The Secrets of Ordinary Farm of-2

by Tad Williams

  “We cannot find him,” Ragnar said. “We have been looking everywhere since just after you left this morning. Everyone on the farm has been searching and we have looked in every place we can think, all through the house, the barns, the hills, the pens.” He shook his head. “But Gideon has disappeared. He is gone.”

  Chapter 10

  Leaving the Garden

  “… and he was so scary, Tyler!” Lucinda whispered. “Like

  … like the devil or something!” His sister couldn’t stop talking about Kingaree, the mysterious Fault Line escapee, but although Tyler was impressed and even worried by her experience it seemed like the least of their problems just now.

  The farm folk were assembled in what Tyler and Lucinda called the Snake Parlor-the big front room with the stained glass window of Adam and Eve being tricked in the Garden of Eden, the serpent running all around the sides of picture as if to draw a noose around them with its body. Tyler couldn’t help wondering whether gathering beneath a glowing picture of Satan was really the best choice at such a time.

  The rain that had pattered on his window and the roof a short time ago was gone and already the day was growing unbearably hot again. Everyone was talking at once and everyone sounded frightened-and no surprise: Gideon was not just their protector but the only thing that connected most of these people to the present century. Tyler couldn’t even imagine what Sarah and the Mongolian Amigos and all the others must be feeling.

  Mrs. Needle stood at the middle of the room frowning, her face hard as carved ivory. “You must all be quiet and listen now,” she announced. “Do you hear me? Silence!”

  “Why? You are not Gideon!” cried Hoka, one of the Amigos. “You are not the master of the house!” His two silent companions looked impressed that he would talk back to Mrs. Needle but they also looked as if they wished he hadn’t done it.

  Colin Needle had a strange look on his face too, Tyler thought-a bit green around the gills, as Tyler and Lucinda’s mom liked to say. Guilty conscience about something? Tyler wondered.

  “Hush, all of you!” Mrs. Needle’s voice was sharper this time. “Don’t be foolish. Nobody is claiming to be the master here. But someone must take charge… ”

  “Then it should be Simos,” said Ragnar loudly from the doorway. “Walkwell has been here longer than any of us. He has always been Gideon’s right hand.”

  Mrs. Needle rolled her eyes in disgust. “This is not about who is in charge, it is about finding Gideon…!”

  “Have you searched the whole house?” Tyler demanded. “It’s miles long! Why are we wasting time blabbing? Gideon could have fallen down somewhere where we can’t hear him calling…!”

  A lot of the others murmured in agreement, but Mrs. Needle was not having it. “Of course we have searched the house, Master Jenkins, and since it is large and full of unused rooms we will continue to do so. Leave that chore to those who know the place-myself, Sarah and her kitchen help, and Caesar… ”

  One of the “kitchen help” suddenly rose from her seat. It was the tall African girl Azinza, swaying like a tree in the wind.

  “I saw Gideon in a dream!” she cried.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” hissed Patience Needle. “This is quite out of order. Sit down, you foolish girl…!” Mrs. Needle turned away from her, leaving Azinza open-mouthed. “Nobody has seen Gideon since supper yesterday. Caesar says his bed was not slept in. We will organize into groups. The women will search all through the house while the men… ”

  “But I tell you I saw him!” cried Azinza. “I saw what happened to Mr. Gideon!”

  Mrs. Needle turned on her with cold fury. “Enough of this foolishness…!”

  “You have no right to stop her speaking,” said Ragnar, moving up beside Azinza. For a moment he and Mrs. Needle stared at each other and the pure hatred between them made the hairs stir and lift on Tyler’s neck. At last Mrs. Needle waved her hand in disgust and turned away. “Go on,” the big man told Azinza. “Tell what you saw, girl.”

  “This is not foolishness,” she said, but she could not quite look Patience Needle in the eye. “My people used to come to me for my dreams. They called me goddess.” She shook her head angrily, her eyes still bright with tears. Tyler felt sorry for her. Gideon might have saved this young woman’s life, but he had also pulled her away from everything she knew and believed. “Last night, I had a strong, strong dream,” she began. “A telling dream like the kind I used to have back home. A great creature with many fingers-as many fingers as the apple tree outside has branches-held Mister Gideon. It hurt him and he fought against it, but he was not strong. And then he… he… ” Azinza’s face crumpled. “He began to melt away…!”

  She tried to say more but could not. Weeping, she let little Pema help her to a chair. Babble and upset filled the room.

  Mrs. Needle turned on Ragnar. “There! Are you happy to fill these frightened peoples’ heads with such nonsense?” Whatever order there had been a moment ago was gone. Everyone in the Snake Parlor was talking at the same time.

  Lucinda sidled up. “I’m scared, Tyler,” she whispered. “Where could Gideon have gone?”

  “I can think of a few places.” He was thinking about the washstand mirror and the shadowy world on the other side of it, but he wasn’t going to talk about it out loud: Lucinda was the only person in the house who knew. Still, could Gideon have got into it somehow? Did it have something to do with Mrs. Needle taking the washstand mirror out of the library?

  What better place to hide someone you don’t want found? Tyler thought. Just knock them out and shove them through the mirror…!

  The more he thought about, the more reasons he discovered that it might be true. But how could he tell the others when he’d been hiding something so important for over a year…?

  His thoughts were interrupted as a sudden quiet fell on the room. Mr. Walkwell stood in the front doorway, his narrow, bearded face gray with dust.

  “I have been down to the Fault Line,” the farm’s overseer announced. “The bad news is there is no sign of Gideon there-the lock is still on the outside, but I opened it and went down to look and found no recent marks or footprints. I suppose that is also the good news, because if he had entered the Fault Line there would be nothing we could do to follow him. It has now been locked again. No one else go near.”

  “Time to begin the search, then!” said Ragnar before Mrs. Needle could say anything. “Hoka, Jeg, the rest of you men, come with me.”

  “What if we don’t find him?” Lucinda asked. The faces of the others showed that they had been wondering this too.

  It was Ragnar who answered. “That is too hard a question for today, child. While we search things will go on as they have. Mr. Walkwell will run the farm, Mrs. Needle will… will see to things in the house.”

  Patience Needle favored him with a poisonous smile. “Thank you for giving me permission to do my job, Ragnar Lodbrok.”

  “Enough arguing.” Mr. Walkwell broke his silence. “Back to searching. Search everywhere again. Gideon is old and he might be hurt. Waste no time.” He turned and walked out the door, hooves clicking on the wooden entry hall floor. Most of the men of the farm followed him-but where, Tyler wondered, was Colin Needle? He spotted him a moment later, talking urgently to Lucinda, which bothered Tyler more than it should have. He didn’t want the pale young man being friendly to his sister. It was just… creepy. Creepy and wrong.

  “Hey, Needle,” he called. “Needle!”

  The older boy shot him a resentful look. “What do you want, Jenkins? I wasn’t talking to you.”

  “I think your mother knows something about Gideon disappearing-something she isn’t telling us.”

  “Tyler,” Lucinda said warningly, “don’t… ”

  He ignored her. “Don’t lie to us, Needle. You know she had something to do with it, don’t you?” Tyler took a step nearer; to his satisfaction, Colin took a step back.

  “Just shut up, Jenkins!” sad the older boy
. “You don’t know anything. You’re busy ruining everything while people like me are trying to save this place.”

  “Stop it, both of you!” Lucinda cried, but Tyler was just getting started.

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “Save the farm… like when you tried to sell Meseret’s egg to the person Gideon hates most in the world? When you pretty much gave away the secret of this place? Yeah, you really care…!”

  Tears actually came into Colin Needle’s eyes. He balled his fists and for a moment Tyler thought the older boy might take a swing at him, but instead Colin turned and hurried out of the Snake Parlor toward the front door.

  Tyler stared after him. “What’s his problem?”

  “You’re a creep, Tyler Jenkins,” Lucinda said. “He came to me for help! He wanted someone to listen to him! And he might have had something important to say about Gideon, but no, you had to be… you had to be… ” She turned and stomped out of the room, headed for the kitchen. As the door fell shut behind her, she shouted back, “

  … A big creep!”

  “Huh?” Tyler said it out loud, even though he was now the only person left in the room. “I don’t get it? What did I do?”

  Chapter 11

  Weregild

  “Oh, sweet! Careful, now…!” Lucinda laughed a little nervously as Desta took another carrot from her hand. Lucinda had just discovered to her astonished delight that Desta’s long tongue was as blue as a summertime sky. “Will it stay that color?” she asked.

  Ragnar looked down from the landing above where he was hosing out the cockatrice cages. “I do not know. Her mother and father are not that way, but they might have changed-I don’t remember what color tongues they had as young worms.” He laughed. The sound startled the displaced cockatrices, which hissed at him from their temporary wire cages.

  “Where is Haneb today?” Lucinda asked. “I thought he was the one who took care of the dragons?”

  Ragnar shrugged as he swept the water toward the drain in the concrete floor. “Simos has taken him and your brother and others to walk the hills and canyons. There are many trees and deep spots there which could hide… someone.”

  A man’s body, he had almost said. Because now that he was three days missing, Ragnar, Lucinda, and everyone else knew Gideon Goldring might very well be dead. A cloud of fear hung over Ordinary Farm.

  Lucinda swallowed hard. “Ragnar? What if Uncle Gideon doesn’t come back? What if we never find him? What… what happens next?”

  Who will get the farm? That was what she was really asking. Who will take charge of this strangest, most wonderful place on earth?

  When the Norseman had all the creatures back in their cage he latched the door, then pulled off the hood of the hazard suit he wore to protect himself from the creatures’ poisonous saliva. He clanked down the stairs to join Lucinda as the cockatrices stepped awkwardly around the puddles, hissing at each new outrage to their familiar home-sawdust and sand now clean and new, their droppings washed from every surface.

  “What happens if he’s really gone?” she asked again.

  “Here you make a testament, yes?” Ragnar asked her. “A… will? Writing down how your treasure will be shared after you are dead. But first someone-one of the city-chiefs, what are they called…?”

  She thought for a moment. “Police? Government?”

  “Government, yes. They will send someone, as Gideon always warned us. And how can we let that happen? How can we explain anything about this place? No, child,” Ragnar said seriously, “believe me, it will be much better if we find Gideon alive. Much better.”

  Ragnar stood now and watched, shaking his head, as Desta wrapped her sky-blue tongue around Lucinda’s last carrot and pulled it into her mouth. The dragon crunched contentedly, her long teeth flashing as her jaw opened and closed, then eyed Lucinda to see if there was any more. Haneb had been right-Desta definitely liked carrots.

  No more today. Lucinda tried to make each thought clear and individual. That’s all. But I’ll bring you more carrots soon. Would you like that?

  For a moment the amber eyes bored into her, then the dragon, small but still bigger than Lucinda, turned and walked away in awkward dragon-fashion, stilting on its back feet and the elbows of its folded wings. But just before Desta pulled herself up onto her nest of straw and old mattresses, Lucinda caught a whisper of happy, greedy thought, faint as a breeze through branches. It was wordless compared to her own, but still had a meaning she could understand.

  Yes. More. Bring more.

  For a moment Lucinda thought she’d imagined it, then her heart seemed to spread wings inside her chest.

  As the cart rolled along Lucinda watched the hills shimmering in the mid-afternoon heat. “Do you think that creepy Kingaree guy has anything to do with Gideon disappearing?” she asked suddenly.

  Ragnar shook his big, shaggy head. “I do not believe it but it could be true. He is a crafty, wicked man.”

  “Everyone keeps telling me that-okay, I believe it! But what did he do?”

  Ragnar stayed silent for a while as the horse slowed to a stop beside Elliot’s Lagoon, as Gideon sometimes called it. The sea-serpent who lived in the small lake didn’t need regular feeding-the water just had to be restocked with fish twice a year-but Mr. Walkwell and the Norseman made a point to check in on Elliot every couple of days. Just now, though, Ragnar wasn’t even looking at the water.

  “Things were better before the fire,” the big man said suddenly.

  “The fire that burned down Gideon’s laboratory?”

  He nodded his head. “Grace had been gone for several years. Gideon used his shiny toy almost every day to go into the Fault Line and search for her, but he would not admit that was what he did.”

  “Shiny toy… You mean the Continuascope.” The thing Tyler was always going on about.

  Ragnar nodded again. “He called it ‘collecting.’ He never found Grace, but instead he brought back animals… and people. I was one of the people he collected. It was a madness-but it was a kind of madness I understand.” Ragnar curled the reins into a loop in his massive hand. “I had a friend once in my old country whose family was killed by raiders from down the coast. From that moment on my friend was a dead man too, but still walking. He swore he would kill two of the raiders for every one of his that had been taken from him. He put aside the blood-gold we call ‘weregild’ so his neighbors and relatives would not have to bear the burden for what he planned to do, then gave away everything else he had, sang his death song, and set out in a small boat… I hear he killed thirteen of the raiders’ tribe before they brought him down, one less than the two for each of his he had promised.” Ragnar abruptly laughed. “I am sure that his spirit is still angry about that!”

  “That’s a horrible story!”

  “Is it?” He seemed surprised. “I fear I don’t understand this place very well, this time. But after Grace was lost, that was how Gideon’s spirit was-like my friend’s, restless and angry.

  “In that first year or two Gideon brought back many animals and many people-Patience Needle with her son in her belly, Sarah the cook, Kiwa and his cousins. Haneb came with two small dragons during that time-he was only a child, but already his face was scarred. And Gideon found me, too. And of course, the other animals! Gideon told me that before she vanished, Grace had begged him to help her use the Fault Line to save some of the animals that had been lost from the earth-the great worms, the one-horns, all of them-and so after he lost her Gideon did his best to fill the farm with all the animals they had discovered together.

  “Then one wild night Gideon came back from the Fault Line with a ragged, bloody stranger-that was Caesar. We all hurried out to welcome Gideon back, but then we heard a great baying from the Fault Line cavern-I swear for a moment I thought Gideon brought back the Fenris Wolf itself! I thought the end of days was at hand!”

  For a long moment the bearded man grew silent, as if seeing that night again before his eyes. “It was not the great wolf, t
hough, but only a dog,” he said at last. “But, gods, what a dog! A monster thing that rushed out after Gideon and Caesar and would have pulled them both down and killed them. But Simos was faster. You should have seen him, child! Do you think I am strong? Walkwell seized that dog with one hand around its neck and threw it so far away that it did not rise after it had fallen.

  “And then Kingaree appeared, tall and dark of face as Loki the mischief-maker himself. He scarcely looked down at the dog’s body as he passed, but stared only at Gideon and Caesar. I did not speak English well then-I had only been speaking your tongue for a year-but I understood what he said next: ‘ You have something of mine.’ ”

  “What was he talking about?” Lucinda asked.

  Ragnar was squinting against the sun. A rolling, silvery something appeared for a moment at the center of Elliot’s Lagoon. He shook his head. “He meant Caesar.”

  “What?”

  The big man shrugged. “I do not know the history of this land well, but I know there was a time not long ago here in America when they still had thralls-what you call ‘slaves.’ Caesar was a slave who had escaped. Kingaree was the man who was trying to bring him back.”

  “Oh, no! What happened? Why did Gideon bring someone so terrible back to the farm?”

  “He didn’t-not by choice, anyway. Gideon had made one of his devil’s bargains with Caesar to help him escape his pursuers, but somehow the Fault Line stayed open longer than usual and Kingaree followed them back. At first Kingaree would not believe what had happened, but at last he came to see the truth.”

  “Then what?”

  “Gideon promised Kingaree that if he behaved himself he could live on the farm too and be safe… but that was making a devil’s bargain with the devil himself. Jackson Kingaree stayed only until he had learned what he could. Then, on the night of the laboratory fire, he slipped away. We have not seen him since-at least not until you met him in the street. Me, I hoped we would never see him again.”