Shipwrecked! 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.

  AQUATIC ADVENTURES IN THE OVERWORLD: SHIPWRECKED!

  Copyright © 2020 by Hollan Publishing, Inc.

  Minecraft® is a registered trademark of Notch Development AB.

  The Minecraft game is copyright © Mojang AB.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

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

  Special thanks to Erin L. Falligant.

  Cover illustration by Amanda Brack

  Cover design by Brian Peterson

  Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-5107-5328-0

  E-book ISBN: 978-1-5107-5329-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 1

  Thwack!

  Asher swung at the wooden plank with his axe. As it snapped in two, he lifted the longer piece and handed it to Mason. “How’s that?”

  Mason took the weathered board from his brother. “Perfect!” He placed it on the stone wall, just above the other four shelves they had made.

  He and Asher had been helping Ms. Beacon restore her underwater cave after a fire. She hadn’t wanted their help at first. She didn’t trust us, Mason remembered. Until we helped her gather more potion ingredients to replace the ones that were lost.

  Now the rebuilt shelves held jars filled with those ingredients, like fermented spider eyes, brown mushrooms, and gunpowder. And Ms. Beacon and I are sort of, almost, friends, Mason thought with a smile.

  Ms. Beacon crouched beside a low shelf to slide dried Nether wart out of a jar. She screwed the lid back on tightly. Then she drifted back toward the brewing stand, her white robes trailing behind her.

  “Are you brewing potion of invisibility?” Asher asked, hope flickering in his green eyes.

  “You’ll see,” said their friend Luna, who stood beside Ms. Beacon’s cauldron. “Be patient.”

  “I’ve been patient, all morning. And now I have a blister.” Asher studied his palms. “How much longer do we have to work?”

  Mason checked the wall. “Just one more shelf,” he said, “and then we’ll be done.”

  Asher’s eyes lit up again. He reached for a plank from the stack of wood they’d brought.

  The planks were from Uncle Bart’s ship, the one that had gone down during a storm. The memory of that storm—and of losing Uncle Bart—still churned in Mason’s chest. But at least the planks are going to good use, he thought.

  Asher swung his pickaxe with a grunt. Thwack! Crack! The board split in two.

  And so did Asher’s axe.

  “No!” he cried, studying the handle where the head used to be. “I broke it.”

  Ms. Beacon hurried over. “So you did,” she said. “Maybe we can mend it. Till then, go check my loot chest for another.”

  Mason and his brother locked eyes. Had Ms. Beacon really given them permission to go into her loot chest?

  Asher got there first. As he pried open the lid, Mason leaned over his brother’s shoulder. Gold treasure glowed from deep within the chest: A pile of precious gold nuggets. A rare golden helmet. And a golden apple—the kind Ms. Beacon knew how to use to heal zombie villagers. Asher dug through the chest like a wolf-dog in the dirt.

  “Be careful!” Mason hissed in his brother’s ear.

  “How can I find the pickaxe if I don’t touch anything?” Asher protested. He slid aside an enchanted fishing rod and lifted a leather tunic.

  “There!” said Mason, pointing. A stone axe peeked out from beneath an enchanted book.

  Asher’s face drooped. “I was hoping for a gold axe,” he whispered. “Or at least iron, like the one I had. But stone? That thing looks heavy as obsidian!”

  “A stone axe is better than a broken one,” Mason reminded him. He reached for the tool, which did feel heavy. As he lowered it to the ground with a clunk, something caught his eye at the bottom of the chest.

  Asher saw it too. “What is that?” he asked, leaning forward. “An old robe?”

  “I don’t know.” When Mason touched the tattered gray fabric, he discovered it wasn’t fabric at all. It felt leathery, like armor. As he pulled it from the chest, the item slowly slid apart, like a pair of droopy wings.

  “Elytra wings!” Asher shouted. When he reached for them, Mason swooped them safely away.

  “Don’t touch them,” he warned. “They’re broken. See?” He pointed toward the tattered end of one of the wings.

  “We can mend them,” said Asher. “Right, Ms. B?”

  Mason winced. Asher was the only one who could use the nickname with Ms. Beacon and get away with it. But does she mind? Mason wondered.

  The old woman raised her lined face from the brewing stand. “Perhaps we can,” was all she said.

  But Luna shook her head. “There are only three ways to mend Elytra wings,” she said. “You have to combine them with another pair of wings in an anvil, or use the mending enchantment, or fight some phantoms for their membranes and mend the wings with those.”

  Mason shuddered. He’d fought phantoms before, the winged creatures that spawn only when someone hasn’t slept for days. Like after the shipwreck, he remembered, when Asher and I were alone on the island. Mason hadn’t slept then. He’d had to stay awake to protect his brother. And the phantoms had spawned and nearly killed them both.

  “Do you have another pair of wings?” Asher asked Ms. Beacon.

  “No,” she said. “Only the one pair.”

  Asher’s shoulders slumped. “Oh.”

  “But there was an enchanted book in the trunk,” Mason remembered. “Does it have the mending enchantment?”

  Asher dove back into the trunk, his back side sticking out. “Nope,” he called, his voice ringing in the hollow chest. “It’s enchanted with feather falling.”

  Mason studied the items they had pulled from the chest. “Maybe we can fish for a book enchanted with mending,” he said, pointing toward the fishing rod.

  Asher groaned. “That’ll take way too long! It would be quicker to just fight the phantoms.”

  Mason shot a sideways look at Ms. Beacon, who wasn’t a fan of fighting mobs unless someone was in danger. But she was bottling a potion and didn’t seem to hear. She corked the thin bottle of green liquid and handed it to Luna.

  Luna held the bottle up to the light of the nearby lava stream. “Forget the Elytra wings,” she announced. “We have potion of leaping here. And leapin
g is the next best thing to flying!”

  Asher shot up like a firework rocket. “Can I try it?”

  Ms. Beacon nodded. “But just a tad,” she warned. “It’s very strong.”

  As Mason reached for the bottle, too, he braced himself for the bitter taste of Nether wart. He squeezed his eyes shut as the potion burned a path down his throat.

  Asher was already leaping, taking long, bouncy strides around the cave. “Ha!” he cried. “This is fun!”

  Mason took a careful step, hoping he wouldn’t hit his head on the ceiling. His legs felt like springs! Boing, boing, boing . . . He leaped over the cauldron with a single bound, landing dangerously close to the pool of lava on the far side of the cave.

  “Watch out!” called Luna, laughing. She was leaping now too, back and forth from one side of the cave to the other.

  Mason jumped upward, away from the lava—just as Asher was coming down. Smack! Mason bounced off his brother and hurled toward the stone floor. He braced himself for impact, but felt nothing. He landed on the ground, soft as a feather.

  “Are you okay?” Asher called, his face etched with guilt.

  “Of course he is,” said Luna, leaping over Mason playfully. “Potion of leaping reduces fall damage, too. C’mon!” She reached for Mason’s hand and pulled him back up.

  When the potion finally wore off, Mason leaned over to catch his breath. “Yep,” he said with a grin. “That’s almost like flying.”

  “But flying would be more fun,” Asher insisted, gazing at the Elytra wings. “We need to fix those wings. We need a book enchanted with mending!”

  Mason caught Luna’s eye and shrugged. Once Asher had his mind set on something, there was no stopping him. “I guess we’ll be doing some fishing,” he said.

  Luna grinned. “Good luck with that.”

  “Here, use this.” Ms. Beacon handed him her enchanted fishing rod. “You’ll have the luck of the sea,” she said with a wink.

  As Mason reached for the rod, he felt a flutter of hope in his stomach. Maybe we will catch a book enchanted with mending, he decided. Maybe we will fix the Elytra wings. And maybe one day soon, we’ll be flying!

  * * *

  “You’ve got a bite!” Mason cried.

  Asher snapped out of a daydream and grabbed his pole. As he reeled in his catch, his face fell. “Another pufferfish,” he said. “Where are all the enchanted books?”

  They’d been in the boat for half an hour, and so far, the luck of the sea enchantment hadn’t proven so lucky. Their pile of “treasures” swam in a bucket in the back of the boat: two pufferfish and a clownfish.

  “We’ll find some books,” Mason said. “Don’t worry.”

  Asher sighed. “I sure hope so. Because it’ll be way more fun to fly over the ocean than it is to row across it.”

  Mason couldn’t argue with that. As he cast his line again, a raindrop plunked off his nose. “Hey, is it supposed to storm?” he asked.

  Asher shook his head so hard, the boat rocked beneath them. “No way,” he said. “The sky was clear when we came out!”

  Mason glanced up. A bank of heavy gray clouds drifted across the extreme hills, heading toward the water.

  As the sky darkened, Asher’s mood did, too. “Now we’re never going to catch an enchanted book,” he muttered.

  “We can come out again tomorrow,” said Mason. “Let’s pack up—the water’s getting choppy.”

  He shivered, more with fear than from the cold. Even small storms reminded him of the big one—the one that had taken Uncle Bart away from them. He glanced up again, checking the clouds.

  Something else caught his eye in the distance. He blinked twice, wondering if he was imagining it. “Asher.” He nudged his brother. “Do you see a ship?” He pointed.

  Asher slowly nodded. “I think so,” he said, his voice rising.

  It had been ages since they’d seen a ship. And this was a big one, too, its sails billowing in the raging wind.

  “The storm already caught up to it,” said Asher. As the brothers watched, the ship tossed and turned on the rolling waves.

  “We’d better get out of here,” said Mason, “before it catches up with us!” But his eyes stayed glued to that ship. Because even from this far away, he could tell that the ship was in trouble.

  Rain slid sideways in sheets now, stinging his eyes, but he couldn’t look away. He reached for his brother’s arm, as if holding on to him would somehow keep that ship safe, too.

  But it didn’t.

  The ship began to spin, slowly at first, and then faster. Nausea churned in Mason’s stomach. He watched in horror as the ship’s stern dipped low amid the waves.

  And then the ship disappeared, as if it had never been there at all.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Where’d it go?” Asher cried, his voice instantly swallowed up by the wind.

  Mason couldn’t speak. Down, he thought with horror. The ship went down. He fought the urge to row straight into the storm, to battle the waves in search of survivors.

  But he couldn’t! The storm was too strong, and the ship was too far away. All Mason could do was get his little brother back to safety—back to the underwater village where they lived. “Row,” he called to Asher. “Row!”

  Together, they tugged on the oars, paddling toward home. But with every stroke, Mason’s mind raced. Who had been on the boat? Had they survived? Were they in the waves now, being sucked downward by the raging water?

  That’s how our ship sank, he remembered—pulled downward into a bubble column with such force that it had split in two. Uncle Bart had slid right off the deck. Right in front of me, thought Mason. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block the memory.

  There was no time to panic now. He had to get Asher to safety. And he had to get to Luna. Because if there were any survivors from that shipwreck, she would know how to find them. Luna had lived in the underwater village much longer than he and Asher had.

  Luna will know what to do, he told himself as he paddled toward home.

  * * *

  “We can’t go back out,” Luna repeated. “It’s still storming out there!” She tapped the glass window of her underwater home.

  Mason glanced out, but all he could see was the bright light of the conduit. He and Asher had built it themselves based on the diagram Uncle Bart had sketched in his journal. The turquoise ball spinning in the prismarine base cast a warm glow across the ocean floor.

  But up above, the storm still raged. Every few minutes, thunder rumbled. Sea grass slapped against the window as if caught in an angry current.

  We’re safe down here, thought Mason. But whoever was sailing on that ship is not.

  “What if there were kids onboard?” he wondered aloud, his voice cracking. “What if they’re stranded somewhere, like we were?”

  Luna’s eyes softened. “I hope not,” she said. “But we’ll go look—I promise. As soon as it’s safe.”

  “Seventy-two, seventy-three . . .” Asher counted. As thunder shook the glass walls, he ducked. “Yeesh! That sounded like fireworks. But at least the thunder is getting farther apart. The storm is dying down.”

  Mason nodded. But as the time between thunder claps grew longer, his patience grew shorter. “It’s practically over now,” he said to Luna. “Can we start looking?”

  She chewed her lip and shrugged.

  That was all the answer Mason needed. He reached for the potions of water breathing and swiftness that would get them safely to the water’s surface.

  As he swam down the tunnel of rock that led out of Luna’s house, Mason checked to be sure the others were following. Then he shot out of the tunnel, speeding along the coral reef and through the ruins of the underwater village. He barely glanced at Ms. Beacon’s cave as they passed. Instead, he kept his eyes trained on the bubble column that would take them up to their rowboat.

  Will it still be there? he wondered. Or will the storm have destroyed that, too?

  When he reached the w
ater’s surface, he saw the rowboat bobbing on the waves. He quickly pulled himself over the edge. A couple of inches of water splashed at the bottom of the boat, but it would float. Yes! He helped Asher and Luna in and reached for the oars.

  “Where to?” asked Luna, searching the cloudy sky.

  Mason pointed toward the extreme hills. But his hand wavered. “Wait, was it over there?” he asked Asher.

  His brother shrugged. “Everything looks different now,” he said.

  Luna sighed. “How can we find the ship if we don’t even know where to look?” she asked.

  Mason swallowed the panic rising in his throat. “We just have to start,” he said, “and keep going. Even if it takes all day.”

  No one argued. But as they raced across the open water, Mason feared what they would find.

  Nothing.

  The ocean was too vast. And too deep.

  After three hours of searching, Luna convinced him to turn around. Or maybe it was his growling stomach. Or the bright sun overhead that now pelted down on them like hot lava.

  As they rowed back toward home, Mason sighed. “I wish we could move faster—and cover more ground.”

  “We could,” said Asher, “if we fixed the Elytra wings.” His words hung in the air like a lingering potion.

  Luna started to protest, but Mason held up his hand. “No, he’s right,” he said. “That’s the only way to search the ocean quickly. We have to search from overhead!”

  “But we can’t mend the wings!” said Luna. “We already talked about that. There’s no way.”

  Mason swallowed hard. “There’s one way,” he said, meeting Asher’s eyes.

  Asher’s freckled face brightened. “Yep,” he said to Luna. “There’s one way. We have to fight the phantoms.” He actually sounded happy about that.

  “You can’t stay awake for three days,” said Luna.

  “Mason did!” Asher reminded her.

  “Well, yeah,” said Luna. “Because your ship had just wrecked and I hadn’t shown up yet to help you.” She only half smiled.

  Mason’s chest tightened at the memory. “Someone else’s ship just wrecked,” he reminded her. “And they might need our help, too.”

  Luna licked her lips. “So . . . we’re doing this then? We’re fighting the phantoms?” Her voice wobbled with the words.