by Mur Lafferty
“That’s why you thought it worked,” Alison said. She looked at Freya. “He almost drowned because of his uncle’s ‘enchanted’ helmet.” She made air quotes with her hands.
Max nodded. “I broke into his house one night and got the helmet, then I went swimming in the river to test it. I got pulled down to the bottom, couldn’t breathe, and blacked out. My family thought I was dead. I drifted downstream and someone must have fished me out and pushed the water out of my lungs. I don’t remember much after that, but I staggered home. Mom and Dad were thrilled to see me, but at the same time they were yelling about Uncle Nicholas and how he wasn’t allowed around our house, or even the entire village, anymore.” He frowned as he remembered. “She wouldn’t let me out of the house after that, and I had to stay in bed and recover, so I didn’t know where he went.”
Alison looked thoughtful. “I guess that would make this around the time of the creeper attack,” she said. “I don’t remember anything that was happening with you, except hearing you were okay after the accident.”
He nodded. “Your parents’ accident made my Mom focus on someone other than me, which was great.” He felt his face get hot with sudden shame, and looked away from her. “I mean, I’m not glad they’re gone, of course, I just—”
Alison smiled sadly. “I know what you meant.”
He relaxed. “Anyway, she told me he left town, but I went back to his blown-up cabin and found his journal and his notes. He’d left messages for my family, saying how sorry he was that he had killed me and how he couldn’t face them anymore. And then I found the portal.”
“He thinks you’re dead?” Alison said.
Max nodded. “I was gone for hours. They all thought I was dead. By the time I was back, they were distracted by me needing healing, and then they were just so relieved I was back that no one went to tell him. Not like Mom wanted him around anymore anyway. Sometime around then, he built the portal, and shortly after that his cabin was destroyed.”
“Which made you decide he was here,” Alison said thoughtfully.
“And wouldn’t come back home, yeah,” he said. “I thought if I told him I was alive, he might come back. Of course, now I know he might want to come home, but lost the portal like we did.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And you thought we could get him back? You, the kid who nearly drowned because of a helmet? And me, the kid who keeps attracting mobs like I am wearing some kind of skeleton lure?”
He set his jaw. “There was no one else. I started looking into the other journals and trying to figure out the things he made that worked, and the failed experiments. I tried to figure out who ‘Boots’ was, but I think they parted ways years ago. Then you came to live with us, and I figured I could use your help, and you could use a little distraction.” They sat, silent for a moment, then Max added quietly, “He needs us. He thinks he’s a curse on our family. He has no one else.”
Alison sighed. “Okay, we’ll find him and bring him home.”
“He wasn’t a curse, but it sounds like he sure made some cursed items,” Freya said from the enchantment table.
“You’re not helping,” Alison said.
“Helped you, didn’t I?” Freya said. “You both would be dead twice now if not for me.”
“That’s fair.” Alison sat up and rubbed her arm where a sword had bit in an hour before. “So, what now?”
“What now?” Freya asked, annoyed. “What now is I get you two some reasonable armor and weapons so you will stop going outside in pleasant summer clothing! I didn’t come here to spend all my time rescuing you two.”
UNNAMED HELMET
More mushroom soup. Alison gobbled it down, though. It seemed that nearly dying brought out her appetite.
“So, your house was built by his uncle, and then creepers blew it up, right?” Freya said, pointing her bow between Alison and Max. They were in the crafting room, Freya checking equipment while the two of them ate.
“More or less,” Alison said. “My family raised sheep, mostly, but also pigs. Mom was an expert knitter. Dad made books that he sold to enchanters. Then, you know, the creepers, and—” She shrugged.
“Boom. That’s what creepers do.” Freya finished examining the equipment. “So, we have a gold sword here that was enchanted with the knockback enchantment,” she said.
“Bone Bane,” Max insisted.
“Do you know how long a gold sword lasts? It is a soft metal.” Freya touched one of the tooth marks Bunny Biter had left on the blade.
“It’s magic. It will last forever. And its name is Bone Bane,” Max said through clenched teeth.
Freya rolled her eyes. She handed Alison the enchanted helmet. “This thing is also made of gold. What’s wrong with iron, or diamond? Do you want to name it, too? Thorny or Rosey or something?”
“No thanks, I’m good,” Alison said, accepting the shiny gold helmet that had saved her life. She knew most enchantments wouldn’t stop an item from breaking. Max had better bring along a backup weapon just in case. And she should get another helmet, too.
“Come on, we need to get some more crafting done,” Freya said, gesturing to Alison. She looked at Max, frowning. “If you want to try some enchanting on your own stuff, go ahead, but I’m not offering any of my equipment up for an experiment.”
“Hey, I enchanted the helmet, didn’t I?” Max said, offended.
Alison snorted. “Ask him how many failures we had,” she said to Freya.
“Don’t need to,” Freya said. “Go get some metal out of that chest on the left. I figure we have enough diamond for each of us.”
Max pulled his uncle’s journal from his bag. “I need to figure some stuff out anyway,” he said. He took a seat at a table next to a torch and held the journal up to the light, squinting at the angry, black scrawled designs.
Alison was starting to figure out that crafting was pretty easy, really, so long as you had the right amount of incredibly rare components. Crafting equipment, anyway. She wasn’t going to mess with the magic stuff. She wasn’t stupid. She had no idea how Max could keep messing with enchanting when it was so much more dangerous than crafting.
* * *
—
Max had no idea how Alison could focus on boring crafting when enchanting was so much more exciting. But he couldn’t do it without her items; he didn’t have the patience or interest in finding the right amount of metal or crystal in order to make useful things. He was much happier searching for fermented spider eyes to enchant already-made equipment.
They made a good team, he admitted. They just should probably be more honest with each other.
He flipped through the book, his finger tracing the recipes he knew to be failures, and then the ones that he had figured out. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but knew that the later pages, the ones with the heavy scrawled lines, held something he needed.
Behind him, Alison was working at her crafting table with great enthusiasm. Freya had given her a huge amount of diamond, which Alison had never even seen before, much less crafted with. She was happier than her sheep in the cove right now, and seemed to have forgotten they were stuck in the Nether with no chance of getting home.
He turned the page again and saw the thing that had constantly bothered him about this journal: there was one almost fully blacked-out page. He frowned in frustration. He had been unable to decipher what was originally written or drawn. What was he supposed to do with this? What was Nicholas trying to hide? He leaned closer to the book when he heard a “Whoops.”
He was about to ask what had happened when a hot spark landed on his cheek. He yelped and jumped up, narrowly missing a sliver of hot metal that had chipped from Alison’s work. It landed on the book and immediately started to smoke.
“Hey, watch what you’re doing!” he demanded, forgetting the pain in his cheek. He lifted the book and s
hook it so the burning metal fell to the floor, but the damage had already been done. A few pages had been loosened from their spine, and, combined with Nicholas’s enthusiastic (or furious) scribbling, the pages were damaged enough to separate from the book and float to the floor.
“No!” he shouted, and went scrambling after the pages. Lucky for him, it wasn’t windy in the Nether, and the pages settled on the floor gently. He scooped them up and held them out to Freya and Alison, shaking them slightly. “Be more careful next ti—” Focusing on the pages and now holding them up to the light, he realized that he could see more than when they had laid flat in the book. He put all but one down on the table and walked over to a torch, holding the page as close as he dared to the flame.
“What are you doing?” Alison asked.
“I thought I saw something,” he said, looking so closely at it that his nose brushed the page. Beyond the dark scribbling he could see other writing, made earlier by a pen with a finer point. “I thought this was a page of failed recipes but it looks like…”
It was a map.
* * *
—
Alison didn’t realize how stuck she’d felt simply because they hadn’t known where they were going.
The lack of armor and the frequent injuries didn’t help, of course, but those were barriers that they could overcome. But not knowing where they were going—that had been a burden on her shoulders that she didn’t notice until they had a clear path.
Well, the path wasn’t clear, exactly. It was still obscured by a lot of scribbling, but once Max had figured out the main lines of a map, and they realized where Freya’s fortress lay in reference to the other things they could make out, they had a general direction they thought they could go in.
But first they had to get out the door, and there was a little issue stopping them. Max wanted to enchant his equipment.
Freya stood by the door of the basement, arms crossed, leaning against the wall. Max and Alison stood at an enchanting table, Max’s new diamond armor between them.
Alison grasped the diamond helmet and shook it for effect. “We are in the Nether. We are looking for a missing man. You have a strong, new, incredibly rare set of armor. And you think that right now is the best time to start up enchanting again? It might ruin the armor!”
Max picked up his boots and shook them at her, mocking her movements. “Yes, I think now is the best time to do it. Are we ever going to need it more than now?”
“The way we’re going, probably,” Alison said. “Who knows what you’re going to get us into next?”
Alison then counted off on her fingers the list of his failed enchantments, making Max’s cheeks grow hot with embarrassment.
“But what about your helmet?” he asked, pointing to the gold helmet sitting beside her shining diamond helmet, armor, and boots. “I did that one right.”
“True,” she conceded, “but for all we know, that was a fluke. You have far more failed experiments than successful ones.” Max dropped the boots with a clang and walked away from the table. He stared moodily at the tacky carvings on the wall.
Freya stretched, and Alison got the very annoying feeling that they were amusing her.
“Let’s take the equipment we have,” Alison said. “Max can pack an enchanting table and whatever books and components he can carry.”
“I can’t enchant on the fly!” he protested.
“You can’t enchant at all,” said Freya.
“That’s unfair and you know it!” Max said.
“Look, we’re not trying to be mean here, Max; we’re trying to save your uncle and survive in the Nether,” Alison said. “We aren’t in the woods anymore. This is serious.”
Max relented with bad grace and packed up his enchanting supplies while Alison and Freya packed the health potions, food, and other equipment they’d need.
It was with sour moods that the trio left the fortress.
The Nether was strangely calm as they exited through the secret door. “Is this the best way to leave?” Max asked. “We haven’t had good luck in this canyon so far.”
Freya looked back. “The front of the fortress is always patrolled by blazes. You ever fought a blaze?”
He shook his head.
“Then we’re leaving through the right door,” Freya said. “Besides, we’re stronger when we’re together and no one is leaving in a huff completely unprepared for the mobs that await us.”
“So, when we’re all together, nothing attacks us,” Alison commented bitterly as they stepped out into the dim Nether light.
“There is strength in numbers,” Freya said, looking around. She had an arrow nocked, ready to protect them from any attack. The canyon was quiet, with only a few bones around that Bunny Biter had failed to find. She ran around now gathering them, looking at Freya, expecting her to open the door to the fortress tunnel so she could put them in her private collection.
“Not this time, BB,” she said. “Pick your favorite and let’s go.”
The wolf blinked at her, bones in her jaws. She whined once, and then ran to Freya’s heels, teeth clenched around the treasures she refused to give up.
Exiting the canyon, Max was finally able to look at the whole of the Nether without fearing massive mobs would overtake them.
The landscape unfurled before him, vast and brown, occasional gouts of flame bursting from the cracks in the ground. In the distance a red haze shimmered, looking like the lake that had been on Uncle Nicholas’s map. Beyond that the world looked infinite, making him feel very small. Max remembered a desert his family once traveled through back in the Overworld; the sand and dunes went on and on, giving a false sense of safety in their monotony. They had seen nothing but rabbits and more rabbits. He’d forgotten that there were dangers other than mobs, though, and discovered what those were when he wandered away from his family. With no vegetation and no streams, he quickly ran out of food and water in the dry heat.
He’d underestimated the seemingly benign and bland landscape then. He wouldn’t make the same mistake here. Even if there weren’t terrifying mobs like those they’d already encountered.
They wandered around the corner to see Freya’s fortress properly from the front, and she was correct: blazes still patrolled the area, throwing out an occasional fireball at each other, or random threats Max couldn’t see, or imagined mobs. They were still a threat, however, and Max figured it would be good to keep his distance.
Freya looked at the map, which they had redrawn on fresh paper. They couldn’t make out some of the areas, and Max had wanted to guess at what lay in those places, but Freya had refused. “We’ll map the areas when we get to them. Otherwise we’ll get lost.”
“We’re looking for a lake of fire?” Alison said. “That’s not narrowing it down.”
Max pointed to the red glow that illuminated a hill in the distance. “I am betting it’s over that way,” he said.
Beyond Freya’s fortress was the lava reservoir Max and Alison had initially seen, and beyond that was, well, another lake of fire. Only one of them was on the map, though, and Freya carefully added the other, estimating the number of blocks that the lava covered.
Max bounced up and down impatiently, his diamond armor clanking together. Although the only magical thing about him was his sword, he admitted he did like the look of the shiny armor.
Freya knelt on the warm ground and spread out two maps. “All right, from my own notes on this area, the land to the left of my fortress is barren with a bunch of mobs. I haven’t gone right very much, mainly because there’s what is essentially a lava sea in that direction.” She pointed to similar marks on each map. “But from your uncle’s marks, it looks like he went directly into the sea.”
Max made a strangled noise. “Why would he do that?”
Freya glanced up at him. “I didn’t mean that literall
y. I mean, he indicates that he wanted to go straight toward the sea. After that, who knows where he went? Maybe he made an under-lava vessel.”
Alison put her hand on Max’s shoulder and glared down at Freya. “If he were self-destructive, he wouldn’t have worked so hard to come to the Nether. He was a master builder, Max. He’s probably fine.” She nodded toward the right. “We’ll go that way, then.”
Freya rolled up both maps and nodded. They started out, sweat stinging their skin. The heat from the rock and lava was constant, and Alison wondered if they were going to die of dehydration before anything else. Now that they were out in the open, it felt both safer and more dangerous than the fortress. They were exposed, but so were all the other beings of this realm. Nothing could sneak up on them, and they took caution to stay clear of the patrolling mobs.
“What have you fought around here besides the skeletons?” Max asked.
“Don’t forget those chicken jockeys,” Freya said. “I haven’t fought the blazes so much as dodged them and shot at them from a distance. There are scarier things than those, of course.”
“Of course there are, because fire creatures aren’t bad enough,” grumbled Alison.
“There are the ghasts, and they’re kind of strange. They throw fire a lot, which you’ll see is a theme here. They’re gray and a lot bigger than blazes. Four-by-four-by-four, by my account. They’re so dumb that you can fool them into killing each other because even though they breathe fire, they’re not immune to it. If they all shoot at each other, there might be one left over, but that one won’t be a problem to deal with.”
“Four-by-four…by-four?” Max said, looking around in panic to see if he could see the massive gray firebombs.
