Mysteries of the Overworld Read online

  This book is not authorized or sponsored by Microsoft Corp., Mojang AB, Notch Development AB or Scholastic Inc., or any other person or entity owning or controlling rights in the Minecraft name, trademark, or copyrights.

  Copyright © 2018 by Danica Davidson

  Minecraft® is a registered trademark of Notch Development AB.

  The Minecraft game is copyright © Mojang AB.

  This book is not authorized or sponsored by Microsoft Corp., Mojang AB, Notch Development AB or Scholastic Inc., or any other person or entity owning or controlling rights in the Minecraft name, trademark, or copyrights.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Cover photo by Lordwhitebear

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5107-2851-6

  Paperback ISBN: 978-1-5107-2703-8

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-2709-0

  Printed in Canada

  CHAPTER 1

  My cousin alex was pounding on the front door so hard you’d think every monster in the Overworld was chasing her. As soon as I opened the door, she rushed inside the house, her eyes wild. She gasped, “I found something that changes everything! You have to come see! Right now!”

  “Is this about the crystal shard?” I asked.

  Just days before, Alex, my friends from Earth, and I had fought off an army of Endermen to protect a strange, purple crystal shard we’d found. We’d figured out the crystal shard possessed some kind of very old magic and the Endermen wanted to use it so they could release somebody—or something—extremely dangerous from some kind of prison. Some people who’d touched the crystal, including me, had even heard an evil woman’s voice in our heads. But we still had no idea exactly what the crystal was, or what it could do.

  “I said, let’s go!” Alex demanded, not bothering to answer me. She was still catching her breath from running.

  “Dad, I’m going out with Alex!” I called as Alex grabbed me by my turquoise shirt and yanked me out of the house. Dad’s reminder to be careful was cut off by the door closing.

  My cousin tended to be as fiery as her red hair, but this was wild even for her. She must have found something big.

  “I was searching the area, trying to find clues about the crystal,” Alex said as she ran, “and I discovered some old mineshafts near where you found the shard.”

  Alex wanted to be an explorer when she grew up, and she already explored her heart out whenever she got the chance.

  “Stevie,” Alex said, panting. “Get ready to have everything you know about the Overworld turned upside down.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, rushing to keep up with her. My pulse was pounding in my ears, and it wasn’t just from running.

  She shook her head. “It’s something you just have to see.”

  A recent Wither attack had opened up a crevice in a mountain, and Alex led me to the far side of the blast. There was a hole in the ground and Alex leapt down into it, shouting, “Follow me!”

  I didn’t have any weapons with me, and I knew monsters—also called mobs—could be lurking in that dark mineshaft. But Alex did have her arrows, and I needed to see what she was so excited about. If it solved the crystal shard mystery and stopped the creepy voice …

  Get me out of this prison. I’m ready to rule again, the voice had said to my friend Maison. The voice was so malicious that remembering it gave me the heebie-jeebies even now. I took a deep breath and followed Alex down into the darkness.

  In the mineshaft Alex pulled out a torch to give us a little light. “Look at this,” she said.

  We’d come up to a door. In the torchlight I could see it was etched with the same fancy symbols I’d found on the door that led to the crystal shard. It looked like a fancy S and A looped together like a design.

  My heart leapt into my throat. There might be some really good clues in there.

  Alex opened the door with a nearby switch.

  “Did you find another crystal shard?” I asked.

  She said, “No, even better.”

  We crept into the room. It was ghostly silent, like it held the silence of the centuries that it had been abandoned and untouched. Our footfalls were as loud as thunder.

  “Look at this,” Alex said, picking up a book and handing it to me.

  The book was dusty, but I could see someone had already smeared some of the dust off the cover so they could read it. That must have been Alex earlier. The cover had the same S and A design on it in golden letters.

  I started to open the book, but the pages wouldn’t budge for some reason.

  “I couldn’t get it open, either,” Alex said. “It must need a key, but I haven’t found any around here. But look—turn it over.”

  I flipped the book over. On the back was a drawing of a purple crystal shard. “This looks just like the shard we found!” I said.

  Alex nodded. “Imagine what we could find inside,” she said. “It might explain all the mysterious things that have been going on”

  I was getting excited. “Maybe my dad will know how to open it,” I said. My dad knew just about everything about the Overworld, though the crystal shard had stumped him. We were keeping it safely hidden away in our house, and he had been visiting libraries in nearby villages to search for information and ask the villagers about it. So far all the librarians were clueless.

  “That’s not even the most mind-blowing part,” Alex said. “Look.”

  She took me over to the mineshaft wall, moving the torch close so I could see. Someone had carved an image in the wall of a strong-looking man standing in a heroic way, holding up his diamond sword. It looked like he was daring mobs to attack him—as though he knew he could take anyone on.

  “It’s just Steve Alexander,” I said, feeling let down. I thought Alex was going to show me something more impressive than this after all that you-just-have-to-see-it-for-yourself-Stevie talk. Steve Alexander had lived thousands of years ago, and he had become a legend. Everyone knew who he was, and lots of people in the Overworld named their kids Steve, Alexander, Stephanie, and Alexandra because of him. My name was Stevie, and my dad’s name was Steve, and his dad’s name was Steve, and his dad’s—well, I think you get the point.

  It was the same for my cousin. Alex was a nickname for Alexandra. Her mom was named Alexandra, and all the firstborn daughters in the family had been given the same name for generations.

  So there were images of Steve Alexander everywhere. In the nearby village there was a big statue of him in the same pose, holding up his diamond sword. Dad and Aunt Alexandra had always said that Alex and I were descendants of Steve Alexander, but everyone told their kids that. When I was little, Alex and I sometimes argued with other kids over who was really related to Steve Al
exander. That’s how I realized all the kids had been told the same thing. So I stopped believing it, though Alex was still convinced we were related to him.

  And who wouldn’t want to be related to someone so heroic? Before Steve Alexander had come along, the world had been so overrun with mobs that people had to hide in their homes all the time. We still had to deal with mobs these days, but things were much better now because of him.

  “I’m not talking about Steve Alexander,” Alex said. “Look. You can tell this image is really old, right?”

  “Yeah,” I said. You could see from the way it was carved that it had been on the wall for centuries, at least. It might have even been made when Steve Alexander was still alive.

  Alex moved the torchlight to the side. Next to the familiar image of Steve Alexander was an image of a woman carved into the rock.

  This time my heart jumped so high in my throat I almost choked on it.

  “This can’t be,” I said. I grabbed the torch from Alex’s hand to hold it closer, convinced I was seeing the image wrong. I wasn’t. My eyes were absolutely, positively not playing tricks on me.

  This image looked as old as the Steve Alexander carving, and you could tell by the way they were carved next to each other that they were connected. The carved woman had an emerald-shaped face, long, thick hair, and wise eyes. She was standing with her arms crossed in front of her stomach, her long fingers touching her arms.

  No one in the Overworld had her body shape. No one in the Overworld had fingers.

  This was a woman from Earth.

  CHAPTER 2

  “But i thought no one in the overworld knew about Earth until I discovered the portal,” I said.

  “That’s what I thought too,” Alex said. “Now you see why I had to show it to you?”

  Earlier that year I’d accidentally found a strange-looking portal, and when I went through it, it hadn’t led to the Nether or the End. Instead I’d fallen out of a computer screen and into a realm called Earth, where people had fingers and cell phones, and the spiders were tiny instead of big and red-eyed. It was there that I’d met my friends Maison, Destiny, and Yancy, who’d helped me save the Overworld many times since. They’d also been part of the battle against the Enderman army to protect the crystal shard.

  No one I knew in the Overworld had ever seen Earth people before I introduced them to my friends. Was it possible someone from Earth had been here before? Or … had Steve Alexander been to Earth? There were a ton of legends about Steve Alexander, including the legend that he discovered the End. But there was no legend about him discovering Earth.

  “I told you this changes everything,” Alex rattled on. I still couldn’t say anything. “If we had contact between the worlds that far back …”

  “We need to tell my dad,” I blurted. “And we need to get Maison and the others.”

  A short while later, Dad, Alex, Maison, Destiny, Yancy, and I sat at my kitchen table, staring at the mysterious book. We’d just returned from another trip to the mineshaft to show everyone the images carved on the wall. I’d told Maison that I thought the woman looked a little bit like her and she had said, “I hope I’m as wise as she is when I’m older.” So I wasn’t the only one who thought the woman looked very wise.

  “Maybe the ‘S A’ stands for Steve Alexander,” Maison said as she tried to open the book. It wouldn’t budge for her, either.

  “Who is this Steve Alexander?” Yancy said. “I’m a big Minecraft fan, but I’ve never heard of him.”

  “He’s the biggest hero the Overworld has ever had,” Alex said. “And we’re related to him.”

  “Alex, everyone says that,” I said. “He lived too long ago for anyone to trace their family all the way back to him.”

  Dad put his hand to his square beard, thinking. Then, without a word, he walked out to the supply shed.

  I turned back to the book. Destiny was squinting at it and frowning.

  “Destiny, put your glasses on,” Yancy said.

  Destiny made a face and pulled something out of her pocket. It looked like two pieces of glass in a frame. She set them over her nose.

  “Destiny, I didn’t know you wore glasses,” Maison said.

  “I just got them recently,” Destiny said, frowning. “Some of the other kids made fun of me.”

  “They help you see,” Maison said, sounding angry. “Why would anyone make fun of you for that?”

  I’d seen other people in Maison’s world wear glasses, but this was the first time I’d seen them up close. “How do they work?” I asked, curious. “Do you enchant the glass?”

  Then I realized I probably sounded silly. On Earth, there was no such thing as enchantment.

  “No, they just cut glass to help you see. Look.” Destiny put the glasses in front of my face, but all the glass did was make my vision blurry.

  “Whoa,” I said, pushing the glasses away. They made me dizzy. “I think those are broken.”

  “They work for my eyes,” Destiny said. “Everyone who needs glasses needs a different prescription.”

  Earth’s weird ways were usually pretty interesting to me, but right then I mainly wanted to figure out what the book was and why there was an Earth woman’s image on that wall. I handed Destiny her glasses back just as Dad walked back into the kitchen. He was holding a key with the same S-A symbolism on it.

  “Where did you get that?” I exclaimed.

  Was there a slight trace of a smile on Dad’s face? “This is a family heirloom that’s been passed down from Steve to Steve for generations. It originally belonged to Steve Alexander, your ancestor.”

  I guessed Dad hadn’t liked me scoffing Steve Alexander earlier. But this was a shock! So … did that mean I really was Steve Alexander’s descendant?

  Dad put the key into the book’s little keyhole. And just like that, the book swung open.

  CHAPTER 3

  “What is this, gibberish?” alex complained. The book was filled with squiggly lines, like someone mimicking what writing should look like.

  “In the Minecraft game, books can look like this,” Yancy said.

  “Yeah, in your game,” Alex said bitterly. “In our world, we can read books. This is—this is just nothing!” She slapped the book to the floor.

  Maison picked the book back up and began flipping the pages. It was all filled with the same weird writing.

  “Is there some way to enchant this to let us read it?” she asked.

  “I don’t do enchantments,” Dad said. “Never cared much for it. But maybe the village librarian will know something about this.”

  “We’ll take it to the village,” I said, ready to head out the door.

  But Dad stopped me.“No,” he said. “This book is probably valuable. It needs to stay where it’s safe, and this house is protected. I’ll bring the librarian back here to take a look.”

  “Is it all right if we stay here and keep trying to find ways to read it?” Maison said.

  Dad shrugged. “I don’t see any harm in it. You kids stay here and I’ll be back.”

  He picked up his toolkit and walked out the door. The rest of us bent back over the book.

  Alex took the book and shook it. “Why won’t you work, you stupid thing?”

  “Relax, Alex,” Yancy said. “It’s not an Etch A Sketch.”

  “A what?” Alex said.

  Yancy gently took the book from her and looked at the image on the back. “It’s about the same size as the crystal shard,” he mused. “I wonder if that means anything. Where are you keeping that shard, Stevie?”

  “I’ll go get it,” I said.

  We were storing it in a little box made of iron that Dad and I had made in an attempt to keep it extra safe. No one had bothered us since the Enderman army the other day, but we had a feeling that someone would come for the crystal shard eventually. Since Endermen didn’t like water, Dad had also put a water source block on top of the house to fend them off. That meant water was constantly drizzling down our ro
of, and we had to be careful not to get wet when we went in and out of the house. But it was a small price to pay to know the shard was safe.

  I opened the iron box and hesitated. I really hated holding the crystal—I never knew when I would hear that awful voice. I made myself pick it up. The crystal glowed violet in my palm, but I didn’t hear any voices. Phew.

  Yancy set the book down on the table with the back cover facing up. I put the crystal on top of the drawing, and it was the perfect fit, almost like someone had traced it to get the design on the book.

  “Interesting,” Yancy said, picking the crystal up while Maison opened the book back up and squinted at it. “Stevie,” Yancy went on, “I know your dad’s not into enchantments, but I like to do them when I play Minecraft, and …”

  Suddenly, Yancy’s whole body tensed like he was in pain. He uttered a low cry and dropped the crystal, letting it fall on the open front page of the book.

  I watched in horror as Yancy grabbed his black hair between his long, pale fingers. It was like he was trying to rip something out of his brain. I already knew what must have happened.

  “Did you hear a voice?” Maison said, her head snapping up. She and I had both experienced it before.

  Yancy shuddered. “That wasn’t just any voice,” he said. “That was a … a nightmare! It was a cruel woman’s voice and it said, I am coming for you. I will have my crystal.”

  “Oh, Yancy,” Destiny said sympathetically and put her hand on his shoulder. They were cousins, and sometimes Destiny could be protective of Yancy, even though he was a teenager and older than us. Maison also stared at him in concern.

  But Alex’s eyes were elsewhere.

  “Look!” she exclaimed, pointing.

  I looked, and I couldn’t believe it.

  CHAPTER 4

  The crystal shard had fallen on top of the gibberish writing in the book. When I looked, I could see right through the crystal—and the words I saw below it were actual words instead of the gibberish from earlier.

  “What’s going on?” I cried.

  Everyone was staring, their mouths hanging open.