The Voyage: An Official Minecraft Novel

by Jason Fry

  Stax sighed, wondering if Ramoa would really try to find him next time she was in town. He’d lost his temper with her for no good reason, and with it, he feared, his chance to have at least one friend in this strange new town.

  Now he wasn’t sure what to do. After days in the wilderness, Tumbles Harbor seemed impossibly busy, with too many sights, sounds, and smells for him to take in. Stax made his way through the crowded square, apologizing profusely to everyone he bumped or elbowed or who bumped or elbowed him (which was more or less everyone) until he reached the marketplace’s perimeter and was able to lean against the wall of a cooper’s shop, the nature of its business clearly indicated by a large birch-wood barrel hanging above the door.

  “It was quiet by the tower, if you don’t count dead things gurgling in the night,” Stax muttered to himself. “Would you like that better?”

  “Don’t think I would, stranger,” said a man bent under a heavy stack of cowhides. He offered Stax a lopsided grin before shouldering his way deeper into the crowd.

  “Okay, the first thing I need to do is stop talking to myself,” said an embarrassed Stax, except he also said that out loud, which led to a testy conversation with a confused flower seller. After that Stax simply watched the crowd for a while, bewildered by the ceaseless thrum of activity. He wondered if his father had been to Tumbles Harbor and tried to picture him in the middle of this throng, weighed down by chests containing precious stones and ore samples that he’d brought over the sea. Would he have greeted old acquaintances? Traded gossip about doings in far-off lands? Stopped off at the inn for a bowl of soup?

  While Stax couldn’t know if his father had visited Tumbles Harbor, he must have seen towns like it. Stax wondered what it had been like for him to come home after that, to step off the boat at the Stonecutters’ dock and hear nothing but the sounds of farm animals and the wind ruffling the birch leaves. Had his father sighed with relief to return to a place that was quiet and still? Or had he found the tranquility of home boring, and counted the days until he could depart again? Stax didn’t know. He wished he’d asked his father, before he vanished, but now of course it was far too late.

  A crier announced the fair’s official opening and the crowd cheered. Eager buyers rushed forward for a first chance at the best material, while wandering traders circulated through the crowd hawking food. From his vantage point, Stax saw people selling melons, pumpkins, loaves of bread, cocoa pods, skewers of meat, fried fish, and slices of cake. His stomach rumbled and he patted it.

  “Sorry, but I don’t think anyone will have dried kelp for sale,” Stax said to himself, forgetting he’d just vowed to stop doing that. “Guess I better see about getting paid.”

  He made his way through the crowd, passing a fishmonger who was indeed offering dried kelp, to his amusement, and pushed open the caravanserai’s front door. The inn was crowded with the drovers and laborers from the caravan, celebrating their safe arrival by talking and laughing and clinking mugs.

  A drover he vaguely recognized pointed him to the caravan agent’s office. To his annoyance, Stax found himself in line behind Ritzo and Chigam. He said nothing to the two disagreeable men, hoping they wouldn’t recognize him now that he’d cut his hair, but after a moment Ritzo elbowed Chigam and they both fixed Stax with broad grins.

  “Well, if it isn’t Ramoa’s pet beggar from the road,” Ritzo said with a cackle. “Stax Shipwreck, or something like that.”

  “Not a beggar, but a hermit,” Chigam said. “Spent years meditating on the mysteries of sand and salt.”

  “I say beggar, you say hermit,” Ritzo shrugged. “We could just say ‘useless layabout’ and be done with it.”

  Stax turned away, determined to ignore them, but Chigam refused to let it go.

  “Careful now,” he told Ritzo. “Stax Shipwreck’s still got his wooden sword. Better call him Sir Stax, unless you want to get splinters.”

  “He’s got more than that,” Ritzo said. “Now he’s got two arrows. Two arrows but no bow! Walking arsenal, this one! What a fine guard you’ll make for the next lucky caravan, Sir Stax Shipwreck!”

  “I had a diamond sword at home,” Stax said a bit stiffly.

  “Sure you did,” Chigam said. “Bet you was clad head to toe in diamond, Sir Stax.”

  Stax endured their gibes in disgusted silence until Ritzo and Chigam had collected their pay and departed with a flurry of mocking bows.

  The caravan agent was a little man sitting in a little office, scratching with an ink quill in a big leatherbound book. He didn’t even look up as Stax approached.

  “Emeralds or credit chit?” he asked in a flat monotone.

  “Excuse me?” asked Stax, baffled.

  “Emeralds or credit chit?” the agent repeated. “How do you want your pay?”

  “What’s a credit chit?” Stax asked.

  The agent sighed. “Did you just fall off the beetroot donkey? A credit chit is money that’s good at the Tumbles Harbor general store, here at the caravanserai, and with the better vendors at the fair. Anyway, what’s your name? I assume you know that.”

  “Stax Stonecutter.”

  The agent started flipping through the pages of his book, brows creased in consternation.

  “I’m probably at the end,” Stax said. “I signed on just a couple of days before Tumbles Harbor.”

  The agent peered dubiously at him, his beady eyes lingering on Stax’s ragged clothes, then shook his head and flipped to the back of the book.

  “I found you,” he said, sounding disappointed. “Well, the decision’s made for you. You didn’t do enough work for us to earn an emerald. Enjoy your credit chit.”

  Stax took the sheet of paper the agent handed over, which contained his name and a scrawled number. He turned to go, then looked back. “My friend said I was entitled to a bed here tonight?”

  “That would logically be a question for the innkeeper,” the agent said, not looking up from his book.

  * * *

  —

  Stax was beginning to think he didn’t like Tumbles Harbor, but fortunately the innkeeper was both kind and helpful, showing him the neat, clean little room that had been reserved for him and pointing the way to the general store, though she warned him that like most everything in town, it was closed for the day because of the fair.

  Now that he had his room sorted out, Stax took a deep breath and headed back out into the crowd, peering over the shoulders of the fairgoers to see what each stall had for sale. There was every imaginable kind of food, and plenty of offerings Stax had never imagined eating. But there was a lot more than food. Lumber merchants offered planks of exactly cut wood, including rich, dark woods Stax had never seen before. Metalsmiths showed off iron swords, including some that glowed with the eerie magenta of enchantment. Chests overflowed with carefully cleaned and combed wool in every hue. Leatherworkers and carpetmakers made lavish promises about the quality of their wares. There were smiths holding up armor made of leather and iron and chain links, and weavers promising to make banners in any color or design you could imagine, and booksellers showing off the clean white pages of librams and tomes. And there were stranger things too: paintings of strange vistas, exotic flowers in pots, brilliantly colored fish in buckets, and the polished shells of turtles and mollusks.

  Just a couple of weeks earlier, when money had been no object, Stax would have gleefully filled chests with knickknacks and new curiosities to adorn the walls of the Stonecutter estate. He would have tried all the strange foods—or some of them, at least—and bought rare fish as treats for Lapis, Emerald, and Coal. But now most everything that caught his eye cost more than he could afford, and Ramoa’s warning about saving his money was uppermost in his mind. He limited himself to a skewer of mutton and a cookie, deciding to get what he needed at the general store tomorrow.

  For now, he’d explore the
town. He left the fair behind him and strolled along the docks, where men and women were unloading ships, singing and laughing as they passed chests, barrels, blocks, and bales from the decks of the ships and rearranged them in neat stacks on the docks. The ships’ sails were furled, but many bore colorful banners festooned with stripes, circles, and diamonds.

  Stax made his way through the dockyards, waving off fishmongers crying out that their catches were so fresh they were still flopping, and followed a narrow road between a line of buildings made of wood and stone. The road was paved with cobblestone, and Stax found himself instinctively studying the quality of the stonework and its composition.

  The road led up and away from the marketplace, and within a few minutes the crowds had dwindled and then vanished, so that Stax was sharing the street with just a few locals busy with errands or simply out for a stroll. He stopped to look down at the town, trying to imagine what it had looked like before the first explorer decided it would make an ideal harbor.

  If he closed his eyes, Stax could almost see it: a half-circle of sand bordered by a lush meadow, ringed by hills. He imagined a single house on the shore: a simple dwelling of sod, constructed as a refuge from the dangers of the night. And then a few more, and more still, until eventually whoever lived there would have to get together and talk about organizing things, creating docks to handle the boats, and clearing a town common, and maintaining the roads, and all the rest.

  Making decisions like that had never been an issue for Stax, who could do whatever he wanted on the Stonecutter estate without having to consult with anyone else. On the other hand, no individual house or estate could ever create a riot of creativity and controlled chaos like Tumbles Harbor. You needed more people for that—lots more people, building houses and tearing them down, imagining businesses and making them work, and bringing in goods and art and food and stories and everything else that other people would want.

  Looking down at the town, Stax smiled. He could see the bay as it existed before all that happened, pristine and beautiful, but he could also appreciate everything that generations of people’s creativity had brought to it, and how their efforts had remade a beautiful place as a thriving port.

  As Stax kept going up the hill, the houses grew smaller, gaps appeared between them, and eventually most sat apart from their neighbors, in little fenced yards. After walking for a few more minutes, Stax found himself in a dusty saddle of land where five roads converged. A cluster of signs pointed the way to four places Stax had never heard of and a fifth place that he had, though by a slightly different name: The Tumbles Extraction Company.

  “Now, that’s a good omen if ever I saw one,” Stax said.

  He followed the road up a series of low hills, until he found himself below what had once been a mountain, its top now squared off with a precision never found in nature. A black tunnel yawned in the side of the mountain, behind a fence, and next to the fence was a low-slung, windowless building made of gray stone, which Stax recognized as andesite. It had an oaken door and a sign next to it out front:

  MINE OFFICE

  EXPERIENCED WORKERS WANTED

  CRIMINALS, LAYABOUTS, THE ACCIDENT-PRONE, AND NEWCOMERS NEED NOT APPLY

  MUST FURNISH OWN TOOLS

  Stax was about to knock on the door when someone called out that the office was closed.

  “On account of it being a holiday, what with the fair and all,” said a shuffling, bent-backed man with a gray beard and a rusty sword on his belt. “You a miner? Manager’s a bit particular about who she takes on.”

  “No,” Stax said. “Well, yes.”

  “Eh?” the man peered at Stax. “Which is it, friend? Yes or no?”

  “I am a miner, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m trying to get back home.”

  “Unless you live in the Tumbles quarry, I’d say you’re in the wrong place.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” Stax said. “Will the owner be here tomorrow?”

  “The owner? Wouldn’t think so. He lives in a big house a few hills over yonder, overlooking the backcountry,” the man said, waving in a vague direction. “But the manager will be in. She’s Mrs. Taney. That’s pronounced TAW-nee but spelled TAY-nee, and don’t mix up the two if you know what’s good for you. All mine business goes through her.”

  “Right,” Stax said. “I’ll be back tomorrow, then.”

  “You want my advice, friend? Before you come, get yourself some tools. She won’t see you if you don’t have tools. And get some new clothes. Like I said, Mrs. Taney’s particular about who she hires, and you look like a beggar or someone who’s crawled away from a shipwreck.”

  “You’re more right than you know,” Stax said, offering the man a low bow. “Until tomorrow.”

  Brubbs and Xinzi * The right tool for the job * Mrs. Taney has questions

  By the time Stax returned to town, the crowd at the fair had thinned, stalls were closing up, and drovers were emerging from the caravanserai to round up the cattle, sheep, and pigs that hadn’t been sold. Stax used a bit of his credit on a bowl of stew and sat in the inn’s common room, surrounded by traders comparing notes on how the fair had gone and tired customers doing the same.

  Stax found himself yawning repeatedly and went to bed. He woke up baffled, confused by the oak planks of the ceiling and the light coming through his room’s little square window, until he remembered where he was.

  After a breakfast of bread with honey, Stax headed across the town common, now strangely empty after yesterday’s hustle and bustle, and climbed the stairs to the low porch that surrounded the general store. A couple of aged townspeople exchanging gossip bade him a good morning; Stax nodded politely and headed inside.

  The general store was like a scaled-down version of the fair, its shelves piled high with gear, supplies, and stores of every conceivable variety, though Stax noticed it didn’t stock any of the more eccentric items that had been for sale yesterday; there were no chests full of cocoa pods or buckets of tropical fish.

  “Well, good morning, young sir, and how can we help you?” called out a squat, cheerful man from behind the counter.

  Stax had half-expected his ragged clothes to be met with snide comments or at least raised eyebrows, and felt himself relax at being greeted so respectfully. A second man, this one extremely tall and thin, was at the other end of the counter, polishing a metal bucket.

  “I need some new clothes,” Stax said, fingering his shirt, which was indeed dirty and disreputable. “Will this credit chit do?”

  “Certainly, sir,” said the man, after a glance at the paper Stax passed over. “Don’t think I’ve seen you in here before. Came in with the caravan, did you?”

  Stax started to mutter something vague, then stopped himself. He needed help getting home, and anyway the man seemed kind.

  “That’s right,” Stax said. “I was…well, it’s a long story. I was marooned.”

  “That sounds like quite the ordeal! Glad it’s behind you,” the shopkeeper said. “I’m Brubbs, and the silent statue over there is Xinzi.”

  “Stax Stonecutter.”

  Brubbs gave Stax’s hand a warm shake, while Xinzi looked over and nodded minutely.

  “Good to meet you, Stax! But I’m afraid to say we don’t have anything as fancy as this shirt. I can tell it was a fine garment, before everything that happened to you.”

  “That’s all right,” Stax said. “I don’t need fancy, just some work clothes. And some information, maybe. Do either of you know the lands on the other side of the Sea of Sorrows?”

  “Can’t say I do,” Brubbs said. “Never been more than a day’s ride out of Tumbles Harbor, in fact. Xinzi, how about you?”

  The tall, thin man shook his head.

  “You might try down at the docks. I swear there were more ships in port yesterday than I’d seen in four or five
months, what with the fair and all,” Brubbs said. “Of course most of them have pulled up anchor and left, now that it’s done.”

  Stax could have kicked himself. He’d been too overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the town and the fair to think of asking the ship captains.

  “Is that where you’re from, Stax?” asked Brubbs. “The other side of the Sea of Sorrows?”

  Stax decided he liked the man’s gentle eyes and nodded. “Unfortunately, I don’t know my way back.”

  “Well, Xinzi and me will keep an ear open,” Brubbs said. “In the meantime, let’s get you dressed.”

  With Brubbs’s cheerful help, Stax picked a plain brown shirt and blue pants, changing into them in the back of the general store.

  “Much better,” Brubbs said, holding up Stax’s salt-encrusted, threadbare old clothes. “And what shall I do with these?”

  “Burn them,” Stax said, disgusted.

  “Off to the furnace they go. And now, new clothes for a new home.”

  Stax knew Brubbs was trying to be friendly, but the suggestion that he needed to forget his old home left Stax feeling morose. The shopkeeper seemed to sense that, and clapped a hand on Stax’s back, his other arm waving at the store’s many offerings.

  “Anything else you need today?”

  Stax remembered the mining company guard’s warning about Mrs. Taney and her suspicions about potential employees.

  “A pickaxe,” he said.

  “Certainly! Let me see what we have.”

  Brubbs vanished into the back room, calling out the selling points of various pickaxes he had in stock. Stax glanced at his credit chit, wondering if he could afford a decent piece of equipment and if that was how he should spend the rest of his funds. He imagined visiting Mrs. Taney, shiny new pickaxe in hand, and discovering she was an old friend of his father’s and would be happy to help him get home, except because he’d bought a pickaxe, he didn’t have enough money to pay for passage back across the Sea of Sorrows.