We’d slipped through a crack in the fortress wall about six minutes ago, which was honestly a miracle considering I’d already tripped over two of my own footsteps and nearly sat on a cactus trap. The fortress interior was enormous — a cavernous sandstone pyramid filled with towering shelves carved directly into the walls, every single shelf packed with stolen goods. Diamonds sorted by size. Wool organized by colour. Iron ingots stacked in perfect pyramids. It would have been impressive if it wasn’t so deeply, completely wrong.
“The vault has to be deeper in,” Biscuit murmured, consulting the list she’d started writing the moment we entered. It was already three pages long. “The shade crystals we collected should help mask our heat signatures from the Sand Minions, but we need more time. Significantly more time.” She looked at me in a way that meant she had seventeen plans but none of them were quite right yet.
That’s when we heard him.
“SAND MINION NUMBER FORTY-SEVEN!” bellowed a voice so loud it rattled the shelves. “YOU HAVE PLACED THE SANDSTONE SLABS IN THE WRONG QUADRANT. AGAIN. THE LABEL SAYS QUADRANT B. WHERE DID YOU PUT THEM?”
A tiny squeaky voice replied: “…Quadrant B?”
“THAT IS QUADRANT F!”
“…They both start with letters?”
There was a very long pause.
I peeked around the corner of a shelf and got my first proper look at Captain Cactus. He was exactly as alarming as Grumbleton had been, but in a completely different way. Grumbleton had been large and grumpy like a thundercloud that had learned to walk. Captain Cactus was precise. He stood in the center of the fortress’s main chamber with his bright green blocky arms crossed, tiny square spines poking out in every direction, his crooked golden crown sitting slightly lopsided on his head as though it had never quite fit right. His tattered tan cape swept the sandstone floor behind him, and his enormous boots left perfect cactus-shaped impressions in the sand with every step he took. He was surrounded by at least thirty Sand Minions, all of them scurrying about in a state of anxious chaos.
“Right,” I breathed. “So. He’s… a lot.”
“He’s incredibly organized,” Biscuit whispered back, which for Biscuit was equal parts criticism and grudging respect. “The vault will be the most organized room in the building. Which means it’s probably—”
“Through that door,” I said, spotting a massive sandstone door on the far side of the chamber, carved with a label that read: VAULT — EXTREMELY SORTED — DO NOT UNSORT.
“Obviously,” said Biscuit. She was already uncapping her pen to add it to the list. “We need four minutes, minimum. Maybe five. He can’t see me cross the chamber floor.” She looked at me. I looked at her. We both knew what had to happen.
“Does it have to be singing?” I asked.
“His biggest weakness is music,” she said. “You are the only one of us who would attempt singing in a sandstone pyramid surrounded by an army of blocky cactus creatures without being embarrassed about it.”
She wasn’t wrong. Back in Chapter Eight, I’d sung a victory song so enthusiastically after defeating Wither Wanda that I accidentally knocked three jars off Sky Tower’s shelves. Biscuit had written “NEVER AGAIN” in her notes. But this was different. This time, it was the plan.
I straightened my tunic, checked that the acorn on my pocket was still there for luck, took a deep breath, and stepped out from behind the shelf.
“EXCUSE ME,” I announced. “BUT HAS ANYONE HERE CONSIDERED HOW WONDERFUL DESERTS ARE?”
The entire chamber went silent. Thirty Sand Minions froze. Captain Cactus turned around so fast his crown spun a full rotation before settling crookedly back on his head.
Then I started singing.
Now, I should be honest: I am not a good singer. I am perhaps the least good singer in Sproutville, which is saying something because Old Mr. Pemberton once sang to his chickens for six straight hours and they all moved to a different farm. But what I lack in talent, I make up for in genuine enthusiasm. And something very strange was happening to Captain Cactus’s face.
“Oh, sandy desert, you are great!” I bellowed, making up the words as I went. “Your sand is — sandy! And also — flat! The sun is hot but that is FINE! The cactus plants are SO — divine! Nobody visits but they SHOULD! Your dunes are — bumpy! And also GOOD!”
It was, objectively, the worst song ever written in any biome.
Captain Cactus’s mouth was open. His spine-covered hands had uncrossed. His enormous boots were planted in the sand like he’d forgotten they were attached to him. And then — very slowly — his eyes went from furious to something else entirely. Something softer. Something that looked almost like the exact opposite of the organized anger Biscuit had smelled in the air.
He looked moved.
“Nobody,” he said quietly, “has ever sung about the desert before.”
“IT DESERVES MORE SONGS!” I agreed, and launched immediately into the second verse, which was even worse than the first but considerably louder. The Sand Minions began swaying. I couldn’t help it — I almost smiled. Because I understood something in that moment, looking at Captain Cactus’s face, that I hadn’t quite understood when we’d first heard his name. He hadn’t stolen everything because he was evil. He’d stolen everything because he was lonely. He’d wanted the whole world to notice the desert the way he noticed it, and when nobody came, he’d grabbed everything he could reach and locked it away just to feel like it mattered.
I kept singing. I added a verse about sand tornadoes being “twirly and fun” and one about how Grumbleton, despite being extremely grumpy, had very impressive shoulders for a sand creature. Captain Cactus sat down on a stolen chest. A Sand Minion climbed up and sat beside him.
Then Biscuit appeared silently at my elbow, backpack bulging, eyes wide with triumph, and gave me the smallest, quickest thumbs-up I had ever seen in my life.
We had the vault’s stolen materials. We had the Crystal Oasis route. And Captain Cactus was still sitting on his chest, staring at nothing, humming a little tune that sounded suspiciously like my terrible desert song.
“You know,” I said gently, before we slipped away, “if you unlocked the fortress and let people visit, they’d come. The desert’s actually brilliant. I meant every word of that song.”
Captain Cactus blinked at me. For a second I thought he might fire cactus needles at the wall and start everything over. Instead, he tugged his crooked crown a little straighter and said, very quietly: “…Every word?”
“Every single one,” I said. “Especially the bit about the dunes.”
He didn’t answer. But as Biscuit and I backed carefully toward the crack in the wall, I heard him hum three more bars of my terrible, wonderful, completely made-up desert song. The Champion’s Crown on my head flickered warmly — not the full blaze of a villain defeated, but something gentler. Something that felt more like a door opening than a battle ending.
Sometimes the bravest thing isn’t charging forward. Sometimes it’s just — noticing someone. And singing about their sand.