I wasn’t arguing. We’d seen the scorch marks back in Sproutville. We knew someone bigger than a rogue sheep was behind all this mess.
What I didn’t expect was for that someone to show up wearing a cape.
Novice
Chapter 4: One Very Accidental Victory
I had managed to collect every last drop from the oak trees at the edge of Rainbow Meadows without tripping once, which was honestly some kind of personal record. I was feeling magnificent about this. I told a nearby rabbit about it, and she seemed impressed, though she may have just been waiting for me to move so she could eat the grass I was standing on.
“Ollie!” Biscuit’s voice came hissing through the tall grass to my left. “Did you get it? All of it? Tell me you got ALL of it!”
“Every drop,” I whispered back, holding up the little clay pot full of golden resin. It smelled faintly of oak bark and something warm, like summer. “How’s the distraction going?”
Biscuit poked her copper bowl-cut head through the grass. Her chunky yellow sweater had a grass stain on the mushroom sleeve, which meant things had been at least slightly chaotic. “Baron Blaze has been telling me his entire life story for the last twelve minutes,” she said. “Did you know he once reorganized all the Nether fortresses by SIZE? He made a CHART. He showed me the chart, Ollie. It was laminated.”
I pressed my lips together so I wouldn’t laugh. “He laminated it?”
“With GOLD trim.” She grabbed my arm. “Come on. He’ll finish the story eventually and then he’ll notice you’re gone and then—”
A sound like a small thunderstorm wearing a very fancy hat rolled across the meadow.
“WHERE,” boomed Baron Blaze, “IS THE SHORT ONE WITH THE RIDICULOUS HAIR?”
I looked at Biscuit. “He means me.”
“He absolutely means you,” she confirmed.
Chapter 1: Upside-Down and Absolutely Fine
I was crossing the village square, minding my own business, thinking very important thoughts about whether pigs preferred rain or sunshine (the answer, according to my friend Gerald the pig, is “neither, we prefer mud, Ollie, honestly”), when my left foot decided it had somewhere more interesting to be than underneath the rest of me. Down I went — arms spinning, blue tunic flapping — straight into the village fountain with a splash that soaked three chickens, one confused librarian, and a very startled flower pot.
“I meant to do that,” I announced to no one in particular, sitting in the fountain with water streaming down my messy brown hair.
That’s when I heard the screaming.
Chapter 2: The Sheep Who Stole the Show
I was too busy trying not to trip over a particularly sneaky root to answer her. I managed it. Barely. I considered this a personal victory and did a small celebratory hop, which is when I tripped over a completely different root. Some victories are complicated.
“Watch your feet,” Biscuit said helpfully, about three seconds too late, as she adjusted the enormous backpack bouncing on her shoulders. She had packed it that morning while reading from a list titled Things To Pack, which was itself on a list titled Lists I Need Today. I had counted at least four separate bags of crackers going in. Biscuit believes crackers can solve most problems. She might be right.
We’d left Sproutville before sunrise, still thinking about those scorch marks near the fountain square and the faint smell of redstone machinery Biscuit had detected. Somebody had taken every map in the village, and that somebody had left a very specific kind of mess — the hot, sharp-edged kind. But the Wool Festival couldn’t wait for us to figure that out. Rainbow Meadows needed help now.