A Gift of Ice

By James Dashner

In an impossible place under a door in the woods, Jimmy Fincher received the first of four gifts---given by a mysterious and desperate people trying to save the world from a ruthless enemy. Now, Jimmy flees to Japan in search of the second gift. Peril is inescapable and mysteries abound as Jimmy receives a haunting warning: THE STOMPERS ARE COMING.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cedar Fort Publishing & Media
• Release date: Feb 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781462103287

Book preview

There are frightening things in Japan.

It seems like such a wonderful, exotic place. Majestic, ice-capped mountains and emerald forests, ancient temples and shrines, rushing rivers and breath-taking waterfalls. To a normal person, the lands of Japan would be the perfect setting for a vacation. But to me, the world was no longer normal.

My name is Jimmy Fincher, and mine is a story of wonder and dread. (And I really, really hate cooked peas, but that has nothing to do with this story.)

Only fourteen years old, I'd been set on a course that could not stop, or the world I called my own, along with countless others, would be in terrible jeopardy. The things I'd been through and the circumstances that led to my urgent arrival in the beautiful lands of Japan are difficult to summarize without sounding like a shoeless wacko from the backwoods of Georgia.

A conspiracy of crazed men, who were actually beings from another, darker place, trying to open a magical door. My dad, caught in the middle, doing his best to prevent them. Me, just a boy, the one destined to open it. A special gift received, one that made me indestructible.

The Givers, a mysterious people determined to help save our world from an enemy unprecedented in ruthlessness. The Black Curtain, that strange, unpredictable portal that led to The Blackness, a pathway between countless worlds. A new friend, Joseph, kidnapped by shadows with wings.

Permeating it all, a phrase that had grown to haunt us in our dreams.

The Stompers are coming.

This was the substance of my new life, and although it was more exciting than the old one, I wasn't particularly enjoying it.

In the days leading up to our arrival in Japan, unthinkable, unimaginable things had occurred. Our lives had been tossed and turned, pulled inside out, twisted, trampled upon. Everything was different now, we knew that, and had tried to fully accept it. Our perceptions on life had taken a turn at the crossroads.

My blocking of the Black Curtain was only days past. However, fear seemed to hover just around the corner. The questions lingered. Was the Curtain really sealed against the terrors of the Blackness? Were we safe from the Shadow Ka? Did we have enough time to find the Givers’ book before the Stompers appeared, ready to wreak havoc? Where and how would we find the book, and what exactly was the Second Gift?

The questions went on and on.

In the wet, humid lands of Japan, some of these questions would be answered, and others would be born.

Dad had found us a nice little hotel in the middle of a city called Kushiro, one of the most fascinating places I'd ever visited—in this world, anyway. It was a town by the ocean, a place for fishing and huge shipping boats. My older brother Rusty and I were in constant awe at this different culture we had invaded. After entering the Blackness, we thought everything in our own world would be dull and ordinary. We were very wrong.

Japan was like discovering a new and thrilling book.

The streets were constantly packed with people, all of them in a hurry to get somewhere. The buildings towered over us no matter where we went, and bright neon signs shone from every direction. The days and nights were misty and rainy, the streets soaked and slippery. The chattering of the Japanese language filled our ears, and it was like magic that people could actually understand each other. Old ladies shuffled through the streets in fancy robes called kimonos, and old men bowed to me without fail. Smells of fish and salt pounded our noses, and eerie music blasted from speakers up and down the streets. Japanese kids pointed at us, giggling, saying hello with really bad accents.

It was flat-out a different place. Sometimes I felt certain we had all been hit in the head during those last catastrophic moments in the Blackness, and that we had actually gone through another portal and were in some other, strange world. But no, this was just Japan, just another country in our world, now under threat from an unseen and unknown enemy. Just another country that I was supposed to save from the Stompers.

Of course, we all really wished we knew what a Stomper was.

At the hotel, we slept on the ground in rooms where the floor was made out of woven straw. The walls were paper-thin, and some old grandma kept coming into our rooms without asking and offering us herbal tea and weird-looking crackers. The telephone in our room wouldn't work unless you put coins in it. There was no shower, only a tub, and to go potty you had to do a magical balancing act over a hole in the bathroom floor. That was the toilet—forget sitting down.

Japan sometimes made the Blackness seem like a trip to the mall. Well, not really.

Our first few days in Japan were relaxed and easy, and we spent a lot of time exploring that strange and exotic place. Dad kept busy at an old library, looking at maps and recreating his adventures of the last time he'd been here. He said we'd be ready to start our search for the book pretty soon, and so my mom, Rusty, and I did a lot of waiting, and walking around, and eating weird food.

It's strange how things work out sometimes. My dad, the only one who had actually seen this book we sought, would never see it again, and would never take us to where it rested. In the weeks ahead, nothing, absolutely nothing, would go according to plan. So, really, those first few days were a complete waste.

All in all, however, it was a fun week. But, typical of the last month or two, things were about to take a turn for the worst.

Like I told you, mine is a tale of wonder and dread.

This is the story of Jimmy Fincher.

The deafening roar that started my family's latest and greatest nightmare occurred during our seventh night in Japan.

It came from a new and unexpected enemy.

It came from the Bosu Zoku.

The seventh day had been a really fun one, mostly spent walking up and down the beach, buying food from vendors while taking in the salty scent of the ocean. We spoke about the good old days before we discovered Raspy and Shadow Ka and little things like the fact that other worlds existed through black rips in the air called the Black Curtain.

By the time we returned to the hotel that night and had supper with Dad, we were exhausted from all of the walking. Dad too was tired from having looked at books and maps all day, and writing down his plans for us to find the mysterious book of the Givers that was going to solve all of our problems. We were in our hotel room by nightfall, and it was time to go to sleep—on the floor, of course.

Dad, I asked as he and I were brushing our teeth in the bathroom, what have you been thinking of the last few days?

What do you mean? he replied.

You know, about the Blackness and the book and all this stuff. I mean, we are in Japan, on a mission to find some mysterious book from another world. Don't you think it's kind of weird that we're all acting so normal, like we're just here on vacation or something?

Yeah, I guess so. But, if you think about it, Dad spread his hands and spoke through a thick foam of toothpaste, What're we supposed to do? He spat in the sink. Should we sit in a corner and huddle together like a Shadow Ka will attack us at any minute? If I've learned anything in life, it's that you adapt quickly to your circumstances, and you can surprise yourself at how you just end up acting like everything is normal. We forget that the whole world is completely different than it used to be. For example …

Dad grabbed one of the hotel cups, reached down to the sink and filled it with water, looked at it for a second, then heaved the water straight at my head. I flinched, ready to retaliate by whipping him with a towel or something, when the water spread out five inches in front of my face, like it had just hit the cleanest window on the planet, and dribbled to the floor. Not a drop touched me. I started laughing.

See, he said, you already forgot about The Shield.

I looked down at the water on the floor.

Let me try something, I said.

I took the glass from Dad and filled it up again. This time, I held it above my head, and slowly poured it out. I gasped as the cold water splashed down and soaked my hair.

I guess The Shield assumes that if you want to pour water on your head, then so be it. Dad laughed, and walked out of the bathroom.

As I dried myself off, once again I realized what a strange world mine had become.

We're not rich by any means, so we all shared the same hotel room. Dad had taken the cash that he had given me for my trip to Utah, which by all miracles I had not lost along the way, and had used the credit card for the rest of the funds he needed to buy us plane tickets and to get the hotel room. The four of us were closer than ever after what we had been through, so it was kind of fun to be in the same room, watching the strangest TV programs I'd ever seen.

It had grown very dark outside and we were all gathered around the television, sitting on the many soft cushions provided by the hotel. The nice Japanese lady had just walked in and given us some snacks and drinks, and we were having a hoot watching some crazed game show where Japanese teenagers were doing all kinds of weird stuff for money. Not knowing their language didn't make any difference.

This is the silliest bit of nonsense I've ever seen, Mom said. Surely we can find something more interesting than this to watch.

Rusty spoke up. Oh, c'mon, Mom. Let's be glad they don't have that horrendous show you watch with all of those fat women talking about nothing.

Oh, yeah, it's not nearly as intelligent and sophisticated as this garbage, Mom replied. And don't call people fat. It's not nice.

Mom, if you were fat, I wouldn't say it. So by saying it, I must mean that you're not fat, which means you're skinny and beautiful, so take it as a compliment.

That's enough, Rusty, Dad said. We all know that I am fat, which means that one day you'll be fat, so zip it.

Dad, you're not fat, I said. You've just got some cushioning to rest your drink on when you're watching football.

Rusty laughed, and Dad grabbed a pillow and lunged at me. I backed up, laughing, but he was too fast, which was unfortunate for him, because when he jumped on me, The Shield threw him backward about five feet, and he landed on Mom.

Alright, that's enough, Mom said, always the calm one. I'm turning this junk off and we're all going to bed. Tomorrow morning, your dad's going to lay out the plan for getting that dumb old book.

Dad gave Mom his you-always-ruin-the-fun smile. Okay, okay. C'mon guys, let's get into our futons and get some shut-eye. I always thought it sounded so geeky when Dad referred to sleep as shut-eye.

Hey, Jimmy, Rusty said, Could you maybe sleep with your backside the other direction tonight? My nose needs a break from your reeking stench.

News flash, I replied, the smeller's the feller.

Enough, guys. Go to sleep, Dad said, trying to keep from snickering. Mom surprised all of us when she did break out laughing, and that set the whole room off.

We finally did calm down, although a giggle popped out every now and then, restarting the whole process. After a few more light-hearted insults, we all settled in, and Dad turned off the lights. After such a tiring day, once the laughter died out, sleep was soon to follow.

By then we'd had seven consecutive days of peace and fun, with long nights of plentiful rest.

Well, seven is better than none, I guess.

I'll never know which was louder or which sound actually woke us all up—the roar coming through the windows of our hotel room, the breaking of the glass, or the piercing scream that came from my mother's throat. None of them were very pleasant.

As we drifted off to sleep that night, you could almost feel the mist in the silent, eerie darkness of the Japanese night. I could only have said this after the fact, but it sure seemed like something was different about that night when we went to bed. We had all been asleep for a few hours when the terrible noises ripped through the air.

I jerked up from my sleep, and a slew of strange sights and sounds greeted me.

The three windows were shattered, and shafts of bright light shone this way and that through the windows, making sinister shadows grow and shrink all around the room. Mom was kneeling on the floor, staring out the window nearest to her, her body a silhouette against the bright lights coming from outside. She screamed only once, but it was enough to rattle an ear for a while.

I saw Dad run to her and grab her, anxiously looking out the windows toward the lights.

There was a constant, terrible scream of noise coming from outside. Engines. It sounded like the roar of engines. Frightened nearly to death, I ran over to my parents, and Rusty soon joined us. Having already developed an instinct from our experiences in the Blackness, we all knew that The Shield would protect us as a group as long as we stuck together. Hugging, we stared out into the night, and right outside our windows we saw the last thing we would have expected to see in this quaint little Japanese town.

Motorcycles.

A lot of motorcycles.

They were everywhere, revving their engines, spinning out, popping wheelies, tearing up grass. They were bullet bikes, the kind that are usually bright colors, sleek, and made to go from zero to sixty in about two seconds. It was hard to get a good look at the riders, but they appeared to be dressed in black, with bandannas flying from all kinds of body parts. It looked like chaos as they rode all over the place, back and forth, narrowly missing each other. And the noise. Never in my life had I heard such loud engines. The sounds pierced the air with violence, making it almost impossible to keep yourself from covering your ears.

But we knew we had to hang on to each other. We knew that these people were not our friends, and it was frighteningly obvious that their attention was focused on our hotel room. They still held rocks like the ones they'd used to break out the windows.

One of the motorcycles pulled up to our middle window, and put down the kickstand. The rider sat there for a minute, staring at us through the dark visor of his shiny black helmet. He finally swung his leg over the seat, stood tall, and walked up to the window. I'm sure Dad was cursing the fact that we were on the bottom floor.

After standing there for a few seconds, the rider calmly pulled off the black helmet. His face was even with the middle of the window, and he stood very close to it, so we got a pretty good look at him, in spite of the fact that the only source of light was coming from behind him, from the bullet bike headlights.

The man was Japanese, with black hair hanging down to his shoulders. He had a bandanna tied around his neck, and one on each arm around his biceps. The bandannas were red, but everything else he wore was black. He had a narrow face, and when he suddenly smiled, we saw that he had white, but very crooked, teeth. I had not seen such a nasty-looking man since I last laid eyes on Raspy.

But nothing was as bad as this new man's eyes. They were as black as the rips I had seen in the Black Curtain. And I don't just mean in the normal sense. There were no whites of his eyes. From end to end, top to bottom, the man's eyes were pitch black. And as he stared at us with those hideous, dark orbs, fear rippled up and down my body.

And then, he spoke.

My name is Kenji.

His voice was gurgled, like he had something in his throat that he either needed to spit or swallow. He had a heavy Japanese accent. He glanced backward, arm raised to indicate his fellow bikers, and then he turned back to face us again.

"We are the Bosu Zoku, here to end your hopeless quest against the