by Tad Williams
“You saved me,” Last One said. “The Great One would have killed me for trying to take his cave. I was only looking for someplace to get warm and I was careless. I should have smelled his fresh stink.”
“I have to go,” Tyler said, struggling to his feet. “My family
… my sister.” He shook his head. “I have to go back.” But how would he get there? He had stepped out of thin air, it seemed.
“You will die if you go outside,” she told him. “It will be dark soon and the bear is not dead. If he lives, he will be back. One like him took all my family. I do not know what we did to anger the Great Ones so.” Her matted hair fell in her face as she looked at Tyler’s thin clothes, his soaked athletic shoes. “He is not the only hunter, either. And your skins will not keep you warm out there, I think.”
“But I have to go.” He didn’t doubt anything she said, but with returning feeling in his hands and feet he was also swept by a tremendous, aching loneliness. Whether he had actually somehow traveled back in time to the ice age or this was some even stranger place, he couldn’t stand to think he might be stuck here. If he waited through the night he might not be able to find the spot where he had arrived. “I have to go,” he said again.
She sighed. It was weird to hear such a modern sound of frustration here in this place. “Then I will come with you, because otherwise you will be dead before morning.”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“My life is yours now.” She said it as simply as if she was talking about the weather. “The Great One would have taken me, otherwise.”
He had been right, Tyler decided as he tottered out into the cold wind with the girl beside him. Although he was already starting to shiver badly, he could still see traces of his deep footprints coming down the hill, traces that would be gone by morning. Not that it helped him much-the prints simply stopped at a point halfway up the slope-but even that was something.
He halted where the footprints began. There was nothing here but cold air and snow, but he closed his eyes tightly and tried to ignore the wind, his own trembling body, and the idea that the wounded, angry bear might be back at any moment. What had led him to this cold world? A feeling, a trace of something he couldn’t explain. What could take him back? Something similar, he hoped.
For a long moment he couldn’t see or feel anything except the beginnings of what it was going to be like to freeze to death here on the hillside. Then the girl took his hand in her own and the trace of warmth, instead of distracting him, reminded him of what he was looking for-home.
Something like a faint light in the distance almost startled him into opening his eyes, but it was not a light from the world around him, it was a light inside his thoughts. Tyler moved toward it, or it moved toward him. It wasn’t easy-other currents pushed and pulled at him, trying to tug him off the track, but he did his best to ignore them and to keep moving forward. The light became stronger, but whatever resisted him became stronger, too, until Tyler felt that he was trying to shove his way through water that was hardening into ice all around him.
Lucinda, he thought. She’ll get hurt if I’m not around. I have to get back. She needs me to help her be brave.
And he needed her, too, he realized, to remind him there were other ways to do things besides charging straight ahead.
The thought gave him an idea: Tyler changed his angle and found he could move toward the light not by fighting his way, but by slipping ahead through the areas of least resistance while remembering always what his final destination was. The light came closer-a light he could feel in his bones, so that he wondered if he was glowing from the inside out like an X-ray. He reached for it. He found it and stepped through.
It was only as the warmth rose all around him that he realized the girl from the winter world was still holding on to his hand.
Tyler opened his eyes. For a moment disappointment washed over him like a drowning tide. It was too dark to see anything, but he could feel rough stone under his hands. It was another cave, more rock and dirt. He wasn’t home-he hadn’t managed to do anything!
He crawled forward, pulling his flashlight out of his sweatshirt pocket and shining it over the rock walls. It seemed to be something like the bear cave. Then he saw a flat roof above him that looked too solid and smooth to be natural stone.
The girl had scrambled away from him, cowering from the light, obviously terrified.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s just a flashlight. See?”
“ Uhawa ganu dut? ” she asked, eyes wide with alarm.
“Huh? Can’t you understand me?” He shook his head. Why should things suddenly be any less weird on this farm?
The flashlight beam revealed the trapdoor in the flat ceiling above them, and Tyler finally realized where they were-in the silo, under the floor. He swept the light back across the cavern and saw that the silo had been built on top of a crevice in the ground, a great mouth of rock and dirt. He and the girl named Last One had just crawled out of it.
The Fault Line, he thought. Octavio Tinker’s Fault Line! This is it!
He clambered up the ladder bolted to the cavern wall next to the trapdoor, but the door was locked, and all his rattling and shaking couldn’t open it. They were trapped in a deserted building.
Oh well, he thought, then began to shout. “Hello! Help! Somebody help us!” He pounded on the trapdoor. “Ragnar? Mr. Walkwell? Somebody? Help!”
He had been calling for about five minutes when the trapdoor above him rattled and he heard the snap of the lock opening. The door lifted and fell back with an echoing thunk, then a bright beam of light came through the opening in the ceiling and swept the cavernous room, blinding Tyler for a moment. The cavegirl growled in fear. Tyler swung up his own light as if in self-defense and the light moved off him. A dark shape clambered down the ladder and dropped to the floor.
“Oh, Jenkins, you idiot,” said Colin Needle, shaking his head in gleeful disgust as he looked from Tyler to the cavegirl. “You just couldn’t mind your own business, could you? And now you’ve really messed up. You might as well go pack your bags.”
Chapter 21
A Blow to the Brain
O ne thing Colin really liked about those Jenkins kids: they were their own worst enemies. It never seemed to have occurred to them that he might be keeping track of where they were. Both of their rooms empty after nightfall? Something had to be up. Noises in the silo, a building that was kept empty at all times? Who else would it be?
But it wasn’t just Tyler Jenkins he had discovered in the Fault Line cavern. There was a girl, too, a stranger-Paleolithic, from the looks of her. It happened occasionally with the Fault Line, these spontaneous manifestations. Like stuff washed up on a beach, he supposed, or left behind on a riverbank, tossed out of the flow of time. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. But Jenkins screwing up so badly- that was something Colin had been waiting for.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Go pack your suitcase. You’re as good as gone.”
“You creep!” Tyler stomped toward him, pointing a finger. “What are you doing, following me everywhere I go?”
“Gideon should never have brought you to the farm.” Colin turned his back and went quickly up the ladder and through the trapdoor, into the empty silo. “But now he’s going to realize his mistake, because I’m going to tell him what you’ve been doing-messing with his biggest, most important secret.” He shoved open the door and went out into the warm night.
“Oh yeah?” said Tyler. He ran up the ladder and out the door after Colin, waving his flashlight like it was a Star Wars light saber. Colin laughed-did the kid really want to pick a fight? He was a full head shorter than Colin was. Still, the idiot kept coming at him, and the light got in Colin’s eyes, blinding him. He had underestimated and did not get his hands up in time as Tyler Jenkins swung a fist and hit him in the neck. Colin stumbled back, choking, and the younger boy was on him with arms windmilling so fast Colin was dr
iven farther backward.
“Tyler, stop!” someone shouted even as Colin slipped and fell.
The Jenkins kid seized the advantage and began pummeling the side of Colin’s head. Colin swung his own right hand around and delivered a satisfyingly nasty blow to Tyler’s face, then he was back in the game again, slapping and scratching and butting with his head until he could get off his back. Another flashlight was playing over them and someone was still shouting at them as they jumped at each other.
“Tyler, no, no! Let go of him!” It was Lucinda’s voice.
They were rolling, struggling with each other like wild animals. Jenkins managed to get on top of him again and Colin was lashing out, hitting anything he could, when Tyler suddenly straightened up. Lucinda had grabbed the neck of her brother’s sweatshirt and was pulling as hard as she could. She had caught him by surprise. Tyler fell back, allowing Colin to struggle free.
“What are you two doing?”
The words were barely out of her mouth when Colin jumped past her and tackled her brother again-he wasn’t going to lose the advantage she’d given him. The two of them went down again, kicking and thrashing so that dust flew up in a cloud, obscuring the beam of Lucinda’s flashlight. Then, suddenly, there was triumph: Colin was atop the wretched Jenkins boy, sitting on his chest. He put his forearm on Tyler’s throat and heard the choking sounds begin. God, he was going to enjoy this!
Then a shadow moved over Colin and something smashed down on his head, turning his bones and muscles to water. After that, it all just went blank.
The next thing he felt was a throbbing in his head like the aftermath of an explosion, as if something had blown his skull into hot pieces that were barely holding together.
My brain, he thought. Somebody knocked my bloody brain out.
Colin tried to sit up, but just the tiny movement of bracing his hands against the ground made him feel dizzy and sick so he gave up. It was dark where he lay, which was just as well. Light in his eyes would have felt like a blowtorch.
“What’s with this farm?” Lucinda was saying. “I mean, Tyler, who are all these people? What are they up to? Witches? Monsters? Magicians? You were right, Tyler, you were so right, and it just keeps getting crazier!”
“You think that’s crazy,” her brother answered, “but you haven’t heard what happened to me yet.”
The pain in Colin’s head was so bad that he began to think he might throw up. He rolled over onto his hands and knees and crouched, his aching head against the cool dirt. The two Jenkins children fell silent.
When he could, Colin turned around and sat up, but even that careful movement made the world swim and he groaned loudly. At this new sound the stranger in the hooded cape moved toward him, growling quietly as if in reply and raising a menacing hand. The face in the hood was smeared with dirt so that Colin could see little more than staring eyes and bared teeth, but the large rock in the creature’s dirty paw made things clear: this was the bastard who had smashed in his skull. And if this spawn of the Fault Line wanted to do it again, there wasn’t much Colin could do to stop it. He raised trembling hands in front of his face.
“No! Don’t hit him again!” cried Lucinda.
The crouching shape stopped and cocked its head like a dog when its name was called-hearing but not quite understanding. “ Na krut? ” it asked. It was a girl, or at least the voice sounded like it. “ Na krut? ”
“Nah, I guess not,” Tyler said. “Don’t krut him.” He laughed a little, which only made Colin ache to hit him again. “Hey, I speak cave language!”
“Cave language?” Lucinda asked.
“Yeah, you’ll never guess where I’ve just been, Luce. I think it was the ice age. It wasn’t very easy getting back, either-I’m still not quite sure how I did it.”
For a moment Colin forgot the throbbing misery of his head. Tyler’s words rang in his thoughts like a sudden thunderclap. The ice age? Was that what the Jenkins kid had just said? That he’d gone somewhere, not just been around when this prehistoric murderess had washed up out of some backwater of time?
“Yeah, that’s where the girl’s from,” Tyler went on excitedly. “Her name is Last One, or at least that’s what she told me when she could still talk. Do you think she’ll learn how again? She sure took care of Junior Doctor Evil.” He turned toward Colin. “Hey, Needle, had enough? You step to me, you better step up strong.”
“Spare me your trashy hip-hop video dialogue,” Colin told him, but inside he was suddenly very frightened. Was it true? Could Tyler Jenkins navigate the Fault Line without an instrument? This could change everything. Even if Colin’s grand scheme worked out, the one he had spent months planning, Gideon would probably still prefer these stupid, heedless kids. It was unfair beyond belief! They had to go-they’d ruin everything. “You’ve gone too far this time, Jenkins,” Colin snarled. “Gideon is going to have you both out of here by tomorrow morning.”
“Colin, please,” said Lucinda. “Whatever we did wrong, we’re sorry. Tyler, what are you talking about? Ice age? Where did she come from, really?”
“I told you, I went to the ice age… I think. Anyway, it was totally snowy, and there was this giant monster bear, and she killed it with a spear.” He shook his head as though even he was having trouble believing it all. “First I was exploring the silo and I… I fell through. Through something. We were right, Lucinda-that’s where the Breach is, or the Fault Line, or whatever Octavio Tinker called it. It’s a cave underneath the silo. It’s like a hole in time or something!”
Shock and fear washed over Colin. How had they found out all these things? Had someone spilled all the secrets to them? “Are you actually saying you traveled through the Fault Line?” He made his voice hard, wanting to test Tyler. “That you went into the past… and came back? That’s impossible.”
“You calling me a liar?” The boy looked like he was about to jump all over Colin again but Lucinda reached out a hand toward him. “I came back by… I don’t know. I came back the same way I got there. I found the spot I came in and just… thought about going back. Sort of.” He shrugged, at a loss for words.
So it was true. But Colin was only defeated, he realized, if Gideon found out. Otherwise they were just annoying kids. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a good idea to tell Gideon Goldring, after all-who knew what information might come out of such an argument?
Lucinda was walking in circles. “Ice age? This is all so crazy! I didn’t even get to tell you what happened to me. Mr. Walkwell-he isn’t even human! He’s some kind of part man, part animal. A faun, I think.”
Tyler stared at her as if she had lost her mind. “What, like Bambi?”
“No, you know, like the guy in what’s-it-called-Narnia.”
“Mr. Walkwell is a lion?” Now Tyler sank down in the dirt beside the cavegirl, shaking his head. “I don’t get it.”
“I’ll explain later, but he’s a goat-man. I think it’s called a faun.”
Oh, they were a cute little comedy act, these two, Colin thought. He would dance for joy when he was finally rid of them. “Not just a faun, but a tutelary spirit,” he said, wiping some of the dirt and blood from his face with the sleeve of his sweater. “To be precise, Mr. Walkwell is the genius loci of Ordinary Farm.” He was feeling his way back to control again. “How did you find out about Mr. Walkwell, Lucinda?”
She told him about the fire, the singing, and the man Mr. Walkwell had captured.
“Stillman?” said Colin. He tried to sound casual, but his heart was thundering. What had he gotten himself into? He had thought he was only manipulating that fat fool Modesto, but Stillman was a billionaire and he wanted the whole farm! Still, it was too late to turn back now. “I think I’ve heard the name, but I can’t imagine what interest he’d have in some little farm like ours.”
“Oh yeah,” sneered Tyler. “Some little farm. Right. Some little farm with dragons and monsters and a hole that leads back a million years into the ice age.”
“Yo
u’d better keep your mouth shut about that,” Colin told him. “I won’t be able to save you if you start babbling about visiting the past.”
“What are you talking about? Why should I keep my mouth shut? And why would you want to save me? Especially after I kicked your butt.”
Colin bit back his anger. “After your primitive friend hit me, you mean.” He took a breath. Calm, he told himself. Calm. “Because if you keep your mouth shut and do it my way, Gideon will think it was just an overflow from the Fault Line. It happens occasionally-that’s where the griffin eggs came from, they just showed up one day. Sometimes the Fault Line opens up enough that we could step into it if we dared. Other times it just sort of spits things out. We have to tell him it was one of those situations, because if you tell Gideon you went into the Fault Line on your own and came back, he’ll know you were messing around with the silo and he’ll go completely berserk. He really will kick you out in a heartbeat.”
Lucinda looked upset, but her brother looked suspicious. “That still doesn’t explain why you want to help us. You hate my guts, Needle. Admit it.”
He hesitated. “I’ll admit I don’t like you much, Jenkins. But your sister has been nice to me, and I’d hate to see her punished for something you did.” Which was just true enough that he could say it with convincing feeling: Lucinda had been kind to him. Colin wasn’t used to it.
Lucinda Jenkins looked at her brother with an expression almost of triumph, an expression that said, See? I told you! She turned to Colin and smiled. “Thank you, Colin. That’s generous of you.”
He felt a little bad-but only a little. “Well, if you agree, we’d better figure out how we’re going to explain that”- thug, he thought, looking at the creature who had hit him; but he didn’t say the word, only gestured-“to Gideon.”
“Hang on,” said Tyler. “That’s all fine, but how can Gideon afford to get rid of us, anyway? We know all about this place now. We could tell everyone what we’ve seen.”