The Dragons of Ordinary Farm

Tad Williams
Deborah Beale
Prologue

Colin tested the parlor door. It was, as he expected, firmly closed and locked, but he hadn’t planned on going in anyway. He got down on his knees and looked through the keyhole.

His mother, Gideon, and Mr. Walkwell were meeting in the parlor, where the old stained-glass window showed Eve in the Garden of Eden with the apple and the tree and the snake. Gideon had once said that whoever made the window obviously cared little for anything but the snake, and he was right: the creature traveled along the top, down the left-hand side, and then all the way along the bottom, and compared to Eve and the tree, it glowed and sparkled like the showroom window of a fancy jewelry store. The room was hardly ever used-the last time he’d been in there the dust had made Colin’s nose itch something fierce. He immediately wished he had not thought about that, because now his nose was tickling as if the dust was all around him. If he sneezed-well, he didn’t want to think about that. He could not afford even one more mistake. His mother was many things. Forgiving was not one of them.

Colin clamped his nose in his fingers and held his breath, killing the sneeze by sheer force of will. His mother’s punishments were meant to “teach him to behave properly,” as she always reminded him. He had never understood what that meant. The only thing they taught him was how terrible it was to get caught.

He stifled the sneeze at last-no small victory. He let go of his nose and placed his ear against the keyhole.

“… I’ve invited two people to come to the farm for the summer,” Gideon was saying. “They’re distant relatives-a niece and nephew, two or three times removed, or however these things are calculated. Children, too, so perhaps that will be good for Colin.”

“Outsiders,” said Mr. Walkwell gruffly. “That is never good, Gideon.”

“Interlopers.” Colin’s mother said it calmly, but her voice was harder than usual.

“Not interlopers,” snapped Gideon with his usual high impatience. “Relatives of mine, if you please.”

Mr. Walkwell, the farm’s chief overseer, spoke quietly as ever, his up-and-down accent as enigmatic as windblown patterns in dust. Colin had to strain to pick out his next words. “But why these outsiders, Gideon, even if they are family? Why now?”

“It is my decision,” said Gideon crossly. “Are you going to fight me?”

“Of course not!” Colin heard his mother push back her chair and cross the room. Her approaching steps made him flinch-he almost turned and ran-but she stopped long before she reached the door. She had only got up to rub Gideon’s shoulders, something she often did when the master of the farm was upset about something.

“We know you must have thought long and hard about this, Gideon,” she told him kindly. “But the rest of us don’t understand, that’s all, and we all care about this place almost as much as you do.”

“I’m out of options.” Gideon’s voice sounded raw. “I’m running out of money. I’ve been getting… letters from a lawyer. Threatening me. There are pressures you do not know about.”

“Then tell us,” Colin’s mother said. “We are more than simply your employees, Gideon. You know that.”

“No, I can’t. And stop prying into my business!”

Which seemed to be all the explanation Gideon was going to give. That was how things usually went with the old man, Colin knew. Yes, that’s what he was-an old man full of stupid, selfish secrets.

But his secrets control our lives! the boy thought angrily. It’s not just his farm-we live here too!

The great front door of the house rattled and swung open. Colin jumped away from the keyhole and scuttled over to the grand staircase, praying that whoever was coming in would not see him in the shadows there. His heart hammered so hard inside his chest he thought it might break a rib. Then he heard the voice singing softly in German, and he stopped trembling quite so hard. It was only Sarah, the cook, carrying something through the lobby on her way to the kitchen. Another door opened and closed, then all was quiet again.

Colin got back to the keyhole in time to hear Gideon talking again. “… Are children. I’m glad of it! It will make them easier to control.”

Mr. Walkwell said, “Or put them in greater danger.”

“None of you understand,” said Gideon. “I am being hounded, and it is not for the first time, either. But I will protect this farm with my life-my life!”

Silence returned. Colin watched the motes dance in the beams of light spilling across the lobby.

It was his mother who spoke at last. “Are you fearful that someone will take the farm away from you? It is difficult, I know, but perhaps

… ” Even Colin’s mother, brave as a lioness, was clearly worried about saying anything more. “Perhaps you should think-just think, mind you-of marrying again…?”

“Are you mad?” Gideon roared. “You forget your place, madam!” Suddenly there was a great scraping of chair legs and Colin, caught by surprise, had to throw himself back from the door and dive toward the shadows beside the staircase again.

The parlor door swung open and Gideon burst out barefoot, robe flapping, his face red with anger. Mr. Walkwell followed, his emotions as hidden as Gideon’s were obvious. A few moments after they had both left the parlor, Gideon stomping through the door that led to his rooms and Mr. Walkwell out the front, returning to the farm, Colin’s mother appeared, shutting the parlor door behind her as carefully as if she was leaving an invalid’s bedchamber. She walked past Colin without looking at the shadows where he stood, then stopped just in front of the door that led toward the kitchen.

“Colin,” she said without turning, “don’t you have better things to be doing than spying on your elders?”

For long moments after she had gone through the door he could do nothing but crouch, breathing hard, feeling as though she had just punched him in the belly. At last he got to his feet and ran after her, despising himself as he did so but quite unable to stop himself. He would explain, he would tell her it was only an accident. Surely she wouldn’t punish him for an accident?

But of course she would. He knew that. And she would know it wasn’t an accident no matter how well he lied. She always did.

He would tell her he had just been trying to find her. That was mostly true, after all. He had hardly spoken to her or even seen her for several days. Sometimes it seemed like she didn’t even remember she had a child.

The kitchen was empty-not even Sarah was there. Colin ran out the door that led to the vegetable garden. The light outside nearly blinded him and the heat was ferocious. Spring had not even ended, but the California weather had turned perversely, sickeningly hot. He spotted his mother on the far side of the garden, gliding swiftly and gracefully across it despite the blazing sun. Her strength amazed him, as always, and the longing for her suddenly overwhelmed everything else.

“Mother!” he cried. “Please, Mother!”

She had to be able to hear him-she was only a few yards away. Tears came into his eyes and the chasm of nothingness opened inside Colin’s chest, an old and all-too-familiar acquaintance. She hurried on ahead of him across the open yard between the buildings, a mirage in the dust. Where was she going? Into the oak woods that began back there? She was always going off there by herself, or into the ancient greenhouse, or Grace’s old sewing room. Why couldn’t she just stop for once and talk to him instead?

“Mother!”

His strangled cry, it seemed, disturbed some of the animals in the Sick Barn just around the corner. Hoots and cries and screams rose into the gritty air, filling Colin’s skull so painfully that everything echoed and throbbed. Something made an unearthly fluting, some other creature chattered and howled, and something else made a wet, barking sound, like a dog underwater. Colin gasped and covered his ears, trying to protect his poor pounding brain. “Stop it,” he moaned. “Stop it!” But it did not stop-not for long moments more. Alarmed birds rose from nearby trees, shooting up into the sky.

The noises faded at last. His mother had come to a halt a short way into the oak grove, her back to him. As he stumbled up, she turned and silenced him with one look from her gray eyes. Then she turned back to the oak tree she seemed to have chosen, its pale, dry branches as shocked and contorted as bolts of lightning. Most of the green leaves had already withered in the unseasonable heat, which made it harder to see the bird’s nest in the crook of one of the high branches.

Staring up at the nest, his mother began to sing, a swoop of wordless melody. Colin fell under the spell of it instantly, just as he always did, as he had since infancy. Her voice was as sweet and slow as warm honey. Colin’s legs grew weak. Sometimes when he heard his beautiful, terrible mother sing, he thought he might be hearing the sounds the very first women in all the human race had used to lull their babies and soothe the sick. Her voice was so powerful, so loving, that when she raised it in song like this he could forgive her anything.

The melody went on, sparkling like sound made gold. A bird with black and white shoulders and a lovely red head crept out of the nest and moved cautiously down the bark of the oak tree, her tail flicking this way and that. For a moment she huddled in her own feathers like someone warming herself in a thick coat, then she fluttered down onto his mother’s outstretched finger and squatted, as if making a curtsey, presenting her glorious wings and neck feathers to be ruffled, bobbing and wobbling comically on the slender finger like a puppy begging to be petted.

“Let me hold the bird,” said Colin, charmed by the power of his beautiful mother. “Please… ”

The singing stopped. His mother’s fingers snapped closed like a trap. In the abrupt silence the handful of small bones breaking seemed loud as a drumroll. His mother opened her fingers and let the crushed bundle drop to the ground, one wing still fluttering feebly.

Colin clamped his hands over his mouth. He should have known. He should have known!

“Do you feel better now?” he shouted at her. He wanted to run but he couldn’t. He looked from her to the dying bird. “Does that make you feel better?” He actually wanted to know, that was the terrible thing. As if maybe there actually was a reason for these things, and when he knew it he could forgive her again.

Patience Needle turned her clear gray eyes on her son. “Better?” she said. “A little, I suppose.” She turned and began to walk briskly back toward the house. “Come along, Colin, and don’t dawdle. We still have to decide on an appropriate punishment for a sneaking little spy, don’t we?”