by Tad Williams
“I fell in love with her when she was just a girl,” the old man said, his voice hoarse. “But I didn’t realize it. Only when she had grown up could I finally understand the feelings I had. But her grandfather-old Octavio-fought against us for so long. He didn’t want his hired hand marrying his granddaughter.” Gideon laughed. “That’s all I was to him! Just the young man he’d hired to help him grow crystals. It took years for him to accept me… accept us. And then, just when it finally seemed we would be happy, I lost her.
“I still don’t know what happened. I had left the farm for the evening and so had Octavio, who had gone off in his own car. The fool was too old to drive-we’d told him that a dozen times but he was too stubborn to listen. So we’d left Grace alone. When I came back late I found my grandfather-in-law’s car half off the driveway into the undergrowth, and Octavio himself lying beside it, dead of a heart attack. Grace was gone-I couldn’t find her anywhere. I don’t know whether she’d found her grandfather and just wandered off in a daze or it was just a terrible coincidence.
“Then Simos found her tracks in the dust of the silo-tracks that disappeared at the Fault Line. Worst of all, the Continuascope was just lying there, as if she had dropped it before she stepped into the Fault. Without it, she was lost with no hope of finding her way back
…”
Gideon fell silent again for a long moment, but she could hear his breath hitching. Lucinda, like others in the room, found herself shifting uncomfortably. The poor man!
“But now, thanks to you,” Gideon said suddenly, “I know for certain that she is still alive-that she’s trying to communicate with me!” He stood up, throwing his arms wide. “And we have a baby dragon! Tyler and Lucinda, bringing you two to Ordinary Farm just might be the best thing I have done in years!” He reached out and captured them again, pulling them into an uncomfortable, bony hug. The ancient bathrobe smelled like talcum powder and sweat. “Bless you both! Please come back to us soon-next summer for certain-and perhaps you could even visit us at the holidays.”
Ragnar seemed to take pity on the two of them being squeezed until Lucinda thought she would pass out. “They will miss their train, Gideon,” he reminded their host.
The old man loosened his grip. Behind him, Mrs. Needle was smiling, that smile of hers that never reached her eyes. “Oh yes,” the dark-haired woman said. “Do take care of yourselves until we see you two again. It is such a very dangerous world out there.”
That doesn’t sound like a warning, Lucinda thought. It sounds like a promise.
Mrs. Needle was making sure she and her brother knew they had an enemy, one who would not give up the farm without a fight.
“Oh, we’ll definitely remember to stay safe,” Lucinda said, then looked right into the frigid gray eyes and smiled back at Mrs. Needle. It was tentative at first, but after a moment it became much easier. And Lucinda’s smile didn’t reach as far as her own eyes, either.
Chapter 31
The Real World
T yler persuaded Ragnar to take the old truck on a detour to Cresta Sol farm before they went to the station. As they drew up outside, with Ragnar fretting about them missing their train as nervously as their mother had all those weeks ago, Carmen, Steve, and Alma spilled through the white iron gate and ran up the road toward them. Tyler and Lucinda got out of the truck.
“We came to say good-bye,” Tyler told them.
Nobody was smiling. Carmen’s long hair was blowing in her eyes.
“You have to promise us,” Tyler said. “ Us this time, not just Ragnar and Mr. Walkwell. You have to promise to keep the secrets. Otherwise… ”
“We know,” said Alma.
“We talked about it,” said Carmen.
“Yeah, we understand,” said Steve. “Because otherwise everything will change. For everyone.”
“We swear we won’t tell anyone,” said Alma, her little face solemn. “Not ever. No matter what.”
“Don’t forget to write, Lucinda,” Carmen said. “And you guys come back soon. So we have someone we can talk to about it!”
None of the children could think of much else to say-their hearts were too full. They all hugged, then Tyler and Lucinda climbed back into the truck.
“Did that all really happen?” Lucinda asked. “All of it?”
“You keep saying that.” Tyler was looking out the train compartment window at the fields and houses going past and trying to think. There was still so much about the summer he didn’t understand. “Of course it happened.”
“But look,” his sister said. “Look, Tyler!”
“I am looking.”
“That’s not what I mean.” She rapped her hand on the window. “Look at what’s out there-the real world. That’s where we live. Not in a television show, not in a movie, not in a… a storybook! Why us?” She leaned in close, lowering her voice so that the man in the baseball cap and the lady with the bag full of knitting materials across the aisle couldn’t possibly hear. “Tyler, I rode on a dragon.”
Tyler grinned. “You dangled off a dragon, screaming like a baby, you mean.”
“Shut up! You know what I’m saying!” She lowered her voice again. “You jumped into a mirror. You went to the ice age and came back with a cavegirl. She’s from, like, a million years ago or something, and she has a crush on you, Tyler!”
“That’s bull! She does not. Besides, what about Colin the Criminal? Seems like he rather fancies you, old chap.”
Lucinda grabbed his arm so hard it actually hurt. “Don’t change the subject-you know what I’m saying. How can we just go back to school like none of it ever happened?”
Tyler was quiet for a long time. “We’re astronauts,” he said at last. “No, we’re secret astronauts.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, astronauts go to the moon, or Mars, or whatever, then they come back and they still have to go to the grocery store, right? They still have to mow the lawn, and, I don’t know, eat and go to the bathroom and stuff, right? They can’t just say, ‘Hey, I walked on the moon, I don’t have to eat and drive a car and do normal stuff anymore.’ Right?”
“I guess so. But everyone knows about them. They get parades and people interview them on television. They don’t have to pretend like everything’s normal-because everything isn’t normal. It isn’t!”
To his astonishment, Tyler saw that Lucinda’s eyes were full of tears. After a moment’s hesitation he grabbed her hand. “No, it’s not,” he told her. “But that’s the secret part. Like spies. They can’t come back from a spy mission and say, ‘The most interesting thing happened when I was in the underground hideout of Professor Evil Guy
… ’ because it’s secret, right? Just like the farm. And we have to keep it that way.” He squeezed her hand before letting it go. “It’s ours, Luce-Ordinary Farm is ours now. We belong there, we earned it, and no one can take it away from us. And we’re going back too. But only if nobody finds out.”
She took a deep, ragged breath. “But I’ll go crazy if I can’t talk to anyone about it.”
“We’re asking the Carrillos to do the same thing, aren’t we? But they have each other and you have me. You can talk to me. It’s our secret, yours and mine.”
Lucinda sat back against the seat. She rubbed her eyes dry with the hem of her shirt. “But what am I going to tell my friends when they ask me what I did this summer? And what are we going to tell Mom?”
Tyler put his knees up on the back of the seat in front of him and pulled a notebook out of his backpack. It was covered with scribbled notes. “We’ll make stuff up. Right now, in fact-we’ve got a couple of hours. We’ll write it down and that way we’ll always be… what’s that word?”
“Consistent.” His big sister looked at him with some thing like admiration. “Wow, Tyler, you really thought about this.”
“We have to, Luce,” he said, finding a blank page. “This is the most important secret in the world.” He looked up. “Now, did we go on hayri
des?”
Mom was only a couple of minutes late. She was wearing sunglasses and looked very tan-kind of glamorous, Tyler had to admit. She was wearing a skirt, too, which wasn’t all that usual.
“There you are!” she squealed, running toward them. She wrapped her arms around them-she was shorter than at the beginning of the summer, Tyler couldn’t help noticing, which meant he was taller-and gave them a hard hug.
“Oh, I missed you two so much! Did you have a good time? Why didn’t you write?”
“We did,” Lucinda said. “Well, I did. About four or five times-didn’t you get them?”
“I was traveling, remember?” She hugged Tyler. “Look at you! My big man!”
“You look great, Mom,” Lucinda said as she got her own individual squeeze. “Really tan.”
“Come along, you can tell me all your stories. I’m double-parked so we have to hurry!”
Mom stopped in front of an unfamiliar, shiny car. She lifted the keys and pushed a button and the trunk popped open.
“Whoa,” Tyler said. “Is this new?”
Mom giggled like a girl and waved her hand. “Oh, it’s not ours. I borrowed it from Roger because mine’s in the shop.”
“Roger?” Lucinda frowned as she got in. “Who’s Roger?”
“I met him at the retreat. He didn’t even show up until the last week-lucky me I was still there!” She laughed again. “He’s so nice. You’ll love him!”
Lucinda looked at Tyler. Tyler looked back. He rolled his eyes, and his sister seemed to know just what he meant: Mom was on another one of her “This time everything’s going to be great!” freak-outs, which usually happened when she met a new man. Well, it was better than coming home to find her depressed and crying all over the place.
“So tell me about your summer!” Mom said, weaving in and out of traffic in a way that made Tyler wish he had a joystick. “Did you have fun? Did you learn things? What did you do?”
Tyler looked at Lucinda and smiled. She smiled back. “Pretty much what you’d expect on a farm,” he said. “Chores. Animals. Early to bed, early to rise. Oh, and hayrides-right, Luce?”
“Oh yeah,” Lucinda agreed. “Lots and lots of hayrides.”
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