Minecraft: The Voyage

Chapter 1

The House by the Sea

Of Stax Stonecutter and his three faithful companions

In a house by the sea there lived a young man.

In a few minutes I ll tell you about the young man, who after all is the hero of this story. But first you ought to know something about the house, because it s important to our tale as well.

The house wasn t a palace. You probably wouldn t even call it a mansion. But it was big, and most people who saw it thought it was beautiful. It was built out of black-and-white speckled diorite, pink granite, and glass. The diorite and the granite had been carefully polished, so the first rays of the morning sun made the house seem to glow, like it was lit from within.

The house had been built into the side of a green hill dotted with white birches, so it looked like it was part of the landscape, instead of something artificial that had been stuck in the middle of it. And the land around the house had been carefully reshaped to make it pleasing to the eye.

If you approached the house by sea, you d step off your boat at the end of a broad green lawn, with a line of birch trees to either side. To your right, you d find a low hill covered with flowers of every color: roses and peonies and tulips and cornflowers and daisies. To your left, beside another low hill, you d see pens for cattle and pigs and chickens and sheep, and above them you d find lovingly tended rows of crops: wheat, beetroot and carrots, and the squat squares of pumpkins and melons. Ahead and above you, you d see the house. To reach it, you d pass between the white birch trees, perhaps thinking they looked a little like soldiers on parade, walk around a cheerful fountain that splashed and burbled in a square of green lawn, and climb a broad flight of polished diorite steps until you stood at the front door.

The young man who lived in the house was named Stax Stonecutter, and he was the third in the line of Stonecutters to call it home. Stax s

Jason Fry is the New York Times bestselling author of the young adult space-fantasy series The Jupiter Pirates, as well as Star Wars: The Last Jedi and many other works set in a galaxy far, far away. He is an advocate for birch trees, lawns free of tall grass, boats made of dark oak, and houses built out of dark prismarine. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, son, and (sadly) no cats.