Tad Williams - The Secrets of Ordinary Farm

Carrot Girl…! The thoughts bombarded her, slapped at her-the dragon equivalent of shouting. Carrot Girl bad! Hurt us!

Desta leaped into the air with a loud slap and thrash of wings and flew off over the top of the farmhouse. For a single, lightning-painted moment she reappeared farther along the sky, then vanished again.

Ragnar stumbled toward Lucinda and dropped to his knees, then grabbed Gideon in his strong arms and imprisoned him. The master of the farm continued to struggle, but with no more luck now than a babe in arms. “What happened…?” the Norseman demanded in a voice made hoarse by shouting. “Did you send that wormling after me…?”

“We’re in trouble!” She quickly told him as much of the story as she could. “You have to help Colin! Help Mr. Walkwell!”

The Viking looked at the greenhouse and made a face. “Baldur’s blood, that is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen…!” He turned back to Lucinda. “Master Needle had a good idea for once-set the cursed vegetable on fire.”

“What?” In the midst of her struggle with Gideon she hadn’t even grasped exactly what Colin had been planning. Now, as if thinking had awakened his resolve, the old man began squirming once more in Ragnar’s arms.

“I ask your pardon,” the Norseman said.

“What?” Lucinda was so exhausted that nothing made sense. “Why?”

“Not yours, child.” He lifted a fist big as a beef roast and struck Gideon sharply on the back of the head. The old man slumped and lay still.

“Now I go to get what I need to kill this demon,” he said and loped off toward the farm house. “Don’t fear,” he shouted over his shoulder. “I will come straight back!” Rain swirled past her, blown almost horizontally by the wind.

Freed from Gideon, Lucinda crawled across the wet ground to Colin, who had long since stopped struggling and lay silent and still in his net of fungal threads. She pulled at the aluminum fence post in his hand but although she could break any single one of the little white fungus threads easily, each time she did several crept back in to take its place and she could not break them in bunches. Lightning leaped down from the sky only half a mile away, making a dazzle on top of a nearby hill, and even as she watched the shrieking wind was rolling more black clouds toward them like a steamroller.

Colin opened bleary eyes. “Don’t let me die,” he begged her. “Please, don’t let me die. I’m sorry I took it. I’m sorry!”

She had no idea what he was sorry about, nor did she care. “I’m trying to help you!” Her wet fingers kept slipping off the strands. “Oh, God, I’m trying, Colin!”

“Stand away girl!” Ragnar came crashing back through the garden toward them, something heavy swinging in each hand. He set down the two large cider jars and wrenched the aluminum post out the boy’s hand, shredding hundreds of fungal threads with a horrid ripping and popping noise as Colin let out a screech of agony.

Ragnar straightened up, took a quick couple of steps, and flung the metal fence post toward the greenhouse. It wobbled through the air, trailing its wire like a giant threaded needle, but was pushed sideways by the powerful wind and fell to earth several yards short of the wall of dead and dying creatures that had piled up at the structure’s base.

“The gods curse it!” The Norseman turned to Lucinda. “I must go closer, but then the demon will be able to reach me as it caught Simos-unless I can set it burning. That will give me a few moments, I think!” He lifted and uncorked first one of the gallon jars, then the other. The smell of gasoline blew past her on the wind. Ignoring another cry of pain from Colin, Ragnar tore the sleeve off the boy’s wet shirt and crammed it into the mouth of the jar. He did the same thing with the other sleeve, prompting a weaker cry of pain and protest. Colin looked like he had all but fainted.

“Do you have fire?” Ragnar asked Lucinda. “Or any way to make it?”

She stared at him for a long, confused moment, then shook her head. She searched Colin’s pockets; he was in so much pain he scarcely seemed to notice. “He doesn’t either,” she said.

He smiled a grim smile. “Then I have no choice but to try to wade through those griping demon-fingers. If Simos could not do it, then I cannot, but I must try.” He reached out and patted her cheek with his gasoline-stinking hand. “I ask for your pardon, Lucinda.”

She flinched. “Are you going to hit me?”

Ragnar shook his head. “I ask pardon because I cannot sing my death-song well in your tongue, Lucinda Jenkins. Still, it must be sung so it can be heard by those who listen, and they say the gods understand all tongues!” He set the jugs down beside her and trotted through the rain toward the greenhouse. “This will be the second time I have sung it!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Let us hope that again it will be in vain!”

Lucinda didn’t know what he meant.

The monstrous thing inside the ancient greenhouse had long since broken out all the windows and was oozing out of every opening in the corroded metal cage, its uppermost extensions stretching thirty feet or more into the air and branching into hundreds of shapes as weird and alien as snowflakes. As the Viking approached, the starry profusion of shapes shuddered and the entire bulk of the fungus began to swell and rock.

The Norseman’s voice rose, each word loud and heavy as a great stone.

“It gladdens me to know that Odin sets out the benches for a banquet,” he sang, or rather chanted in a deep, booming voice.

“Soon we shall be drinking ale from cups of horn! A hero who is ushered into Odin’s hall does not lament his death, and Ragnar Leather shanks shall not enter Old One-Eye’s hall with words of fear upon his lips…!”

Shiny white strands began to climb the tall Viking’s legs, more and more of them coiling around him until he staggered to a halt several dozen yards from the greenhouse, not far from the motionless, cocooned shape of Mr. Walkwell.

“I have fought against foes in many battles,”

he sang, louder now to best the mounting thunder.

“My sons are gone, and their sons after them,

I myself brought an ending to many men

And now I am a king out of his time!

But I never imagined pale serpents like these

Would be the ending of my life…!”

Ragnar bent and ripped as many of the strands away as he could, then forced himself a few steps forward, tearing the pale rootlike strings out of the earth as he went, snapping dozens of them with each stride. He took a step. He took another step. Against all odds, he was still moving toward the thing, but each step was slower and more labored than the last.

Colin raised his head, clutching his arm against his belly as he spoke through chattering teeth. “Is he… is he g-g-getting close to it…?”

Lucinda watched a moment longer and then shut her eyes in despair. Rain warm as blood ran down her face. “No. It got him. It’s… it’s tangling him up like Mr. Walkwell.”

“It’s my fault… ” Colin said. “I should… I should have told you… that there was something weird… in the greenhouse

… ”

“Lucinda!” It was a new voice. “Lucinda! Where are you?”

She opened her eyes. “Here, Tyler! Over here!”

Something was crashing toward her through the garden rows like a charging elephant; a moment later her brother tumbled onto the muddy ground beside her. “Lucinda! What’s going on? And what’s that? ” He stared at the horrible white thing swelling from the greenhouse like rising bread dough. “This is crazy!”

Even as she tried to form the words to explain, Steve Carrillo came staggering up behind him. Steve leaned over, gasping for breath, and lifted a hand in a shaky sort of wave. “H-Hi, Lucinda.”