In memory of Lola Salines 1986-2015 founder of 404 éditions and editor of this series who lost her life in the November 2015 attacks on Paris Thank you for believing in me Cube Kid
THURSDAY Squeak Squeeeee Cheeeeeee-ehhhhhhh These annoying sounds woke me up in the middle of the night The sounds of a spider On top of my house It must have wandered into our village after sunset And decided that the roof over my bedroom was a cool place to hang out Screeee Squeak-squeak-squeak I I covered my head with my pillow It didn’t help Soon could hear a slime moving around out there Blap blap blap It almost sounded like someone was beating the ground with a big dead fish Then a zombie joined in with its horrible moaning What are they doing out there I muttered to myself Are they trying to start a band or something Hurrrrrr In case you don’t know hurrrrrrr is the sound a villager makes when thinking Or irritated And right now I’m super irritated The mobs can’t get to us in our homes so they make noises all night just to annoy us 1
Still lying in bed I simply stared at the ceiling and made that sound Hurrrrrr hurrrrrr hurrrrrr I’d trade two hundred emeralds for something that could go over my ears and block that awful noise A pillow just isn’t enough Sigh This is the life of a villager We’re helpless against the mobs Monsters that is They arrive almost every night and there’s nothing we can do except hide in our little houses I wish we could fight them off Unfortunately villagers aren’t allowed to become warriors The village elders say being a warrior is too dangerous The only thing we can do is farm farm farm Harvest harvest harvest And stay indoors all night until the sun comes up Still even if we don’t have any warriors I’ve met some They sometimes visit our village Villagetown They never stay for very long though Just long enough to rest up and trade They don’t look like us at all They have swords and armor And they go exploring And adventuring I sometimes talk to one of them His name is Steve He’s a pretty cool guy A few weeks ago he killed a couple of zombies in our village My family was especially thankful for that One of those zombies had just stood right outside the front door looking in mouth hanging open making the loudest grunting sounds 2
Sometimes I wish I could be like Steve He gets to run around doing whatever he wants Every morning he must wake up and think Oh what will I do today Slay some mobs Explore some temples Find some treasure Meanwhile the most interesting thing I do is collect seeds I often wonder Does Steve have a village Where does he come from The next time I speak with him I’ll have to ask Anyway if I actually defeated a mob some day none of the other kids could call me a noob anymore According to most of them I’m just a noob worthy of my name Runt As you can imagine I get a lot of grief over this name Especially from Max He’s so annoying He always says I’m useless no good He wants to be a librarian and he thinks he knows everything because he’s read nearly every book in Villagetown That really doesn’t mean much at all though because a lot of books in our village totally stink I mean most of Max’s so-called worldly knowledge comes from a series titled The Adventures of Cow the Cow Whatever If I ever become a warrior he’ll be saluting me And after he salutes me he’ll be shining my boots and 3
