by Tad Williams
“I don’t know how to get back through the other gate,” said Mr. Carrillo. “And I’m not leaving you here.”
Hearing his voice clearly excited the manticore: it sat up straight and swiveled its dead stare between Ragnar and the truck.
“Do either of you have a knife?” the Norseman asked.
“A knife?” Mr. Carrillo didn’t quite understand. “Not in the truck … ”
“Here.” Tyler pulled out his jackknife. His heart was pounding like a marching band, a thousand terrified thoughts ping-ponging through his mind. He slowly rolled down the window and tossed it toward Ragnar. At the movement the manticore let out a strange bark and jerked back a step. The knife bounced in the dirt and landed near Ragnar’s feet.
“A very small blade indeed,” the Viking frowned as he squatted slowly and picked it up. “But that can’t be helped.” The manticore watched him intently, its tail rattling back and forth through dust and dead leaves like a hissing snake. It was all Tyler could do not to shout for help-but who would hear them, anyway?
“Get back in the truck, Ragnar!” Mr. Carrillo said.
The bearded man only shook his head. “No. If I move he’ll come after me-he will strike soon in any case. Get the children away.” He began moving in a wide slow circle, trying to pull the manticore’s attention away from the old pick-up.
Lucinda stirred beside Tyler. “I’m sick,” she moaned. “I want to go home.” She didn’t seem to have any idea of what was happening. An instant later the manticore struck at Ragnar, reaching for him with a speed that utterly shocked Tyler. Even Ragnar was barely able to avoid the creature’s clawed fingers-as he danced back the front of his shirt flapped open, torn to tatters.
“Drive, curse you, Hector!” Ragnar shouted. “Get these children away from here…!”
But even as he spoke the manticore leaped toward him, snarling in a curious, high-pitched way. Ragnar fell back but the thing was faster than he was, and although he hacked at the creature with Tyler’s knife, whatever blow he dealt it did not stop it or even slow it down. Man and monster went down in a struggling heap, arms and legs and lashing tail. A moment later one of them rose. The snarling noise had been replaced by something else, something closer: Mr. Carrillo was desperately trying to restart the stalled truck, but the engine turned and turned without catching.
The manticore, limping and snarling, began to circle Ragnar’s motionless body, examining him before beginning to feed. An instant later the pick-up’s engine fired.
Bwam! Tyler and Mr. Carrillo shouted in terror as something smashed down on top of Mr. Carrillo’s truck, a huge impact as if another car had dropped out of the sky. The windshield spiderwebbed and sagged inward. What was it? Tyler felt as if he couldn’t breathe. Another manticore…?
The male dragon Alamu’s crocodilian face appeared as its long, slender neck dipped down from the top of the car, just outside Lucinda’s window.
First the manticore-now this…? was all Tyler had time to think, then the dragon opened its jaws wide and let out a bellowing screech that made his skull rattle. Lucinda woke up, took one look out her window and started screaming; Mr. Carrillo was shouting words in Spanish that Tyler couldn’t understand.
The dragon leaped off the truck and landed on the ground with enough force to kick up packed earth. The security lights made Alamu’s scaled shine light flecks of gold but he was not posing to be admired, he was coiling to strike. An instant later he spread his wings and launched himself at the manticore.
Alamu hit with the full force of his body, then his wings bellied with air and pulled him up into the air, knocking the surprised manticore away from Ragnar’s motionless body. An instant later Alamu dropped back down again. Even as the manticore reared up, the dragon seized the beast’s head in his long claws and forced his enemy to the ground beneath his greater weight. The manticore thrashed but could not escape, the end of its spiny tail pounding the ground like a mace.
“Why the hell are these things trying to eat us?” screamed Mr. Carrillo. “Where did they come from?”
“Tell you later.” Tyler was so frightened he was afraid he was going to pee himself.
Mr. Carrillo got the truck into gear at last and it leaped forward across the dirt. For a moment Tyler thought they were going to crash through the fence but then the truck spun, dirt flying, and headed back to the spot where the two impossible beasts were locked in a screaming death-struggle. When they reached Ragnar’s motionless body, Mr. Carrillo stood on the brakes. The car slid to a halt, then he opened the door and leaped out.
“Help me get him in!” he called to Tyler.
Every second out of the car felt like death was at Tyler’s shoulder-he was fighting back tears of terror. Ragnar’s body was terribly heavy, but at last he and Mr. Carrillo managed to heave the big man over the tailgate and into the bed of the truck. Ragnar groaned but did not open his eyes.
“Go!” Tyler screamed to Mr. Carrillo as he jumped into the back seat next to his sister. Lucinda looked like she wasn’t certain whether she was awake or having a nightmare. “Go, go, go!”
The truck threw dust as the wheels churned, then it skidded and slalomed around the two creatures’ struggle, which seemed to have suddenly entered a new and less violent stage, the dragon bending over the smaller manticore almost tenderly, sniffing at it as it twitched on the ground.
“I think the electric fence might be off!” Mr. Carrillo shouted. “But don’t touch the doors of the car, just in case-don’t touch anything!”
“What?” How could they avoid touching the seats they were sitting on?
Tyler didn’t have long to wonder: a couple of seconds later the pick-up truck hit the fence and smashed through, collapsing it into a tangle of wire mesh and broken poles. For a second the truck threatened to get stuck, but then it jounced over the wreckage and they were out into the open spaces beyond.
“Head for the main outside gate,” Tyler said as he looked back. To his relief, Alamu was watching them but showed no signs of following. The dragon stretched his head up on his long neck to observe them, then bent once more to the crumpled, motionless form of the manticore.
Chapter 22
A Thing of Gears and Stars
His mother watched from the front door as the Mongolian herdsmen went past with wheelbarrows full of manticore parts. The dead creature was too massive to move easily in one piece, but Mr. Walkwell had some kind of superstitious objection to burning it, so they were trundling the body off to bury it somewhere in the hills.
“One of Gideon’s most foolish, dangerous ideas, those animals,” she told Colin. “I told him but he wouldn’t listen. ‘They’ll kill someone,’ I said, and I was quite nearly right. It still may happen.” She shook her head. “Such a pig-headed man.”
Colin Needle had stopped watching the clean-up-the blood made him feel dizzy and sick to his stomach, and of course more than a bit guilty because of his own involvement. This should have been his moment of triumph, now that the Jenkins children and the Viking bully had been thrown off the farm, but for some reason Colin didn’t feel as happy as he thought he should. “How is Gideon doing?” he asked, peering into the parlor. The old man was sleeping, or appeared to be, his mouth wide open and his eyes shut. “Any better?”
Patience Needle’s mouth tightened a little, but she did her best to smile, an effort Colin appreciated because he saw it so seldom. “I think so. I’ll have him up and around soon.”
Colin felt his chest loosen. When she talked about Gideon, it was with real puzzlement and concern in her voice-that proved his illness couldn’t be anything to do with her! He wanted to celebrate this happy state of affairs, somehow, but both he and his mother were going to be very busy today. Already she had made several calls to Gideon’s lawyer, Mr. Dankle. “I am not pleased, Mr. Dankle-not pleased at all,” he heard her tell the lawyer at one point. Dankle was out of town, apparently, and whatever she wanted from him would have to wait. Some legal question that
needed answering because of Gideon’s illness. Colin guessed, or some insurance thing. He didn’t really care too much.
And why should he? His enemies had been driven from the field and Colin Needle himself was now the boy with the best toy in the whole wide world.
In fact, Colin knew he had been very lucky. When he heard Tyler Jenkins shouting about the dragon’s nest and Gideon’s precious Continuascope he had been certain that things were going to get bad quickly. He had only used his computer to open the manticore cage to cause a distraction-how was he supposed to have known that Carrillo fellow from next door was waiting outside the inner gate, right in the monsters’ way? It had been sheer dumb luck that only one manticore had got out, and even greater luck that Alamu had been close enough to notice the ruckus and nasty enough to feel challenged. Colin knew that the manticore’s death was a terrible loss-one of only six in the world!-but he also knew that Walkwell and the rest could get rid of a dead manticore. A dead Hector Carrillo would have been a lot more difficult to hide. In fact, it chilled him how close he had come to getting somebody killed.
But I’m fighting a war to save this farm, he reminded himself. In wars, there are casualties. And the prize-the prize is worth it!
Including, of course, the best prize of all, the ability to use the Fault Line, and everything that would come with it-and that ability was now Colin Needle’s.
The Continuascope was still where he had left it in the library the evening before on his way back from the dragon’s nest, stashed unceremoniously beneath one of the dusty chairs. Colin lifted the device up to the morning light that streamed through the high windows. It was a beautiful thing even if you didn’t know what it could do, a complicated but graceful arrangement of golden celestial rings, starry pale crystals, and shiny gears in many sizes, some big as salad plates, others smaller than the tip of Colin’s finger. Everything in him longed to try it out but he knew he wasn’t ready.
In the past year he had managed to hunt down more of Octavio’s journals, scattered in the oddest places in the house: it had taken much persistence, but as he had tracked down piece after piece the search had also given him new insights into Ordinary Farm’s creator. Something had clearly made the old man more than a little paranoid about his discoveries, enough that he seemed to have intentionally hidden his writings in all kinds of places. Either that or he had been senile at the end and had just forgotten where he had left them. But even after close study of all the material he had so proudly managed to assemble, Colin barely began to understand the ideas in Octavio’s work, let alone anything relating to how to use the complex instrument that was the Continuascope.
Patience. It wasn’t just his mother’s name, it was Colin’s word to live by. No point in getting himself lost in the Fault Line by being in a hurry. The Jenkins kids were gone now, after all. He could take his time.
He began by cleaning every inch of the Continuascope gently and thoroughly with a soft cloth, q-tips, and alcohol and, for some of the very hard-to-reach places, a little canister of compressed air that he kept for cleaning keyboards and computer parts. Considering all the time it had been in the dragon’s nest, Octavio’s device seemed to be in amazingly good condition; under the dirt it appeared largely undamaged.
When he got hungry Colin trotted back across the grounds to the kitchen and helped himself to some leftover dinner rolls, as well as some pickles and slices of ham from the refrigerator. He also grabbed a pitcher of cold milk, then carried it all back to the library so he could keep working.
It was early afternoon by the time he finished cleaning. Colin touched the crystals in their tight baskets of coiled golden wire. They might have been a little warm to his touch, but that might also have been his imagination because he was very excited. After so long, after so many nights hunting journals and information, and after the mind-numbing fight to understand the things Octavio Tinker had written-and after he had twice risked his life too, searching the dragon’s nest-all that work, and now here he was, holding the actual article in his own trembling hands.
The most powerful thing in the world-and it’s all mine.
Colin surprised himself-it was as if someone else had thought it, not him. But it was true, wasn’t it? Governments around the world would pay millions-no, billions!-for this thing, and even more for Ordinary Farm itself. Look at that crook Ed Stillman-he had brought half a million just to buy what he thought was a live dinosaur egg. How much would he have been ready to pay if he had known it was from a real, live dragon…? And what would he give for the ability to travel to any time in history…?
No. Colin did his best to clamp the lid on such thoughts. Maybe later, when he had assumed real control of the farm, he could think about all the different possibilities; now he had more important things to do. He would study and study and study, and when he was ready he would take the Continuascope and then he, Colin Caiaphas Needle, would make the Fault Line his own.
Chapter 23
At Cresta Sol
Ragnar groaned and straightened up in the seat. Tyler was frightened by the blood on the Norseman’s face and chest, but Ragnar felt himself carefully, then declared, “Nothing but swipes.” He touched the back of his head. His hand came away bloody. “But that thing rattled my brains against the ground. What happened?”
When Tyler told him, Ragnar grinned through the drying blood. It made him look frightening and fierce. “Then the worm saved my life because the Manticore would have had my guts. I had never thought to owe a dragon thanks, but I do.” He looked at Lucinda. “Your sister?”
“I don’t know. She’s sick.”
Ragnar leaned over to touch Lucinda’s forehead, nodded, then saw the mess he had made of the seat behind his head. “I apologize, Hector Carrillo,” he said. “My blood is in your car.”
Mr. Carrillo didn’t say anything, but Tyler could see the man’s eyes were still wide with fright and he was hunched over the wheel as he drove like the devil himself might be chasing them.
Tyler didn’t understand how sick his sister really was until they reached the Carrillos’ farm. As Mr. Carrillo pulled up in front of the house Lucinda, who had been leaning on Tyler’s shoulder for most of the trip, began to slide off the seat. He clutched her arm and shook her but she was out cold, although “cold” was the wrong word to use-Tyler could feel the heat coming off her like a light bulb that had been burning for hours.
“She’s really hot,” he said, struggling to keep her sitting upright, but his sister was as limp as a rag doll. A very heavy rag doll. “She’s got a bad fever!”
“The Carrillos will see that she has what she needs,” said Ragnar, but he didn’t sound very convinced. It was strange to see the huge Norseman at a loss for what to do, but it was also frightening.
Tyler was so busy trying to get Lucinda to wake up that he hadn’t noticed Mr. Carrillo had got out of the car until he returned with his wife Silvia. Mrs. Carrillo looked almost as worried and frightened as Tyler felt, but she took control quickly. “Lift her out and carry her inside,” she told Ragnar. “Hector, get me some water and some towels.”
As they brought her into the house the Carrillo children came running to see what was going on.
“Is she all right?” Carmen asked. “What happened?”
“Your father said she’s got a fever. Go get a pair of your pajamas and a bathrobe,” her mother said. “She’s going to need a change of clothing-everything she’s got on is soaking wet.” When Carmen was gone and Ragnar had put Lucinda down on the couch Mrs. Carrillo wrapped Lucinda’s head in damp towels, then stuck a thermometer in her mouth.
“You couldn’t warn me?” she asked her husband.
“Phone never works over there.” He frowned. “Should we take her into Liberty?”
Mrs. Carrillo scrutinized the thermometer. “A hundred and one. Not too bad. I’ll sit with her. If it goes up any we’ll take her in.”
Lucinda’s eyes fluttered open. She looked around but it didn’t seem like
she could focus. “Tyler…?” Her voice was a cracked whisper.
“I’m here, Luce. You’re going to be okay. We’re at the Carrillos’ house… ”
“Something… in… g-g-g… ” She closed her eyes, defeated for a moment, then tried again. “G-Green… house… ”
“We know. You were out in the garden near the greenhouse when something made you sick. Do you know what it was?”
“ Greenhouse…!” she said, almost crying. The effort seemed to exhaust her. She closed her eyes and seemed to fall asleep again.
Tyler held his sister’s hot, damp hand. Seeing her like this frightened him, and for the first time in a long time he wanted his mother. “Man,” he said to no one in particular. “What happened over there?”
It got worse before it got better. Lucinda had to be carried off to Carmen’s room twice during the evening to have her sweat-soaked clothes changed. She moaned and thrashed for much of the evening, sometimes talking to a Tyler who wasn’t there (instead of the Tyler who was sitting next to the couch watching worriedly); other times she seemed to be speaking to the dragons-once she even asked Desta to pass the tea. And a few times she seemed to be talking to something else entirely, something that frightened her badly. “No!” she kept saying. “Don’t want to! Don’t want to go!” During those moments it was all Tyler could do to hold onto her slippery hand.
At last Lucinda’s skin began to cool and her sleep became less disturbed. She also stopped talking.
Mrs. Carrillo examined the thermometer. “Just under a hundred. I think she’ll be okay. You kids, off to bed. Steven, get Tyler a sleeping bag and an air mattress out of the garage-and don’t forget to shake out the spiders!”
Tyler laughed. “I’m so tired I could sleep in a whole nest of spiders.”
Grandma Paz, who had been helping Silvia Carrillo nurse his sister, crossed herself hurriedly. “Don’t say such a thing-you will bring the susto on yourself.”