“You live here?” Standing there like a dweeb, I stared at the very thing I’d first run to, then discounted, then explored (I thought), and finally left way behind me. “Here?”

“Why the surprise?” asked Summer. “Haven’t you been listening to my story?”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” I backpedaled, “but I’d been here, like, just this morning, and I didn’t, like, see a cave or anything.”

“You weren’t supposed to,” she said matter-of-factly, then started up the very same lava slope. Had I missed a door somewhere? A hatch?

“Here we are,” she announced, stopping at that lone red flower. Then, reaching over it, she plucked out a cube of dirt to reveal a shallow recess behind it. Peering inside, I saw a standard wood and stone lever fixed to the floor.

“Go on then,” she said, inching out of the way, “you do the honors.”

Without moving, I used this world’s four-block extended reach.

The lever flicked forward, with the compound noise of something else behind it. I thought I’d heard that sound before, that mysterious click when I’d been exploring the mountain. Whatever those had been, this one definitely stopped the flow of lava.

“Just give it a moment,” said Summer, replacing the camouflaging earth cube before leading me back down the slope. “It takes a bit, but well worth the wait.”

And it was! I gasped as the last bits of molten rock dropped away to reveal a four-by-four block recess that ended in double doors. “A secret entrance!” I cooed. “So cool!”

“Oh, this is nothing,” she said, leading me through the dark spruce doors. Warm, welcoming air embraced me. And not just warm. Wet, or, at least it felt that way compared with the ice-desert atmosphere I’d been breathing.

I could see a long, torchlit hallway beyond, and as Summer stepped inside, I thought I heard another click. I should have just followed her in, instead of stopping at the threshold to investigate.

“OW!” I yelped as the door promptly slammed on my face.

“Mind the pressure plates,” she said, reopening the door with a giggle. “They keep the mobs out and hot air in. At least they used to before I put in my lava upgrade.”

“Good to know,” I grumbled, stepping over the clicking, mini-cube-thick panels.

“I suppose you don’t have to worry too much about weather where you spawned.”

“Not much,” I answered, “I came ashore at—”

“Just a moment,” she interrupted, then led me down a narrow side passage. “Can’t forget to set everything right.” I could see her reaching up into a hole in the ceiling, about where I judged the lava lever to be.

Th-chck. That same noise from before, machinery moving above my head, along with a faint bubbling that had to be the boiling rock.

“Now,” continued Summer. “Let’s get you properly warmed.”

She led me back down the main hallway to a single, mercifully non-pressure-plate door. And beyond that door was the closest thing I’d seen in this world to a luxury hotel suite.

I guess I was expecting something like my bunker: smooth stone walls, a crafting table, maybe a furnace or two, and the obligatory double and single storage chests. They were all there, all right, but everything around them…

A fully carpeted floor, striped red and yellow, and dark spruce planks for walls. And nearly every square of wall was covered with what I recognized as item frames. I’d read about them in one of the manuals but could never construct them because a primary ingredient was animal hide.

Clearly Summer didn’t have that problem (neither with the supply or, I would later confirm, the morality). I counted twenty-one in total, each holding a different make and model of this world’s tools. Axe, pick, shovel, and hoe, from plain wood right up to glittering diamond.

And the final frame held a golden disk. It was similar to a compass, but instead of a needle, this face held the picture of day slowly rotating into night.

“Is that a clock?” I asked, thinking I might have seen its design in one of the manuals.

“Don’t you have one?” asked Summer.

“Never needed one.” I shrugged. “I lived aboveground on an island. The sun was the only clock I needed.”

“Well, I didn’t have that luxury at first,” Summer explained, with just the slightest hint of defensiveness. “The first few weeks, I gambled with my life every time I opened the door.”

The thought made me shudder. To not know if it was day or night outside? Mobs aside, just being cut off from the natural world must have been a brutal experience. It sounded like torture to be locked in a room with no windows and either darkness or the light of torches all the time. It sounded like it would really mess with your head, break down your spirit. Those first few weeks for Summer, with the constant cold and a starvation diet of zombie flesh…

“How’d you do it?” I asked, realizing that I’d heard only the first part of her story. “Once you found this place, how’d you turn things around?”

“I dug.” Summer looked up to a mounted stone pickaxe. “The coal gave me an incentive to keep going, to see what else I could find underground. I tunneled and explored and found all the usual minerals and such. But when I discovered the abandoned mineshaft…”

“Hey! Me too!” I blurted, excited at this connecting coincidence. “Did you find some cool stuff?”

“If by ‘cool stuff,’ ” Summer continued, “you mean the means to survive without ever having to go topside again.”

To me, the idea seemed crazy. Underground all day every day? Never seeing the sun or feeling the wind on your face? “Really?” was all I could ask.

“Really,” she answered quickly, but sensing my follow-up question, added, “Of course, I obviously did, but only after discovering the books that told me how to make this.”

She gestured to the clock.

“And, a few weeks later, these.” Her eyes fell on something below the clock, a line of glass blocks I’d mistook for the gravel behind them.

“How about a little natural light?” she asked, and flicked a floor lever I’d also missed.

“Just like the lava,” she boasted. “Pistons and levers and a line of that marvelous redstone.”

I was about to jump in with stories of my own “marvelous” redstone inventions, how I’d used them to make awesome mine-clearing booby traps, but the thoughts never made their way into spoken words, as my eyes caught something odd about the position of the windows. They looked right out onto the path I’d used to climb the mountain. Right about where I’d heard that clicking noise the first time I’d been here.

“Summer,” I asked, a little hesitantly, “earlier, when I was climbing your mountain, I heard that same sound, and, well, I thought it was a rabbit that killed itself.”

“Oh, they are rather daft,” Summer chuckled. “Those poor little fuzzies.”

“Yeah,” I said, unsure of how to proceed, “but that’s not the point.” I suddenly felt my stomach tense, my jaw tighten. I couldn’t understand why I was suddenly so nervous, until the words had actually left my mouth. “Did you…like…see me? Out there?”

A pause. Summer’s eyes locked on me.

“No.” Flat, unemotional. Then, “I might have opened the windows. I do that in the morning to check if the coast is clear.” Another beat, barely a second for breath. “But I didn’t see you.” And suddenly, “You don’t have the rabbit, do you?”

“Wha?” I started to ask, a little confused at the abrupt change of subject.

“The hopper.” She pressed. “You said it leapt to its death right in front of you.”

“Yeah.” I nodded, rummaging. “Yeah, I still got the body somewhere in my…”

“How about I cook it for you?” she asked cheerily. “Whip up a nice hot rabbit stew while you shower.”

The words came out as one. “Ohthanksyeahthat’dbeSHOWER?!”

“A steam shower,” she chimed. “Best way to chase away the chills.” She pointed to something behind me, another single door in the wall. “There’s a frame in the washroom if you’d like to hang your armor.”

I wasn’t sure what to say other than, “Um, thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” she said happily. “Just hand over the hopper.”

I tossed her the little pink carcass, which she grabbed before turning back to the crafting table. “Well, go on—it’ll only take a minute. I’ve got the ingredients in my kit.”

The door opened to a whoosh of hot, humid air.

“Don’t let all the steam out,” she said, closing the door behind me.

I found myself in a polished gray bathroom that put the model in my first house to shame. There was an armor frame, a storage chest, a raised “toilet” with its water hemmed in by stairs. There was also a “sink,” I judged, by the wall cube gushing out into another raised hole. Exactly what you’d need for washing your hands after using the toilet, which as I knew by then was impossible on both counts.

I remember, at that moment, having felt strangely validated that this other human had also built a useless, decorative monument to that other life, but those musings quickly vanished when I turned to the side.

Just as with the toilet, Summer had learned to craft a HOT TUB! Water above glass above lava. “Aw yeah!” I sang, doing my signature happy dance. “Hot tubbin’,” I crooned, spinning and hopping and throwing my armor on the frame, “hot tubbin’ time!”

That feeling! Those first delicious seconds of skin sinking into scalding water. “Wh-ugh,” I groaned, and I shook as the heat leapt up my legs, through my spine, literally expelling the frosty tension from my body. I thought I’d appreciated the sensation on my temperate island. But here, after a day and a night of freezing, of chattering, stabbingly cruel cold, it was perfect.

I groaned again, eyes closed, feeling every muscle in my body start to unwind.

“You all right in there?” asked Summer through the door.

“Wha…oh…yeah!” I answered, standing embarrassedly still. Now that there was another pair of ears around, that whole talking-to-myself thing would have to go!

“I thought you might actually be a different life-form that needed to use the toilet.”

“Oh, no,” I laughed, “just enjoying the tub!”

Well, that’s one question answered.

“Have you tried the shower yet?”

I’d forgotten, too engrossed in the steamy goodness of the tub. “Not yet.”

“Just above your head,” she called.

Right in front of me and one block above was another of her mysterious levers, and directly above my head was a shallow hole in the ceiling.

“Got it,” I called back, reaching for the lever. “Thanks.”

Fffft!

Water. Hot water! Falling all around me, encasing my face in a column of blissful blue.

I started to laugh at the joy I felt at this wonderful invention, but instead gurgled, forgetting I was now underwater. I’d forgotten how much I hated to be underwater. “Ooouuugh,” I choked.

I couldn’t stay submerged forever. Unlike in my world, showering meant holding your breath. But those few, glorious seconds replaced every hour of frosty torture.

Summer was right. It was the only proper way to warm up.

What an amazing way to use a piston, I thought, relishing the scalding rain. Just like the windows and the lava.

Windows and lava.

Why?

The question rose like steam. Why is she using gravel to hide her windows, and lava to hide her doors? In fact…

A bigger question behind the first.

Why is she trying to hide at all? Why not announce her presence to the world? Like I did with my first “HELP” sign on the hill?

Another dunk under the shower, another layer of mental mystery.

Maybe she gave up on being rescued. I did, after a while, but if someone had come along, they would have seen my house, and certainly my observation tower. I didn’t try to hide from anything, or…anyone?

And what was that pause when I asked her about seeing me?

Was she telling the…

“Supper’s on” came a muffled call.

“Be right there,” I bubbled, and hopped out of the tub to dress. I suddenly felt guilty for questioning Summer’s motives. There had to be a reasonable explanation.

Maybe she has to hide, I thought, slipping my armor back on. This land’s a lot bigger than my safe little island, and if there are other, smarter monsters here that could track her down…

I switched off the shower, opened the washroom door, and walked out to Summer’s presenting a bowl of steaming, aromatic stew.

“A bit uncivilized,” she said, tossing the bowl at my feet, “but well worth it in the end, don’t you think?”

I did, even if the experience was slightly forced for Summer’s benefit. No, I didn’t eat animals, but this one had died by accident, and I didn’t want to be rude to my host. I figured just this once would be okay, and later I could explain my dietary beliefs.

And, yeah, I might as well come clean: It was SO delicious. Gobbling down every delectable morsel almost made me regret my life choice not to hunt. “Mm-mmm-mmmm,” I moaned, producing a lyrical laugh from the chef.

“It can’t be all that,” she said with a hint of embarrassment.

“It is!” I moaned. “With, what, potato, carrot, and mushroom! You actually made mushrooms taste good.”

“Don’t knock mushrooms,” she warned playfully. “They were my first step up from zed guts.”

“Why do you call them ‘zeds’?” I asked. “Why not zombies?”

“Just seemed quicker,” she said with a shrug, “to use the last letter in the alphabet.”

“That’s a Z,” I corrected, making sure to pronounce it “zee.”

“I’m afraid that’s a zed,” she counter-corrected, which confirmed that we might be speaking two versions of the same language.

“We gotta be from different parts of our world,” I said.

“Or,” she suggested, “different worlds that both need a toilet.”

I started to laugh, but it came out as a long, unexpected yawn.

“Sorry,” I said, still yawning. “Been a long day.”

Summer nodded, glancing at the darkening sky beyond her windows. “Let’s get you bedded down for the night.” Flicking the window lever shut, she took back my empty, clean bowl (how cool is it that this world doesn’t make you have to wash dishes?!). Then, opening another door opposite the bathroom, she led me into another cozy, well-furnished bedroom. Gray and blue checkered carpet, wood-paneled walls, paintings on the wall (the same ones I had in my house!), and an embedded, brick-built, three-block-wide column against the far wall. I was going to ask what this unfamiliar construction was for, but first things first.

“Where should I set up my bed?” I asked, mentally measuring each section of open floor.

“Eh?” Summer sounded confused, then motioned to the single bed opposite the column. “This is your bed.”

Now my confusion. “But where will you sleep?”

“Ah!” Summer laughed at a joke I was yet to be let in on. “This isn’t my room! I’ll be just down the hall, in the main chamber.”

“Main chamber,” I repeated, wrapping my brain around the term. “You mean this isn’t…”

“No, no, no,” she giggled. “Not for ages. It’s more like my vestibule now, or, I guess, my guest room.”

There was more? More rooms under this mountain? More wonders? More crazy cool stuff to see?

“Can I see the main chamber now?” I asked, as fatigue brought up another, contradicting yawn.

“Tomorrow,” she said, walking over to a hole in the brick column. “You can leave the washroom door open if you’d like. The shower should keep you warm enough. Or…”

Producing a flint and steel, she threw a spark into the hole.

Flames blazed to life.

A fireplace!

“I love going to sleep by its light,” she said, stepping back next to me. “Even though it can get a bit whiffy.”

That smell.

Just like when I’d been climbing the slope!

That hole I’d found must have been the outlet of a chimney, and the eggy, sulfurous smell must have come from this, or maybe another, fireplace.

“I used to use wood,” she explained, “but it doesn’t burn indefinitely like netherrack.”

A new word.

“Netherrack?”

“You don’t have any?” Now Summer sounded really confused. “You’ve never been to the Nether?”

“What’s…Where’s the Nether?”

“Tomorrow,” she repeated soothingly, then headed past me for the door. “We’ll talk over breakfast tomorrow.”

“Uh, thanks,” I stammered at her back. “Thanks for dinner and the shower, and, you know, everything.”

Summer turned to face me. “You’re welcome, Guy.” Then headed out with, “Sleep well.”

“Um, you too…” I called to the closed door, as a new type of warmth, the warmth of a single word settled on me.

Welcome.

I’m welcome.

I know it’s just something people are supposed to say, but here, now…

Summer had welcomed me into her home, into her life. Maybe she wasn’t ready to call me a friend yet, but there’d be time enough for that. The point was that all the big challenges were now behind me. No more having to struggle, to figure everything out, to feel like it was always me alone against the whole world.

Body warmed and belly full, I slipped between the soft, comforting blankets of my bed, staring at the “whiffy” fire as sleep wrapped me in protective arms.

“I’m not alone anymore,” I yawned, closing my eyes. “I’m not alone.”