The Dragons of Ordinary Farm

Chapter 9

L ucinda woke up late in the afternoon, feeling the way she had once in fifth grade when she’d come down with a really bad fever and had to stay home from school for almost two weeks. Time had seemed to pass in strange pieces when the fever was strong, and sometimes it had been hard to remember whether something she was recalling had been real or just a dream.

Like now.

She had only meant to take a little nap, but she had dropped unconscious like someone had hit her with a club. Now she lay on her mattress, breathing the too-warm air and remembering every little bit of the events of the morning. It was hard to believe it had all happened, the unicorns and dragons and sea serpents, but there couldn’t be any such thing as a dream this complicated and realistic.

Not unless you went crazy.

That was a disturbing thought. Lucinda sat up. It was breathlessly hot in her room. She struggled out of bed to get a drink of water from the bathroom.

She knocked on Tyler’s door for at least a minute. He didn’t answer, so she wandered down the stairs with the idea of finding something better to drink than warm tap water. Within moments she realized she had taken yet another wrong turn and was in a dusty hallway covered with dark red wallpaper, the walls full of empty picture frames.

What’s with this crazy place? she wondered. Why do I keep getting lost? It was almost like the house itself kept turning away from her, like when the other girls at school had secrets and were freezing her out. Lucinda hated being on the outside-it took all her strength away, left her feeling too weak to do anything except say sour, nasty things.

But right now there was no one to say anything to -only the house and its long, dark, many-angled corridors full of stiflingly warm air.

None of it made any sense-not the house, not the farm. Where did someone get actual, honest-to-goodness dragons? Was Tyler right about Uncle Gideon being the mastermind of some weird genetic project like in a science-fiction movie? What else could it be? The animals weren’t robots or any kind of special effects, that was for sure. Meseret had looked her right in the eyes. Lucinda had no question that dragon was real.

She looked down at the threadbare carpet and its design of green roses. She’d never been in this hall before, she was sure. She sighed and started off again. She spent at least ten minutes wandering up and down hallways and staircases without coming across an outside window or anything else she recognized.

Finally she opened a heavy paneled door and found herself in another unfamiliar place, a sitting room of some kind-a parlor, with dusty sofas and shelves full of photographs. The carpet, with its black and gray patches and green roses, was mirrored more or less in reverse by the wallpaper, where the background was a pale green and the twining roses were black. Lucinda hesitated before backing out. The pictures had caught her attention. She let the door fall shut behind her and walked deeper into the room. There were dozens of photographs, and they all seemed to be of the same dark-haired woman.

Lucinda sat down on one of the sofas, the better to examine the pictures on the coffee table, but the cushions were thick with cobwebs and dust. She jumped up, brushing herself off with little squeals of disgust, and decided she could look at things just as well standing up.

In some of the photos the woman was with other people-one looked like a picnic beside a lake, where she sat smiling on a blanket with half a dozen other people in old-fashioned clothes-but in most she was alone, smiling or laughing or sometimes just looking at the camera with calm attention. Some were black-and-white, some were in color, although none of the color photos looked quite realistic. The woman was very pretty, with a long-legged figure and the kind of long, dark brown curls Lucinda had only seen before on women in old paintings.

At last, Lucinda turned to examine the rest of the room. It felt like a place no one had visited for years-faintly creepy, maybe even haunted, she thought-but strangely she wasn’t at all frightened; in fact, she almost felt like she was dreaming. In one corner a tailor’s dummy stood like a headless scarecrow. Lucinda walked over to the shadows where it stood and put her hands on the dummy’s waist. It was slender, but the hips and breasts were full. Their mother’s friend Mrs. Peirho made clothes sometimes, and she had a tailor’s dummy too. She had told Lucinda that they could be adjusted to your own exact size. Had this one belonged to the woman in the pictures? Whoever she was, Lucinda thought, she must have been very small…

“Wasn’t she lovely?” said a voice. “Her name was Grace.”

Lucinda let out a little scream and whirled around. Patience Needle was standing right behind her, as if she had suddenly risen up from the floor. Lucinda stumbled and put out a hand to steady herself on the tabletop. One of the framed pictures teetered and then fell. Lucinda did her best to catch it, but it tumbled to the floor and the glass broke, making a noise almost as loud as her scream. When Lucinda picked it up, feeling both ashamed and angry, she cut her fingers on a jagged edge.

“I’m sorry I startled you, dear,” said Mrs. Needle, and held out a hand to Lucinda, who shrank from her. “And I’m sorry things have been so strange for you children since you’ve arrived. You’re lost, aren’t you? Oh, look, you’ve hurt your hand. Really, you must let me help you.”

Lucinda’s fingers were really starting to ache now. The blood was making a little pool in her palm, and looking at it suddenly made her feel dizzy.

“Poor you!” said Mrs. Needle. “That’s a nasty gash there. Don’t worry about the broken glass, I’ll clean it up later.” Mrs. Needle took a clean white handkerchief out of the pocket of her skirt and wrapped it around Lucinda’s injured fingers. “You must let me help you-I insist.”

Standing this close to Mrs. Needle, Lucinda could smell the faint but lovely scent of lilies, rich and sweet. “Who is that woman in all the pictures?”

“Her name was Grace Tinker-well, Grace Goldring after her marriage. She was Gideon’s wife. He lost her many years ago but he loved her very, very much. I don’t think you should mention her in front of him.” Mrs. Needle put a hand on Lucinda’s shoulder. “Look at this place! I’m ashamed to see how long it’s been since we’ve dusted in here-what must you think of us? Now come and let me take care of you.”

Relief that she was no longer lost suddenly flooded through her. Lucinda let herself be steered out of the old parlor and taken down some stairs, then gently coaxed this way and that, as if she was a boat drifting down a river. “Here,” said Mrs. Needle at last, ushering Lucinda into a room unlike anything she had yet seen in this strange, strange house.

It was very large, but at Ordinary Farm that wasn’t unusual. One wall was a giant filing cabinet with what seemed like hundreds of little drawers in rows reaching up to the ceiling, like the cells of a wooden beehive, each perhaps the width of a hand. A rolling ladder stood to one side and a long desk stretched along another wall. Part of the desk was covered with stacks of books, but it also held a microscope and a computer, although the latter seemed weirdly out of place in the otherwise old-fashioned room.

At the far end of the room stood several open doors, and Lucinda caught glimpses of two bedrooms and a bathroom as Mrs. Needle led her to one of the chairs. She made Lucinda sit down, then vanished into yet another room. “I’ll just make some tea!” she called.

Lucinda heard a kettle moan, then whistle, then shriek as she stared around the room, still feeling groggy. High windows rose along the wall across from the desk, but although the light of late afternoon was still in the sky there didn’t seem to be much to see outside but another section of the house’s crazy-colored outside walls. Below these windows stood dozens of potted plants that filled the room with the smell of live greenery and damp soil and something else less pleasant-something that was like meat, or blood.

Mrs. Needle came back bearing a steaming mug in one hand and a small bottle in the other. She set down the mug, then unwound the handkerchief from Lucinda’s fingers.

Something cold splashed on Lucinda’s cuts, something that stung like Mrs. Needle had dabbed them with acid. Lucinda gasped, but the pain dissolved swiftly, leaving her trembling. A moment later a delicious coolness had settled over her hand and the throbbing had melted away.

“Oh! What was that?”

“Now drink this,” commanded Mrs. Needle, handing her the cup of tea.

Lucinda stared at the creamy brown liquid inside the china mug. The smell of the tea-a fragrant, black-leaf smell-washed over her. She lifted it to her lips. She had not known tea could be anything as intense as this, as dizzying and delightful.

“There,” said Mrs. Needle, taking the mug away from her, “you’ll feel much better now.”

The room wavered like a mirage. Lucinda’s heart was pounding, she suddenly realized. There was a vase overfilled with white lilies nearby, and their scent was carried to Lucinda by a breeze from the window. She was drowning in it. Her throat felt squeezed, and she saw her own hand like a claw pulling on the neckband of her T-shirt. Mrs. Needle was very pretty, but she seemed to be a long distance away, like an empress on a high throne. An empress of lilies.

“Hush, dear, hush,” said Mrs. Needle, patting Lucinda’s hand.

Lucinda blinked. She hadn’t been saying anything, had she?

“Are you feeling better, Lucinda? How are your cuts?”

“Much better, thank you.”

“Good.” Mrs. Needle held out her hand, revealing the bloodstained handkerchief she had taken off Lucinda’s wounded fingers. “Do you see this?” she said. “People in this modern age of machines and invisible electricity talk so much about their new ideas, but really nothing is new.”

Lucinda stared. How beautiful Mrs. Needle’s mouth was as it formed the words she spoke-and how beautiful the words, pronounced in that perfect English accent.

“Take blood, for instance,” Mrs. Needle continued. “Long before there was any talk of… genes or the DNA, people knew that blood and hair and spittle contained the magical essences of things.” She nodded her head slowly, then looked up at Lucinda and smiled. “Would you like to see a little trick?”

Lucinda could only nod. She had suddenly noticed that at some point Mrs. Needle had let down her black hair. It was much longer than Lucinda had guessed-halfway down her back or more. Letting your hair down. She understood the expression now. It meant being friends, feeling comfortable. Right now, she felt very comfortable.

“Watch, then.” Mrs. Needle folded the bloodied handkerchief into a ball so that only the white was visible, then closed her fingers around it entirely, making a fist. “Look closely!” She opened her hand and the wadded handkerchief slowly unwound until the bloodstain was again visible-but it had changed shape. Now it looked like the silhouette of a girl. With its long, straight hair it could almost be Lucinda herself. Then the red silhouette began to move. It might only have been Mrs. Needle gently flexing her hand, but it looked like the little blood-Lucinda was… dancing.

“Oh.” Lucinda let out her breath. “Oh, wow! How do you do that?”

Mrs. Needle closed her fingers on the handkerchief once more. “Just a little trick. An amusement. You enjoyed it?”

Lucinda felt as if her head was as big and round and light as a helium balloon. “Can you do it again?”

Mrs. Needle’s shook her head sadly. “It only works once, I’m sad to say.” She brightened. “But if you could bring me something of your brother’s, I could show you another charming trick. Would you like that?”

“Something of…?”

“Blood, like this. Or maybe just some hair… ”

“But I don’t know where he is. He went out somewhere.”

“Did he now? Well, why don’t you have a look in his room? Perhaps he’s left a comb there.” When Mrs. Needle smiled she looked like a beautiful queen from a fairy tale. “Why don’t you go see?”

“I’ll get lost again,” Lucinda told her sadly.

“No, you won’t. Just go out that door. Oh, do hurry-I’m having such a good time with you, I don’t want to waste any of it.”

Lucinda walked to the door, dizzy and uncertain. It felt like the most popular girl in school had suddenly decided she wanted Lucinda for a best friend, and that was thrilling-wasn’t it?

Mrs. Needle had been absolutely right. Once out the door, Lucinda climbed a single staircase and found herself in the hallway she shared with Tyler. He still wasn’t back, but she pushed his unlatched door open and went in. It was already a typical Tyler mess, which was pretty impressive considering he’d only had a day or so to get it started. She found his hairbrush where he’d dropped it on the floor near the bed, its bristles snarled with his light brown hair. Normally she wouldn’t have touched any of Tyler’s personal items without putting on a hazmat suit, but at this moment she was feeling dreamy, and distant, and the prospect of not doing this thing seemed so hard, like swimming against incoming waves… It wouldn’t matter so much anyway-not really.

She found her way back to Mrs. Needle’s room with the same weird ease-one moment she was in the hall, the next sitting at the table again.

“Oh, well done.” Mrs. Needle clapped her hands. There was something so charmingly open, the way she did that. “Here, let me have it.” The Englishwoman peeled one of Tyler’s long hairs out of the knot wrapped around the bristles and put the single hair in a little dish, then passed her hand over it once and struck a match. The hair burned blue for a moment and made a puff of smoke that seemed far too large for the size of the flame, then the smoke swirled into a shape-Tyler’s face, as unmistakable as a photograph. Her brother was brushing his hair and his features were contorted in a grimace of pain because the hairbrush had caught in a tangle. Lucinda and Mrs. Needle both laughed. A moment later the smoke-Tyler fell apart.

“That’s amazing!”

“I’m so glad you enjoyed it.” Mrs. Needle handed her back the hairbrush. The entire tangle of hair was gone from the bristles, although she had only burned one. “I do love to make children happy. Now, have some more tea, dear, and let’s talk. I want you to tell me everything. You see, I’m really very interested in you and Tyler, but I know so little about you.” Mrs. Needle laughed again and patted Lucinda’s arm. “Did your mother give you good advice for your trip in the days after she received Gideon’s letter?”

Lucinda giggled in sour amusement.

“She must have had some wise things to say, your mother.”

When Lucinda’s giggles became outright laughter, Mrs. Needle frowned kindly and put her cold hand over Lucinda’s. “I’m so sorry-I don’t mean to pry if it’s difficult to talk about her. Is she hard to get along with?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” said Lucinda. “She doesn’t really listen to me.” She frowned, trying to remember. “What did she say? God, she’s always talking, but she never really says anything. Oh yeah. She said she hadn’t known we had a rich relative and would we please not scare him off. Ooh,” she said, full of a pleasurable sense of naughtiness.

“I feel like I want to tell you just everything.”

“Then do so, dear,” Mrs. Needle said, smiling. “We’ll be such good friends! I promise you won’t find a better listener than me.”

Lucinda talked and talked, and out came more than she had ever told anyone in her life. She didn’t know why she wanted to talk so much today, but it seemed so natural to share all kinds of secrets as the sky went from dark purple to black beyond the windows, as the two of them sat like old friends in the room reeking of white lilies and the faint tang of blood.