Tad Williams - The Secrets of Ordinary Farm

She extended a finger and her nail touched the surface of the glass with a soft click. She moved her finger and then touched the surface again. The same click. Colin watched her, both repelled and fascinated. “Tell me, Mother,” he said at last, “why did you go to the trouble of having this thing hauled up the stairs and installed in here?”

“I’m not entirely certain.” She gazed somberly at her own reflection. “It feels… strange to me. Older than it looks. But perhaps you’re going to tell me differently?”

He was sure she was teasing him-mocking him. “What do you mean, Mother?”

She flicked the mirror with her nail again- tik, tik, tik. “I seem to remember that I asked you to bring me anything you could find about the piece or its acquisition in Octavio Tinker’s papers.”

“There’s nothing. I told you that already.”

“I hoped you had come to tell me you were wrong, Colin. That you found out something about it. Because it intrigues me, and I am seldom if ever wrong about such feelings.” She gave the mirror another dreamy stare. “Something, there is something… ”

“I came to ask you some questions, Mother. Still no news about Gideon?”

A sharp, annoyed stare. “Why on earth are you asking me? Do you think I would hide it from you if we heard something? Really, Colin, just when I have so much extra work to do.” She stared at him for a long silent moment. It was all Colin could do not to turn away from his mother’s hard, fierce eyes, but there was something in her face he had seldom seen before. It took him a moment to recognize the unfamiliar expression: she was anxious. But why? Did his mother know something about Gideon Goldring’s disappearance after all?

“You’re worried, aren’t you, dear?” she asked, more lightly than before. “It’s not good for you to brood about things, Colin. We’re all worried about Gideon.”

Something about the casual way she spoke upset him. “Really, Mother? All of us?”

Her lip curled in a snarl. She looked so angry he took a startled step back. “What is that supposed to mean? You do say the most incomprehensible things sometimes. I’m glad you’re going out for the evening tomorrow. It will be good for you.”

It took him a moment to realize what she’d just said. “Going out? What do you mean?”

“Oh, didn’t I tell you? The people on the next farm over, those

… Spanish people… asked you over for their holiday celebration. Surely you remember that tomorrow is July the Fourth. Independence Day, don’t they call it?”

“The Carrillos? They invited me?”

“Of course. They sent us a letter and it said, ‘the children are invited.’ Like it or not, you are still one of the children, so of course you are expected to go.”

Colin found it very hard to believe the Carrillos wanted him at their Fourth of July gathering. “I don’t want to go to their stupid party.”

“Nevertheless, you will go-I insist, Colin. We owe them several favors. Also, before he disappeared Gideon was rather rude about not answering Mr. Carrillo’s questions, so we must do our best to be polite to them. I want you on your best behavior.” She turned back the mirror, gazing at it again as though it was a magical picture that showed her heart’s desire. “Oh, and would you please go tell Caesar he may come up for his physic? I’m brewing his special tea.”

Colin was walking downstairs toward the kitchen when he suddenly realized that he had never asked his mother any of the questions he’d planned to ask. He also realized that going to Cresta Sol dairy farm for the evening tomorrow had nothing to do with the Carrillos at all, except that they provided a useful excuse: it was his mother who wanted him gone. He had no idea what she planned to do, but he was certain she didn’t want to do it in front of him.

Thunder boomed again, and outside the window a flash briefly turned the sky white. Lightning, and not very far away.

Another son would have felt disturbed by his mother’s secrecy, and might even have marched back upstairs to argue about it, but Colin Needle was used to being inconvenient, to being kept in the dark, and he was also used to doing what Patience Needle wanted him to do, or at least appearing to do so.

He would go to the Carrillos-but nothing on earth, not even his beautiful, cold, clever mother, could make him enjoy himself.

The more Tyler thought, the angrier he got.

“What’s with this place? Are they all crazy?” He was having so much trouble paying attention to what he was doing that he dropped his flashlight. The batteries he had been loading popped out and rolled across the floor. “That Kingaree’s a slavery guy? What if he’d tried to kill you? They never tell us anything about anything-we always have to find out for ourselves!”

“They’re all from the past, Tyler! They don’t belong here and they’d be in trouble if people found out they were here. Of course they keep secrets.”

Tyler scowled: he’d thought Lucinda was getting better about pretending things were fine when they obviously weren’t. “I don’t care if they’re from Magic Happy Land, Luce-t hey invited us! Dropped us into the middle of all this and didn’t warn us about any of this dangerous crazy stuff-dragons! Billionaires with helicopters and guns! Crazy… slave-whippers from the Civil War days! And now Gideon’s gone, so we’re the only people in this whole place who even legally exist. ” For perhaps the first time ever, Tyler was beginning to wonder if they really did belong at Ordinary Farm. As if to emphasize this thought, thunder boomed in the nearby hills.

Then he thought of Colin and his creepy mother again and his heart filled with anger. “No, it’s not us who don’t belong here…!” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“Never mind.” He had been planning to go back out and look for Gideon until the evening meal, but instead he put down the flashlight and stood. “Come on. Maybe this Kingaree guy you met really does have something to do with Gideon disappearing-and if he does, I know who might have some answers.”

The women in the kitchen were just starting supper. Tyler noted the good smells with approval, but he was in too much of a hurry to appreciate them properly. However, a little bit of something to take along might not be a bad idea, he thought…

“He is upstairs,” Pema told them. “In Gideon’s study.”

“Meanwhile, if you touch that bacon, Junge, you will be beaten,” Sarah warned him. Defeated, Tyler led Lucinda up the stairs.

Caesar looked up from dusting. With Gideon Goldring now missing for almost a week it was hard to know how much cleaning of his study was really necessary, but Caesar regarded it as his personal job to take care of both Gideon and his rooms, and it seemed he would continue doing it whether Gideon was around or not.

“Hello, children,” he said. “Are you looking for something?”

“For you, Caesar. Could we ask you some questions?”

The old man laughed, showing very white teeth. “I suppose you can.” They were not his own teeth: Mr. Walkwell had found them for him in a church jumble sale in Standard Valley, and although they didn’t fit tremendously well, Caesar was very proud of them. He had lost most of his own at a young age.

Weird we know that about him, but didn’t know he was a runaway slave, Tyler thought. “Did you hear that Lucinda met Jackson Kingaree? He came up to her in town and introduced himself.”

Caesar’s expression grew more distant, but he kept his smile. “Oh, I heard, yes. Terrible thing.”

“We want to know more. About Kingaree. We think he might have something to do with Gideon’s disappearance.”