Zetta nodded vigorously, but she wanted Aunt Meryl to finish talking so they could head back into the house and start on the brewing. The whispers were becoming more intense. She could feel them running down her skin now, like the touch of a cold, dead finger.
Aunt Meryl patted her plump packful of brewing ingredients, then took a step up onto the raised porch. Zetta scurried after her, but when she tried to enter the front door, her aunt’s hand pressed out. “Not so fast. You need to gather your ingredients first.”
“But we just—” Zetta stammered.
“No, I just collected the ingredients for my brewing. Now you need to go collect yours. Just remember everything I said and you should be fine.”
Zetta gulped and startled at the cold grip of a hand around her wrist, tugging her. But when she looked down, there was nothing there.
“It’s fine. Everything’s fine,” Zetta mumbled to herself. “It’s just hundreds of tortured souls that have been trapped in sand for probably thousands of years. What could possibly go wrong?”
Zetta closed her eyes and reached under the porch. Her fingers brushed up against the warty protrusions, and she picked the biggest she could find in the few seconds she dared to linger. Then she pulled her hand back and stuffed the nether wart into her pack without looking. She scrambled away until she hit the fence around the garden patch, then sucked in a cool breath, instantly soothing her aching lungs. She hadn’t even realized she’d stopped breathing.
But now the worst part was over and out of the way, and she could gather the remaining ingredients without all that fear in her head. She picked out a plump, ripe melon. Melons took up a lot of space in the garden, but Aunt Meryl had said that they produced well once established.
She grabbed a dozen tender carrots, young and firm, and ripped their greens off before putting them in her pack. Then she picked a couple more to give to the rabbits milling about. Zetta was determined to redeem herself with that brown bunny, but when she went to look for it, she saw it bolting out of the gate she’d forgotten to close behind her.
“Oh no,” Zetta said. She ran after the bunny, making sure to shut the gate this time. She clicked her tongue at the rabbit to get its attention. “Here, sweetie,” Zetta said, offering a carrot to the rabbit as it crouched by a spruce tree. The rabbit twitched its nose, maybe a little interested. Good. But then Zetta noticed the mushrooms growing in the podsol at her feet. Might as well collect them now. She reached down slowly, grabbing a handful, then turned her focus back to the rabbit, but it was darting again…straight under the porch.
Zetta’s heart stopped. No.
No. No. No.
Aunt Meryl had said something about animals and soul sand, hadn’t she? She couldn’t just leave the rabbit under there and hope it came back out. And she couldn’t go running to her aunt for help. If she couldn’t be trusted to close a gate properly, how was her aunt going to trust her with magic potions? No. She just had to be brave and crawl under there and grab the rabbit. It wouldn’t take long. Fifteen seconds, max. And the voices, well, she would ignore them…
CHAPTER SIX
When Zetta got on her hands and knees and peeked under the porch, she saw a pair of beady eyes staring out at her from the dark. For a second, she thought she saw them glowing red, like that killer rabbit Ashton was always going on about. But killer rabbits weren’t real, just another made-up mob to keep people afraid. Zetta gulped. She was afraid. A little. The rabbit’s eyes were back to normal now. Probably just a weird trick of the light.
You could always scare the rabbit out, a whisper said, running gently down her spine. It was a kind voice. Not that scary, even if it was from some poor long-dead soul.
She shook the voice off and tried to will herself forward, but it wasn’t working. She was petrified to go under the porch.
Try building a scarecrow, the voice suggested. Works for birds. Why not bunnies?
Why not indeed. She wouldn’t have to get all dirty and the bunny would run out on its own. Win-win situation, right? But what could she build a scarecrow out of? Her grandpa used hay bales and pumpkins to keep the pests out of his potato patch, but Zetta didn’t see either of those hanging about.
Soul sand. Four blocks of it, the voice said. So simple. Just put it in a T shape…
Mmmm. Aunt Meryl had said that she would give Zetta some soul sand of her own, so she probably wouldn’t mind if Zetta collected it now. She dug up four blocks of sand with the least mature warts on them, then assembled them on the other side of the porch where the bunny was holed up.
Didn’t look scary to Zetta, though. It needed a head.
A head, or perhaps three,…said the voice. Behind the house, there’s a chest buried down deep. There are three skulls inside. They’ll do quite nicely.
It seemed like a lot of work, digging all that way down, when she could have crawled in and out from under the porch several times over by now, but Zetta didn’t question it. And she didn’t question why she didn’t question it. She didn’t have to. It all made perfect, logical sense.
It took her ten minutes, but she finally had the chest unearthed. It looked very old—rusty hinges and splitting wood. And sure enough, inside were three black skulls. Zetta smiled to herself. They were definitely scary. So scary, she knew deep in her heart that she normally wouldn’t come within a mile of such things, but now, they seemed harmless. Like children’s toys. A little damp and fleshy in some places, with bits of rotting sinew clinging to the bone, but children’s toys nonetheless.
She carried the skulls back to her scarecrow and set one in the middle. The voice was right. If one head was scary, three would definitely do the trick. She stacked another to the right, then was reaching down for the last skull when her aunt came screaming out of the house.
“Zetta! No! Don’t!” she said, hopping over the railing of the porch and landing on the ground with a dramatic thud.
Do it. Now! the voice demanded. Not so gently this time.
“Zetta, love, put the skull down,” said Aunt Meryl. She seemed afraid of Zetta in the same way Zetta had been afraid of the bunny’s haunting red eyes.
Place the skull, Zetta.
Zetta’s fingers trembled as she held the skull within inches of the soul sand. She wasn’t sure who to listen to—the aunt who’d once coddled and spoiled Zetta as a toddler or this mysterious and definitely not nefarious voice emanating from haunted sand.
Zetta didn’t get to make the choice, though, because in that moment of hesitation, her aunt came barreling at her and knocked her to the ground. The skull went tumbling out of her hands and bumped up against a planterful of daisies. It was an odd sight, something so grotesque huddled up close to something so beautiful.
“Zetta? Zetta, are you with me?” her aunt said, slapping her cheek.
Zetta shook the cobwebs from her mind. What was she doing out here? Why had her aunt tackled her?
“Hi, Aunty,” Zetta muttered. “I’m sorry, I’m just having a hard time with thinking right now. Did I do something wrong?”
Aunt Meryl shook her head. “No, it’s my fault for thinking this was even a remotely good idea. You’re not ready. For goodness’ sake, you almost created a—” Aunt Meryl bit her tongue.
Zetta looked over at the scarecrow. It was coming back to her now. The rabbit had gotten under the porch, and then she’d heard…“The whispers. They made me do that, didn’t they?”
“I’d forgotten how persuasive they can be to those who aren’t used to dealing with them. Some people are good at tuning the voices out, or maybe their minds are too busy to really listen. But the souls, they’re always looking for a ready and willing target.” Aunt Meryl helped Zetta back to her feet. “We’ll get you cleaned up. I’ll pack you a few pies to take with you on your way home.”
“Wait, I thought we were going to brew!” Zetta held up her pack
brimming with ingredients. “I’m almost done. I just need to collect some sugarcane!”
“I can’t, Zetta.”
“But the illagers!”
“I’ll load you up with as many potions as you can carry, but I’m not teaching you. Your father—”
“What about my father? Why do you keep ignoring my questions about him? What’s going on between you two?”
Aunt Meryl chewed her lip, the sadness in her eyes undeniable. Then she turned and walked to the back edge of the property, where the trees became denser. Zetta was about to sulk off in the other direction, when her aunt called, “Well, are you coming or what?”
Zetta scurried behind her aunt, hanging vines slapping her in the face, stepping over fallen trees that had rotted through. Among the shadows, Zetta caught glimpses of red eyes watching them—spiders—but somehow she knew they wouldn’t approach as long as she was with her aunt. They came to a sheer drop and a view of the entire Overworld beyond the mountain. It seemed to go on and on, so crisp, like it was a painting. She sat down next to her aunt, as if they were about to have this conversation on the sofa and not on the precipice of a drop that would kill her if she slipped and fell.
Aunt Meryl sighed, her eyes tight on the horizon. “Your mother, she was brilliant. I don’t know if your father ever told you that, but she was. She’d see a problem and come up with a dozen ways to fix it. She’d fix problems we didn’t even know were problems.”
“Really?” Zetta asked. She knew so little of her mother. Her father hardly ever spoke of her.
“Really. You know the piston door to the vault in the town hall? She invented that.”
Zetta’s eyebrows arched. She’d had no idea.
“Your mother and I, we became like sisters. We were inseparable. Your father was off mining for much of the day, so we kept each other company, especially after you were born. We took turns watching you while we worked. Me and my magic, her and her inventions.
“I made swiftness potions for the miners, to help them speed through the mining tunnels a little faster and to help them get home quicker, so they could spend more time with their families. Your mother even made a sugarcane farm that was fully automated to keep up with the demand. Our plan worked for a while. Your father was ecstatic with the productivity. Magic was still new to our town then, but everyone seemed to embrace it.
“Your mother and I worked together for months, trying to research even better ways to increase mining efficiency. We scoured the library for ideas, until one day she stumbled upon a brief mention of a device that could create haste magic. With this, your father and the other workers could mine at a quicker rate. The beacon would send out a magical force to anyone in range.”
“Sounds perfect,” Zetta said, imagining how much free time she could have had to practice her brewing skills if her mining sessions hadn’t lasted all day. But obviously something had gone wrong, because she’d been mining for half a year now and had never even heard of a haste beacon.
“There was a catch. You needed a nether star to get it,” Aunt Meryl said.
Everything Zetta knew about the nether came from the paper flower floats at the Eve of Hostile Mobs parade. Lava lakes. Angry pigs. Fireball-shooting ghasts floating around in midair. Zetta had believed in such fantastical beasts when she was little, but she knew it was all a trick to keep kids from being curious about traveling outside the town’s borders, and the possibility of traveling outside of the Overworld for that matter. “So you went to the nether?”
“Didn’t have to. I had soul sand from my nether wart farm and traded some other valuables for the wither skulls. You stack the sand just the right way and place the skulls on top, and you get a wither. A monstrosity that can wreak more havoc than almost any mob there is. It flies in the air, and has three heads that shoot skulls, each with more explosive power than a creeper. But if you manage to kill a wither, it’ll drop a single, perfect nether star.”
Zetta stiffened. The sudden movement reminded her that she was perched precariously on a cliff. She shifted her weight back. “That thing I built back there…I was creating a wither?”
“Nearly did. Would have torn this whole mountainside up.” Aunt Meryl shrugged. “But that didn’t happen, so don’t worry yourself over it. Your mother wasn’t worried either. She had an idea to kill a wither, a machine that would fire arrows and splash it with potions all at once, and when it died, we could claim the nether star it dropped and use it for the beacon.”
Zetta’s voice softened. “And her invention…it didn’t work?”
“It was flawless. The wither only managed to fire one skull shot, which hit a poor, defenseless chicken. The machine wailed upon that wither, spending its full arsenal in a matter of seconds. Before we knew it, that overpowered mob was knocked out of existence, leaving only the nether star behind. We had our star!
“It was so beautiful, Zetta, you wouldn’t believe. Shone so bright, we could barely stand to look at it. Everything had gone so right. And then your mother saw another treasure…a beautiful black rose lying on the ground. She collected it, and when we got home, your mother planted it to commemorate our success. But she must have gotten nicked by a thorn. She let out a cry of pain and was thrown back.”
Zetta wasn’t breathing again. And she had a warm tear running down her cheek. Her aunt Meryl’s hand slipped into hers.
“It was a wither rose, created when the wither killed the chicken. I know that now, but back then, I was clueless. It usually isn’t fatal, but your mother must have had some severe reaction to it, and got sicker and sicker. We suspected milk would cure it, but back then Sienna Dunes didn’t have a cow. I told your father what happened and he sat by her side as I prepared healing potion after healing potion for her. She couldn’t keep them down. Splash potions didn’t work either. After a few hours, she just sort of withered away.
“We were all devastated, of course. Your father never really recovered. He took the star, probably tossed it off a cliff. Said there would be no more magic in his house, and in the whole of the town if he had his way. The others agreed and closed their minds off to the world and its possibilities. They were more than happy to stay stuck in their old ways, but what they didn’t understand was that the world would keep changing, even if they kept ignoring it. So I had to keep practicing alchemy. I had to keep learning. It was the only thing that kept my mind off your mother and my loss. Our loss. I left Sienna Dunes after another six months. I never returned.”
“I’m sorry,” Zetta said, squeezing her aunt’s hand.
“No, I’m sorry,” Aunt Meryl said. “I thought we’d taken every precaution. We thought it was safe, that we were doing the right thing. But magic can be unpredictable. As soon as you get comfortable with it, it’ll let you know who’s really in charge.” Aunt Meryl sighed, then pulled her hands into her lap, fiddling with her thumb. “That’s her tunic you’re wearing, isn’t it?”
Zetta looked down at the frayed edge of the old blue tunic, then nodded. “I found it in a chest in the hall closet a few years back. It finally fits me. I think it’s the first thing I’ve worn that’s not green or lime green or white.”
“You favor her. And she would have loved to see you like this, pursuing your own dreams and passions.”
“I hope one day I can make her proud,” Zetta said, twiddling her own thumbs now.
“You will. And I suppose it wouldn’t be the worst thing if I help hasten that along…”
“Does that mean—” Zetta began, forgetting herself again, and shifting so quickly that she nearly slipped off the edge of the cliff. Her aunt’s hand reached out and grabbed her.
Aunt Meryl nodded. “I’ll give you exactly one brewing lesson. So get your questions ready—you’ve got to make them count.”
Zetta followed her aunt back home, her head dizzy with excitement, and soon her aunt was giving Zetta her
first official brewing lesson.
“You have to keep the swiftness potions on low heat so the sugar doesn’t caramelize,” Aunt Meryl was saying, wiping the sweat from her forehead. They had taken out another set of four brewing stands and placed them on the opposite side of the workbench for Zetta to use. With eight brewing stands going at the same time, and even with the windows open, the whole room was beyond steamy.
Zetta jotted a note in her book, then went over to one of the bubbling potions and reduced the heat to low. The bubbles died down. She added a heaping scoop of sugar, pleased when the potion faded into a blue the exact same shade as the one her aunt was brewing. Zetta didn’t have time to let out a breath, though. Her aunt was going a million miles an hour, like she’d downed a swiftness potion already, but it was just nerves and excitement, Zetta knew. Aunt Meryl probably didn’t get to talk to people much, and even as much of a recluse as she was, Zetta could tell that she was enjoying the company and a chance to pass down her knowledge.
“The amount of blaze powder you add to a strength potion depends on the ambient temperature of the room. If it’s warm, you can use a little less. Daytime brewing will work well for you in the desert, so take advantage of that. You might not notice the difference when making single potions, but if you’re working with a big batch, those savings add up.” Zetta watched carefully as Aunt Meryl threw a handful of blaze powder into another awkward potion.
She didn’t have any of the potions labeled, which made Zetta uncomfortable. Zetta didn’t want to lose track of which awkward potion was getting which additional ingredients, so she drew a diagram in her notebook and carefully wrote down what had been added to each. Her aunt seemed pleased with this thoroughness, though she expressed this in the form of arched brows and pinched lips instead of praise.
The Dragon: An Official Minecraft Novel Page 6
