by Tad Williams
“Half a million,” Colin corrected her.
“So for a while at least Ordinary Farm is not… broken?” Mr. Walkwell smiled. “Breaked?”
“Broke,” Tyler said. “No, definitely not broke. But isn’t Stillman going to come back for it?”
Ragnar laughed grimly. “Stillman will be back, but I think he does not care so much about this. For him, it is a little bit of money only. Still, it will make Gideon happy.”
“ I got that money!” Colin said shrilly. “If anyone’s going to give it to Gideon… ”
“Shut your mouth or I will shut it hard.” Ragnar glared at him. Colin stopped talking. “So what do we do, Simos?” the big man asked.
“Um, I’ve got an idea,” said little Alma Carrillo. Everyone turned in surprise to look at her. “I mean, if you can’t tell Mr. Goldring about how the money really got here, why don’t you tell him something else? Tell him those bad guys were trying to buy the farm or something.”
“Hey, sis, you’re pretty sneaky!” said Steve Carrillo, obviously impressed.
“For half a million?” Tyler shook his head. “They wouldn’t believe it.”
“A bribe,” Lucinda said. She had sat down, and sounded about ready to fall asleep. “Tell Gideon that they tried to bribe you, Mr. Walkwell. That you went along with it to find out what they knew, and then you took the money.”
“Gideon will like that,” said Ragnar slowly. “He will like the idea that Stillman tried to steal our loyalty and failed-and that we kept the gold for him.” He frowned. “But what will we do with the boy?”
Tyler swallowed. He hated himself for what he was about to do, but it made sense. “Don’t do anything. We need Colin. If we turn him in he’s not going to keep his mouth shut, and then everyone’s going to be in trouble-me, Lucinda, the Carrillos, even you guys. We all kept secrets from Gideon.”
“Congratulations, Jenkins,” Colin said. “You have a brain in that head after all.”
“Shut up, Needle. It works both ways. If you tattle on us, then we won’t just tell Gideon what you did, we’ll tell your mother.”
“Wh-what?” Colin Needle looked like he’d been punched in the stomach.
“I know you didn’t tell her. You’re scared of her, aren’t you? So just shut up.”
“You don’t know about me!”
“I know enough.” Tyler said. “Now shut up while Ragnar and Mr. Walkwell decide what to do.”
For a long moment no one spoke. The Carrillos shuffled their feet. Colin stared sullenly at the ground.
“I think we must keep quiet,” Mr. Walkwell said at last. “Otherwise the Needle boy will be sent away. Those on the farm should stay on the farm. If not, they become a different problem-like Kingaree.”
There was that name again, Tyler thought, the one even Ragnar was afraid of. What kind of monster was this Kingaree? What had he done?
“So-it seems we make the devil’s bargain, as it is called,” said Ragnar. “Everybody will stay silent about what they know-but Simos and I will be watching you always from now on, Colin Needle.” The big man glared at Colin for a moment, then shook his head. “Still, we have one other problem to solve. The egg. Gideon thinks Alamu took it. Now we have it again.”
“We will think of something,” Mr. Walkwell said. “But let us think while we are taking these children back to their beds. For them this night has gone on for far too long.” He looked at Tyler and Lucinda and his normally gravel-toned voice was almost gentle. “You are leaving us tomorrow, after all.”
“But… what are you going to do with that… that dragon?” Carmen Carrillo asked. “Is it dead?”
“No, just overcome by sleep medicine,” Mr. Walkwell told her. “But she does have a deep cut on her wing from that thrice-cursed flying machine. It will need many stitches. Ragnar, can you find a big enough tractor over in Canning to carry her back to the Sick Barn?”
“Carry her back?” Tyler was amazed. “Where can you find anything that big?”
“You would be surprised,” Ragnar said. “Meseret is not so heavy as she looks. Her bones are hollow, like a bird’s.”
“But first, I suppose, you should take the other devil machine and return these children to their own home,” Mr. Walkwell told Ragnar. “It will be dawn soon.”
The Carrillos walked back to the farmhouse yet again, this time with Tyler, and silent Colin, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. Mr. Walkwell carried exhausted Lucinda on his back, her head nodding. Ragnar had the backpack with the dragon’s egg in one hand and the briefcase full of money in the other.
“Seems like you guys must have had a pretty interesting summer,” said Steve Carrillo.
“You could say that,” Tyler agreed. “Yeah, I guess ‘interesting’ would sum it up pretty well.”
Chapter 30
One in the Oven
“W ell,” said Gideon Goldring, wrapped in a clean bathrobe and looking like an ancient king as he stared down the length of the breakfast table, “I knew it was going to be a big morning, what with our guests heading back home today-but I didn’t expect things to be quite this exciting.”
The briefcase full of money was in his lap. Meseret’s egg sat in a nest of towels at the center of the table as if it was the main dish. The official story, constructed in haste, was that the she-dragon had sensed where her mate had taken the egg, broken out of the Sick Barn in fury, and recaptured it. The injury to her wing from the helicopter blade was now a battle wound from a scuffle with Alamu.
Lucinda didn’t like having to lie, especially about things this big. Unable to look at Uncle Gideon, she turned and looked at Colin Needle, who was also avoiding Gideon’s eye. Or perhaps it was the gaze of his mother, sitting at Gideon’s right hand, that he was avoiding. Whichever was the case, Colin had a pale, sickly look, and for the first time since Haneb had told her of Colin’s role in the theft of Meseret’s egg she felt sorry for the older boy. He had been stupid and reckless and arrogant, but she believed him when he said the farm was important to him.
Gideon looked at the briefcase again, then at the egg, and shook his head in disbelief. “My goodness. I can’t get over it. A dragon fight, attempted industrial espionage, and I slept through it all.” He turned to Ragnar. “How is Meseret?”
The blond-bearded man laughed in a hollow way. He was still wearing the same dirty, sweat-stained clothes from the night before. “She is sleeping. We’ve given her more medicine. The tractor man should have a loader and a trailer ready this afternoon-I’ll bring them back after I take the children to the train station. We’ll have her back in the barn by tonight.”
“And the damage?”
“We will be able fix everything, I think.” Mr. Walkwell was leaning in the doorway, dressed and looking almost normal again. He had not bothered to put his newspaper-stuffed boots back on: his hooves stuck out the bottom of his pant legs. “But it will take time to replace the things for animal medicine and put up new shelves in the Sick Barn. Most are ruined.”
Gideon suddenly laughed. “I was going to say it will take money we don’t have-but we do have it now.” He patted the briefcase. “Mercy me. As you can tell, I’m quite surprised by all this!”
“We all are, Gideon,” said Mrs. Needle with chilly sweetness. “We all are!”
Another long silence dropped over the table. Lucinda wondered how long it would be until Mrs. Needle squeezed the entire story out of Colin. She had drugged Lucinda and set a vicious, unnatural animal on Tyler-goodness only knew what else she could do. And she was Colin’s mother! No wonder he acted like he did. It turned Lucinda’s stomach.
“My only sadness,” Gideon said at last, “is that we have the egg back so we can study it, but we still we have no baby dragons and no idea of what the problem is.”
Something tickled Lucinda’s memory but stayed just out of reach.
“I wish you would let me take a hand, Gideon,” said Mrs. Needle. Her hand came to rest on Uncle Gideon’s arm like an ivory spider. “Aft
er all, Walkwell and the Norseman have failed three times now to keep an egg alive. There are charms that I know, herbs I could give her that ensure healthy births in cows and sheep and even poultry
…”
“There is nothing wrong with my care of these animals,” said Mr. Walkwell in a flat, angry voice.
Suddenly Lucinda remembered. “Wait! Maybe the egg isn’t dead!”
“What nonsense are you talking, child?” demanded Mrs. Needle. “Leave these things to your elders.”
“Just a moment, Patience,” Gideon said, shaking his arm loose from her clutch as he turned to Lucinda. “What do you mean?”
She told them how the dragon’s thoughts had seemed to stream through her mind as she rode her, most of them quite strange and alien, but some of them so clear that she felt sure she had understood Meseret’s meaning. “She was thinking about the egg-she didn’t think it was dead, just that it needed… something to start it moving.”
“Quickening, it is called,” said Mrs. Needle with a certain cold authority. “But what does that matter? The conceptus has been lifeless each time. There is no life to quicken.”
“It’s just… ” Now Lucinda was embarrassed. What had seemed so clear when she had touched the dragon’s thoughts now seemed strange and dubious when she had to explain it, especially with Mrs. Needle staring daggers at her. “It just felt like she thought there was something she was supposed to do. She thought about breathing on it-breathing fire. But there was something wrong with the shell. Meseret needs to eat something to make the shell… I don’t know, right. Some kind of dirt, or rocks, or… something.”
“Some kind of dirt?” Mrs. Needle summoned a tight smile. “Surely you misunderstood, Lucinda. After all, you were terrified-struggling for your life… ”
“Now, hold on, Patience,” said Gideon. “Animals eat all kinds of things to help themselves. Remember when we kept losing the first basilisks until we found out they needed rocks in their stomach to grind up the bones of their prey?” He turned to Lucinda and Tyler. “They eat mice and lizards and whatnot-just gulp ’em down, swallow ’em whole,” he informed them with a certain relish, then looked around the room. “Where’s Haneb? He’s the one that came with the dragons-if anyone’ll know, he will.”
“He did not want to come in to breakfast,” said Ragnar.
Of course he didn’t, Lucinda thought. He’s afraid he’s in trouble.
“I will find him,” said Mr. Walkwell. It was a pleasure to see him turn and go out the door so swiftly, so gracefully, instead of limping like an accident victim. She hoped he would keep his boots off from now on-around the farm, anyway.
Mr. Walkwell returned in only a few minutes with Haneb beside him, looking as though he was trying to become half his ordinary size.
“Haneb, what are you cowering for, boy?” Gideon boomed. “We need your help. We want to know about what the dragons ate back in your country.” He turned to Lucinda and Tyler. “It’s part of Turkey now, but a long time ago Haneb’s people, the Hittites, had much of it to themselves.”
Haneb still looked startled and fearful. “Ate?”
“Yes, ate, confound it! Did they eat stones? Anything unusual like that?”
He kept his head down as he thought, his hair masking the scars on his face. He had worked hard to avoid Lucinda’s gaze. “No stones,” he said at last.
“Nothing strange at all?”
Haneb winced. “I am sorry, Master Gideon. I am thinking.” He frowned and looked as though he was about to burst into tears. “Sometimes they ate Earth-flax…,” he said at last.
“Earth-flax? What is it? Describe it!” Gideon demanded.
Haneb waved his hands. “It is like ordinary flax, but it grows in the rock, not in the ground. You can make cloth of it and the cloth cannot be burned.”
“By God, he’s got it!” shouted Gideon, making Haneb jump so badly that only Mr. Walkwell’s steadying hand kept him from falling over. “ Asbestos! My goodness, Lucinda, you’re right!”
“I am?”
“The mother dragons must eat it to make their eggs fire-resistant. Then they heat the eggs up. Some animals lay eggs and sit on ’em-dragons turn on their internal flamethrowers and quick-roast ’em!” Gideon smacked the table and scowled. “But what are we going to do now? How can we find out whether it can still be hatched? We don’t have any asbestos. We ripped it all out a few years ago. Had to, or the inspection boys would have been down on us from the county.” He shook his head. “I wish we’d saved some…”
“Meseret won’t breathe on anything for a while, anyway,” Ragnar pointed out. “The medicine has made her sleep.”
“Perhaps we could make a sort of flamethrower from pipes and the blacksmith bellows Mr. Walkwell uses to fix the wagon,” Colin said excitedly. He seemed to have forgotten that a short while ago his entire future had hung by a thread. “But we’d have to paint the egg with something that would work as well as asbestos… ”
A throat was loudly cleared. Everybody turned to see Sarah standing in the doorway with Pema, Azinza, and the cavegirl, Ooola, who had spent the last several days following them like a wide-eyed feral cat. Ooola caught sight of Tyler and smiled a brilliant smile at him.
Sarah’s round cheeks were flushed red, but if she was embarrassed to be the center of attention she still spoke strongly and plainly. “If you want something warmed but not burned, why not try talking to the people who do that every day? The girls and I will take some of that very nice paper made of hammered metal… ”
“Aluminum foil, it is called,” said Azinza with queenly condescension.
“Yes, aluminum foil, and we will wrap it around the egg as though it was a plump turkey. Then we will put it in the oven where we can make it just as hot as we choose for as long as we choose.” She shrugged. “If it does not offend any of you, that is.”
After a moment’s startled silence, Gideon laughed and clapped his hands. “Wonderful! Sarah, you are a genius. That is just what we will do. I should say about four hundred degrees… ”
“Perhaps three hundred,” Sarah said kindly. “It will take longer, but be safer.”
“As you say, as you say.” Gideon struggled up from his chair, waving a piece of waffle on the end of a fork. “To the kitchen!”
Tyler and Lucinda were packed but reluctant to leave, although it was beginning to get close to the time when they’d have to. They hung around the kitchen, as did most of the rest of the farm’s inhabitants, all finding excuses to make frequent visits to the scene of the experiment. Even Haneb worked up the courage to come watch. At last, about two hours after they had first put the shiny bundle into the oven, Sarah cracked the door, peered in, and said, “I think something moved!”
She and Ragnar, both wearing oven mitts, wrestled the egg out onto a bed of towels on the floor and began to peel off the aluminum foil. A spiderweb crack had formed on the top. As Lucinda and her brother stared, it bulged in the center, and then a piece of the shell popped loose and fell to the towel. She could just hear the cracking of the shell over everyone’s murmuring voices. She wondered if the heat was necessary to make the egg brittle enough for the baby to break it.
Another piece fell off, then another, and a moment later the whole top of the egg cracked loose and swung outward as though hinged. A head snaked out that was no bigger than a small dog’s, a tiny version of Meseret with a blunter snout, but with colors that were brighter than hers, horizontal stripes of black and gold. The infant dragon pulled itself awkwardly out of the wreckage of the eggshell and walked a few staggering steps on its wing-pinions before stopping to rest, its throat pulsing in and out, its striped tail coiled around it. The golden eyes looked blearily around, then seemed to focus on Lucinda. For a moment, she could almost feel its simple, wordless thought: ?
No, I’m not your mother, she tried her best to tell the newborn. You’ll meet her soon.
Someone put a hand on Lucinda’s shoulder. It was Gideon, his hair standing up ag
ain so that he looked like a scarecrow that had been out in the wind too long. He had his other hand on Tyler and an expression on his face so strange that it gave Lucinda shivers. “I have not treated the two of you as well as I should have,” he said. Everyone in the kitchen fell silent. Gideon cleared his throat and continued. “But this… the young dragon we thought we’d never see… it makes me realize… ”
As Gideon fell silent again, someone made a noise like a grunt of pain. Lucinda saw Colin Needle standing half in shadow, half in sunlight from one of the big windows, watching. He had his arms wrapped tightly around himself and even from across the kitchen Lucinda could almost feel his envy and unhappiness.
Tyler suddenly stood up and said, “Uncle Gideon, I… I almost forgot to tell you. I found something in the library. And I wonder if it’s anything you recognize.” He held out his hand.
Lucinda, as surprised as anyone else, stared at Tyler’s fingers as they opened to reveal a bit of sparkle. Gideon said, “What? What is it? In the library, you say?”
“Yes. Near the portrait of Octavio.”
Gideon took the shining thing from Tyler’s hand and stared at it intently. Everyone in the kitchens craned their necks to see. Gideon held up the golden locket on its s voice little more than a hoarse whisper. “Was it hidden somewhere?”
Tyler hesitated, looking like he wanted to get something just right. “No, not hidden. It was right out in the open. Like somebody
… wanted it to be found.”
It seemed that all his years had caught up with Gideon at once. His lip trembled and his eyes were wet with tears. “It’s… it’s hers!” he said. “The necklace I gave her. Grace, oh, my beautiful Grace.” He lifted the necklace with trembling hands and kissed it. “It’s a sign-she sent it to me through the Fault Line somehow. It means she’s still alive and she wants me to know it.” Tyler was squirming uncomfortably, but Gideon didn’t notice. “Bless you, boy. Oh, thank God, you’ve brought me the greatest treasure of all-my Grace is alive.” Gideon Goldring crouched down and took Tyler and Lucinda by the hand. Lucinda couldn’t even look at him. She was ashamed of all the lies they were telling him. After a moment she pulled away, and Tyler did too, but Gideon was oblivious.
