by Mur Lafferty
“I thought water and lava made obsidian,” Max lamented. “But that doesn’t seem to be the case.”
“I think you have to be at the source of the lava,” Alison said.
Max opened his mouth to suggest going back into the cave Alison had found, but when she glared at him, he shut it.
“We could get the blocks from the sheep pen,” Alison said as they relaxed, exhausted from hauling the cobblestone out of the garden. “But why do you want to? We don’t need extra anyway. The portal is ready.”
“But I can’t imagine you can ever have too much obsidian. If we got separated from the portal in the Nether, we’d need to build another one! But if we took those blocks, what would fix the holes in the pen?” Max asked.
She looked at him and laughed. “Actual wood, fence segments, gates, you know, proper patches. Not just stacks of highly valuable blocks.”
He shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”
“Keeping them inside the house would work too, but we don’t do that either,” she countered.
He gave an exaggerated sigh. “All right, let’s get the ones from the pen.”
“And fix the pen,” she reminded him.
“And fix the pen,” he agreed.
Unfortunately, the diamond pickaxe was one of the things that they had to keep back at the cabin, lest Max’s mom discover it. They couldn’t do much with the obsidian blocks that were now patching up the fence.
Mr. Hatch had returned some of the sheep to their pens temporarily, stating that he needed to take his bellwether to get some confidence training, so Lil’ Prince and Apple stood at the fence to watch them hopefully, but all the kids managed to do was poke at the heavy blocks with their tools before they gave up.
“The obsidian back at the cabin will have to be enough for you,” Alison said, putting her pick away.
“Sorry about the fence,” he said. “It seemed like a good idea.”
“Well, your obsidian patch worked, but it worked like using a diamond pick to mine cobblestone,” she said ruefully. “Let’s go.”
Back at the cabin, they discovered the Enchanter did have more obsidian in one of his chests. That stash, plus what they could gather from beside the portal, was more than enough to build another portal. While Max did hate the loss of the valuable obsidian blocks back at the pen, he admitted he didn’t really need them.
Once Alison had crafted enough equipment, she felt it might be time to at least test the portal. They had their equipment and extra obsidian stashed in a chest next to the portal. Alison gazed up at it. “This portal is huge,” she said. “Too big for what was needed.”
“How can a portal be too big?” Max said, looking at the portal in wonder. “Big or small, it’s a door.”
“Well, it’s a waste of resources, isn’t it?” she said. “Obsidian isn’t easy to come by, so if you want to get to the Nether, if it exists—”
“It exists,” Max interjected.
“If it exists, then why not use the bare minimum? Why work to get over twenty-six blocks when you need only fourteen?” She squinted at the plans. “Actually, we’d only need ten. At least, according to your Enchanter, we don’t need to fill in the corners here.” She pointed to an alternate portal plan drawn in the corner of the page. It looked like a rectangle except that it was missing the four blocks that made up the corners.
“Ten? That’s it?” Ten didn’t sound very impressive. When Max imagined a nether portal, he imagined a huge gaping door into another world, not something slightly larger than his front door.
“Luckily we have ten blocks,” she said. “If you want to wait until we have thirty to take with us, then by all means, I’m happy staying home while you look for more obsidian.”
He’d really thought adventuring would involve less math. “Fine, whatever. Can we light it now?”
She bit her lip. “I guess we can test it to see if it works. Just to see that much, promise?”
He nodded and went running for the flint and steel. When he returned, she was still studying the portal’s construction.
The real challenge to portal creation, Max realized, was the plan and the supplies. If someone did it for you, then all you had to worry about was the last step: put a fire in the middle of the portal to activate it. (They ignored the note to include a fermented spider eye in the fire. Max had pulled one out of his pocket but Alison had given him such a glare that he’d put it back.)
Alison bent and pulled her golden helmet out of the chest beside the portal and stroked it. “I still can’t believe we got enough gold for me to make a helmet,” she said as Max smacked the flint against the steel. “I thought working with rarer elements would make crafting harder, but this gold was actually pretty easy to work with.”
“Try enchanting,” Max said ruefully. “That’s harder.”
She glanced up at him. “Is the fire broken?”
He sighed, frustrated, and stood up. “Will you give it a try? You’re always better with fire than I am.” He handed the tools over. She hesitated and then took them, trading him the helmet to hold. She bent before the portal, trying to get a spark to light.
Right now, all he could see was the clearing on the other side of the portal, grass, flowers, and the woods beyond. But soon, if they’d done everything right, he would see a shimmering portal to another world. He grinned in anticipation. “I can’t believe we’re finally doing this.”
“Neither can I, honestly. I keep expecting something to go wrong,” Alison said, striking the flint again. She stood up and took a step back. “I’m still not sure this is the best idea.”
“What?” he said, tearing his eyes away from the beautiful black blocks and staring at her. “You’re getting too scared to just activate it now?”
He pulled the flint and steel from her hands. “Here, I’ll do it. Let’s just see if it works. Then we can go home. Promise.”
Alison was silent. She stared at the portal like it menaced her.
“Aren’t you just a little bit curious to see if it works?” he asked desperately.
She gave up and turned away, throwing her hands into the air in frustration. “Fine, activate it, and then we’ll go through it because you’ll come up with another reason to make me take the next step, and then we’ll be transported to another world where we have no idea how to handle ourselves, and then we’ll probably die or something worse.”
“Yeah, Mom will find out. That would be worse,” Max said, and smacked the flint at the steel a bit harder than he meant to. A spark flared, and then died. “Why do you always anticipate the worst? Sure, we’ve made mistakes, but look at the things that have gone right!” Smack. “We’ve taught ourselves to craft, enchant, brew potions, even cook. For everything that’s gone wrong, we’ve achieved or learned two things!” Smack.
“It doesn’t matter how much we’ve learned! If one thing goes wrong and we’re done for, it wouldn’t matter if we had the whole knowledge of the Overworld at our fingertips,” she said, eyes on the flint and steel. “You’re doing that wrong anyway, let me—”
Smack.
Max lost it. “I don’t want you to do it! And you know what? I didn’t want you to move in! I didn’t want my mother to treat you like the daughter she never had and build you an entire wing of the house just for yourself. I didn’t want to get grounded and have you take over half of my room!” He struck the steel again. “And you snore.”
She whirled on him. “That’s a lie,” she snarled. She snatched the flint and steel from his hands. “Oh, give me that!”
Smack!
A spark flared.
Alison’s eyes went wide, her face bathed in a purple glow.
The air behind Max began to hum and crackle, and he could feel it pulling at him. But he wasn’t paying attention to the portal, because he had something else he had to stare at. While
they’d been building and then arguing, they had lost track of time. Now the sun hung low in the sky, and the mobs that preferred the dark had come out to see what the fuss was about. From around the cabin, a terrifying green face had peeked, hissing slightly. It emerged, its lengthy, armless body wandering on three legs.
His mind went completely blank. He had been taught the basics of how to avoid a creeper attack—it was something parents taught all children from birth—but the steps completely left his mind. He’d been so excited, and then so angry, and now so shocked. Was he supposed to stay still? Run? Dig a hole and hide in it?
And what would Alison do if she saw it?
The portal’s purple glow shed an unworldly light on the clearing. Alison still stared at it, smiling in wonder. She hadn’t seen or heard the appearance of the same kind of monster that had destroyed her home. The creeper moved forward on its tripod legs, hissing louder.
Max reached out and took Alison’s hand.
“You’re right,” she said. “This is amazing.”
“Alison,” he said softly. “We need to run.”
“We just got it lit!” she said. “And you haven’t even looked at it—” She turned to see what he was staring at, and sucked in her breath in panic.
The creeper was getting closer. It was hissing louder. Alison made a high-pitched, panicked noise deep in her throat. The steel fell to the ground.
“Alison, I can’t remember, what do we do?” Max asked, looking around for something to throw at the advancing monster. The creeper began to quiver, and Max could only think of one option left to them. He jumped into the portal, pulling Alison after him. Everything went purple, and dimly he could hear the explosion that indicated the creeper had detonated.
DOOM, SURELY
Disorientation slammed into Alison as the paralyzing fear broke. An odd little part of her mind, watching her impassively, thought it was interesting that her next emotion was not panic. But the world went purple, and then exploded, and then they were on their knees in a very different place.
She was vaguely aware of a popping sound behind them, but the sights and sounds in front were so alien that she could only stare.
They were on their knees in a small mushroom patch, the fungi warm to Alison’s fingers. Beyond the patch were vast fields of redstone and bedrock, forming small caverns and stretching up and over them, as if they had fallen into a vast hollow with no exit. Ahead of them was a massive cliff, down which poured a waterfall of lava (Would that be a lavafall? a small part of her brain wondered) that pooled at the base and formed a lake. It was beautiful in its terrifying power.
Gouts of flame spawned on various blocks around the lake, burned fiercely, and then died out.
The heat was close to oppressive, but they could breathe at least. Alison took a deep breath and got shakily to her feet.
She squinted, shielding her eyes from the harsh glow off the lava. They stood on rough, brutal, redstone blocks. What was that called? She remembered hearing something about it when people would whisper about the Nether. Netherrack?
Around the lake of lava at the base of the cliff flew a few mobs that she had never seen before. Big gray beasts with lazy faces and dangling tentacles wandered the lakeshore making high-pitched, inquisitive noises.
It was amazing. “Max, you were right. I can’t believe it, but you were right.”
Max was still on his knees, staring behind them. “It’s out,” he said, his voice high and blank.
“What is?” she asked.
“The portal. The creeper detonated and put it out.”
Alison whirled and saw an obsidian rectangle, a doorway that led only to more fire and lava. The glowing purple center was gone, erasing the path back home. Her jaw dropped open.
Max leaped to his feet and ran around the portal, looking at it from all sides. “Alison, relight it! That’s all we need to do!”
His volume was increasing as he spoke, and she looked around nervously. She thought she saw one of the floating beasts turn their way, but it could have been a trick of the very low light. Illumination in this cavernous realm came from glowstone nestled in among the bedrock, lava, and not much else. She wished they’d brought torches.
Or the armor and weapons and food and tools they’d left back home, for that matter.
“Max, be quiet, we don’t know what’s out here,” she said, looking nervously at the lava lake. She glanced at her empty hands. “And—and I think I dropped the steel back at the—other portal.” She pointed at the flint, lying on the ground where she had dropped it after coming through.
“What? Alison, we can’t go home until you relight it!” he shouted. “We aren’t prepared, we can’t be here!”
She lost all composure then. “I know that. Listen,” she hissed. “We have to look at our situation, look at our options, and figure something out. We’ll be fine. We’re surrounded by fire! This won’t be hard, but first thing you have to do is be quiet because you’re gathering attention we don’t need!”
He jerked to a stop as if she’d slapped him, and glared at her. She pointed wordlessly to the lava lake and his eyes widened. “Oh no,” he said.
“Oh yeah,” she whispered. “So, let’s just calm down and see what our options are. We will need to get something to catch on fire and just use that. It’ll be fine.”
He waved his hands, getting agitated again. “We don’t have any fuel!”
They looked around. The area was vast, but she had the sneaking suspicion that any fuel they might find would have already burned to a crisp.
“Well, if we can’t go back, we go forward. That Enchanter person, you said they’re here, right? Maybe they can help us get home,” she said.
“But we were supposed to rescue him,” Max said. “What are we going to say? ‘Hi there, we’re here to rescue you, if you can tell us how to get home.’ That’s like the worst rescue attempt ever.” In frustration, he grabbed the useless flint from the ground and threw it as far as he could.
He thought he heard a startled sound when it landed, but he dismissed it to face Alison’s anger.
“Then what do you think we should do?” she asked, hands on her hips. He said nothing, looking at his feet. “All right, then. Watch those…things…and if you see them move toward us, let me know. I’m going to see if I can tell where we are.”
She ignored his snarky comment that they were in the Nether as she walked away. Just ahead, a rocky spire made of glowstone jutted up from the ground, and Alison approached it cautiously. The heat was almost too much to take, but she could grab the stone and pull herself up. Standing about ten blocks above the ground, she got a much better look at the surrounding area.
Lava was everywhere. Well, not everywhere. There were plenty of places to walk, many directions to go and get lost in. They would have to leave a marker leading back to this place so they didn’t lose their way.
A glowing section of rock and lava caught her eye at that moment. It looked as if someone had carved a rough circle into the rock, complete with two dots in the middle. Lava had bubbled up and created a burning image.
Like the cover of the journal.
“Max!” she cried, forgetting her earlier warnings. “He is here! He carved his symbol into the rock! It’s a beacon! We can find him and ask him for help!”
She clambered off the rock and ran toward him, only realizing at the last minute that Max was frantically gesturing for her to be quieter.
“Shhhh!” he said. “I thought I heard something.”
“Oh, that’s those things around the lava, they haven’t noticed us,” she said, glancing toward the lake.
“No, I thought I heard…clucking.”
* * *
—
The beacon didn’t matter anymore. The Enchanter, the dormant portal, the lack of weapons and armor, and the very fact
that they were surrounded by fire but couldn’t actually use any of it to light the portal, nothing mattered. What mattered, the only thing in the world that mattered, was that Max and Alison ran like rabbits trying to escape with their lives while being pursued by wolves.
Only they weren’t rabbits, and they weren’t being chased by wolves. Instead, behind them ran dozens and dozens of chickens urged on by tiny zombie pigmen atop their backs.
They ran, but Max didn’t know or care where. He had outrun zombies before, even the tiny ones. It was a typical way of life in the Overworld when one didn’t live in the safety of the villages.
But he had never seen them as zombified pigmen riding chickens. And he had never seen chickens this fast.
Alison wasn’t making it any easier. She yelled at Max as they ran, venting her frustrations straight onto his shoulders. “Why did you have to throw the flint at it? Of everything we could have encountered here, we found the fastest, creepiest one, and threw stuff at it! We built the portal because you wanted to build it, and now we’re going to be eaten by chickens. I will not be eaten by chickens, Max!”
The clucking got louder, and now they could hear the groans and squeaks of the zombie pigmen.
He felt like they had been running forever, zigging and zagging, making abrupt turns when they saw more mobs ahead, but never heading back the way they came, as the chicken jockeys got closer and closer.
Max spied an opening in a cliff, a dark entry into—a cave? Canyon? More death? They didn’t have many options.
“Would you stop yelling at me and run?” he said, turning in to the valley while jumping to avoid a geyser of fire erupting to his left. He collided with Alison and she grunted, then tumbled to the ground.
He bent and grabbed her wrist. “Get up!” he shouted, refusing to look at the approaching mob.
“I hope I’m reborn as a sheep so I won’t have to worry about meeting you in the next life,” she mumbled, but accepted his help getting up and kept running.
