by Tad Williams
Lucinda followed the procession for several more yards as it was joined by other streams of tiny creatures, beetles and spiders and more pillbugs. She also discovered that it was not the only such line-several other streams were winding through the leaning rows and tangled plants, but they all seemed headed in the same direction. Lucinda was beginning to wish she had Tyler with her, or even Colin Needle, but both boys had left the house hours earlier.
She saw a lump lying only an inch or two away from the little procession she was following. Ick, she thought -a dead bird. But they’re all just walking past it! Don’t bugs, like, eat dead stuff? Where are they all going?
She straightened up until she could see where all the lines seemed to be converging-the old greenhouse, which loomed from the tangle of wild plants like a rock in an angry sea. Its high, peaked roof and all the glass made it look a bit like an abandoned church. The iron frame that held the glass, once painted green, had long ago become a ghostly rust-colored skeleton, except for the roof and the ornamental weathervane, both mostly scorched black. In some places the bars had even melted and changed shape, sagging like taffy. It almost looked as though there had been a fire here, like the one in Gideon’s lab that so obsessed her brother. But it didn’t just smell like a fire: Lucinda was still very aware of the sweet stink she had noticed earlier, as though something much larger than any mouse or bird lay rotting nearby. Was that what was drawing all the bugs, some big thing like a dead raccoon in the ruined greenhouse? But that didn’t make sense-if all the little creatures wanted was to scavenge on a dead animal, why had they marched past the bird as if they didn’t even notice it?
A dead cat, lying sprawled at the base of the greenhouse as though it had fallen from a great height, nearly made Lucinda turn around and head back to the house, but instead of clearing up the mystery it only made it stranger, because it was surrounded by the bodies of dozens of smaller creatures, mostly insects and birds, while the streams of insects and other tiny creatures wound through this accident scene without even slowing, vanishing at last into cracks in the greenhouse glass or holes in the ground at the base of the old structure.
“What the heck is in there?” Lucinda asked, talking out loud again because she was badly spooked. She stepped over the bodies, most of which seemed quite recent, until she had nearly reached the dusty glass of the greenhouse. If she hadn’t been able to hear Azinza singing something only a hundred feet away, with Pema shyly chiming in, she might have turned and bolted. Just the smell was beginning to get to her, but she also knew Tyler would be look at her like she was the girliest girl in the world if he found out she had retreated without even examining at the greenhouse. Still, she wasn’t going to be stupid about it. She turned and shouted to the two women at the other side of the garden.
“Hey, Pema, Azinza!”
Tall Azinza turned, shading her eyes. “Hello, Lucinda!”
“There’s something really strange about this greenhouse,” she called. “A funny smell… and there are all these dead animals
…!”
“What?” Azinza said something to Pema. “I can’t hear you!”
Lucinda was struck by a sudden worry. Was Mrs. Needle making some kind of witchy poison in there? But surely she would have done a better job hiding the fact… “Could you come over here and look?” she called to the two kitchen women.
“We come to you!” Azinza called back, then led little Pema toward the space between the rows. From a distance and despite the different colors of their skins, they looked like a mother and child.
As she waited for them Lucinda stared at the scorch-marks and the charred husks of vegetation that lay around the base of the greenhouse like a shadow. How could you have a fire just here, but not have it affect the plants growing inside the greenhouse? As Azinza and Pema came down the garden toward her she leaned closer to the greenhouse, and tried to see through the dirty glass. The inside was so full of leaves that she couldn’t make out anything, as if a crowd of green people were covering the panes with their hands to keep outsiders from looking in. Just beside where she stood one of the panes had been pushed a little way out of its paint-flaking iron frame by the exuberant plant life inside. Without thinking she reached out to push the square of glass back into place and it tilted and fell out, breaking into two pieces on the ground.
For a moment Lucinda could only stare at the pale, wispy plume that snaked out of the opening-was it smoke? Was something burning in there? Then the wind changed direction and swirled the powdery cloud into her face. She gasped in surprise and accidentally sucked some of it into her nose and mouth-dusty, gritty, itchy… Her skin felt as if it were on fire. “Oh, God,” she cried, but could scarcely force the words from her throat, “my face! Help, my face…!”
“We are coming!” Azinza shouted, but the African woman seemed to be getting farther away, not nearer. Eyes streaming with tears, cheeks burning, Lucinda blindly reached out her hands. Why wouldn’t anyone help her?
She fell to the ground. Hands pulled at her, trying to drag her back onto her feet again, but Lucinda barely noticed them. Her throat was on fire, and her thoughts were drifting away into the darkness like dying sparks.
Chapter 19
What to Do with an Angry Dragon
The first thing he realized was that something was holding him by one arm in mid-air, like a giant about to grind his bones into bread. Dizzy, he opened his eyes and squinted up through the swirling dust, but whatever had him caught was not the dragon-he was caught by something that was pinching his wrist quite painfully. He kicked his feet but there nothing beneath him, and no matter how he stretched he couldn’t find anywhere to perch-he was caught like a fish on a hook. And where was the dragon? He was still in one piece, so it clearly hadn’t been able to reach him. Was it sniffing silently around for him even now?
It’ll be dark soon, he realized. If he didn’t get himself down before then, nobody was going to find him-nobody but the dragon. Colin was here, he abruptly remembered. That little cheater followed me! He wanted to call, but he didn’t dare make that much noise.
Whatever held him seemed to be wrapped around his wrist. Instead of trying to get his feet onto something, he used all his strength to pull himself up with his trapped arm until he could reach up his free hand above his head and try to find something else to grab. He had never tried to do a one-handed pull-up, and it was all he could do not to scream in agony at the effort it took, but at last, after scrabbling desperately he found a horizontal fence post in the tangle; now that he could pull with both hands he lifted himself up until he could get his feet onto one of the madrone branches that held the nest. When he had regained his breath he took his weight off the arm that had held it so long and managed to twist it loose from whatever had held it. Only when he had finished did he understand that what had saved him was the unicorn-hair bracelet Jeg had tied around his wrist. He reached out again and eased it loose from the old-fashioned television antenna on which it had caught. He wasn’t going to leave such a good-luck charm behind, especially when he still had to find a way to get out of the nest without the dragon getting him.
Something made the clutter of junk above him bob and groan a little as it shifted, and for a terrified moment Tyler felt sure Alamu was looking for him there, but the shape above his head was much smaller than the winged monster-in fact, it was only a bit bigger than Tyler himself.
“Is that you, Needle? Come down here so I can slug you.”
The shape moved and the tangle swayed a bit, so that Tyler had to shield his face from a cascade of small metal objects. “Oh, yeah, Jenkins,” said Colin’s voice. Tyler still couldn’t quite see him. “And why don’t you shout a little louder to make certain the dragon hears you?”
“You little snot. You followed me!”
“I already told you, Jenkins, I would have found it first if you hadn’t got a head start…!”
“Liar! Where’s the Continuascope?”
“You didn’t find i
t?” Colin sounded surprised by Tyler’s question-in fact, he seemed genuinely pleased.
“You know I didn’t. You probably climbed down and looked while I was knocked out.”
Colin snorted. “Not likely. First of all, I can’t even see you … ”
A wide shadow flicked by overhead and they both looked up. “Oh, man,” Tyler, said, “he came back-the dragon came back! Crap!” He did his best to work himself farther down into the shifting heaps of dragon treasures without dislodging anything major, especially anything that might be keeping him from falling out the bottom of the nest. It was painful-a dozen things dug into him or stabbed him as he shoved himself down into the clutter, a kettle, old cans, a bent, chewed cookie sheet…
Alamu landed with a sudden crash that set the entire nest rattling and swaying and almost made Tyler shout in terror. The dragon-stink, musky and harsh as ammonia, got right into his nose and made it hard not to cough or sneeze. The beast roared, then roared again, so close it made Tyler’s skull rattle. As the echoes rolled down the valley it was all he could do to cling to a bouncing branch as bits of the stacked hoard tumbled away beneath him. He began to clamber as quietly as he could toward a safer place, ending up perched at last in an awkward hammock of rusted cyclone fencing.
A moment later the dragon’s snout abruptly stabbed through the junk above Tyler, coming up a only couple of feet short. The fence tipped and slid downward until Tyler was hanging on by his fingers, eyes shut tight; any moment he expected to feel the creature’s scorching breath, to be toasted like a boy-sized marshmallow, but instead after a few more moments Alamu retreated, huffing with frustration. Tyler could hear the creature scrunching back and forth above him, a predator almost the size of a small plane. He stayed as motionless as he could but his arms were aching and his sweaty fingers were losing their grip. Then Alamu stopped moving. A long silence followed.
He’s listening, Tyler thought, pulse pounding in his temples. What if he can hear my heartbeat…?
Alamu’s snout suddenly smashed down through the scrap-metal once more, his long crocodilian jaws snapping only a foot away from Tyler’s head. For a horrible, endless instant he stared right into the dragon’s orange eye as Alamu stretched toward him, but the creature’s neck was wedged between the remains of an office chair and a shopping cart-where the heck had Alamu found a shopping cart? -and the deadly jaws couldn’t quite reach him. Tyler swung his body as far to one side as possible. Alamu snapped at him again, but for the moment the tangle of madrone branches and junk kept the monster from reaching Tyler.
“Colin!” he screamed. “Help me! He’s right on top of me! Colin! Colin…?”
Nothing. If Colin was still there, he wasn’t going to advertise the fact.
Alamu pulled his head back. The shopping cart came loose and slid down a few feet to fill the space. The mass above Tyler shifted once more and he had to swing to the other side and grab a branch, then find something to put his feet on, because a moment later the entire length of cyclone fence Tyler had been sitting on earlier tore free beneath Alamu’s weight and fell to the ground below, bouncing and slithering a short distance down the hill and almost taking the dragon with it. Alamu clambered heavily to another part of the nest, hissing in irritation.
“Colin, please, get help! He almost got me…!” But still there was no reply. Had the older boy just run away and left him? Or was Colin Needle himself lying somewhere on the hill below the nest, unconscious or dead? “Colin…!”
Then just as Alamu again made his way across the swaying nest toward Tyler, something began screeching from the hillside down below, a terrible, painful sound like an animal caught in a horrible trap-for a terrible moment Tyler felt certain that Colin hadn’t just fallen, but had fallen onto sharp rocks and was loudly dying. Alamu hissed and his head snapped back, then the dragon leaped into the air. The nest pitched violently at his departure: it was all Tyler could do to cling where he was. The screeching noise echoed once again from below, then was drowned by the dragon’s angry, bone-shuddering snarl.
Tyler felt cold all over-the first scream had been one of the most terrible sounds Tyler had ever heard. If it had come from Colin, the dragon must have found him quickly, because now the hillside had gone ominously silent.
Tyler struggled through shifting junk until he could see down to the ground. For a moment he thought make out something moving through the trees much farther below, something that could have been the pale blue of Colin Needle’s shirt, but it was impossible to tell for certain. Tyler called softly but no one answered.
What if he’s dead? Even if I get out of here myself, how will I explain what happened to Colin? Gideon will kill me! Not to mention what the witch will do to me for letting her son get eaten by a dragon …
Junk shifted a few yards away. A can worked its way loose and plummeted out of sight. A few more things moved and settled. Something was getting closer. He almost called out, hoping it was Colin, safe after all, then realized it was much more likely to be Alamu trying a more stealthy approach. Tyler braced himself as best he could and held his breath, but nothing could stop his heart from pounding, pounding, pounding… “Tyler,” someone whispered. “You are here?”
“Ooola!” He didn’t think he’d ever been so happy to hear someone’s voice in his entire life. “Oh, man, Ooola, what are you doing here? Did you see what happened to Colin? Is the dragon gone?”
She stuck her head down between a casserole dish and a discarded paint can so he could see her. “Me-I made a noise,” she explained. “Animal noise. Did you hear?”
“That was you? The dragon went right after it.”
“Yes, he chase, but not see me. I throw rocks, he chase more.” Breathlessly she grinned at him. “I save you?”
“Save me? Yes!” Tyler tried to find a more secure place to hang on-the nest was still shifting in a very disturbing way. “But we have to get out of here before the dragon comes back. Do you understand? We have to go now.”
“Understand.” She stuck out a dirty hand.
“Can’t reach you from here,” he said. “I have to climb up.” He began working his way upward through the clutter. “How did you know I was here?”
“Was looking for you. Followed Colin because I thought he looked for you.” She frowned. “But when I come here, he is running back to house instead. I hid-he not see me. Then I come to see where is Tyler.”
“Running back to the house, was he? Thanks a lot, Needle, you creep.” With the girl’s help he managed to scramble up one of the heavy tree branches that supported the nest-she was at least as strong as Tyler himself, although she was a few inches shorter. “Wow. You really saved my life, Ooola.”
“Me, you,” she said simply. “You, me.”
Tyler hoped she just meant she had returned the favor he’d done for her, not that she was going to follow him everywhere from now on. He clambered down out of the tree with shaking legs and made his way carefully down the slope, examining the dozens of pieces of the horde that had worked their way loose from the nest and tumbled out. Nothing that looked anything like a Continuascope was on the ground or visible in the parts of the Alamu’s chaotic hoard he could see, nor had he run across anything like it while he was in the nest. “We’d better get out of here,” he said at last, trying not to be disappointed. He was lucky he wasn’t dead or crippled. He didn’t think he’d be bragging much about this adventure. “I’m sure not going back in there to look some more.”
“You lose?” Ooola asked. “What is gone?”
“Nothing really. But I came here looking for something and I didn’t find it… ”
Ooola nodded as if she understood something now. “Shiny thing. Like this.” She made a circle the size of basketball hoop with her arms.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. What do you mean?”
“Colin. When I see him run down hill, he carrying shiny thing.”
Tyler stared at her. “ Shiny thing…?”
She moved her fingers
in a series of vague shapes, as if trying to draw circles and spokes and protrusions in the air, but, “Shiny thing,” was the only words she had to describe it.
Despite his aches and pains and numerous cuts and bruises, Tyler took off down the hillside path at a trot, scarcely even keeping an eye out for Alamu anymore. Ooola caught up with him within a short distance. “Why you run? Help sister?”
“Because I have to catch Colin. He has something of mine.” He slowed for a moment as he finally processed what she’d said. “Why would I run to help my sister?”
“Because she very sick. That why Ooola come find you.”
“What?”
“Your sister Lucinda very sick. Fall down in garden, not talk. Ragnar carry her to bed. She white face, make bad noises.”
“Oh my God.” Tyler now hurried downhill even faster, his pace so brisk that several times he almost slipped and hurt himself badly, but now he was not just furious with Colin Needle, he was also terrified that while he had been out taking stupid risks, something really bad had happened to Lucinda.
Chapter 20
Taking Tea with Desta
Lucinda was in a cave that was also the farmhouse, sitting on one side of a table set in the middle of a room full of photographs. On the far side of the table, teapot held in a clawed foot, sat the young dragon Desta, smiling kindly.
“It’s really rather simple,” Desta explained. “You’ve been eaten alive. It happens all the time. My mama tells me that sometimes it’s easier just to swallow a deer or a cow whole than struggle with carrying it back to the nest. More tea?”
Lucinda nodded, although she did not remember having had any tea in the first place.
“It’s made with roses,” Desta said, pouring for both and then picking up her own cup. “Very good for girls. Girls like roses. You like roses, don’t you?”