Chapter 7
Take Life in Steps

Smiling up at the sun, my stomach brought me back down to earth. I wasn't too hungry yet, but now that I'd eaten all I had left, the search for food had to be today's goal.

The first seeds I planted were higher than the others; not by much, but enough for me to try harvesting them. People ate sprouts, right? Alfalfa sprouts, brussels sprouts, maybe there were some new kind of—

I didn't get to finish the thought. The second I touched the shoots, they turned right back into seeds.

All right, I thought, putting them back in the ground, so they just need a little more time, no big deal. There still have to be more apple trees, I reasoned, picking my way up the hill. I just haven't looked hard enough. I poked my head over the top, and came face-to-face with another giant spider.

"Gah!" I gasped, instinctively jumping back. Out of control, I toppled down the hill, bounced off a rock, heard a sickening SNAP, and landed hard on the sand below.

Pain shot up my leg as I hobbled back to the safety of my bunker. This isn't right, I thought, slamming the door behind me. This is daytime.

Peering through the door's opening, I waited for a flash of legs and eyes. They never came. I opened the door nervously, tried to look in all directions, then took a tentative step outside.

And that first step scared me worse than any spider. My ankle still hurt. My hyper-healing wasn't working.

Of course I should have expected this now that my stomach was empty, but to actually have it happen was terrifying. Worry rose up on a bubble of realization. I was just a mere mortal now. Any major injury, any accident or monster attack, could be the end. I tried putting weight on my injured leg. White-hot nails of pain jabbed through my ankle.

What was I going to do now, if I couldn't outrun the spider? Just one of those vicious bites would finish me. But if I stayed where I was, if I didn't eat, didn't heal, I'd end up just as dead.

Grabbing my battered, nearly broken pickaxe, and what little nerve I had left, I limped carefully out onto the beach.

Nothing stirred up on the hill. I listened for the arachnid's familiar hiss. Silence. This time, instead of climbing back up the cliff, I thought it might be safer to swim around it.

I paddled slowly past the southern slope, keeping my eyes fixed on the summit. I got halfway around the hill when I spied the tips of two black legs. I froze in place, treading water as slowly and quietly as I could. The spider crawled creepily into view, its cherry red sensors locked on me.

I swam backward, ready to make for open water. If that thing didn't swim, maybe I'd have a chance to double back to another part of the island. I got a few strokes away before I realized that the arachnid wasn't coming after me. For a moment, we remained frozen, silently trading stares. Clearly it saw me, so why wasn't it attacking?

Did the light blind it, or was it something to do with the day itself? Were spiders only hostile at night? We watched each other for another few seconds before the eight-legged horror just up and disappeared. No fire, no smoke. One second it was there and the next, gone.

I swam back to shore, my mind flooded with questions. Why had it disappeared without burning? Why hadn't it been dangerous in daylight? And why had it lasted in the daylight after all the zombies had burned?

Limping back up onto the southern beach, I wondered if creepers also lasted longer than zombies, and if that was the reason I'd nearly been killed by one. I scanned the dense line of trees, making sure one of them wasn't a mottled green. I didn't see any creepers, thankfully, but noticed how dark the shaded wood was. Had the creeper been sheltering from the sun?

If that was true, and if there were other monsters hiding under those leaves, then that'd be the last place I looked for food. I limped west along the southern shoreline, looking for shellfish or even seaweed. The beach was completely barren. For the first time I also noticed that I hadn't seen any fish, or whales, or seals, or anything aquatic besides that sinister squid.

Coming around the edge of the island's southern claw, I saw that the water of the lagoon was as lifeless as the open sea. Squishing across its soft clay bottom, I climbed up onto the northern claw, looked down the beach, and spied a plant I'd never seen before.

It had stalks, three actually, that were light green and tall and growing right out of the seaside sand. "Bamboo!" I exclaimed, hopping painfully over. People ate bamboo, right? Wasn't it on some menus as bamboo shoots? If this was the mature version, then I could surely find a way to replant it and eat the shoots.

I took one swipe at the lowest section, and, unlike trees, the whole stalk came tumbling down. Collecting the three sections in my left hand, I saw the image of a grainy white pile in my right.

"Sugar," I said happily. "This isn't bamboo. It's sugarcane."

After so many failed attempts with the egg, I should have at least half-expected that this new food didn't want to be eaten. "Fine, whatever," I pouted, stuffing the pile and the two remaining stalks into my pack. "Bad for my teeth anyway."

Trying to stay positive, I wondered if the sugar might still be useful when combined with another ingredient—but what? I couldn't see anything else that remotely reminded me of food. No berry bushes, no mushrooms. There weren't even any worms or bugs, and believe me, in the state I was in, I would have gladly munched them down.

I even tried nibbling a few of the red and yellow flowers growing at the edge of the woods. Not only did they not oblige, but holding them in my left hand gave me the option of turning them into useless dye. "What else can go wrong," I grumbled, just as it began to rain.

"Had to ask," I moped, the warm, light drizzle perfectly matching my mood.

Limping tensely through the forest, my eyes flicked this way and that. I tried to keep my attention on the trees themselves and not what might be lurking behind them. It didn't help when I passed the crater that had almost been my grave.

Strangely enough, it hadn't yet filled up with water, even though a steady stream was flowing in. "Even the water here is weird," I muttered, and moved on to try to find an apple tree.

Which I didn't. The only trees left growing on the island had muted leaves and black and white bark which kinda reminded me of birches. I couldn't find one single apple tree, which I now called "oaks" because I didn't want to think of apples anymore. I'd always taken for granted that there had to be at least one more oak tree nestled somewhere in the forest. I figured, hoped, that I just wasn't looking hard enough.

Now I'd run out of excuses, and there was nowhere left to go but forward. Maybe these birches also have fruit, I wondered, grasping at straws—which, by the way, I also would have tried to eat. Maybe they've got nuts or acorns or…something.

With growing desperation, I punched out a few blocks of the nearest tree, whipped up a crafting table, and then a stone axe. I laid into the birches around me like a madman, swinging at trunks and leaves.

Nothing came down except more logs and a white-flecked sapling. "It's okay," I said, trying to stay cool. "Maybe this species just has fewer nuts. That's all, just gotta keep looking."

Pocketing the logs, I placed the useless sapling on the ground, and gave a startled shout as it suddenly grew up right in front of me. Chopping down that one turned out to be fruitless as well.

"Maybe this one," I grunted, turning to the next birch, "or maybe this one." Frustration growing into fear, I cut my way through the forest. "This one," I huffed, getting halfway through another tree before my axe snapped. Twisting back to my crafting table, I forgot about the injured leg.

Agonizing sparks erupted from my ankle. I slumped against the half-cut tree, choking back tears, waiting for the throbbing to cease. I could deal with the injury but not with the pain. How could anybody? Feeling this way every minute of every day? How would you not go crazy? Isn't that why my world had whole shelves of different pain pills? Even if you weren't better, at least you felt that way, and right now that's all I wanted.

"Make it stop," I whispered. "Please. Please just make it stop."

"Cluckcluckcluck," came the sound of an approaching chicken.

"Get outta here," I barked, waving the annoying bird away.

The chicken looked up at me for a second, laid another unbreakable egg, then stubbornly pecked the grass at my feet. "Beat it!" I growled, waving my hands right in front of its face. I didn't need this right now, didn't need to see another creature eat, didn't need to be reminded of how delicious cooked chicken tasted.

"C'mon, now, I mean it!" I commanded, shuffling over to my crafting table. And it continued to follow me, pecking away while its clucking rang in my ears.

"Go!" I shouted, my fist clocking it in the beak.

"B'gack!" bawked the bird, sprinting away in a flash of red. "I didn't mean…" I started, guilt quickly replacing anger.

"Moo," came a friendly sound to my right. I looked over at the familiar eyes of the cow. In those eyes, in that serene face, I found the centering I needed.

"I know," I sighed. "I gotta get ahold of myself."

"Moo," it agreed.

"I gotta remember," I continued, "that no one's ever died of a twisted ankle, and if the sprouts grow into food then they'll take care of that."

Again, the cow gave an agreeable "Moo."

I could feel myself calming down, my breathing returning to normal. "Here I am acting like I did that first day when, well, look at all the progress I've made since then. I gotta remember that progress, and that vow I made to you the day I almost got lost at sea."

"Moo," said the cow, which prompted a quick correction.

"Okay, maybe it wasn't you, maybe it was your friend I was talking to who got killed by the creeper…and I'm sorry about the steak thing, by the way, but, you know, I was hungry and it was already dead and…well anyway, back to the vow."

I started pacing again, just like I had that first day with the cow, albeit with a pronounced shuffle. "I told myself that I had to figure out all the rules of this world, but I get now that I've gotta go further. I've gotta figure out rules for myself."

"Moo?" asked my bovine foil.

"No, I don't just mean the lessons I've been learning," I said, "or having a grand strategy like we talked about. I need a methodical way to achieve that strategy, a detailed discipline of specific steps for each individual task."

I stopped and turned on my good heel. "I know that's a lot of big words but what they boil down to is that I need to know not just what I have to do, but how I'm going to do it."

"Moo," chimed the cow, finally getting what I was saying.

"Isn't that what gets people through life back in my world?" I asked. "They get up every day and already know how they're going to face that day. That's what I need."

As the cow took a quick grass break, I kept pontificating.

"And I need to start with our strategy. Cover the basics, right? Food, shelter, safety. So, I got shelter, and food, well…I just figured out that there's nothing left to eat on this island other than sprouts which need time to grow. But safety?" I held up my wounded foot. "The whole reason I'm all panicked about food is because I can't hyper-heal anymore, but I wouldn't need to if I knew more about the creatures that can hurt me."

"Moo," said the cow, which I took for "Okay, I'm with you, but what does that have to do with your new method?"

"I'm getting to that," I said. "If I can study the creatures from a safe place and figure out where they come from, how they hunt, and how long they last when the sun comes up, I can keep out of trouble long enough to get a handle on food."

At that moment the rain ceased. I looked up at the sun, then down to the hill, then back over to the cow. "I've discovered how to make glass, so what if I built another room into this side of the hill to safely study the creatures, and that"—I held up a triumphant fist—"is where the method, or the 'way,' comes into play."

"Baa," said the white sheep, ambling over to us.

"Will you explain it to him?" I asked the cow, limping back toward the hill. Behind me, I could hear the sheep's confused "baa" and the cow's exasperated "moo."

"Take it in steps," I shouted over my shoulder. "I gotta take life in steps."