by Jason Fry
If you’re thinking this all sounds a little depressing, well, Stax thought so too. But his last sight of Hodey haunted him and he’d vowed that he’d never let that happen again. His plan remained much the same as it had been in Tumbles Harbor: He’d collect enough wealth to see the Champion and set out alone to try to enlist him to find Fouge Tempro.
So Stax dug down in his yard, his shovel making quick work through dirt, until he hit rock and put the shovel aside in favor of his new diamond pickaxe. The tool was lightweight and felt good in his hands, and it bit through rock with satisfying speed. As he had done working with Osk and Hodey, Stax tunneled straight down, capping his new mine with a trapdoor of acacia wood. Several days’ work brought him down to bedrock, but this time the hard work of digging down wasn’t fruitless; he accumulated enough coal to fuel his furnace and make weeks’ worth of torches, and hit several veins of iron.
Once he’d dug back to above the lava line, Stax carved out a headhouse belowground, connecting the stairwell leading back to the surface to the feeder tunnel he’d started excavating. The headhouse became another base of operations, with chests full of equipment and food and a bed so Stax could rest between shifts. And, increasingly, that was where he spent most of his time: digging out tunnels until he was too tired to work any longer, and then sleeping in the headhouse with his diamond pickaxe next to the bed.
Stax quickly developed a routine. Every week, he harvested food from his garden to sustain him while he mined. Every other week, he made the long trip to Tumbles Harbor to get new supplies—allowing himself some honey for his bread as a small luxury—and to check if Brubbs had heard from anyone who might know the way back across the Sea of Sorrows. (The answer was always no.) The rest of the time, he mined.
Stax had one visitor while he was setting up this new operation: Osk, who brought him a pair of gifts. The first was a pressure plate by Stax’s front gate, which activated a redstone torch down in the headhouse, telling Stax that he had a guest. The second was a golden clock, which indicated whether it was day or night in the Overworld far above Stax’s head.
He was grateful, but since he never had any other visitor, the redstone torch down in the headhouse stayed dark, except for the afternoon when it turned out that a wild pig had stepped on it while looking for a way to get through the fence and eat Stax’s crops. The clock was useful, but after a while Stax no longer cared what time it was.
All Stax did was mine and sleep and mine some more, and his clothes became dirty and worn and his hair grew long and a scraggly beard sprouted on his chin. Though he didn’t realize it, he once again looked like the pathetic, ragged figure Ramoa’s caravan had encountered near the road to Tumbles Harbor. He’d also started talking to himself again, having conversations about the quality of ore and the most efficient use of a pickaxe.
He had fallen into a routine that wasn’t particularly good for his health, with his world shrinking to the mine, his little vegetable patch, and the general store. Even the memories of his beloved cats and his beautiful house on the hill, the one made of gleaming diorite and granite and glass, started to become a bit blurry and indistinct.
Until something changed.
It was the day to till the garden, or at least Stax thought it was; he’d lost track of day and night, but noticed he was down to a few crusts of bread, which were getting hard, and a single piece of pumpkin pie that smelled a little odd. So he’d trudged up the winding stone steps to emerge in his yard, blinking at what felt like too much light, even though the position of the sun indicated it was late afternoon.
Stax was hacking away at the stem of a ripe pumpkin when he felt the back of his neck prickle and stood up, peering across the savanna. At first he thought his mind had been playing tricks on him, but then he spotted a lone figure in the distance, striding across the plains from the direction of Tumbles Harbor. Stax thought the traveler might be Osk, but the figure was far too tall to be the eccentric artificer, and the way they walked suggested both power and purpose.
Stax realized he had left his iron sword in the cabin and ducked inside to get it. He wished he had a bow, but what would have been the use? He had only two arrows, and was a poor shot anyway. All he could do was wait.
The traveler was dressed entirely in black, with nut-brown skin and black hair streaked with gray, pulled back and tied in a ponytail. His face was weather-beaten, seamed and pocked. A sword hung at his belt, and a bow was slung over his shoulder. To Stax’s surprise, the man was barefoot but never broke stride, marching across the savanna like he was being drawn by a string, without a care for thorns or rocks that might be lurking in his path.
The man came to a halt at Stax’s gate and stood there, regarding him.
“Good afternoon, Stax Stonecutter,” he said in a voice that surprised Stax, for it was rich and melodic, beautiful even. The voice of a poet or a singer, not a rough-looking wanderer.
“And who are you?” Stax asked curtly, in no way reassured by the traveler’s polite greeting. Fouge Tempro had been polite—at least occasionally—and he’d turned Stax’s life upside down. Plus Stax had once again fallen out of practice at talking to other people.
“My name is Hejira Tenboots,” the man said. “And we have a friend in common.”
That name was familiar somehow. Had Fouge told it to him while Stax was his prisoner? Stax’s hand crept toward the hilt of his sword, though he doubted he would have a chance against anyone who’d marched across the savanna barefoot without so much as batting an eye.
The man saw Stax’s hand on his sword, and raised his eyebrows. “I believe you know my good friend and occasional traveling companion Ramoa Peranze,” he said. “She asked me to check on you. The gentlemen at the Tumbles Harbor general store told me I could find you here.”
Stax felt his shoulders sag in relief. “Oh. I thought you were—well, never mind what I thought. Please come in. It will be dark soon.”
Suddenly he was embarrassed by his little house made out of dirt and also by himself, seeing how he was pretty much made out of dirt too by now. But Hejira shook his head, smiling apologetically.
“Unfortunately, that is against my code,” he said.
“Your code?” Stax asked, wondering what, exactly, Hejira was saying he couldn’t do.
“I have vowed never to make use of shelter, whether for myself or for another,” he said. “I have no home, and no supplies beyond what you see. And I never stay in the same place for two nights in a row.”
Stax looked at him in disbelief. “No shelter? How do you survive the night?”
“Trees are very useful,” Hejira said. “Typically I sleep in their branches. If a tree is not available, I remain awake, relying on my sword and bow for protection. Once, I was awake for six straight days while crossing the Desert of the Last Sigh. That was a difficult experience.”
Stax imagined spending the night in a tree, surrounded by prowling zombies and skeletons. He knew there were many of them on the savanna. He often found chunks of rotten meat or lengths of bone in the tall grass, outside his fence.
“Don’t things climb up after you?” Stax asked.
“Spiders do,” Hejira said. “I have been bitten many times, and though they are only doing what is in their nature, I must admit that I am not fond of them. In my experience, neither skeletons nor zombies climb. Occasionally a skeleton will fire arrows at me, but fortunately they are poor shots.”
“I see,” Stax said, though the whole idea felt fantastical to him. “If I can ask, how did you develop this code of yours?”
“I had a moment of crisis as a young man. I realized I was growing slothful surrounded by comforts, and that I knew nothing of the world. So I decided to discover if I had a true self worth preserving.”
“It seems like you’ve more than proven that you do,” Stax said.
Hejira smiled. “I like to think so,
yes. But I find the idea of going back to that life unimaginable now. This is who I am, and this is how I live—and if I can help others discover the path to their true selves, I do so. If it will not bother you, I will sleep tonight in that acacia tree.”
Stax managed not to laugh at the idea that someone sleeping in one of the great thorny trees could somehow bother him.
“But now please tell me of yourself, so that I may tell Ramoa. How fares your quest to find this mysterious Fouge Tempro, and take your well-deserved revenge?”
“Ramoa told you that?” asked Stax, not sure that he liked the idea.
“Of course she did,” said Hejira, looking surprised. “How would I find your adversary, if she had not? I have traveled many lands since adopting my code, Stax Stonecutter, though I am afraid what I know about the area west of the Sea of Sorrows is just rumors. Everywhere I go, people bring me news and stories they believe to be true but that are only stories. I have asked about this Fouge Tempro since Ramoa told me your story, and I will continue to do so. But so far, I am afraid, no one has heard of this man.”
“I’m grateful to you for helping,” Stax said. “And to Ramoa. Where is she?”
“I am to meet her outside the Lost Fane of the Green Faith, in the Rain-Jungles of Jagga-Tel, two weeks from tonight. It is a long journey. I may have to sleep less than is ideal. And I do not know which route Ramoa will take. She dislikes taking the same road twice, and never rides horses, for reasons I have never understood. And because of these things, she is often late.”
Stax had to smile at that, remembering Ramoa’s restlessness and her distaste for the idea of spending even a single night at the caravanserai.
“You may accompany me, if you like,” Hejira said. “Perhaps such a journey would help you discover your own path. Though fellow travelers often find my code hard to abide by.”
“No, thank you,” Stax said. “I am afraid my duties are—”
Thunk! Stax jumped as an arrow thudded into the fence between him and Hejira.
“Excuse me, Stax,” said the black-clad man, shrugging his bow off his shoulder with his left hand while his right reached up, unerringly, and eased a long arrow fletched with brilliant red feathers from his quiver. He turned, the bowstring twanged, and Stax heard the rattling of bones coming apart somewhere out on the gloomy savanna.
“Perhaps you should take shelter, Stax,” Hejira said. “The nights of the Overworld are beautiful, but they are the domain of things with teeth. Until morning, my friend.”
He clasped Stax’s shoulder, his grip firm, and then turned and walked off into the dusk, offering a cheerful wave. Something growled in the gathering dark and Stax retreated to his acacia-wood door. He tried to spot Hejira but failed, and shut the door behind him.
Stax had been working so hard that he’d grown used to falling asleep the moment his head hit his pillow, but that night his sleep was broken and restless, and he dreamed that Fouge Tempro was knocking on the door of the little sod cabin, telling Stax their business wasn’t concluded. Stax opened it and saw Fouge standing at the head of an army of skeletons, all of them clad in strange spiked armor made of acacia.
He woke with a start to find moonlight streaming through his window.
“Just a dream,” he said. “I’m awake and it was just a dream.”
But he could hear someone outside, yelling and chanting. Stax opened the door a crack and peered out. The brilliant moon made the acacias’ zigzag shadows even longer and stranger. Stax thought he spied odd shapes out there—a lone figure in frantic motion at the center of a larger circle.
“Madness,” muttered Stax, now not sure if he was dreaming or not.
* * *
—
Stax hadn’t been dreaming. In the morning he emerged, blinking and scrubbing a hand through his hair, to find Hejira leaning against the fence, gnawing on a chunk of meat. Objects littered the ground around him: strands of spider silk, bones, arrows, and heaps of gray powder.
“Good morning, Stax,” said Hejira. “I hope I did not disturb you. It was a busy night. Please take anything here that you can use.”
Stax accepted the bones, which he could grind into meal to fertilize his garden, and left the rest.
“We were interrupted last night, and I was talking when I should have been listening,” Hejira said. “You said you had duties that prevented you from traveling with me to Jagga-Tel.”
“Unfortunately I do,” Stax said. “My mining. And my mission.”
“Your mission to find Fouge Tempro?”
“Yes.”
“Are these things not mutually exclusive?”
“Excuse me?”
“If you are mining, you are not searching for Fouge Tempro. And if you are searching for Fouge Tempro, you are not mining.”
Stax thought Hejira was making fun of him, and was about to tell the strange traveler it was none of his business. But he realized Hejira wasn’t smiling, but seemed genuinely puzzled.
“It’s…well, it’s not that simple,” Stax said. “I’m not a warrior. Though you certainly are. Say, Mr. Tenboots—”
Hejira held up his hand. “This is your quest, Stax, not mine. I will help you discover your path if you want my assistance. But I would not steal your destiny from you, whatever it may be.”
“If it means ridding the Overworld of Fouge Tempro, by all means steal it,” Stax said. “I wouldn’t mind in the slightest.”
The idea seemed to offend Hejira, whose gaze grew stony. “That is against my code.”
“Of course it is,” said Stax, with a sigh. “That’s all right. I had someone else in mind anyway.”
And he told Hejira of the Champion, and how he performed services in return for people making the Overworld a better place, and how Stax had no idea what the price might be.
“I have heard stories of this man,” Hejira said. “Though there have been no new stories in recent years. So this is why you mine, instead of pursuing your tormentor. You hope to meet the price of this Champion.”
Stax nodded. “And I’m not there yet.”
Suddenly, under Hejira’s stern gaze, his plan seemed less certain than he would have liked.
“How will you know when you have reached your goal?” Hejira asked.
That was a good question.
“I don’t know,” Stax said. “I just know I don’t have enough. Not yet, anyway.”
The sun had fully risen, drying the dew from the grasslands. Hejira was peering at the distant gray shapes of the mountains and shifting from foot to foot.
“I must go, Stax,” he said. “Or I will be late to meet Ramoa. If she is not late herself, of course.”
Stax had to smile at the man’s obvious longing for the horizon and whatever lay beyond it. And for a moment he wanted to tell Hejira to wait, that he would pack his things and come with him. Stax had survived on a bleak shore with nothing but a shipwreck and a broken tower nearby; surely he could learn to live in a tree.
But no. He had chests to fill with ore and gems, treasure that would allow him to hire the Champion. And then, once the Overworld was rid of Fouge Tempro, he would search for a way home, to put his life back together. That was the plan, not gallivanting off to some jungle with a barefoot fanatic.
“Good luck journeying to the Jungle of Jagged…of That Place,” Stax said. “I, um, hope the treetops are comfortable.”
“As do I,” Hejira said. “I have heard Jagga-Tel has massive trees, in which people make their homes. I am eager to see this myself. Though I am undecided on the question of whether a tree people consider a home counts as a shelter.”
“I suppose you’ll have time to think it over,” Stax said.
“Yes. A long walk always helps. Good luck to you, Stax Stonecutter. May you discover the path to your true self, and find the destiny you deserve. And if Ramoa
should pass this way, remind her of our appointment.”
Hejira clasped Stax’s shoulder again and then strode off, his long steps taking him across the savanna almost as quickly as Stax could have run. Stax had work to do—he’d mapped out a new feeder tunnel in hope of finding lapis deposits—but instead he stood at the fence, one hand on the rail, until Hejira had dwindled to a small figure and then was lost to sight.
Gravel, gravel, and more gravel * A miner’s mistake * Someone at the gate
Two days later—or at least Stax thought it was two days, though he had to admit it might have been longer—Stax finished the new feeder tunnel and surveyed his work. The tunnel was perfectly straight and studded with torches placed at the correct intervals, all of them on the left-hand wall, as they should be.
That was properly orderly, but the walls were an unattractive hodgepodge of different types of stone—as Stax walked the length of the tunnel, he passed sections of gray andesite, pink granite, and white diorite, with no rhyme or reason. The places he’d found ore veins crossing the tunnel were now patched with cobblestone, which looked even uglier. At least in those cases Stax had removed something of value: stacks of coal and some iron. The patches in the ceiling were there because Stax kept running into gravel. Packed above the rock for eons, it came showering down when disturbed, leaving Stax no choice but to shovel it all out and fill the gap.
There was a lot of gravel around the new tunnel. Stax could only hope he’d seen the last of it. And perhaps it was his imagination, but his diamond-headed pickaxe was growing a bit dull. Stax had found seams of diamond, but disliked the idea of using those stocks to make a replacement tool.
“Need those riches for other things, now don’t we?” he said out loud, his voice echoing hugely in the tunnel he’d dug out.
