by Tad Williams
“A susto’ s kind of like a curse or something,” Steve whispered. “It comes from being scared.”
“As it is, I will have to sweep your sister,” said Paz. “You too, maybe.”
“What does that mean?” Tyler whispered. “I don’t want to be swept.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Steve told him quietly. “You just lie down and she waves a broom over you. But don’t let her near anything bleeding. I fell off the monkey bars at school once and my leg was all bloody and she wanted to put powdered rattlesnake in the cuts.”
In fact, now that it seemed like Lucinda was going to be all right, Tyler was beginning to feel all his own cuts and bruises from his time in Alamu’s nest: every inch of his body seemed to have been scraped or poked; but Tyler’s idea of medicine did not include any kind of poisonous snakes. “So, yeah,” he told Steve. “That’s really interesting, about your grandmother and everything. Maybe I’ll just sleep in the front yard tonight.”
He didn’t, of course. In fact, Tyler woke up several times during the night, frightened for his sister, but each time he went out to check on her she was sleeping more or less peacefully on the couch with either Grandma Paz or Mrs. Carrillo asleep in Mr. Carrillo’s big armchair beside her. At last, sometime before dawn, he was able to fall asleep for good, but his dreams were full of tangles and snags and the sounds of something large trying to find him.
Tyler stood out in front of the Carrillos’ house and stared across the valley, but of course he couldn’t see anything of Ordinary Farm from here except the hills that surrounded it. Lucinda, who for the first time in two days had felt well enough to get off the couch, stood beside him wrapped in a blanket even though the day was a hot one.
“I’m telling you, there’s something in that greenhouse, Tyler. It was like smoke, or like… I don’t know. But it got into me and made me sick!”
“You just know that witch is growing poison apples or something in there,” Tyler said. “You’re lucky you’re alive.”
“It wasn’t just poison, though,” his sister said, shivering and pulling the blanket closer. “It was… like something got inside me. Into my head. I can’t explain. I can still feel it a little… ”
“Better be careful or Grandma Paz is going to get out her broom again.” Tyler squinted. “Anyway, you’re better now, so forget it about it.” He picked up a dirt clod and flung it as far as he could. “The real problem is Colin Needle.”
“Oh, Tyler, he’s not that bad… ”
He turned on her. “He is, Lucinda. He is. And he’s got the Continuascope, I just know it.”
“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” She was pale and distracted, still nowhere near her old self. “It’s been missing a long time and Uncle Gideon really needs it to look for Grace. Who cares who gets the credit…?”
“That’s not the point!” At least Tyler was pretty certain it wasn’t. “I don’t care about the credit, but don’t you understand-Colin has the Continuascope! He can use the Fault Line! And if his mother gets hold of it, she can use the Fault Line. They could go back into the past and make it so we were never born!” Something at the corner of his eye was distracting him, an odd shape flitting toward them across the pale blue sky.
“Colin wouldn’t do that,” Lucinda said.
“He’ll do anything his mother tells him to do,” Tyler said stubbornly. “It was probably her who sent him after it in the first place… ” He narrowed his eyes against the sun. “What is that?”
For half a moment he almost convinced himself it was Alamu streaking toward them down the sky like an avenging demon, but although it drew rapidly nearer the shape did not grow much larger and his heart began to slow to normal. Then he recognized it.
“Zaza!” He laughed and clapped his hands together as the little creature glided down toward them. “Look, Luce, it’s Zaza!”
“That’s nice. But I have to go lie down again.” She turned and made her way unsteadily back into the house. Tyler hardly noticed her go because the little winged monkey had landed on him and was climbing around on the top of his head, tugging at his hair and chattering softly, seeming as pleased to see him as he was to see her.
“Good girl! Heya! Good girl!” He laughed at the little tickling fingers. “Hi, Zaza! Whatcha doing? You came all the way over here, did you?” In other times he would have been terrified that the Carrillos would see-Silvia and Paz were only a dozen yards away in the kitchen, making dinner-but if they hadn’t said anything about the manticore and Alamu he didn’t think they were going to make much of a deal about Zaza. “What brings you here, Z?”
It was strange that the little monkey should come so far to see him when she had hardly spent any time with him at all this summer. The year before they had been almost inseparable, but this time she had stayed away except when Tyler was out on the edges of the farm. Why would she come to him out by the Reptile Barn or all the way over here at Cresta Sol but never come to the window of his room as she used to almost every night?
He sat down and let her climb all over him, petting her and playing with her, enjoying the softness of her velvety wings and her funny, inquisitive noises. She looked him in the face and pulled on his nose with her little fingered hands until he began to believe she wanted him to follow her, maybe even back to the farm.
“I can’t,” he said. “I got kicked out. But I sure wish you could talk like Lucinda’s dragons. I bet you’d tell me what’s going on back there.”
At last, puzzled and a bit distressed, Zaza flung herself into the air, circled Tyler’s head once, twice, chattering loudly, and then sped away back toward Ordinary Farm.
“Okay,” Tyler said to the Carrillo kids. “What’s going on with your folks? It’s been three days. Why haven’t they said anything about what happened?”
“About what happened where?” asked Steve without looking up from his GameBoss screen.
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Come on, man! Your father was driving the car-we had a manticore chasing us and a dragon on the hood. We almost died! Why haven’t they said anything about that?”
“I know,” said Carmen. “It’s scary. It’s like it never happened.”
“No.” Little Alma shook her head, her expression solemn. “It happened. You can see it on their faces. They’re just not talking to us about it.”
“But why?” Carmen flopped down on her bed, bouncing Lucinda who was resting there in a sleeping bag.
“Stop,” Lucinda groaned. “My head hurts.”
“Sorry. But your brother’s right-why haven’t they said anything? It’s creeping me out!”
Steve Carrillo stood up. “Dude, there’s a simple solution. Let’s go ask ‘em.”
They could hear Hector and Sylvia Carrillo arguing in quiet but strained voices as they approached the kitchen. “… To deal with it,” Hector was saying. “It’s pretty clear we have to do something
… ”
“Do something?” This was Mrs. Carrillo. “What are we supposed to do? You might as well try to do something about… about a volcano!”
Carmen knocked on the closed door. “Mom? Dad? What’s going on?”
A moment later it swung open. “We’ll talk to you kids later,” Mrs. Carrillo said, peering out. “Your father and I are having a discussion.”
“About the stuff we want to talk about. So why don’t you have the discussion with us?”
Mrs. Carrillo stared at the children for a moment. “All right,” she said at last. “Meet us in the living room.”
“Well,” Mr. Carrillo said when they were all settled, “as you may have guessed, this business with the Tinker farm, with those… dragons, or whatever those things were… didn’t come as a complete surprise to your mother and I.”
“Huh?” Steve looked stricken. “You mean you knew? About the farm and… and the kind of animals they have there?”
“But how?” Carmen asked.
“Because… well, because your great-grandfather knew Octavio and help
ed to build that farm,” said Hector. “And… there are some other things you haven’t… ”
Suddenly the front door rattled and banged open. Grandma Paz pushed through with two hefty bags of groceries, which she deposited on the floor, then turned around and closed the door firmly. “He’s coming again,” she told them. “That man. He was right behind me the whole way in from town.”
Hector Carrillo turned to Tyler and Lucinda. “You two stay out of sight or he might ask questions,” he warned, then turned to his own offspring. “Go with them.”
“Who are they talking about?” Tyler whispered as he and the others pushed down the hallway into Steve’s room.
“Who do you think?” Steve told him. “That crazy Stillman guy-the billionaire. He comes by every few days.”
Tyler heard the doorbell ring and the door open. He was curious-he had never seen Stillman in real life-and opened Steve’s door just a crack, but he couldn’t see anything of the living room. He could hear voices, though, and heard an unfamiliar one say, “I find it hard to believe you won’t take twice the market price for this place, Mr. Carrillo.”
“And I find it hard to believe you won’t take no for an answer,” said Hector.
They spoke for a minute or so more, but their voices became quieter and Tyler could make out only a few words, then the front door was firmly closed.
“Why does he keep trying to buy our house, Papa?” Alma asked when they were all back in the living room. “We told him we won’t sell it.”
“Because he’s the kind of man who thinks he can always get what he wants just by throwing money at it,” Hector said, but the lines between his brows deepened. “I’m beginning to think he might be right.”
Sylvia Carrillo sat on the sofa, pinching the bridge of her nose. Tyler, horrified, looked from one to the other and said, “You’re not really going to sell to him, Mr. Carrillo, are you? Not to Stillman. He’s Uncle Gideon’s worst enemy!”
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if Gideon Goldring won’t even talk to me.” Hector Carrillo banged his beer down on the little round table. “How many times can I beg the man to talk to me? How many times do I have to let him treat me like a dog?”
“But it’s not really Gideon’s fault!” said Lucinda. Everyone turned to look at her.
“What do you mean?” Tyler asked.
Lucinda shook her head. “I’m not sure-but it’s not! I mean, there’s something really wrong with him… ”
Grandma Paz chose this moment to emerge from the kitchen with a glass of tomato juice and plop herself down on the couch next to her daughter. “So,” she asked, “have you and Hector told them about the mina frecuentada yet?”
“Mother!” Silvia Carrillo almost screamed it.
“Whoa! Doesn’t that mean ‘ghost mine’ or something? asked Steve. ‘Sounds like an amusement park ride. What are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” said his father sternly. “Your grandmother just likes to tell crazy old stories.” He gave Paz a very hard look. “It’s her age.”
Sylvia stood up, an expression of pain and weariness on her face. “Enough for tonight,” she said. “Have you all forgotten about the evening milking? The cows must be full to bursting. It’s time for work! We’ll finish this later.” But she looked as if she hoped they would never, ever return to that particular subject.
Chapter 24
Mr. Koto’s Letter
Days passed at Cresta Sol without anything changing. July turned into August, the end of their summer vacation loomed, and still Lucinda and Tyler remained banished from their great-uncle’s house and land. Ragnar met with Mr. Walkwell at the Cresta Sol property line every few days, but according to the ancient Greek things had not improved: Gideon Goldring was still sickly and still doing pretty much what Mrs. Needle told him. She did not even allow the exiles’ names to be mentioned in Gideon’s presence.
Ragnar slept in the Carrillos’ dairy barn and helped Hector and Silvia with the farm. Lucinda and Tyler hung around with the kids. It was fun to have time with Carmen and the others, but Lucinda was beginning to feel like the old Ordinary Farm had been a dream and now they had woken up.
I could have been spending all this time getting to know Desta, learning how to really talk with the dragons, Lucinda thought. Is anyone giving her carrots? She enjoys them so much! Haneb must be so busy with us gone, especially Ragnar-will he have the time to pay some extra attention to her…?
Tyler flopped down beside her. He looked around the empty living room as if there might be spies hiding behind the sofa cushions, but it was late afternoon and everyone was out of the house doing chores or running errands. “Grandma Paz-she knows a lot more than she’s telling,” he said in a dramatic voice.
“Well, duh.”
“What does that mean?”
Lucinda sat up carefully-her head sometimes still pounded if she moved too quickly, but otherwise she was feeling better, although she still had no idea what had happened to her that day in the garden. “ Everybody around here knows more than they’re telling-except us kids. That’s the whole point. The place is full of secrets.”
“Well, I’m going to find out what she’s hiding. You can tell she’s dying to tell somebody… ”
Lucinda sighed loudly. “And then what? You’ll ride Eliot the Sea Serpent up Kumish Creek, throwing hand grenades until Colin Needle and his mother surrender?”
“What is your problem? Why are you being like this, Luce?”
Tears came into her eyes. “Because I’m tired of listening to you talking about all the things we’re supposed to be doing when we’re helpless. I wish we’d never learned about this stupid place. It’s all been just… trouble. And scary, dangerous things. I want to go home.”
Tyler stared at her as if she’d announced she didn’t want to have Christmas anymore. “You’re crazy, Luce.”
“Well, I’m tired,” she said, “and I still feel lousy!”
“But you’re totally in love with those dragons…!”
“You don’t get it, Tyler. I don’t care anymore! It’s too hard! Even the grownups can’t make this work-what are we supposed to do? We’re kids!”
“But the grown-ups can’t make things work because they’re grown-ups!” Tyler shouted.
Lucinda rolled her eyes and said, “I’m going to go take a nap.”
Tyler followed her down the hall to Carmen’s room. He was angry now, too. “So you’re just going to give up? We’ve got a few days of our summer left-that’s all. And you want to let the Needles have the farm and all the animals and do whatever they want while we go back home-while we go back to school?”
“What else can we do?” Lucinda knew she was being hard on her younger brother: he wasn’t feeling as lousy as she was, so of course he was frustrated. But she really did feel exhausted-whatever had caused the strange fever was not entirely gone. Suddenly it was all she could do to stumble to her bed.
When Lucinda woke up it was mid-afternoon. The sheet stuck to her sweaty skin and the air in the Carrillos’ house was hot and close. She wanted to take a shower, but she needed fresh things to put on afterward or getting clean was pointless. She rummaged through her jumbled suitcase for unworn socks and underwear until she had emptied the suitcase completely, but she still couldn’t find anything clean. Because she had been sick she had let everything go, but now it seemed she would either have to find out how to use Silvia’s washing machine or just wear dirty stuff. She began to search through the suitcase’s various zipper pockets, hoping a clean pair of underpants might have strayed into one of them somehow. To her surprise, she found something in one of them, but it wasn’t underwear.
She lifted out the old, yellowed envelope with the Madagascar postmark. It was the letter she had been holding when Mrs. Needle burst into her room their first night back on the farm, the night Tyler found the box mailed to Grace Goldring. Lucinda had tried to gather up all the letters when Mrs. Needle came in, but several had fallen onto the
floor. This one must have gone under the bed or something, and Pema and Azinza had found it when they were packing her suitcase and just stuck it in.
She climbed onto the bed. The envelope was still sealed-the letter had never been opened and Grace had never read it, which was a strange thing to think about. Did the person who wrote it wonder why she had never replied? Lucinda couldn’t help wondering what Doctor Grace Goldring had really been like. In all those pictures in the memorial parlor she looked very calm, very pretty, very smart-exactly the kind of woman Lucinda wanted to grow up to be. Now here in Lucinda’s hands was an unopened letter addressed to the woman, sent from half a world away, in a box of biological specimens from Madagascar. She held it up to the light to read the now-faint handwriting. 13 July 1989, it said, sent by someone named Fabien Koto.
Her heart beating faster, she slit the envelope carefully with scissors from Carmen’s well-organized desktop and pulled out the yellowing paper. The letter was printed but looked old enough and strange enough that she guessed it had been written on a typewriter.
Dear Dr. Goldring,
I send you my best wishes! The weather here has been good-Antananarivo is a very pretty place in the spring and I hope you and Gideon will come here some day! It would be a great pleasure to show you around! In the meantime, I send you the fruits of my last trip to the market. The Chamaeleo belalandaensis would have been a much more exciting find if it was still living, but even the dead ones are seldom seen these days, and this is well dry and I think not too unpleasant!
You were right that it is the people of the southwestern coasts that come across the strangest discoveries, things often found floating on logs or root-system rafts. I am not sure I understand your argument as to why that precise spot at Moromboke should prove such a nexus for biological oddities and events, but I am very happy to report the fruits of my success! That is to say, I indeed found myself overwhelmed with the diversity of new botanical specimens. And am herewith sending many back to you.