The Ender Earl was already waiting for us, seated on a throne that appeared to be made of stacked purpur pillars with a velvet cushion on top. His sparkly purple cape was draped just so. His blocky crown sat perfectly straight. His violet glasses caught the pale light and glowed. He had his golden clipboard out and was writing something on it with great importance.
“You’re late,” he said, without looking up.
“We got lost,” I said. “Someone swapped all the signs.”
He looked up. “Yes,” he said. “That was me. I have it in writing.” He tapped the clipboard.
He explained the situation in the most organized way I had ever heard a villain explain anything. The rare colored blocks we needed for the Elegance Duel — the rainbow wool, the glowing sea lanterns, the sparkling amethyst — were hidden somewhere in his courtyard complex. If we wanted them, we had to beat him in a riddle contest. Three riddles. Best of three. If I won, we got the blocks. If he won, he kept them and we had to go home, and the entire Blocky Realm would be gray forever, which he seemed perfectly happy about.
“What do you get if you win?” Biscuit asked, already pulling out her notebook.
“The satisfaction,” said the Ender Earl, “of having beaten a child from Sproutville at a thinking contest.” He said Sproutville the way someone says the place where they ran out of good cheese.
“I accept,” I said.
Biscuit made a small noise behind me that sounded like all seventeen of her backup plans screaming at once.
The first riddle was this: I have cities but no houses. I have mountains but no trees. I have water but no fish. What am I?
I thought about it very hard. I thought about Sproutville, and then about Rainbow Meadows, and then accidentally about the cake that Biscuit had baked that blocked Crumbleton’s town square for three weeks. Then I said, “A really bad cake!”
The Ender Earl stared at me. “The answer is a map.”
“But a bad cake also has all of those things,” I pointed out. “Biscuit’s had a mountain range and everything. We called the tallest one Mount Frosting.”
The Ender Earl looked at his clipboard. He looked at me. He wrote something down. “I— yes. Fine. That also works. Technically. Point to you.”
Biscuit, meanwhile, had gone very still in the way she does when her nose is telling her something important. She drifted casually sideways, as if she was just stretching her legs, and I pretended not to notice.
The second riddle: The more you take, the more you leave behind. What am I?
I genuinely tried on this one. I thought about it so hard my tooth gap whistled slightly. I thought about cookies — no. I thought about questions — maybe. Then I thought about my walk here this morning, and I said, “Footprints! Because I kept leaving purple chalk ones everywhere and there were definitely more of them the further we went.”
“That is,” said the Ender Earl, through what appeared to be a clenched jaw, “the correct answer. But you arrived at it through completely the wrong reasoning.”
“Does reasoning count?” I asked.
He looked at his clipboard. There was a long pause. “My rules say answer,” he admitted quietly, “not reasoning.” He wrote something down with great resentment.
Behind me, I heard the softest clucking sound.
I turned around. Biscuit was crouched beside the most unexpected thing I had ever seen in the End dimension — a small, round, completely ordinary chicken. It was pale yellow with a faintly golden shimmer to its feathers, and it was looking at Biscuit with the intense expression of an animal that has been waiting for exactly the right person to arrive. Biscuit held out her hand, the chicken clucked once, and — very gently, very deliberately — a single golden feather drifted down into Biscuit’s palm.
Biscuit stared at it. She sniffed it. Her eyes went wide. She didn’t say anything. She just tucked it carefully into the front pocket of her backpack, the same pocket where she keeps the Lucky Button that she has seventeen rules about never using. And then she stood up, and she pointed northwest, and she looked at me with an expression I had never quite seen on her face before — not I have seventeen plans, but something quieter and more certain. I know.
I gave her a small nod. She moved.
The third riddle came while Biscuit quietly followed her nose through an archway to the northwest. I needed to keep the Ender Earl occupied, which meant I needed to be spectacularly wrong for as long as possible.
What has hands but cannot clap?“A grumpy llama,” I said immediately. “Their legs are technically hands if you think about it from the llama’s perspective, and they absolutely refuse to clap. I know from experience.”
“A clock,” said the Ender Earl.
“A clock can’t argue with you, though,” I said. “A llama will argue. That seems more impressive.”
“This is not a contest of impressiveness!”
“Your cape suggests otherwise.”
The Ender Earl stood up from his throne. He pointed at me with his clipboard. “That is — I — the cape is a formal garment appropriate to my station and I —” He stopped. He straightened his crown. He wrote something on the clipboard with tremendous dignity. “The answer stands as clock. But your llama answer has been noted. Under protest.”
From the northwest archway came a triumphant whistle — Biscuit’s signal. I heard the sound of several large chests opening, and the unmistakable shimmer of rainbow wool catching the pale End light.
The Ender Earl heard it too. He turned. He saw Biscuit emerging through the archway with her arms full of sparkling amethyst and glowing sea lanterns, the golden feather tucked into her pocket, the End chicken trotting proudly at her heels.
“You distracted me,” said the Ender Earl.
“You challenged me to a riddle contest,” I said, grinning. “I got two right.”
“Through completely wrong reasoning!“
“Results are results,” I said. “I think I have it in writing, actually.” I held up the contest rules he had handed me at the start, which did indeed say only answer, not reasoning. He had written them himself.
He stared at the paper. He stared at me. He made a noise that was half fury and half the specific frustration of someone who has been defeated by their own extremely organized rules.
We collected every last block. Rainbow wool, amethyst, sea lanterns — all of it, loaded carefully into Biscuit’s backpack, which expanded in the way it always does and somehow fit everything plus a spare cheese sandwich.
The Ender Earl watched us go. He was already writing something on his clipboard. I suspected it was a new rule about riddle contest reasoning. Fair enough.
“Nice chicken,” I called back.
“She is NOT my chicken,” he said. “She simply lives here. Uninvited. I have filed a complaint.”
The golden-feathered chicken watched us leave from the archway, looking extremely pleased with herself. Biscuit touched the feather in her pocket and smiled — not her I have seventeen plans smile, but something smaller and braver and entirely her own.
The Elegance Duel was one sunrise away. We had the blocks. We had a golden feather that slowed falls to a gentle float, which I was absolutely going to need. And for the first time since this whole adventure began, I wasn’t charging forward hoping things would work out.
I was walking forward, knowing they would.