Tad Williams - The Dragons of Ordinary Farm

“Gideon will like that,” said Ragnar slowly. “He will like the idea that Stillman tried to steal our loyalty and failed-and that we kept the gold for him.” He frowned. “But what will we do with the boy?”

Tyler swallowed. He hated himself for what he was about to do, but it made sense. “Don’t do anything. We need Colin. If we turn him in he’s not going to keep his mouth shut, and then everyone’s going to be in trouble-me, Lucinda, the Carrillos, even you guys. We all kept secrets from Gideon.”

“Congratulations, Jenkins,” Colin said. “You have a brain in that head after all.”

“Shut up, Needle. It works both ways. If you tattle on us, then we won’t just tell Gideon what you did, we’ll tell your mother.”

“Wh-what?” Colin Needle looked like he’d been punched in the stomach.

“I know you didn’t tell her. You’re scared of her, aren’t you? So just shut up.”

“You don’t know about me!”

“I know enough.” Tyler said. “Now shut up while Ragnar and Mr. Walkwell decide what to do.”

For a long moment no one spoke. The Carrillos shuffled their feet. Colin stared sullenly at the ground.

“I think we must keep quiet,” Mr. Walkwell said at last. “Otherwise the Needle boy will be sent away. Those on the farm should stay on the farm. If not, they become a different problem-like Kingaree.”

There was that name again, Tyler thought, the one even Ragnar was afraid of. What kind of monster was this Kingaree? What had he done?

“So-it seems we make the devil’s bargain, as it is called,” said Ragnar. “Everybody will stay silent about what they know-but Simos and I will be watching you always from now on, Colin Needle.” The big man glared at Colin for a moment, then shook his head. “Still, we have one other problem to solve. The egg. Gideon thinks Alamu took it. Now we have it again.”

“We will think of something,” Mr. Walkwell said. “But let us think while we are taking these children back to their beds. For them this night has gone on for far too long.” He looked at Tyler and Lucinda and his normally gravel-toned voice was almost gentle. “You are leaving us tomorrow, after all.”

“But… what are you going to do with that… that dragon?” Carmen Carrillo asked. “Is it dead?”

“No, just overcome by sleep medicine,” Mr. Walkwell told her. “But she does have a deep cut on her wing from that thrice-cursed flying machine. It will need many stitches. Ragnar, can you find a big enough tractor over in Canning to carry her back to the Sick Barn?”

“Carry her back?” Tyler was amazed. “Where can you find anything that big?”

“You would be surprised,” Ragnar said. “Meseret is not so heavy as she looks. Her bones are hollow, like a bird’s.”

“But first, I suppose, you should take the other devil machine and return these children to their own home,” Mr. Walkwell told Ragnar. “It will be dawn soon.”

The Carrillos walked back to the farmhouse yet again, this time with Tyler, and silent Colin, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. Mr. Walkwell carried exhausted Lucinda on his back, her head nodding. Ragnar had the backpack with the dragon’s egg in one hand and the briefcase full of money in the other.

“Seems like you guys must have had a pretty interesting summer,” said Steve Carrillo.

“You could say that,” Tyler agreed. “Yeah, I guess ‘interesting’ would sum it up pretty well.”

“W ell,” said Gideon Goldring, wrapped in a clean bathrobe and looking like an ancient king as he stared down the length of the breakfast table, “I knew it was going to be a big morning, what with our guests heading back home today-but I didn’t expect things to be quite this exciting.”

The briefcase full of money was in his lap. Meseret’s egg sat in a nest of towels at the center of the table as if it was the main dish. The official story, constructed in haste, was that the she-dragon had sensed where her mate had taken the egg, broken out of the Sick Barn in fury, and recaptured it. The injury to her wing from the helicopter blade was now a battle wound from a scuffle with Alamu.

Lucinda didn’t like having to lie, especially about things this big. Unable to look at Uncle Gideon, she turned and looked at Colin Needle, who was also avoiding Gideon’s eye. Or perhaps it was the gaze of his mother, sitting at Gideon’s right hand, that he was avoiding. Whichever was the case, Colin had a pale, sickly look, and for the first time since Haneb had told her of Colin’s role in the theft of Meseret’s egg she felt sorry for the older boy. He had been stupid and reckless and arrogant, but she believed him when he said the farm was important to him.

Gideon looked at the briefcase again, then at the egg, and shook his head in disbelief. “My goodness. I can’t get over it. A dragon fight, attempted industrial espionage, and I slept through it all.” He turned to Ragnar. “How is Meseret?”

The blond-bearded man laughed in a hollow way. He was still wearing the same dirty, sweat-stained clothes from the night before. “She is sleeping. We’ve given her more medicine. The tractor man should have a loader and a trailer ready this afternoon-I’ll bring them back after I take the children to the train station. We’ll have her back in the barn by tonight.”

“And the damage?”

“We will be able fix everything, I think.” Mr. Walkwell was leaning in the doorway, dressed and looking almost normal again. He had not bothered to put his newspaper-stuffed boots back on: his hooves stuck out the bottom of his pant legs. “But it will take time to replace the things for animal medicine and put up new shelves in the Sick Barn. Most are ruined.”

Gideon suddenly laughed. “I was going to say it will take money we don’t have-but we do have it now.” He patted the briefcase. “Mercy me. As you can tell, I’m quite surprised by all this!”

“We all are, Gideon,” said Mrs. Needle with chilly sweetness. “We all are!”

Another long silence dropped over the table. Lucinda wondered how long it would be until Mrs. Needle squeezed the entire story out of Colin. She had drugged Lucinda and set a vicious, unnatural animal on Tyler-goodness only knew what else she could do. And she was Colin’s mother! No wonder he acted like he did. It turned Lucinda’s stomach.

“My only sadness,” Gideon said at last, “is that we have the egg back so we can study it, but we still we have no baby dragons and no idea of what the problem is.”

Something tickled Lucinda’s memory but stayed just out of reach.

“I wish you would let me take a hand, Gideon,” said Mrs. Needle. Her hand came to rest on Uncle Gideon’s arm like an ivory spider. “After all, Walkwell and the Norseman have failed three times now to keep an egg alive. There are charms that I know, herbs I could give her that ensure healthy births in cows and sheep and even poultry

…”

“There is nothing wrong with my care of these animals,” said Mr. Walkwell in a flat, angry voice.

Suddenly Lucinda remembered. “Wait! Maybe the egg isn’t dead!”

“What nonsense are you talking, child?” demanded Mrs. Needle. “Leave these things to your elders.”

“Just a moment, Patience,” Gideon said, shaking his arm loose from her clutch as he turned to Lucinda. “What do you mean?”

She told them how the dragon’s thoughts had seemed to stream through her mind as she rode her, most of them quite strange and alien, but some of them so clear that she felt sure she had understood Meseret’s meaning. “She was thinking about the egg-she didn’t think it was dead, just that it needed… something to start it moving.”