overworld. He’s your painter. Although he was more or less on board with Jax’s plan, and so was I.”
Koal looked embarrassed. “I like to travel. But once you’ve got where you’re going…it’s nice to have something to do. I need activities. Or I might as well stay home.”
Roary nodded. Fin got the feeling none of them was entirely offboard with Jax’s plan when it came right down to it. “And Jess wanted…”
Jesster rubbed her hands on her knees. She could speak very well for herself. “Jess wants to live on the mountain.”
“To rule it? W
ith an iron fist? From this castle? Queen of the End?” Fin clenched his fist. Grumpo will not be ruled. Grumpo is unruleable. And so is Fin.
Jesster boggled. “No. Just live here. Who wants to rule? What a lot of work. Jess got tired of running from all those sweet, nice monsters who definitely didn’t want to kill her or knock down everything she ever built. Jess thought if she stocked up enough pumpkins, she could build her own little city and live down here and not have to worry about witches or spiders or skeletons or zombie butlers or creepers or anything. She could just build her library of glass and be happy. Jess…kind of wants to be you when she grows up.”
Fin looked at Jess with astonishment. She wanted to be like him? But…Jess was strong and confident. She had everything. She was pretty. Soft brown skin and brown hair in a long ponytail and brown eyes. A friendly set to her chin. Not scary. Not flashing with rage. Not a monster. Just a girl who wanted to build a library. He knew another girl like that. His sister. And when his sister came back, if they were going to figure out what had happened to him, it would be this girl and her friends who would help them, not the endermen. Not now. Not once they saw the twins as they really were. Not Kraj or Lopp or Koneka or Eresha the Mouth of the Great Chaos. Maybe Kan. Maybe. But he couldn’t count on that and neither could Mo. If he was going to get help, Fin knew he needed to stop calling them monsters. Whether it was true or not.
Fin dried his eyes and took a deep breath. “Building libraries isn’t so bad,” he sniffed. He smiled shyly. “I even know where you can find some books.”
“Really?” Jess said. Her eyes got big and round. “I could have them?”
Fin nodded. “If Mo says it’s okay. She will. But it’s nice to ask.”
“It would only take a couple of trips to ferry them all over here,” Roary said. “What’s in all those books anyway?”
Fin shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re enchanted. I’ve never been able to get one to open.”
Go on, thought Commander Kraj. Take it. It will make you stronger.
The End: An Official Minecraft Novel Page 12
