by Tad Williams
They left by the front door and walked down the driveway, then cut back, skirting what looked like kitchen gardens, until in the distance they saw the big white tube-shaped building she had seen earlier, lit up now like an airport at night. Fearful, she slowed down, but Ragnar’s strong hand closed on her arm, gently but unbreakably firm, and kept her moving.
Long before they reached the building she could see two figures standing and waiting for them, one big, one small. Her flutter of relief lasted only a moment. The way Mr. Walkwell’s hand sat on her brother’s shoulder made it look like he was a prison guard and Tyler was a criminal. At least, she thought the small shape was Tyler: it looked just like him except for one thing-the expression on his face. Her brother was pale as a piece of printer paper and looked absolutely terrified. She’d never seen him that way.
Lucinda was getting more frightened by the second.
Mr. Walkwell let go of Tyler and walked forward to meet Ragnar and Mrs. Needle. Lucinda hurried over to Tyler. “What did you do?” she whispered.
“There’s a monster in there,” he told her, eyes wide, lower lip trembling. “I’m not lying, Luce-a real, honest-to-God monster!”
“Well, here you two are,” said a man’s voice from behind them, dry and sour. “Tyler and Lucinda Jenkins. Welcome to the farm… I suppose. I hadn’t planned our first meeting to be quite so dramatic.”
Lucinda whirled around, startled. Hobbling up the path toward them from the other end of the house was a strange-looking old man in a red-and-white-striped bathrobe. He was tall and thin, with a crest of white hair that stuck up as though he’d just got out of bed, and even under the spotlights he looked as tan and wrinkled as the leather of Tyler’s old baseball glove.
“Are you… are you our uncle Gideon?” she asked.
“Your great-uncle, to be technical. But I think ‘Uncle Gideon’ will do.” He narrowed his eyes. “And despite the more relaxed attitude these days about choosing names for children, I’m going to assume that you, girl, are Lucinda, and that this young ne’er-do-well is Tyler.”
“There’s a monster in there,” Tyler said. “In that Sick Barn place. A dinosaur!”
Gideon Goldring stared at them in silence for a long moment. “I’m not happy about this,” he said at last, and made a noise in the back of his throat. “I don’t like Nosy Parkers prying into my business.” He gave Tyler a fierce look-actually glared at him. Despite being frightened, Lucinda felt a moment of anger. If you don’t want people nosing around, she thought, you shouldn’t invite them somewhere and then get all mysterious! She didn’t dare say it out loud, of course.
“But here we are,” the fierce old man said, “so I suppose I don’t have much choice. No, it’s not a dinosaur, boy-it’s something much more interesting. And her name is Meseret.” Uncle Gideon pulled a pair of glasses that were little more than two lenses out of the pocket of his bathrobe and inspected Tyler’s face like a doctor examining a particularly interesting wart. “Yes, you look a bit shocked-no surprise there, but no less than you deserve. I shouldn’t reward you for being a troublemaker, but if I send you two back to the house now we’ll just have to do this some other time.” He snorted. “Children- pfah! ” Gideon turned his attention to Lucinda, then back to Tyler again, as if he was making some huge decision. “Well? Do you want to see her properly? Do you want to meet Meseret?”
Tyler stared at back him and then slowly nodded his head. “That thing in there? Yeah. Yeah, sure.”
“What is going on here?” Lucinda almost screamed. “Will someone please explain it to me?”
“We’re right here, child,” said Mrs. Needle with more than a touch of impatience. “There’s no need to shout.”
“Oh, there probably is,” said Uncle Gideon, and he laughed, a sort of cracked hiss that didn’t make Lucinda feel much better at all. “Come along, then, all of you-follow Simos, if you would be so kind.”
“Simos” was apparently Mr. Walkwell. Tyler and Lucinda followed him as he scrunch-scrunch-scrunched his way around the front of the Sick Barn to a heavy metal door. As before, he sounded like he was walking on packing material, but he was on the same soft dirt as the rest of them and he was the only one making a noise. When they reached the door, Mr. Walkwell opened a little cabinet beside it and punched numbers into a keypad inside, as though this was some kind of top-secret missile base out of a spy show.
The door swung open silently and Mr. Walkwell stepped into bright fluorescent light. Tyler stared in, his pale face suddenly reluctant. Lucinda felt a sudden urge to take his hand as she used to when he was still her little brother instead of the irritating kid with the headphones who lived across the hall. She stepped forward, but as soon as she touched his hand he pulled away and walked into the Sick Barn. Lucinda followed a little more slowly.
She would never forget how the place looked in those first moments-a long room that seemed to stretch for a city block, with a dozen banks of lights hanging from a grid of pipes beneath the curved ceiling. Stainless steel tables stretched along one side of it, and the walls and shelves and open spaces were cluttered with bags of supplies and gasoline cans and cabinets full of tools, so that the place almost looked more like a garage than anything to do with animals. Lucinda would never forget how it smelled, either-that weird mixture of a doctor’s office and a zoo on the hottest day of summer. It made her eyes water.
But as impressive as it all was, she would never be able to remember exactly how it felt to see Meseret for the first time. Some things were so powerful that as soon as they came into your life they changed you completely-changed everything, so that the you who was trying to remember was just too different from the you who hadn’t known.
It felt like she was in a movie, one of those special-effects epics that she had to go see when it was Tyler’s turn to pick. Lucinda was looking at a stretched-out shape that almost entirely filled the massive steel pen running down the far side of the room, a scaly shape the size of a small jet plane. Even though she had been expecting something to fit Tyler’s word, monster, her brain couldn’t make sense of the immense thing in front of her. It was a giant robot, maybe, some kind of theme-park attraction, but it couldn’t be real.
It lifted its huge head on its huge neck and looked back at her with snaky yellow eyes almost as big as hubcaps. Nothing else, Lucinda found out, was as convincing as actual eye contact.
Her shrieks didn’t seem to bother the creature much. Its yellow eyes followed her, but without much obvious interest, as she stumbled backward toward the door and slammed into Colin Needle, who had just walked into the Sick Barn.
She fell down at Colin’s feet, still staring helplessly at the monster and trying to remember how to breathe. He didn’t bother to help her up, but the big farmhand Ragnar did.
“Don’t fear,” Ragnar said. “She will not harm you.”
“It’s a monster!” Lucinda shouted.
“See? I told you!” Tyler had stopped a good dozen feet from the pen to stare, which was clear evidence of how frightened he still was. But he was shaking with excitement too. “See! It is a real dinosaur. I wasn’t lying!”
“Don’t be stupid,” Colin said. “That’s not a dinosaur.”
“Have you children forgotten all the stories?” Ragnar sounded almost sad.
The monster in the pen stirred and the immense leathery flaps folded against her long front legs scraped along her scales. Wings.
“Oh my God,” said Lucinda, almost in a whisper, not talking to anyone but herself. “It’s a dragon. It’s a real, true dragon.”
Colin pushed past her. “Why are you showing them the Sick Barn?” he demanded of Ragnar. “Why didn’t anyone tell me you were all coming here? I’m going to tell Gideon.”
“He’s here,” said Mrs. Needle, pointing to the corner of the room where the old man in the striped bathrobe was talking quietly with Mr. Walkwell. “And we didn’t tell you because I thought you needed your rest.”
Colin scowled lik
e a three-year-old about to throw a tantrum, but turned away instead. Uncle Gideon was coming back toward them, but Lucinda didn’t think that was the only reason Colin wasn’t arguing with his mother.
Gideon’s voice rose sharply and suddenly. “Here now, boy! What’s-your-name-Tyler! Don’t get too close to her. She hasn’t been feeling well.”
Tyler had been moving steadily forward, drawn toward the huge creature as though hypnotized. He looked like he was over his fear and into his I-wonder-how-it-works phase, something that usually spelled trouble for anything that interested him. Lucinda felt a clutch of fear. If he got eaten, how would she explain it to Mom?
It really was a dragon. There was no avoiding the fact, no arguing with it. Lucinda couldn’t see every detail because much of the creature’s body was hidden by the metal rails of the pen, but unless there was some normal kind of animal longer than a school bus that had scales and fangs and wings, then she, Lucinda Anne Jenkins, was standing in the same room as…
“A dragon,” she said again, loud this time, finally starting to feel the wonder of it all.
“She certainly is,” Uncle Gideon said. “I will introduce you to her-and I do mean introduce. This is a dragon, not just some kind of giant lizard or crocodile. You must treat her with respect. Her name is Meseret.”
“Un-be-lievable!” Tyler was bouncing up and down again. “This is so awesome! Where did she come from?”
Uncle Gideon scowled. “ That, at least, you’re going to have to wait for until I’m ready, boy.” He was still frowning as he said, “Now step forward carefully. That’s right. Just stand and let her smell you.”
Tyler and Lucinda had moved up to within a couple of feet of the bars. The dragon’s nostrils twitched like little volcanoes getting ready to erupt. It was all Lucinda could do not to run away. The smell, the size-she was terrified.
“Move slowly and quietly, will you?” said Gideon. “She has very little experience of human children. In fact, as far as we know, before today she hasn’t met any except Colin.”
“Poor dragon,” said Tyler, too quietly for anyone but Lucinda to hear.
The dragon fixed Lucinda with an emotionless stare. The huge eye glowed with red-gold light like the coals of a fire, and for a moment it seemed something Lucinda could fall into, fall forever, twisting helplessly downward… She backed away, knowing that if she didn’t she’d scream again. “This is too weird,” she said. “Everybody here’s acting like… like this is all normal! Like it’s… ”
“Ordinary?” asked Uncle Gideon, the light winking off his spectacles. He looked amused and angry at the same time, a strange combination. “Yes, I’m afraid the name of the farm is a trifle deceptive.”
“Oh, man-flaming cows!” Tyler said, laughing a little wildly. “Flaming cows! Now I get it!”
Uncle Gideon nodded. “Ah, you did receive the book, then. I was worrying I’d missed getting it in the mail in time. Good. Obviously it’s not really about cows. And I do want you to memorize it. They’re not at all like ordinary animals, dragons.”
Lucinda felt like her head was going to blow up. “But this can’t be real! If this was really true, it would be in the news… people would know… it would be on television!”
Without warning something grabbed her arm, and a second later she and Tyler were both being dragged across the Sick Barn by Uncle Gideon. He was holding her wrist so tightly her bones ached, and his face had gone red with anger. When they got out into the glare of the outside spotlights he abruptly let go. They both staggered. From the corner of her eye Lucinda registered the others coming out of the Sick Barn, too, but no one said anything.
Gideon stood in front of them, and he didn’t just look like an eccentric old man in a bathrobe anymore. He looked really mad and really scary. “Now you listen to me,” he said in a voice that trembled with fury. “You have no idea- no idea, I tell you -of the great privilege you have received in being invited to this place. And yet I find that the first thing you two do when you get here is abuse my hospitality. You, boy, do exactly what you are told not to do. You were told not to leave the house, weren’t you?”
“I warned him, sir,” said Colin. He sounded pleased.
“And then you, girl, start telling me this place should be on television.” Gideon made a sputtering noise, like a snake about to bite. “You have been here five minutes and you would give away our hard-won secrets to a society of idiots and thieves, would you?”
“No, I didn’t… ” she began, but there was no stopping Gideon Goldring.
“I cannot tell you how deeply disappointed I am in my first impressions of you both. Moreover, you just confirm my worst fears. Once people have been allowed into Ordinary Farm, there’s no control-no control at all! Yes, children, if you haven’t guessed, I am very, very angry.”
Tears sprang into Lucinda’s eyes and her heart hammered. She looked to Tyler, but he had his head down, avoiding Uncle Gideon’s eyes. Her little brother wouldn’t argue, but he wouldn’t give in, either. He was too stubborn for that.
“Give me your hands,” Gideon said, suddenly and loudly. “Right now! You are going to swear me an oath.”
Lucinda saw the mouths of some of the others fall open in shock. She looked at Tyler.
“ Now! ” roared Gideon.
They did so. Somehow there seemed nothing else they could do. Lucinda heard distant birds in the trees, a breeze ruffling leaves, the ragged breathing of this terrible man, their great-uncle.
“Promise me,” said Gideon, “swear on everything you hold sacred, that you will never, never betray the secrets of Ordinary Farm to the outside world!”
The old man’s grip was so tight that she could feel him trembling, and she suddenly had the feeling that he was more than just angry-Gideon Goldring was frightened. Really, seriously frightened that they might tell people about the farm. An odd calm came over her. “Yes,” she said, “I promise.”
Tyler didn’t say anything for a moment. “As long as you don’t try to hurt me or my sister,” he said. “Remember, you asked us to come here.”
Gideon let go of their hands. He sounded surprised. “Hurt you? You are my relatives-you are family!”
“Okay, then, I promise.”
Another silence fell. When Lucinda looked up at Gideon to see if he was getting over his anger, the heels of his hands were pressing his eyes. “God,” he cried suddenly, “oh, God, my head!” Suddenly he swayed and almost fell.
Mrs. Needle, black hair streaming, ran to his side. “Gideon, enough! You are still unwell. You must come away now and lie down.” And she began to lead him to the house. Gideon leaned into her, hobbling and wiping at his eyes.
“Just like Mom told us,” Tyler said quietly. “Right, Lucinda? A nice, old-fashioned summer on the farm.”
Chapter 6
Free-Range Muffins
B y the time they reached the grand lobby and its blind staircase, Colin could just barely hide his anger. Only a few hours on the farm and these two interlopers were already getting special treatment! The boy-what was his name? Tyler-had immediately broken the rules, but instead of being sent home they had both been rewarded. Already they had been shown the second biggest secret on the farm!
Of course, Colin had known that having strangers on the farm would cause trouble, but who could have guessed it would have begun so quickly? Now he understood and could even sympathize with his mother’s dark, cold rage when Gideon had announced it.
His mother had taken Gideon upstairs, the old man stumbling like a sleepwalker. No matter how much medicine she gave him, Gideon didn’t seem to get any better. That was strange: it wasn’t like Patience Needle to come up short, although she hadn’t had much luck with the female dragon, either. It gave Colin a strange, slippery feeling-half joyful, half terrified-to think of his mother failing at something.
At Colin’s mother’s order, Caesar came down from Gideon’s rooms to lead the two Jenkins children back to their beds. Colin avoided the bent
old black man. He had made the mistake once of referring to Caesar as a servant-what else would you call someone who took trays to Gideon, turned down his bed each night, and ran his bath and folded his clothes?-but Caesar had turned on him. When the man straightened up, Colin had discovered, Caesar was actually quite tall and more than a little frightening.
“Don’t you ever call me that,” Caesar had said, his weary, wrinkled face twisting into something quite different. “I work for Mr. Goldring because work is all I know how to do and because I owe him a big old favor, but I am no man’s servant. Not ever again. Do you hear me, child? Do you hear me? ”
All Colin had been able to do at the time was squeak a yes. He had done his best to avoid the fellow ever since.
“Come, children,” Caesar now said as he led Tyler and Lucinda away. “Must be tired, you two. Quite a day, quite a day. Ordinary Farm ain’t like other places, and now you know it. Enough to tire anyone out. Come along to bed.”
When they had gone, Colin stood in the silent lobby, too disturbed for bed, too full of irritated thoughts and anger. Gideon had actually had the nerve to suggest that Colin would enjoy having “people his own age” on the farm this summer. As if these two children were anything like him! As if he himself were a child instead of an adult in all but the official sense. Which is what any kid had to be if they were like Colin, a boy without a father, but also with a mother who never spoke about her previous life and treated Colin more like an assistant than a child. All in all, he hoped Gideon had learned a lesson about who he could trust and who he clearly couldn’t.
Colin Needle’s attention was suddenly drawn to a rectangle of white sitting on a silver tray. It was the tray that Caesar used to carry upstairs the mail and other papers that Gideon needed to see. The old fellow had obviously been distracted by the afternoon’s events and had left the tray with a small pile of undelivered mail out on a table near the door leading to the kitchen. Colin sidled over to look through the envelopes.