by Zack Zombie
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 The Weirdest Things
Chapter 2 Mr. Windup’s Wonderous Toy Shop
Chapter 3 The Christmas Tree
Chapter 4 Christmas Eve
Chapter 5 Robot Soldiers Complete!
Chapter 6 Kidnapped!
Chapter 7 Into the Nether
Chapter 8 To the Rescue!
Chapter 9 Freeing Santa
Chapter 10 Santa Saves the Day
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This unofficial novel is an original work of fan fiction which is not sanctioned nor approved by the makers of Minecraft. Minecraft is a registered trademark of, and owned by, Mojang Synergies AB, and its respective owners, which do not sponsor, authorize, or endorse this book. All characters, names, places, and other aspects of the game described herein are trademarked and owned by their respective owners. Minecraft ®/TM & © 2009-2016 Mojang.
Chapter 1
The Weirdest Things
I’ve realized that over the past few weeks people in the human world have started doing weirder things than ever. It began around the beginning of December with the lights. I know what you’re thinking—lights aren’t weird—every house has them, right? Well, I’m not talking about the usual lights you see in houses. These were really tiny lights that covered everything.
The first place I saw them was at the mall. At first, I thought the mall just had dandruff. But then I saw them in the trees, in the stores in town and around the outside of people’s houses. It looked like the whole town was invaded by radioactive cockroaches.
Apparently, according to Lucy, the lights had something to do with a festival called Christmas. I wish I could say that I understood half of the things that humans in this world do, but this Christmas thing…It really had me confused.
“Hurry up, Herobrine!” Lucy shouted from the bottom of the stairs. “It’s the day before Christmas Eve. Mom wants us to run into town to fetch a few things for her. The stores will be packed soon, so let’s get going.”
I grabbed my scarf and hat and trudged down the stairs. December was a cold time of year in the town where Lucy Lurker and her family lived, and I didn’t really care for it. I much preferred hotter climates. In fact, I’d happily take up residence beside a lava river in the Nether.
As I reached the bottom stairs, Mrs. Lurker came running up to me really excited about something.
“Oh, Herobrine! How exciting is this? It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow. This is your first Christmas ever! How do you feel?”
“Cold!” I replied, trying to muster a smile upon my frozen face. “Why is it so cold in here? What’s happened to the heating?”
“Broken!” Mr. Lurker murmured from the large chair in the living room. “Broken until this afternoon. Then, it’ll be fixed.”
Mr. Lurker was a man of few words. Normally all that ever came from him were grunts and groans.
“Right, now you have my list, dear,” Mrs. Lurker said, zipping up Lucy’s coat. “If you don’t get everything on it then don’t worry, but try to do your best.”
“Will do, Mom!” Lucy replied, opening the door and stepping onto the porch. She tilted her head at me and gave me a glare that said, “Let’s go!”
I could tell Mrs. Lurker was proving to be a bit annoying for Lucy as usual, so I hopped down the last stair and out of the house.
“Finally!” Lucy gasped. “Free!”
Lucy bounded into the street and headed towards town with me in tow, as I tried desperately to wrap my scarf around my head a few more times. Anything I could do to keep the cold out was a bonus.
“So, what’s your Mom got on her list?” I asked Lucy.
“Let me see…A ham…a turkey…”
“A turkey? You getting a new pet?” I asked.
“No, silly. A turkey for Christmas.”
I nodded like I knew what she meant. But honestly… I had no idea what she was talking about.
“… a new star for the tree and one of those annoying singing Santa statues.”
Lucy looked at me and smiled as we approached Main Street. Now, ham I could understand… I knew what that was. The pet turkey thing confused me and I had no idea why she needed a new star for a tree. But, I had another question that was really messing with my freezing brain.
“Hey Lucy…What’s a Santa?”
“Santa? Are you serious?” Lucy laughed. “You don’t know who Santa is?”
“Is he made out of sand?” I asked, trying to take a guess.
“You really don’t know anything about Christmas do you?” Lucy said giggling. “Santa is a really happy fat guy with a white bead who wears a red suit. He lives in the North Pole and brings presents to all the boys and girls around the world every Christmas.”
“Wow!” I exclaimed excited to hear the story about a fat guy with a beard that brings toys.
“But, if he’s so fat, how does he get around so fast?” I asked.
“He has a wooden sleigh and some reindeer.”
“Reindeer. What’s that?” I questioned.
“Reindeer are like big horses that can fly. They pull the sleigh through the air.”
I stopped in my tracks as Lucy continued down the street. The world I came from was filled with Withers, Creepers and Zombie Pigmen, yet this Santa guy and his flying horses seemed weirder than all of them put together.
I looked up for Lucy, but she must have gone into one of the shops, because I couldn’t see her anywhere. I glanced around town. Not only were there fairy lights everywhere, but little silver strings hung inside the shops and banners hung in the windows saying ‘Merry Christmas’.
As I looked up at the town clock, all of a sudden I heard singing. I hadn’t heard anyone singing in the town before. It was probably because the noise they were making didn’t sound so good. But, I followed the noise anyway, to see where it was coming from.
I walked to the end of the first block and turned the corner to be greeted by three grey-haired men and three grey-haired women all trying to sing together. The women wore silver strings in their hair and each of the men wore a red hat with a fluffy white ball on the end.
A few people were standing around watching, so I decided to join them.
When the song finished some people clapped and some people moaned, but they all threw things into a bucket that sat on the floor in front of them. I thought I should too, so I put my hand into my coat pocket, pulled out a half-eaten sweet potato and threw it in. I turned to leave when suddenly someone grabbed my scarf and yanked me back.
“What’s the meaning of this?” one of the grey-haired men said, shoving the sweet potato in my face. “We’re collecting for charity here!”
I had no idea who Charity was, but looking at how mad everybody got, I guessed she must not like sweet potato. Luckily, Lucy appeared by my side to save me.
“It’s okay, Mr. Squawker,” she said. “This is Herobrine. He’s not from around here. He didn’t mean any harm.”
The man let g
o of my scarf and Lucy threw some money into the bucket. I figured holding people’s scarves for ransom was how these old folks made money for their friend Charity.
The moment he let go I backed away, trying to loosen the scarf and regain circulation in my head.
“What was all that about?” I asked Lucy.
“Those are Christmas Carolers,” Lucy explained. “They were singing Christmas songs to raise money.”
“I thought people were giving money to Charity, not Carol,” I said.
Lucy just looked at me funny, gripped my hand and headed down the street.
“What’s in that bag you’re carrying?” I asked, spotting a bag she didn’t have earlier.
“It’s the ham,” Lucy replied. “One thing checked off the list, three to go.”
We stopped by the curb on the opposite side of the street next to a huge toy store.
“What do we need from the toy shop?” I asked.
“Nothing!” Lucy replied. “It’s just the best toy store in town, so I thought we could have a look. Come on!”
Lucy pulled me across the street towards the huge double doors of Mr. Windup’s Wondrous Toy shop. There were massive red bows on the windows on either side of the door and the really big displays full of toys.
As the double doors automatically opened I could feel the excitement rise inside me—partly because I wanted to check out all the toys but mainly because I saw some big square toys that looked just like me.
As we went in, I had a feeling that the toy shop was going to be my kinda place…
Chapter 2
Mr. Windup’s Wonderous Toy Shop
“Welcome, one and all to my marvelous, magical toy shop, filled with wonderful, hand-made toys for young and old, meek and bold!”
I looked to my left as we entered and a short man in a top hat and weird colorful clothes greeted us.
“My name,” he continued, “is Mr. H. P. Windup and this is my shop.”
The man was one of the weirdest characters I had ever seen. He wore a pink waistcoat, a bright blue shirt underneath and pants with a red line running down the side. He looked like a circus clown who had just slipped and fell into a bucket of jelly.
He was standing on a small podium and jumped down as the doors swung shut behind us.
“I know you! You are Lucy, correct?” he said, raising his hat and bowing to greet her, “but who is this intriguing looking square fellow?”
“This is Herobrine,” Lucy replied. “He’s a good friend of mine.”
“Ah! Any friend of Lucy Lurker is a friend of mine,” Mr. H.P. Windup said, shaking my hand. “You’re a blocky chap aren’t you?”
I didn’t quite know how to reply to that comment…
Mr. Windup stepped behind us and moved into the middle, putting his chubby hands on our shoulders. Then, he slowly moved forwards and started taking us on a personal tour.
“This toy shop has been in the Windup family for three generations,” he said proudly. “We do not import toys here. Everything you see before you is hand-made by Windup workers.”
I stepped closer to a shelf and picked up what was called a ‘JACK IN THE BOX.’ I couldn’t find the ‘JACK’ part, but I did find a cool windup handle, so I decided to turn it…
Then… I found Jack.
As I was getting up off the floor, beside me was a rocking horse that was hand-made too. I had never seen a rocking horse before. Closest thing back home was a horse skeleton that I saw floating in a lake once. I tried to ride it, but it was really hard…especially over the waterfall.
“Through the back we have some of our workshops,” Mr. Windup said, leading us towards a large door with ‘NO ENTRY’ written across it in red.
As we went through it was hard to see anything but people. The place was packed!
As I squinted into the sea of workers I could spot workbenches, and on those workbenches were rows of toys being carved and put together.
“It’s like Santa’s workshop in here!” Lucy said.
“What do you think, Herobrine?” the eccentric toy shop owner said, turning to me. “Bet you’ve never seen anything like this before?”
I shook my head. The place was terrifying. I had never seen so many humans in one place before. It smelled funny too.
“You look like a handy sort of fellow?” Mr. Windup continued. “I bet you’re good at building things.”
“Yep. I am!” I said proudly.
“I thought so. Well, tomorrow is Christmas Eve and all the workers in here will not be in the factory. Today is their last day. However, I need someone in the workshop just in case we get any last minute toy requests. Fancy working here with me tomorrow?”
I looked a Lucy. She shrugged her shoulders. It seemed she could see no reason why I couldn’t help out for a bit.
“Perfect! Make sure you’re here at the bright and early. The chances are I won’t need you, but you never know.”
With that, Mr. Windup led Lucy and myself back into the main shop and then headed off to speak to another customer.
“Looks like you’re coming back here tomorrow then,” Lucy said, patting me on the back. “It’s probably a good idea. Mom gets even weirder on Christmas Eve. You’ll probably be safer out of the house.”
We left the toy shop and headed back out onto the street. Lucy looked at her list. She took out a pencil and crossed off the ‘Singing Santa’ statue. She looked at me and frowned. There was obviously no way she was going to try to find one of those after all.
“We’ll just tell Mom we couldn’t find one.” she whispered as she winked at me. I didn’t know what to do so I just winked back. But it was pretty hard since I didn’t have eyelids.
We walked down the sidewalk to a store that seemed to sell nothing but Christmas decorations. There was a large, gleaming star in the window.
“Wait here,” Lucy said as she disappeared through the solid white door of the Christmas store.
I took a step to the side and looked in through the window. Lucy was chatting to the shop assistant. The assistant walked over to the window, leaned through and plucked the gleaming star from the display. She headed back to the desk, took some money from Lucy and then handed over the star, which Lucy promptly put into the bag with the ham.
I stepped back to the door as Lucy walked out.
“Just need to get the turkey,” she said, pulling out the list from her pocket for the final time.
I looked up and down the street.
“There doesn’t seem to be a pet shop in this town,” I said.
“We don’t need a pet shop,” Lucy responded. “We need a butcher.”
I had no idea what a butcher was, but I assumed it was a shop that sold pet turkeys.
As we entered the butcher’s I froze in my tracks. After looking around the butcher shop, I realized that humans do some weird things to their pets.
Then I saw a wall poster that really creeped me out. It said that humans should eat three square meals a day. After seeing what they do to their pets, I didn’t want to find out what they would do to a square guy like me. So I decided to wait for Lucy outside.
Meanwhile, Lucy approached the butcher, who she seemed to know. They shared a joke and then the butcher handed over a large bag filled with something extremely heavy.
The butcher looked out the window in my direction with a confused look on his face. But, I was used to that by now.
As Lucy came out of the butcher’s, she thrust the large heavy bag into my arms.
“Here, you can carry this,” she said.
I gripped the bag tightly but I couldn’t hold on to it. I had no idea that a pet turkey would have been so heavy. So I just put it on my head, then everything was fine.
With all the items checked off of the l
ist, we walked back through town in the lightly falling snow towards Lucy’s house.
“Are you prepared for the next crazy Christmas event in the Lurker household?” Lucy asked as we walked along. “It’s Dad’s favorite part of Christmas.”
“What’s that?” I asked, having no idea what was coming next.
“Once we drop these at home we’re all going to jump in the car and head off to buy a tree.”
“A tree?” I asked. “But you have loads of trees. You have four in your front yard and about ten behind your house.”
“Ah, but this tree will be going in our living room.”
I frowned at Lucy, thinking she must be joking. After all, how ridiculous can you get?
A tree in the living room, that’s silly, I thought.
This Christmas thing was getting weirder by the minute.
Chapter 3
The Christmas Tree
As we approached Lucy’s house, Mr. Lurker was outside throwing some long, thick ropes into the trunk of the car.
“Going spelunking, Mr. Lurker?” I joked using the latest word I learned on TV.
Mr. Lurker didn’t say anything. He just snarled and grunted at my comment. I realized he was born with a real shortage in the sense of humour department.
I followed Lucy up the steps and into the house. As we entered Mrs. Lurker came rushing over.
“So, where is it?” she cried, unable to contain her excitement.
“Herobrine has it,” Lucy replied.
As the only thing I was holding was the pet turkey, I assumed Mrs. Lurker was talking about that.
I moved into the kitchen and slid the turkey off my head onto the kitchen counter.
Mrs. Lurker immediately placed it on a scale and sighed with happiness. “Perfect!” she said. “This will be the biggest turkey we’ve ever had for Christmas dinner.”
Dinner? Man, humans and their pets are so weird, I thought.
