The Dragons of Ordinary Farm

Chapter 19
The Secret Guardian

L ucinda had a bad feeling. Actually she had several.

Instead of all of the farm folk being clustered in the kitchen and dining room as they usually were-where she could keep an eye on them, as Tyler had asked-most of them appeared to have chosen this night, of all nights, to be somewhere else. Mr. Walkwell and Ragnar had gone out after dinner on some mysterious special task, the kitchen workers told her, Uncle Gideon was simply absent again, and Haneb was at the Sick Barn looking in on Meseret, who had been acting strangely since she had lost her egg-so much so that everyone was afraid she was sick with some unknown dragon illness. Even the Three Amigos had vanished, perhaps gone with Mr. Walkwell and Ragnar, perhaps just back to their cabin on the far side of the farm or off to the dormitory to play cards with the other farmhands-no one could say. Only old Caesar, Sarah, the cook, and her two helpers, little Pema and tall Azinza, were in the kitchen, the women washing dishes while Caesar prepared to take a tray with tea and sandwiches up to Gideon.

Which meant, Lucinda thought miserably, that Tyler could stumble into any number of people out there and get both of them in serious trouble.

She picked up a dish towel and started drying.

“So where’s Mrs. Needle?” she asked after a while.

Azinza frowned at her. “Child, why do you ask so many questions tonight? Mrs. Needle, she does not like us talking about her.”

Sarah made a snorting noise. “That is the truth. She is secret like a wall with no window, that one.”

Caesar paused in the kitchen doorway, the tray balanced on one hand. “You womenfolk do know that the devil finds work for idle hands, don’t you? And idle tongues too.” Shaking his head, he went out.

“I think Mrs. Needle have tea with Mr. Gideon,” Pema offered suddenly, breaking the silence that followed. She had the habit of looking down and speaking very quietly, so that sometimes you could only hear the soft murmur of a voice, but no words at all. She was pretty, too, like a doll, and although she looked older than Lucinda, she was half a head shorter. Being around Pema made Lucinda feel like a horse or something even clumsier.

“Oh, she’s probably having tea, all right,” said Sarah, her mouth tight and her pale skin flushed with some emotion Lucinda couldn’t quite read. “With her little friend.”

“Colin?” asked Lucinda.

“He wishes that were true,” Sarah said with a snort. “If she paid half as much mind to her fatherless child as she does to that animal, the boy wouldn’t be up to such strange mischief…”

Pema took an audible breath. Even tall Azinza straightened up as though Sarah had said something dangerous. “You shouldn’t talk so,” Azinza hissed. “She hears things.”

It felt like something cold had clutched the back of Lucinda’s neck. “Animal? What do you mean?”

“That… thing,” Sarah said, ignoring Azinza’s warning shake of the head. The usually cheerful cook folded her arms across her bosom. “No, I won’t be quiet. I am a Christian woman, whatever has happened to me. She talks to that creature as if it were her own pet, and what is godly in that? Sits and talks, and I swear that it listens.”

Pema laid a small hand on the German cook’s broad arm. “Please, Miss Sarah. Do not say any more. Azinza is right-it is foolishness to speak ill of-”

“A witch?” Sarah scowled. “There, I said it. Don’t these children have a right to know? She talks with a black squirrel and it chatters back at her, for all to see! And only our good Lord knows what she has done to Mr. Gideon to make him so foolish, so… so… ”

Even as Sarah suddenly, startlingly began to weep, Lucinda ran out of the kitchen in terror.

Tyler was right! Lucinda could hardly breathe. A witch! Mrs. Needle really was a witch!

She ran out into the yard, disoriented in the dark after the lights of the kitchen. She was sickened to think of Tyler out there alone, being watched by who knew what. She stumbled toward the middle of the open space, wishing the moon would hurry out from behind the clouds. She thought she saw the bulk of the silo now, but something was moving, something that caught the faintest sheen of moonlight. Tyler? She wanted to call out but didn’t know who might hear. The farm, which only a short while before had seemed strange but mostly safe, now seemed to be a nest of fearsome strangers.

If that was Tyler, he was moving away from the farmhouse-not toward the silo, but out toward the pastures and the reptile barn. Perhaps he had already tried the silo and now meant to explore some other parts of the farm. He didn’t know how much danger he was in! She felt like a fool. Her brother had been right, she had been wrong. She had wanted everything to be okay, just like she always did, and she had kept her eyes closed to the things that seemed to suggest otherwise.

A shudder went through her at the memory of Mrs. Needle’s cold, bright eyes, the woman’s pale hand on hers. When had that been? She remembered drinking tea with her, but not being touched-Mrs. Needle hardly ever touched anyone, even her own son. But now the memory of that cool white hand lying across her own seemed as strong and painful as a memory of being burned.

The dark figure ahead of her was moving faster than she had thought. If it was Tyler, he was running. Had something happened to him? In any case, she could not simply let him roam the farm property without being warned. Too many of the farm folk were out tonight, and he needed to hear what Sarah and the others had said about Mrs. Needle.

Something came to her-a noise? No, it was a feeling, a distinct sadness floating into her thoughts like the wail of a ghost, raising the hair on the back of her neck.

Lost.

Gone.

Lost.

The feeling swept over Lucinda and made her stop where she was, quivering, as though a freezing wind had struck her. It was like a voice in her head, a voice without words that still spoke clearly of terrible grief and an equally terrible, deeply buried anger. Lucinda felt as though she couldn’t hold so much sadness inside her-that she would burst like a balloon that had been inflated too far.

Then the feeling was gone, although a sensation of powerful unhappiness lingered for several moments after. Lucinda’s cheeks felt cold. She touched them with her fingers and found that they were wet with tears.

What was going on here? Was it the ghost she’d seen in the mirror? What else could fill her with such a sensation of misery? Was the whole farm haunted?

While Lucinda had been distracted the dark shape, moving with surprising speed, had almost disappeared from her sight. She pushed herself away from the sheltering darkness of the buildings nearest the house and out into the clouded moonlight, one shadow following another.

Whatever or whoever she had been trailing was long gone, and Lucinda was stumbling through a dark wood at the far end of the pasturelands, just at the base of the hills that marked the edge of the property. The moonlight seemed to have weakened, and she had turned around so many times in the shadow-spotted trees that she wasn’t even quite sure which direction the house was in. She was crying a little despite herself, frustrated and frightened, and was just about to sit down and wait until people came in the morning to find her when she saw a light a short way up the hill.

Was it Tyler with his flashlight? No, it wasn’t a flashlight at all, but the uneven, flickering light of a fire. It must be the herders-Kiwa, Jeg, and Hoka-who liked to sit beside their campfire late into the night, singing mournful, deep-throated songs that seemed to vibrate like plucked strings. Still, even in the dark she didn’t think she could have stumbled that far out of her way. Also, although she could now hear a single gruff voice raised in song, it didn’t sound anything like the music of the Three Amigos.

Lucinda moved closer, worry and hope fighting each other inside her chest. She could see the fire moving and sparking in the gentle night breeze in a clearing just ahead, but there was no sign of the singer. She paused at the edge of the clearing, alarmed by the strangeness of the hoarse yet plaintive song, like the howling of some lonely animal set to slow, rhythmic music.

Something was lying on the ground just at her feet. She bent and picked it up. A boot, small as a child’s shoe, still warm from the leg and foot that had been in it. As if in a dream, she reached her hand into it, then yanked it out, startled. It was stuffed with shredded paper, which rustled beneath her fingers.

Something squeezed her arms against her sides with the strength of a giant snake. A huge hand folded over her mouth.

Lucinda screamed but no sound came out except a muffled murmur. She was lifted clean off the ground, feet kicking. Her heels beat against the legs of her captor, but seemed to make no more impression than kicking the trunk of an oak tree.

“Sssshh,” a voice whispered in her ear, the hot breath making her squirm in terror. “He will hear you. He has little enough freedom-do not take this from him.”

Then she recognized the voice. She was still frightened, but at least she knew who held her.

“I’m going to put you down,” Ragnar whispered. “Do not run-it will startle him, which might be dangerous. Do not speak, either. He will be off soon, to look to the fences.”

She had no idea who “he” was, but she nodded her head. The big man set her down as if she weighed no more than a coffee cup. For a moment, overwhelmed by the strangeness of the night, the succession of shocks and surprises, she almost ran away despite her promise, but something inside held her back.

No one’s hurt me. Ragnar wouldn’t do anything to me. Strongest of all, though, to her surprise, was that she wanted to know. For once she wanted nothing more than to get answers to the questions that were swarming in her head like startled bees.

A moment later a shape came springing down the hillside. There was just enough firelight to show its odd, jerky movements. It was dancing , she realized, leaping and capering with arms stretched high as if to clutch at the stars. From the waist up it had the shape of a naked man, slender and muscled, but below that were the haunches and narrow, hooved feet of a deer or goat.

The head dipped down for an instant into the firelight and Lucinda almost screamed. The face was Mr. Walkwell’s.

The animal-man leaped up again, then whirled around and was gone, bounding up the slope with tremendous speed and agility, disappearing over the crest of the hill. Lucinda, her knees suddenly too weak to hold her weight, sank down to the ground beside the discarded boots, the paper that had spilled from them crunching beneath her.

“He’s a… Mr. Walkwell’s a… ” She shook her head, shocked. “What is he?”

Ragnar laughed. “He is one of the Old Ones, child. I do not know the right name for his kind, but the Graekers worshipped them as little short of gods. The Greeks, I mean. Sometimes I still do say the wrong words, despite all my years here.”

Lucinda picked up Mr. Walkwell’s boot. The whole night felt like a dream, but she knew it wasn’t. “The poor man. He has to walk in these-no wonder he goes so slow. Always having to hide what he is.”

“Not always.” Ragnar helped her up and led her across the clearing toward the stone circle in which the fire burned. When she knelt to warm her hands he crouched beside her. “The nights are his-like this one.”

“Is he from… does Mr. Walkwell come from the same place as the dragons and the unicorns?”

Ragnar poked the fire with a long branch. A few sparks drifted up and winked out. “I do not know all of Simos’s story, because he was here long before the rest of us came… but in a way that is true. He is from the same place as the dragons. We all are. But place is not the right word. It is hard to explain.”

“Maybe somebody should try,” she said, but without anger. She had lost it back in the trees. “No one ever tells me or Tyler anything until we find it out for ourselves.” A sudden thought made her heart race. “Tyler! He’s out exploring-I have to find him!”

“He will be well,” the bearded man said. “Nobody will come onto the farm and hurt him when Simos is on guard.”

It wasn’t people getting in from outside she was worried about, but people who were already here-one person, anyway. “Sarah and the others-they said that Mrs. Needle is a witch.”

Ragnar frowned and took a moment before answering. “It is true that where she came from that is what they called her. They would have killed her for it too. But your great-uncle trusts her, and she has helped him, there is no doubt of that. After the fire took his laboratory and all his things I thought he would waste away in sorrow, but since then she has helped him find new life-new purpose.”

Lucinda’s mind was still whirling with questions, but before she could ask anything else Ragnar stiffened and rose. A knife that she had not even seen was suddenly in his hand, glinting in the firelight. A moment later a bizarre, lumpy shape came swinging down the hillside, sometimes upright, sometimes going on all fours. Before she could do more than take a frightened breath, the weird thing came to a sudden halt at the edge of the clearing and split into two pieces, one of which fell to the ground.

Mr. Walkwell straightened and prodded with his hoof at the bundle he had just dumped. He rolled it over, revealing a pale face and slack, open mouth. He looked up from the motionless man at his feet and cocked an eyebrow at Lucinda, who had shrunk back into Ragnar’s shadow.

“What is the child doing here?” He seemed more irritated than embarrassed to be standing in front of her naked, although he was so shaggy he might as well have been wearing trousers. Lucinda could not help staring. Even trousers would not have hidden the fact he had hooves instead of feet, and it was almost stranger to see him without his hat than without pants. Where his hair had blown back from his forehead in matted, sweaty curls she could see pale, circular marks-the place where his goat horns grew, she realized, although he had cut them off or filed them down. With his scraggly beard and the fire reflecting red in his eyes, he looked like the devil himself. Lucinda should have been terrified, but the face was still Mr. Walkwell’s, the man who hated cars and carved wooden toys for children.

“Don’t blame Ragnar. It’s… it’s my fault,” she said. “I was out looking for Tyler. I got lost, and then… I saw the fire… ”

Ragnar crouched beside the man Mr. Walkwell had dumped on the ground. The stranger was wearing dark clothes and a dark stocking cap. “Where did you find him?” Ragnar asked.

“Beside the Junction Road fence,” said Mr. Walkwell. “He only got a few steps past it. I came down on him from behind. He did not have time to see me.”

The old man had just run out to Junction Road, then run back carrying a large man on his back, all in a quarter of an hour or less, Lucinda realized. Here was another thing Tyler had been right about all along-Mr. Walkwell wasn’t just inhumanly strong, he wasn’t human at all.

“Is… is he dead?” Lucinda asked.

Ragnar shook his head. “Simos has only stunned him. We want these people to know they are not welcome, and for that they must live to tell those who have hired them.” He had finished going through the man’s pockets. “Empty, of course. But I will wager that if you find his car, you may also find a telephone with the number for that greedy man, Stillman.” Ragnar sighed heavily. “He is digging to see what he can find, or perhaps just reminding us he is out there. This is a problem that is not going away.”

“I don’t understand,” Lucinda asked. “Who is Stillman?”

“A bad man. A rich man too. He is a descendant of the Tinker family and he wants this farm. Anything else, Gideon will have to tell you himself.”

“If I find the telephone, I will bring it back. I do not understand those things and I do not want to,” Mr. Walkwell said. He looked sternly at Lucinda, as though she might have been about to peddle him a cell phone herself. “It makes my head itch even listening to people talking into one.”

“They hardly work here, anyhow,” Ragnar said. He had pulled off the unconscious man’s clothes, leaving him in only his underpants, socks, and undershirt. He didn’t look very dangerous now. “He is ready, Simos.”

Mr. Walkwell leaned down and scooped the man up like a bag of groceries, then slung him across his shoulder. “I will take him back. He and his master will have something to think about when he wakes up.”

A moment later he had bounded off, so quickly that Lucinda had completely missed the point between going and gone. She could smell him, though, a tang that was not unpleasant, but still made her nostrils twitch.

“As for you, we take you back to the house,” Ragnar said. “You have had enough questions answered for one night, yes?”

Lucinda nodded. Tyler would be safe. How could anything bad happen to him with a magical creature like Mr. Walkwell guarding the farm?