“You don’t know that,” Jesster tried to reassure him.
“I don’t know it. But it’s still true,” mumbled Fin.
Koal rolled his eyes in disbelief. “A war? Against us? But there’re four of us.”
“Yeah, but they don’t know that. All they knew was a portal was opening. They kind of thought it was…all of you.”
Jess frowned at Fin. “All the humans?”
“Yeah. An invasion. They’re just…waiting for the other side to show up. I tried to tell you that before. Why, is that a problem? I thought you and Jax liked fighting and killing.”
“Well, there’s fighting and then there’s four on ten thousand,” Koal muttered.
Fin started to laugh. He didn’t want to laugh. He didn’t mean to laugh. But it was all just so funny to him all of a sudden. The last few days of stress and misery and fear poured out in a flood of giggles.
“You don’t even”—he gasped between bouts of hysterical laughing—“you don’t even know how worked up they all are about you. They’re so terrified of the big bad human army. They stripped the End for supplies to fight the oogey boogey human menace and you’re just…you’re just tourists. You’re on vacation! Building sandcastles and hunting the local wildlife and then you’re just gonna scamper off back home and tell your friends what a grand adventure you had. Take souvenirs! Write postcards! See the Magnificent End and Its Many Attractions! Ride the Ender Dragon! Play Whack-a-Shulker! Wish you were here!” Fin had to sit down. He could barely breathe. “We thought you were the scariest thing in the world.” But then he thought about Jax, and ED, and how quickly his little universe had disintegrated once the humans set foot there. Everything he’d ever known really was ruined. It was just that everything the other endermen had ever known was still just fine. He and Mo were the only casualties of the war with the humans.
So far.
“I don’t know,” he finished softly. “Maybe you are the scariest thing in the world.”
“What’s wrong with being a tourist?” Koal shouted angrily. “Didn’t you ever want to see anything but this stupid place with its stupid trees and its stupid cities and all its incredible stupidness? You should try being a tourist. It’s interesting. It’s fun. It’s not boring. Traveling makes you bigger and wiser and cleverer and when you lie down in bed at night you have something to dream about. It doesn’t hurt anyone. You shouldn’t drum up an army just because someone takes their holiday in your neighborhood!”
“Jax is going to kill the ender dragon! It’ll hurt the ender dragon plenty! And ED is my friend.” Fin stopped and scrunched up one side of his face. “Well, not my friend. But it’s not actively my enemy and that’s pretty much the same thing!”
Koal looked down at his feet. “Yeah, ok, that’s fair,” he admitted. “But Jax isn’t here and your ‘not actively an enemy’ is fine. For now.”
“We can get in and out of Telos without this Kraj knowing about it,” Roary said, choosing to ignore Fin’s and Koal’s outbursts. “You’re forgetting that we came prepared. We’ve got pumpkins. We can move around the End just as well as you did for all those years, and no one will know, any more than they knew about you. In fact, we can all do whatever we came here to do, without getting caught, and go home at the end with no one the wiser. The endermen can go back to doing whatever it is that endermen do. Win-win-win.”
“Except ED. I’m not going to let Jax do it,” Fin said in as serious a voice as he could manage, having only started talking with his mouth a few hours before.
“We have to—” Koal started. But he didn’t get to finish.
“You’ll have to take that up with him when he gets back,” Jess evaded. “Not our gig.”
“But Telos!” Roary said, her dark eyes lighting up with the thrill of the mystery. “Telos can be our gig. It’s a real honest-to-god spy mission. We’ll sneak in, liberate your stash, and sneak out again. Under cover of night! Not that we have a choice. And if your army friends see us, they’ll think we’re just prepping, like them, right?”
“I guess…probably.”
“Once we have a grindstone we can disenchant your books really fast,” Jess assured him. “It’s no problem, I’ve done it tons of times.”
Roary nodded. “Maybe there’s something in there that will help you remember who you are. Maybe the spell that took your memory is hiding in one of them. Or the spell to cure it. You could know everything that ever happened to you in just a couple of hours. Isn’t that exciting?”
Fin thought about Mo. Where was she? He hated not knowing where she was. If she was okay. What she was doing. If he was making the right decisions without her.
“I suppose,” he said, but he didn’t feel it. What he did feel was a big ball of dread right in the pit of his stomach.
“Hey, yeah, you never know, maybe you’ll find out something even more devastating than being a secret human!” Koal threw in cheerfully.
Fin thought he might be sick. Come home, Mo! Yell at these guys with me! It’s always better yelling as a team than yelling solo. Where are you?
“I’ll go with you, Fin,” Jesster said kindly. “I’m the biggest and I have the best weapons. If we all go together, they might get suspicious. Four strange endermen they don’t know sneaking around. Roary and Koal can stay and work on the palace. We don’t want to fall behind.”
Fin nodded. He had to do something. All this standing around and talking made him itch. He used to spend all day climbing and cruising between islands, without a care in the world. Now he was stuck arguing with strangers about strange things, no Grumpo, no Mo, no Kan, no purple popcorn, no nothing but them. Do I really want to know? he asked himself. Maybe I should just go up to the Overworld with Mo and start living life human-style. Don’t ask questions. Don’t pry. Don’t look a gift human in the mouth. But no. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let things go back to the way they were. If he and Mo were human beings, then they weren’t Endless. They weren’t outcasts. They had a family somewhere. They had people. They had a world where they did belong. And that was worth finding. It had to be.
I can’t go back. I can only start over.
One way or another, he had to know who he was and what had happened to him. Even if it was something terrible. Especially if it was something terrible.
Fin straightened his shoulders. His blue eyes shone in the dark.
“Okay, Jess. Let’s go.”
Kan, Mo, and Loathsome tumbled through the portal. Grey stronghold-stone and underground torches turned upside down, then inside out. They landed stomach-first, sprawled across the outcropping of sandy stone on the underside of the ender dragon’s island. Mo was still soaking wet. Kan inched away from her, just to be safe. They could hear the vibrating roars of the great black lizard far above. The earth shook every time it bellowed fire into the dark. Even if they couldn’t see it, they could feel it.
Mo stared out into the black sky of the End. She felt the rock under her fingers. She’d been gone only—what? Eight or nine hours? Half a day? More? Less? She didn’t know. You never needed to tell time in the End. She didn’t know what a proper hour was supposed to feel like. But it didn’t matter how much time it was, it felt like a hundred years plus eternity. Nothing looked the same. Not after she’d seen the sun. Nothing could ever look the same again. The End seemed so small now. It looked back at her like a stranger.
Kan grimaced as he pictured the portal they’d just used. The twelve dead, hard eyes of ender that were stuck on to each block of the frame gleamed greyish green. Mo felt ill just looking at them. Loathsome thought they were just beautiful. The prettiest jewels she’d ever seen. She rather wanted to eat one. Loathsome looked at Mo for permission. She was so hungry. She was always just so hungry. Mo nodded.
The zombie horse squealed in delight and snapped at the eyes as they stepped through the portal. She chomped as
fast as she could, chomping while falling, popping them like bubbles, slurping, crunching, munching, relishing. The eyes crunched like candy between her sharp yellow teeth.
Without those eyes, Mo figured Jax wouldn’t be able to come through that portal. He’d have to hunt down yet another stronghold before he could track them down. As the trio regrouped safely back in the End, that thought at least was comforting.
Mmmmmumma, Loathsome hummed with satisfaction as she slurped up a bloodshot mess of eyeball off her blistered lip like spaghetti. Veeeeiiiins.
Yummy, Mo said as she fought to keep from throwing up. She couldn’t remember ever having a mother, but she felt it was generally important for parents not to shame their children for their tastes. The baby was eating, that was the important thing.
Kan shuddered. He patted the horse. Carefully. Gingerly. Those teeth meant business. Loathsome went stiff. No one but Mo had ever patted her in her whole sixteen hours of life. The undead pony froze mid-snack. But Kan’s hand was cold and hard and heavy. To a zombie, that feels very nice indeed. People who were not Mo were obviously bad and wrong, the horse knew. But at least one of them was…acceptable. Barely.
He wasn’t that bad, Mo thought.
Who?
Jax. I think really he’s just a kid like us. He likes to hit things and take things and do what he likes without anyone bothering him.
He likes to kill things, Kan corrected her. He wants to kill the ender dragon.
I know that’s bad. But he gave me back my chestplate. Kraj likes to kill things and he stole it from me. And Kraj hasn’t been a kid since the dawn of time.
You like him.
No, I don’t. Mo sighed. Right now, I like anyone who helps me make sense of all this insanity. He’s one of only four humans I know. Five, I guess, counting Fin. At least he hasn’t hurt me yet. If anyone I used to know down here sees me, they will. You know they will.
Mo’s green eyes filled up with tears. She remembered Lopp’s face, twisted up and furious and cruel. Lopp, who once asked her if she needed a hubunit. She didn’t want to see anyone else look at her like that. Not ever. Mo needed a hubunit now. But she’d never say so.
Kan put his arms around his friend. The pearl where his heart should have been pulsed fast, the way any human boy’s heart would have.
I have an idea, he thought.
Is it to give up and hide forever with me and my horse?
No. Mo, someone, somewhere knows the truth about us. About what happened to you and Fin. About why I am…the way that I am. There is not anything in the universe that somebody does not know. Now, let us lay it all out. What do we know? Not much, I admit.
Me and Fin are human beings.
Therefore, you came from the Overworld.
Sure, that’s logical enough. Endermen come from the End, rain comes from the sky, humans come from the Overworld. Ah! Therefore, we had to come down to the End at some point. With the pumpkins on. Through a portal. Jax says that’s the only way for a human to travel between the Overworld and the End.
Right. And it had to be some time ago, because you and Fin and I have all these memories of growing up together. And your pumpkins were not exactly fresh.
Mo picked at her fingernails. How strange it was to have fingernails in the first place. We also know that you aren’t like other endermen, she thought. You have green eyes. You can play music. And when you’re by yourself, you don’t go halfwit berserker dangry on everything. But you aren’t wearing a pumpkin and you’re not human.
Kan sighed. I think your mystery is easier. I wish it were not. Believe me. I never thought that more than anything in the world, someday I would wish I were a human being with a pumpkin on his head. But here we are. At least we have somewhere to start with yours. I am just…a freak. A greenboy.
Kan, don’t say that.
It is true.
Mo touched his cheek. His skin felt like wet ink, even though it was dry. If you’re a greenboy, I’m a greengirl, she thought. Our eyes are exactly the same. If you’re a freak, I’m a freak. Freak Club. Population two.
They were almost close enough to kiss.
You mean three, Kan thought bashfully. Fin, too.
Yeah, thought Mo, a little embarrassed. For the first time, she saw an advantage in not having telepathy. Three. Sure. Fin, too.
Kan’s pearl thundered in his chest. Why had he brought Fin into it? What a fool he was. The moment had passed. The thing about telepathy was that you couldn’t hide your feelings from anyone. Especially not from the girl you’d known all your life. He tried to hide how much her words meant to him. But she knew anyway. With telepathy, you couldn’t put on a tough face. You could only change the subject. So he did.
So if you came to the End at some point, someone must have seen it. Everyone knew when Jax’s portal was about to open. They knew right away. So if you came through a portal, somebody knew then, too.
Mo caught on to where Kan was headed with this. So who’s old enough to remember two humans coming through a portal years ago? Kraj, obviously.
For once, I doubt he will want to regale us with tales of the past. Right now, he is not even Kraj anymore. He is Commander Kraj. The “commander” makes all the difference. One look at you and he will command you out of existence. And me for helping you. An earsplitting shriek broke through the air far above them.
Mo’s thoughts lit up. ED? The ender dragon?
There is nothing in the End older than ED.
There is nothing in the End meaner than ED. It’s not going to tell us what color my shoes are. Huh. I have shoes. I’m wearing shoes. Did you see my shoes?
I saw your shoes, Kan thought. They are awful. I thought you said ED showed you where to find Loathsome’s egg?
Yeah, because the meanest people are the ones who are occasionally nice. You can never totally hate them, since they really were so kind to you that one time a million years ago. So they can keep on hurting you while you wait for that one nice day to come around again. Also, it probably hoped she would eat me.
Brains, agreed Loathsome. Kan narrowed his eyes.
Let us go talk to it. Maybe today is a nice day.
Kan got up to start the climb up the rockface and over the lip of the island to the grand plain where the ender dragon lived.
Wait, Kan! Mo grabbed at him. I can’t. The enderman hopped back down. You know I can’t.
Why can you not?
Mo laughed. She pointed at her face. He still didn’t get it. No pumpkin. I look as human as I am. Have you ever seen the island not crawling with endermen? They’ll see me. They’ll kill me. And they won’t even know it was poor little orphan Mo they killed.
Okay, so we just teleport up to the top of one of the pillars. Easy. No one will see us up there.
Mo went pale. I…I can’t do that either.
What? Sure you can. I have seen you teleport tons of times.
Mo slumped miserably. She couldn’t look him in the eye. But she didn’t need to. As soon as she thought about it, he knew.
Oh, he thought. Oh. Um. Huh. Kan looked away. Kan looking away was the most awful thing that had ever happened to Mo. And Mo was still in the middle of the worst day of her life. Silly, I guess. I should have thought of that. It is…a lot to get used to. And everything.
But Mo knew that under all that he was just wondering who it was. Whose heart and brain and soul she’d used as a public bus for so long. She hated herself. But should she hate herself? She didn’t remember ever killing an enderman, let alone collecting their pearl. So the Mo that did that wasn’t this Mo, right here, right now. That was another girl, a girl she’d never even met.
I suppose you are right, Kan answered her thoughts instantly. This Mo is my friend. This Mo gave me a new note block when my hubunit destroyed mine. This Mo let me in and fed me whenever I ran away from h
ome. This Mo loves a dead horse like her own baby. She could never hurt her people. Whatever that Mo did, I do not know her. All hail the Great Chaos, right? This whole mess is truly Its work. I have served the Great Chaos all my life. Why stop now? Kan looked up, toward the ender dragon’s lair. Maybe the Great Chaos is just another way of saying life is crazy so you might as well get crazy, too.
Kan sent his mind toward Loathsome’s. He saw the infinite graveyard and the wiry trees and the sickly moon. He saw the gravestones of Loathsome’s first memories, and now there were new ones. One said: YUMMY EYEBALLS. One said: DOUBLE MELON. One said: MUMMA’S FRIEND.
Stay here and we will come back for you, Kan thought to the graveyard. Do not go anywhere till we get back. Do not even move.
Remaaaain, Loathsome moaned.
Good, Kan thought. Okay, Mo. Hold on to me? I will do it for both of us.
Mo hesitated for a second. Jax the human being had just grabbed her. He hadn’t cared what she thought or what she wanted. Kan the enderman was asking. Even though part of him was disgusted with her right now. What did that mean? Did it matter? She took a deep breath and stepped into the enderman’s arms.
And quicker than she could let that breath out, they were standing on top of a towering obsidian pillar. A crystal flame crackled beside them in a silver cage. And far off on the other side of the island, the ender dragon flapped its enormous black-and-purple wings in the night, soaring toward them.
The dragon turned toward the eastern bank of pillars. It meant to pass right by. Its endless circling wouldn’t be interrupted by a couple of brats. Mo and Kan held their breath. The ender dragon glided past on their left side—and turned its head.
ED looked at Mo. Directly at her. At her green eyes. At her black hair. At her human face.
And the ender dragon laughed.
It sounded like rocks banging down a mountainside and landing in a lake of fire. It sounded like a hundred people screaming at once. It sounded like stars dying. The ender dragon’s thoughts exploded roughly into their heads.
The End: An Official Minecraft Novel Page 15
