Battle for Time Read online

  “That’s your biggest concern?” questioned Carl. “Shouldn’t you focus on getting back home? I don’t want to be here.”

  “Where are you from?” asked Claudia.

  Pete confessed, “We are from the future.”

  Carl added, “We all fell down a portal and ended up in the past.”

  Alexandra said, “I didn’t even know time travel was possible. I guess we do learn something new every day.”

  Brett explained, “I know a lot about the ice age and what you guys are going through right now. I read a lot of books about the ice age.”

  “Reading about it isn’t the same as living through it,” said Claudia.

  “Oh, we know,” said Poppy. “We’ve traveled through time before.”

  “You have?” Alexandra asked.

  “Yeah, a few times,” said Joe, “and I know you feel like you will never get back home, but we will get back there.”

  “You promise?” asked Carl.

  Joe wasn’t ready to make a promise he wasn’t a hundred percent sure he could keep. He replied, “We will try our best.”

  Alexandra paced the length of the small living room. “We are in the ice age?”

  “It’s not as bad as you think,” said Brett. “We have to get to sleep.”

  The gang crawled into their beds and tried to sleep. Brett dreamed a million strays were attacking him. The strays surrounded him, and he didn’t have anything in his inventory. He had no idea what he was going to do. In the dream, two arrows struck him at once, and he began to move quite slowly. When he called for help, it took ten minutes before he could even get out the entire word. Just as he was about to be destroyed by two strays, he woke up. The sun was melting some of the ice cubes, and he hoped that was a sign the ice age was coming to an end.

  Claudia was standing above him. “You mentioned you know how to build a farm in the ice?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “Joe and I can build it.”

  Joe said, “But that takes so much time.”

  “People are starving. We have to help them,” said Brett.

  Poppy said, “How about you stay here and build the farm, and we work to stop whatever or whomever is causing this ice age?”

  Alexandra and Carl were nervous. Carl said, “We don’t think we’re equipped to stop an ice age. Alexandra and I are just going to search for a portal back to our time period.”

  Poppy said, “I know this seems scary, but we have to help. There is nothing I want more than to be back in my time period hanging with Joe and Brett and planning pranks. Brett and I are known for our great pranks.”

  “Is this a prank?” asked Alexandra.

  “No, we never pull mean pranks that make people unhappy. We just pull pranks that make people laugh,” explained Brett.

  Carl said, “I don’t think we are going to be helpful. We don’t know how to stop an ice age.”

  “Neither do we,” said Poppy, “but we will figure out how we can help.”

  Brett said, “I’ve read tons of history books about the ice age, and I know that it just stopped and the weather became warmer. Nobody knew what caused it.”

  “If we stop it earlier,” said Joe, “we could save a lot of people.”

  “How did it start?” asked Pete. “Were there any warning signs?”

  “No,” Claudia and Brett answered in unison.

  Claudia said, “One day we woke up and it was bitter cold, and all of our crops were destroyed.”

  Poppy remarked, “You must be so hungry.”

  “I am,” said Claudia.

  Everyone in the room grabbed food from their inventories and handed it to Claudia. Poppy said, “Today you will feast.”

  Claudia smiled as she thanked everyone for their generous offerings. “I feel like I will never be hungry again.”

  Alexandra looked at Claudia and said, “We will help you. We will try our best to solve this problem and stop the ice age.”

  A cold wind pushed the igloo door open. Brett looked outside and saw someone dressed in blue in the distance. He hurried outside, but there wasn’t anybody there.

  7

  THE HUNGER

  “Brett?” Poppy ran after him and asked, “What’s the matter?”

  “It was just the wind,” said Joe. “That’s why the door opened.”

  “I thought I saw someone dressed in blue,” said Brett.

  “Blue?” Claudia asked. “Like the person who trapped me in the cage!”

  “You were trapped by a person in blue?” asked Poppy.

  “Yes,” Claudia replied, “but I didn’t see what their face looked like.”

  “I think we found a connection,” said Poppy. “I want to find these people in blue and see if they are behind this ice age and famine.”

  Brett stayed behind and worked on the farm with Joe as Poppy left with Pete, Claudia, Carl, and Alexandra to find out who was causing the frozen era. Brett was crafting the farm when he heard a noise in the distance.

  “Do you hear that?” he asked Joe.

  Joe listened. “Does it sound like people talking?”

  “Yes,” said Brett, and they left the farm to see who was around, but after walking for a while, they found no one except a large polar bear.

  “Watch out,” Joe warned as the polar bear approached them and began to move its back legs. It leaped at Brett. They had gotten too close to the bear, and it was ready to annihilate them.

  “Ouch!” Brett wailed in pain. The bear had him trapped, and he knew he was about to be mauled by this massive bear.

  Joe grabbed his bow and arrow and shot a succession of arrows at the bear. The enormous white bear cried in pain and was destroyed. Joe picked up the raw salmon the bear had dropped.

  “I will never get used to the cold biome,” said Brett as he drank a potion of healing and walked back to the farm.

  “I wonder where the people are. It’s odd that we both heard voices, but nobody was there,” said Joe.

  They didn’t hear anything as they worked on the farm. Both of them had spent a long time studying how to construct a farm in the cold, and they knew they had limited supplies, but they worked hard as they took out their torches and used them to melt the ice.

  Meanwhile Poppy was trekking through the Overworld with her new friends. They had reached the first village, and Poppy was shocked to see the devastation. People were walking around like zombies. They had no food, and the land outside of the town was barren.

  Carl and Alexandra bickered the entire time, and Claudia told them to conserve their energy because fighting was going to exhaust them. “Soon you will see how it feels to live a life of hunger.”

  “A life of hunger,” repeated Pete. “That seems like a great title for an article. I have to chronicle the world of the hungry.”

  Once Pete had this idea for an article, he wanted to stop every person they met and ask them how they felt. After he did this to two people, Poppy said, “Pete, I know you’re a journalist, but this isn’t the time to ask people how they are reacting to their situation. You should be trying to find out who is behind this attack on the Overworld.”

  Pete didn’t listen to Poppy. A person from the town asked them if they were lost, and Pete responded by asking them how they were dealing with the feeling of being hungry all the time.

  “It’s awful,” the townsperson replied, “but don’t you feel the same way? Or do you know a way to get us food?”

  “No,” replied Pete, “I don’t have a way of getting us food. Although my friends are constructing a farm in the icy biome next to your town.”

  “They know how to build a farm in the ice?” The townsperson was impressed and asked, “Can we go there? I miss eating apples.”

  “I never liked apples,” said Carl.

  “How can you say that? Can’t you see how much this person misses apples?” asked Alexandra.

  Carl and Alexandra began to fight about apples, and Claudia once again reminded them to conserve their energy.
<
br />   “I think they like fighting, and I don’t think they’re going to stop. I have been with them since we arrived here, and they haven’t taken a break from fighting,” said Poppy.

  “I don’t know how I am going to deal with it,” said Claudia.

  “It’s too much,” agreed Pete, and then he asked them politely, “Carl and Alexandra, can you please take a break? We understand you both have opinions on apples, but this isn’t the best time to discuss it.”

  Claudia spotted a person dressed in blue running in the distance, and she raced toward them. Poppy followed Claudia, and they both approached the person.

  “Hi,” Claudia said awkwardly, because she didn’t know how to ask this stranger why they were dressed all in blue and if they happened to be associated with the people who had trapped her in the cage.

  “Hi,” the woman in blue said and asked, “Do I know you?”

  “No,” Claudia said. “We are new to this town, and we need a place to stay. Do you know of any?”

  “No,” the woman replied. “And why would you want to stay here? This town is suffering. We have no resources here. The blacksmith closed up shop because we have no resources to trade. The library even closed because nobody could be bothered to read books anymore. This is a ghost town. You could probably stay in one of the many empty houses because nobody wants to stay here anymore. It’s odd that you came here and want to stay. If I were you, I’d leave.”

  “Can you lead us to an empty house?” asked Claudia.

  “If you walk outside of the village, you will find one. In fact, most of them are empty. You’ll see there is nothing in them. People took whatever they had, which wasn’t much,” said the woman, and then she asked, “Do you have anything in your inventory that I can eat?”

  Poppy pulled out an apple. “An apple! I haven’t seen one of these in ages,” the woman said fervently.

  Another townsperson heard the word apple and hurried over. “An apple? How did you get that? Apples haven’t grown in the Overworld in ages.”

  “I saved them,” said Poppy.

  “And you’re kind enough to share them with a stranger?” asked the townsperson.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I want one too,” the townsperson demanded.

  “You aren’t very polite,” said Poppy.

  “Okay, I want one too, please,” said the townsperson.

  Poppy went to grab an apple from her inventory, but she didn’t have any left. “I’m sorry, that was my last apple.”

  The townsperson grabbed the apple from the woman who was dressed in blue. She screamed, “That’s my apple.”

  The townsperson didn’t care. He pulled the apple from her hand and took a bite. The woman grabbed the apple from his hand and took a big bite. Apple chunks spit from his mouth as he yelled at her to give the apple back.

  Poppy yelled, “Stop it! Stop fighting over an apple. I know you guys are hungry, but you can’t act like this. If you do, we will never solve the problem of everything being frozen.”

  The townsperson laughed. “Solve this? How?”

  “We have to figure out how to make the Overworld warmer so it will be a hospitable environment and crops can grow again,” said Poppy.

  “That sounds like a great idea, but it’s never going to happen,” said the townsperson.

  “We will solve it,” said Poppy.

  “I think you’re wasting your time,” said the townsperson.

  “Well, we have to try,” said Poppy.

  “We don’t even know how it all began,” said the townsperson.

  Everyone was surprised when the woman in blue said, “I think I know how it started.”

  8

  DISPLACED

  “You do?” asked Claudia.

  “I’m not sure,” the woman replied and then said, “You know what, I don’t know how it started.”

  Pete spit a bunch of questions at the woman, “Why did you change your mind? Are there reasons for that?”

  Alexandra and Carl were fighting, but they stopped when they heard Pete blast the woman with a barrage of questions. They added one to the list. “Hey,” said Carl, “what’s your name?”

  Alexandra questioned, “Who are you?”

  The woman in blue walked away. As she did she said, “My name is Cara. I’m displaced. I used to live in a town, but now I have no home.”

  Poppy hurried toward the woman. “I’m sorry to hear this, but we need to know any information you have about the ice age because we must stop it and save the people of the Overworld.”

  Cara paused. “I live in a town where we are all forced to wear blue. It wasn’t always like that. There was once a time when we were able to pick out our own skins.”

  “Who is making you dress in blue?” asked Poppy.

  “Anya,” said the woman. “She is the head of our town, although nobody voted her into that position. She showed up one day and demanded we all wear blue. She is a fan of the cold weather, and I think she manipulated this weather situation, but I’m not sure how.”

  “Can you please take me to your town?” asked Poppy.

  “I escaped from that town. I don’t want to go back,” said Cara.

  “We will go with you,” Poppy told her.

  “I don’t want to go back. I’m sorry, I can’t.” She looked at Poppy, and her eyes were filled with tears.

  Pete was standing close by and listening and suggested, “Why don’t you tell us where you are from, and we will travel there.”

  Cara’s eyes brightened as she pulled out a map. “It’s not far from here.” She pointed to the map. “You have to go through the swamp and then over this large hill, and you will find a town that is over the mountain. You will know you are there because everyone dresses in blue. Also, everyone is a builder. There is a lot of construction going on there. When I left, we were all working together to build a castle for Anya.”

  Poppy took the map. “Thank you,” she said to Cara. “We will go and try to solve this crisis.”

  “Thank you,” Cara said softly as she walked away.

  Alexandra and Carl jogged toward Poppy and looked at the map. “Seriously?” asked Alexandra. “We have to climb up a mountain? I hate climbing.”

  Carl said, “I hate swamps. You know how I feel about witches.”

  “I don’t like witches, but it’s something we have to do to save the Overworld,” explained Poppy.

  Pete was the only one who was excited about the trip. “The story is unfolding,” he said with a smile. “I bet we will expose who is behind this ice, and I will have an award-winning article.”

  Poppy laughed. “Pete, do you only care about the story?”

  “No,” Pete explained. “I do care about saving the Overworld, but I also think it’s important to keep a record and have an article where people could learn the facts.”

  Poppy couldn’t debate that comment, so she just looked at the map and led them into the swamp.

  Claudia was the first person to point out a hostile mob in the swampy biome. She had stopped by the murky water when she watched a bat fly overhead and said, “I think I hear something.”

  “What is it?” asked Poppy.

  Boing! Boing! Boing!

  “It sounds like slimes,” said Claudia.

  The gang listened to the sound of bouncing slimy mobs, and within seconds they were confronted with the creatures. They used their swords to destroy the beasts, but the slimes weren’t easy to defeat. They broke into smaller slimes, and it seemed as if this battle against the slimes might be never-ending.

  As they destroyed the final slime, the sun started to set. “Should we stay here?” Poppy asked the group.

  “Stay here?” Alexandra’s shrill voice screamed. “No way.”

  “You have to speak softly,” Carl yelled. “You don’t want a witch to hear us.”

  “You are also yelling,” Claudia reminded them in a soft voice. “We all have to calm down and figure out where we should build a structure.
It isn’t safe being outside at night, and we want to conserve our energy. Once you go through your food in your inventory, you will begin to understand how it feels to be hungry. I promise you, it’s awful, and you don’t want to feel that way. Please work together to solve this problem, and then we can all eat again. We can’t waste our energy fighting.”

  Poppy had already taken a bunch of supplies from her inventory and started constructing a house by the water. “We are staying here,” she said as she built the foundation for one side of the house.

  Everyone took out whatever supplies they had to help Poppy build the house. They were putting the windows on the house when they heard laughter in the distance.

  “That sounds like a witch.” Carl’s voice cracked when he spoke.

  “It does,” Claudia said, “but we can’t get upset about the witch. We have to find her and battle her. I don’t have any potions left in my inventory, but I do have a diamond sword. If someone wants to splash a potion on her, I will strike her with my diamond sword.”

  Pete pulled a potion out. “Come with me, Claudia,” he called out as he sprinted toward the sound of the witch.

  The witch’s hut was in the middle of the swamp. The purple-robed witch charged toward them clutching a potion in one hand, but Pete skillfully splashed a potion on the witch as Claudia struck her with her diamond sword. The duo destroyed the witch in record time.

  “We make a good team,” said Claudia.

  Pete was about to respond when a second witch darted out of the hut and splashed Claudia. “Help,” Claudia said faintly. The witch had left Claudia with one heart.

  Pete swung his sword with one hand and splashed a potion with his other hand and defeated the second witch. He rushed toward Claudia with a potion for healing. As she took a sip, they heard their friends cry out in the distance, “Help!”

  9

  FARM OR FAMINE

  Claudia and Pete rushed toward their friends, making their way through the dark swamp where the only light came from the large full moon in the sky. They were almost at the house when they saw their friends battling chunks of slime. Slimes surrounded Poppy, Alexandra, and Carl, and they were losing hearts fast.