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DISCOVERIES

I think I see diamonds!” Harriet called out from where she was digging.

“Where?” asked Jack, pulling his pickaxe out of the block he’d been breaking.

Toby had been mining with an iron shovel nearby, but he stopped and walked over to Harriet. “Where are the diamonds? I don’t see any blue.”

The group had just started their planned treasure-hunting excursion through the Overworld, when they had spotted an abandoned mineshaft and stopped to mine for diamonds. Diamonds are extremely valuable trading resources in the Overworld, and finding some would be a great start to their treasure hunting.

“Look, it’s blue!” Harriet pointed to a cluster of diamonds in the mine. She picked up as many as she could and handed some to her friends. “We have to store these in our inventories.”

“I can’t believe we really found diamonds,” said Toby. It was becoming increasingly difficult to find diamonds in the Overworld, and this was a lucky find.

When they placed the last gemstone in their inventories, Harriet dug her pickaxe deep into another layer of the mineshaft. But Toby just stood there. “I doubt we’ll find any more diamonds here. We should just take what we have and move on.”

“Seriously?” Harriet kept digging deeper.

“Yes,” insisted Toby. “We should stick to our plan. We want to reach the jungle before nightfall.”

Jack held a map in his hands. “It looks the jungle is still far away. We should leave. I hear there’s a lot of treasure there.”

Harriet was annoyed. “We don’t even know if there’s a jungle temple with treasure. But we do know that there are diamonds in this mineshaft.”

“I think we’ve already unearthed all the diamonds.” Toby looked over his inventory.

Harriet and Toby would have kept arguing, if Jack hadn’t interrupted. “Watch out!”

Silverfish crawled on the floor toward them. They put their pickaxes away and grabbed their diamond swords to strike at the swarm.

“There are so many of them,” Harriet called out as she swung her sword at the seemingly endless silverfish crawling at their feet.

“Should we search for a spawner?” asked Jack.

“I’m not sure,” Harriet replied breathlessly. “I think we need to destroy these first.”

The group used all of their strength to battle the silverfish, until the room went still. “I think I got the last of them,” said Jack.

Looking around for any last stragglers, Toby spotted something in the corner of the mineshaft. “Hey, what’s that?”

The trio walked over to the corner, and Harriet said, “It looks like an enchanted book. That will come in very handy for our treasure hunting!” She leaned over to pick it up and leafed through the first few pages of the book. “This isn’t an enchanted book at all. It looks like somebody’s journal.”

“Do you think somebody is living in this mineshaft?” Jack looked around the dark and creepy mineshaft for a bed.

Harriet studied the book. “No, I think this journal is old.”

“Who wrote it?” asked Toby as he stood behind Harriet trying to get a good look at it.

Harriet turned the book to look at the journal’s spine. “I don’t know. But it has a warning on the cover! It says, ‘Do not open this book! Anyone who reads this will be cursed’!”

“Really? Let me see,” said Jack.

Toby laughed. “What a threat. How would they know if we read it?”

Jack didn’t see anything funny about it and didn’t understand why Toby was laughing. “I wouldn’t laugh—curses should be taken seriously. Reading this book could be really dangerous.”

“You’re such a scaredy-cat! Nothing is going to happen to us if we just read it,” said Toby.

“How do you know?” Jack countered.

“Because there are no such things as curses. Right, Harriet?”

Harriet hesitated. She wanted to agree with Toby, but she wasn’t totally one hundred percent sure. She had never read a book that had a warning on its cover. She was conflicted. “I’m not sure. Although, I’ve never been cursed, I can’t know that curses don’t exist.”

Toby grabbed the book from Harriet’s hands. “Well, unlike both of you, I’m not afraid to read it.”

“Toby, don’t!” shouted Harriet. She was more afraid than she’d realized.

Jack looked nervous.

Toby was about to open the journal anyway when a silverfish crawled next to his foot and bit him. “Ouch!”

“Watch out!” Harriet lunged at the silverfish with her diamond sword. “Jack was right—the book is cursed! Put it back!”

Toby glared at her. “That silverfish has nothing to do with me reading the journal. It’s just a coincidence.”

Harriet wanted to believe Toby. He made sense, but she was still worried. The book didn’t say what exactly would happen if they read it, so she began to imagine all sorts of ways they could be cursed. “What if we read the journal and are destroyed by a creeper and respawn in the Nether?”

“That’s impossible. We weren’t even in the Nether.” Toby held the book open in front of him.

“Please don’t read it,” begged Jack.

“I am going to read it now, just to prove that you can’t be cursed from reading a book.”

“But that’s somebody’s personal journal,” said Jack. “Even if we aren’t cursed, it’s still wrong to read someone’s private writing.”

Toby paused for a moment. He knew Jack was right. He wouldn’t want anyone reading his diary. In fact, he’d never let anyone know he even kept a diary. That was a secret. It was full of all the things he could never to say to other people in real life. He closed the book.

“Thank you.” Harriet let out a sigh of relief.

“Why do you think this person”—Toby looked at the cover—“William the Explorer, left his personal journal in this abandoned mineshaft?”

Jack stared at him. “Did you say William the Explorer?”

“Yes.” Toby pointed to the very bottom of the cover. “The Journal of William the Explorer.”

“Haven’t you heard of him before?” asked Jack.

Harriet and Toby stood silently, watching Jack. Toby looked down at the brown journal.

“William the Explorer was the greatest explorer in the Overworld, ever. He went missing a long time ago. People have been searching for him for ages. Nobody has been able to find him. That journal will be very valuable. Maybe it can even lead us to him!”

“Does this mean you want me to read it?” Toby was confused.

Jack paused. He was too excited about having discovered the journal of the famous William the Explorer to worry about curses. “I think we have to read it. Maybe it can help us find him. He may have left it here as clue to his whereabouts.”

“What if he doesn’t want to be found?” asked Harriet.

“Everybody wants to be found,” said Jack.

“Okay, let’s read it!” Harriet was quick to give in. She was curious too.

Toby began to read the first page of the journal aloud to his friends. They hovered over him, staring at its worn-out pages as they listened.