by Tad Williams
Carrot Girl!
She could hear it as clearly as if someone spoke it into her ear-the name (or more precisely the idea) that the young dragon Desta used as Lucinda’s name. The sound that was not a sound came again: Carrot Girl-help!
Lucinda had fallen asleep on the air mattress in Carmen’s room-in fact, she realized, she was still at least half-asleep, but she didn’t dare open her eyes for fear of losing touch with the frightened dragon. She had never dreamed the creature’s thoughts could reach her this far from the farm. I’m here, Desta. What’s wrong?
Too much wrong! All wrong! Frightened!
And it wasn’t just herself the young dragon was worried about. Meseret -Lucinda felt it as an image, not a name, the huge, warm shadow-thought that represented Desta’s mother- she hungry too! Other animals-escape! Growling! Scaring Desta! Others running and shouting!
And even as these ideas fluttered and whirled through her mind like panicky bats Lucinda could feel something else as well-Desta was trying to fly. Lucinda could sense the young dragon straining at her harness, struggling to let her wings pull her up into the air.
She’s ready! Even in the midst of so much confusion and fright, Lucinda felt a swelling of excitement. She’s ready to fly!
Tell me what’s going on, Desta. What’s happening?
Everything bad. Bad-smell animals out hunting. For a moment Lucinda could almost see what Desta saw-a slouching four-legged shadow, a pale, orange-eyed face peering into the Reptile Barn-and a cold shiver ran down Lucinda’s spine, even miles away.
One of the manticores was out.
Lucinda sat up. Carmen’s room was empty and dim, the light of the dying evening turning the long window into a glowing violet rectangle. She could dimly hear the television in Grandma Paz’s room down the hall. Outside the trees thrashed in a strong wind and a few raindrops were already splattering against the window.
The dragon’s thoughts suddenly vanished from her head.
Concentrate, Lucinda told herself. Desta? Desta, can you still hear me? The moment of contact now felt slippery as a piece of soap at the bottom of a bath or a watermelon seed squirting across a plate each time she tried to close her fingers on it. Concentrate. And there it was, but only for a moment, the last, dwindling perceptions that came from the terrified dragon…
Running things. The ideas flitted across Lucinda’s mind like shadows on a window shade. Wind and growing darkness. Warm rain making all the smells strange. And the hunting things still lurking outside the reptile barn but working up their courage to come in-there was more than one of them now, and they were barking to each other, excited chuffing noises like an ax biting into wood…
Lucinda’s skin went cold. Was all that really happening? Could it possibly be just some kind of dragon-nightmare? But in her heart she knew it was all too real. Since the first moment she had seen Gideon’s new watchdogs, the manticores had terrified her. But how had they gotten out? And more importantly, if it had taken Alamu to kill just one of them, how on earth would anybody at the farm be able to get all the rest back into their cage…?
Tears of worry running down both her cheeks, Lucinda leaped up and sprinted down the hallway.
“Tyler!” she shouted as she burst out the back door and headed for the garage. She saw that the boys had set their tent up inside it-the canvas was lit from within but she couldn’t hear them. “Tyler, it’s the farm! Something’s really wrong on the farm!”
No reply. No movement.
“Tyler, don’t play games!” She yanked back the flap and leaned in. “I just… Desta just… ” She stopped when she realized it was pointless. The tent was empty but for a clutter of comic books and video game magazines. Tyler and Steve weren’t there.
With Carmen and Alma-and, when she finally understood what had happened, with Grandma Paz as well-Lucinda turned the Carrillos’ house upside down but found no sign of the boys anywhere.
“Where could they be?” cried Paz. “Are they playing a trick with us?”
Carmen came out of the kitchen. “No, they’re really gone. They took food with them. Baloney sandwiches. And of course they didn’t put anything away-not even the mayonnaise!”
“At eight o’clock at night?” Grandma Paz was irritated at the mere thought. “What for? They both ate like pigs at dinner… ”
“Because they’re not coming back right away,” Lucinda said, suddenly feeling queasy. “They’re… ”
Alma back into the house, hair dripping, carrying a piece of paper in her hand. “I found a note in the tent.”
Paz grabbed it from her. Lucinda and the girls leaned over her shoulder to read.
Were out doing important things and well be back soon. Don’t worry about us were fine.
“My brother is allergic to apostrophes,” Alma said, but she looked really frightened. “Where do you think they went?”
“Why would they go out somewhere?” demanded Grandma Paz. “Those pinches! And in a storm!”
“Oh. Oh, no.” Lucinda suddenly remembered Tyler’s excitement over what Paz had told him. “It’s Tyler. I bet he and Steve are going to try to get back into Ordinary Farm.”
Carmen looked shocked. “How can they do that? There’s an electrical fence! Even my brother isn’t that stupid.”
Lucinda slumped down onto the living room couch. “I don’t think that’s the way they’re going.” She turned to Grandma Paz. “Tyler said you told him there was a tunnel or something that might connect this property to Gideon’s… some underground way.”
The old woman’s eyes opened very wide. “Oh, goodness, they wouldn’t go there, would they? To the old mine? That’s a terrible place!”
“Which is exactly the kind of place my brother would go.” Lucinda wanted to be angry at him but she was terrified. What would she tell Mom? “He loves stuff like that… Oh, Tyler, you idiot! All because he’s so worked up about Colin Needle and the Contin… ” She suddenly realized Paz was still standing there. “Never mind. What do we do? Where is it? How do we get them before they get themselves killed?”
“I’ll get my car,” said Paz. “I know where they’re going and if they haven’t been gone too long we can beat them there. You girls get your jackets and get shoes on and get in the car. Dios mio, those two! I am going to tan their little backsides…!”
As Carmen and Alma ran off, Lucinda told Paz, “I’m not going. Someone has to stay here to tell Ragnar what’s happening-he’s coming back soon. If they beat you to that mine or whatever it is, then Ragnar will have to be the one to go and get them.” And if he doesn’t already know about the manticores being out, she thought, well, that’s something else that has to be dealt with. She wanted to cry but couldn’t afford to waste any more strength on tears. This was shaping up to be a horrible, horrible night.
Grandma Paz threw her hands up in surrender. “What am I thinking? I have to call Sylvia and Hector, too, tell them what those little idiotas have done. They’ll come right back when they hear, so you won’t be on your own long.”
A scant three minutes later Lucinda stood in the driveway watching Grandma Paz’s big old car bump down the gravel driveway on its painfully slow way toward the Cresta Sol front gate. The drizzle had stopped but the sky was cloudy and the moist, warm breeze tugged at her hair.
“Hurry up!” Lucinda called to them, but all that came back to her was the sound of the rising wind.
Chapter 27
Weird Scenes Inside the Silver Mine
“So, not trying to criticize or anything, but is this your actual plan?” Steve Carrillo was a good-sized kid; with his parka billowing in the wind and the clanking of canteen and flashlight and various other implements dangling from his backpack he looked like someone’s camping tent had pulled up stakes and escaped. “I mean, like us walking about a zillion miles in the rain? And the mud? And it’s getting dark? And did I mention that it’s raining?”
“Just be glad it’s summer-at least it’s warm,” Tyler told him. “And we
’ll be out of the rain soon.” At least he hoped so. He didn’t really know much about Grandma Paz’s abandoned silver mine except for where it was on the map, and certainly didn’t want to think about what they were going to do if they got there and couldn’t get inside. He could already imagine what Lucinda would have to say about this latest idea of his, and it wouldn’t be, “Good thinking!”
Steve had started the adventure full of his usual good humor.
“Shouldn’t we be bringing a gun or something?” he asked as they set out in the hot, gray-blue evening between waves of summer storm. “Y’know, in case there are any… monster-type things? Dragons? Stuff like that?”
“A gun?” Tyler was shocked and a little intrigued by the idea. “You don’t have a gun, Carrillo.”
“Not really, but my uncle has a rifle he uses to shoot at crows. I could get that. And I’ve got my paintball rifle. Dude, you know how good I am with that.”
Tyler snorted. “Yeah, and if we need to splatter yellow stuff on a dragon, you’re my first choice. But we’re just going in some tunnels. There’s probably nothing down there but gophers.”
“And snakes. And spiders. And more snakes.” Steve stopped. “Maybe we should think of some different way to do this, Jenkins. Grandma Paz says that place is haunted!”
Tyler shook his head. “It’s not haunted. It’s connected to the Fault Line, like I explained. So every now and then something weird probably comes out of it, like back at the farm. But I know how to deal with the Fault Line, dude! I can totally go in and out. I’ve done it!”
“Yeah, and I was there. And it sucked.” Steve shuddered. “Dude, some crappy monster made out of old rags or something tried to eat me the last time I went anywhere with you.”
“That wasn’t the Fault Line, that was the other side of the mirror. That’s… different.” Although he didn’t really know if that was true. It wasn’t like he could look it up in a textbook or anything.
“I don’t care if the things with teeth that want to kill us come out of a mirror, or a hole in the ground, or a box of cereal,” Steve said forcefully. “Things with teeth equal bad idea.”
“Anyway, you got into the mirror by yourself- I was the one who got you out, remember?” Still, Tyler couldn’t really disagree with Steve Carrillo’s basic point. Walking across the dark fields toward the looming hills, he was growing less and less fond of his own plan every minute.
Tyler hoped it was a good omen that once they reached the foothills they found the little road leading to the mine pretty easily. Flashlights cutting a bright path through the flurrying raindrops, they hiked uphill another mile or so until they reached the mine entrance, a frame of old timbers surrounding a hole in the hill just at the base of a rocky cliff. Someone had nailed some ancient gray boards across the front of it as a barrier, but there were no signs reading “Keep Out! This Means You!” or anything else Tyler had expected from Saturday morning cartoons. A sign over the entrance might once have proclaimed the mine’s name, but rain and wind and sun had scrubbed the wood clean long ago. All they had to do was duck beneath it and they’d be inside.
Thunder boomed in the distance. “Oh, hellz no,” Steve said, eyeing the mine entrance with dismay. “Oh, come on, look at that! That’s like where zombies live. We’re going… in there?”
“Zombies don’t live. But yeah, that’s where we’re going.” Tyler put down his backpack and took a swig from his canteen. “You can stay out here if you like. Your folks have probably called the sheriff’s office by now. They’ll give you a ride home.”
“If they even find me alive. You’re a knobweed, Jenkins. I’m not sitting out here and waiting for the wolves and bears to eat me.”
The thunder rumbled, closer now. Tyler was beginning to see flickering smears of brightness over the distant hills on the other side of Standard Valley, beyond Gideon’s farm. “So, the police or wild animals. Or the lightning could fry you,” said Tyler. “That’s always a possibility, too.”
Steve stretched his round face into an expression of extreme disgust. “I hate you so much, dude. I hate you worse than homework.”
“Yeah. I’ll go first.”
The first part was the easy bit-it was all stairs. They went carefully down the rough shaft on a succession of rickety old wooden ladders and steps until Tyler guessed they had descended about the depth of a four or five story building. Steve’s grandfather and his workers (or whoever) had built the old structures well; they creaked and swayed, but he never felt like they were at serious risk, although Steve Carrillo seemed to think they were only moments away from plunging helplessly into the Earth’s core.
“Look,” Tyler said, pointing his flashlight downward. “You can see the bottom. It’s like climbing a tree. Just pretend this is all sixty-four bit.”
“Does that mean there’s a giant gorilla out there somewhere who’s going to start throwing barrels at us?”
“Ho ho.” Tyler had reached what seemed to be the beginning of the main shaft. He flashed his light around. The final ladder ended in a natural cavern tall enough to stand in, although the three tunnels he could see opening out from there looked a lot less spacious. “Which way do you think we should go?”
“Hey, sure,” said Steve, “I’ll just release my cyborg tracking hound… ” His fingers rapidly flurried the A and B buttons of an imaginary video game controller, then he turned and frowned at Tyler. “Seriously, dude-that part is your job.”
Tyler crouched at the base of the ladder for a moment to consider. He cocked his head, even took a sniff of the warm, damp air. If this had been a movie he would have felt something or heard something and made a brilliant deduction, but this was not a movie. He flicked his flashlight beam along the walls.
“Batteries don’t last forever,” Steve reminded him, but it was the fearful undercurrent in his friend’s voice that made Tyler more uncomfortable than the words. Maybe Lucinda was right. Maybe he did jump into things. Maybe he shouldn’t have dragged Steve Carrillo into this crazy plan…
He did his best to think calmly. If this cavern was connected somehow to the Fault Line cavern a mile away at Ordinary Farm, he reasoned, then maybe he could feel the air moving in the one of the tunnels. He licked his fingers and gently moved them from side to side, then turned and did it again.
“There has to be a better way onto your uncle’s farm than this, Tyler, I’m serious,” Steve said. “It’s not like that English lady is going to kill him or anything. She needs him!” He liked this thought. “So we might as well go back to my house. Maybe my folks even know some place we can get into the tunnels closer to your uncle’s property
… ”
Tyler ignored him. He was doing his best to remember what he had felt when he had found the Fault Line the first time. It had been frightening, but it had also been a feeling unlike anything he’d ever had before. After a moment he walked to the first tunnel opening and stood in front of it with his eyes closed and his palms held out, then moved to the second and did the same.
“What’re you doing?” Steve asked. “Asking the spirits to help you? ‘ Eenie, meanie, chili beanie… ’ ”
“Shut up, dude. I mean it.” The third tunnel at first seemed no different, but after a few moments Tyler began to feel what seemed like a faint stirring of the air. It was enough to make up his mind. It had to be-the only other way would be trial and error. “This direction,” he said, then ducked his head and headed down the tunnel. He could hear Steve trudging after him, murmuring darkly to himself.
“How long have we been down here?” Steve had been trying to edge sideways through a narrow spot in the tunnel, but he and his backpack had stuck. Tyler loosened the straps so he could slip out of it. “It seems like days,” Steve complained. “This goes on forever!”
Tyler looked at his watch. “It’s ten. We’ve been down here about an hour.”
“No way. Only an hour?” Steve started to hoist the pack back onto his shoulders, then sighed. “I forgot about
the dark.”
“What do you mean, you forgot?”
“Going along in the pitch dark is real creepy, man. Even with flashlights.”
“Yeah. It’s like being in another universe.”
“Don’t say that out loud!” Steve dropped his pack and swore. “Seriously, I need a rest. How about a snack break?”
Tyler nodded. “When we get out of this tunnel into the next open cave.”
Whoever built the mine had mostly dug tunnels to connect a complex of natural caves, low, angular spaces walled with gray, shiny stone that looked a bit like melting ice cream, but in several places they opened out into chambers of various sizes, a couple of them larger than a small house. Both boys were glad not to have seen much in the way of snakes or spiders, but they had discovered that the caves housed plenty of bats, so when they reached the next large chamber Tyler had to look around for a while until he could find a place for them to perch without having to sit in too much bat guano. The atmosphere didn’t seem to put off Steve Carrillo, though: Tyler had only taken a couple of bites from his sandwich when the last of Steve’s was disappearing.
“So sue me!” Steve said when he saw Tyler’s expression. “All this exercise-I was hungry.” He took a huge, gurgling swallow from his canteen. “And thirsty!”
“Slow down on that water. I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to reach the farm.” Tyler was feeling better about his choice of tunnels now-the simple fact that they had been walking so long (when they weren’t crawling and dragging their packs through some of the tighter passages) suggested he had picked the right tunnel to reach Ordinary Farm.
“You never told me what we’re going to do when we get there.”
“I totally did.”
“You totally did not. It was all, ‘We have to find out what they’re doing!’ Like a cartoon. Like ‘Agent Aardvark.’ ” He frowned. “Which makes me Mugsy Meerkat. Crap.”
“Well, we do have to find out what they’re doing. Colin Needle and his mother.”
