The Secrets of Ordinary Farm

Chapter 9

Lucinda was beginning to appreciate traveling by horse cart-the only wheeled vehicle Mr. Walkwell would ever use. Rattling along through the open air made her feel so vital, so connected-as if nature itself was flowing through her. Mr. Walkwell, horns and goat-legs hidden once more for the trip into town, held the reins loose but taut, almost talking to the horse Culpepper through the leather straps.

When he saw her watching the old man gifted her with a quick, careful smile, something she hadn’t seen much. The sunlight was golden, the day, not too hot, and the air filled with the smells of eucalyptus and warm yellow dust. Things even seemed to be going well at the farm this year-why wasn’t Mr. Walkwell happier?

“Is everything all right, Lucinda?” asked Colin Needle. “You seem very quiet.”

That sounded like sincere interest, which surprised her a little. “I’m fine. Just enjoying the ride. Do you think it’s going to rain?”

Colin looked up at the bruise-gray sky. “Maybe. Gideon says there hasn’t been weather like this since 1983-they had floods then! But it won’t rain anywhere near that hard this summer, I don’t think.”

1983 was well before Lucinda had been born. She was impressed. “Have there really been a lot of storms here this year?”

Colin smiled. “Oh, yes-thunder, lightning. The week before you came it was almost like being in a war-boom, crack, boom! Sarah said the world might be ending!” He laughed and Lucinda found herself laughing with him. They both fell silent again, but this time it was a comfortable silence.

When they reached downtown Standard Valley (such as it was) Mr. Walkwell tied Culpepper and the cart to a hitching post outside the store. Colin stood up. “I have to go over to Rosie’s for something. Shall I meet you somewhere?”

The old man looked up, squinted, and said, “You can do what you wish, Master Needle. Just be back here in an hour.”

“Where are you going?” Lucinda asked, then immediately regretted it. Surely secretive Colin Needle wouldn’t take kindly to being quizzed about his plans. But to her surprise Colin only grinned.

“I’m going to Rosie’s to use their wireless connection.”

Lucinda couldn’t help laughing at the idea of the ancient diner with its glowering owner as a fancy internet cafe. “Wi-fi? You’re kidding, right?”

“No. Rosie lets me use it when I’m in town and I help him with his accounting software.” Now Colin laughed, too. It sounded quite ordinary and pleasant. “Yes, even Standard Valley is finally stumbling into the twenty-first century.” He climbed down, threw Lucinda a little goodbye salute, then walked off toward Rosie’s cradling his laptop as carefully as a bundle of dreams.

Lucinda picked up a large bag of carrots at the grocery store, then decided it wasn’t big enough-they were for a dragon, after all!-and dug down to find a larger one. When she had paid for it she headed back to the feed store where Mr. Walkwell was talking sourly to the clerk about the horrors of machinery. Bored, Lucinda stared out of the window at the main street and wondered when they were going to see the Carrillos again, the kids from the farm next door. She and Tyler had met them first here in Standard Valley last year, on another of Mr. Walkwell’s shopping trips, and they had all become friends. She thought it was a little strange they’d been back on the farm so long and still hadn’t heard anything from Carmen and the rest. She and Tyler would have to find a way to contact them.

Mr. Walkwell was still denouncing the dangers of steam power to the confused counter clerk when Lucinda finally gave up and wandered outside into the hot, gray afternoon. The air smelled like rain but none was falling yet. She briefly considered going over to join Colin at the diner but felt reluctant to do that-what if he thought she had a crush on him? Which, though he occasionally acted almost human, she most definitely did not…

She wandered away from the center of town instead. It didn’t make for a very long walk-past the few stores and the train station until the only buildings around her were board houses with small, fenced front yards.

As Lucinda turned in front of the farthest houses and started back, someone stepped out of the shadows at the front of the train station, a tall man who angled toward her with long strides. By the time she had reached the center of the block the stranger was walking beside her.

“You-child,” he said. “Stop and talk to me for a moment.”

Every instinct told Lucinda to run; only the fact that they were standing in the middle of the town’s main street in the middle of the afternoon with people watching them from in front of the diner gave her courage to stand her ground. The towering stranger had to be nearly six and a half feet tall, she thought, with the easy physical grace of a young man, but his face was tan and creased as old leather. His hair was black, as were most of his clothes and his wide-brimmed hat. He looked more like a gunslinger out of a western movie than a farmer… a man out of time…

A sudden understanding felt like icy fingers on her neck: this man did look like someone from another time-like someone who had stepped out of the Fault Line. Suddenly she was terrified.

“I saw you and Simos Walkwell roll into town,” the stranger said in a slow, confident drawl. “Are you staying out at the Tinker farm? Gideon Goldring’s an old friend of mine.”

Lucinda just stood, mouth working helplessly.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me, child.” He showed her a flash of teeth. “I’m not your enemy.”

It was hard to swallow down the lump in her throat enough to make words. Something about this man made him seem as though the day itself had created him out of dust and summer heat. “I’m s-sorry, but I’m not supposed to talk to people I don’t know… ”

“Of course you’re not,” he said. “Smart girl. But I’m no stranger-just ask Gideon and the rest. Tell them you saw Jackson Kingaree. Tell ‘em I said I’ll be coming by real soon to catch up on old times. Can you remember that?’

Lucinda nodded.

The tall man bent over. Lucinda could smell liquor on his breath. His smile seemed like a trick he’d learned without understanding it, a dog taught to shake hands. “I’m glad to hear it, child. We’ll talk again one day, you and I-that’s a promise.” He straightened and walked past her, his coat brushing her hand as lightly as a bird’s feathered wing. His boots clicked on the sidewalk as he walked around the corner of the train station and disappeared. A drift of raindrops, light as flower petals, sprinkled her face and hands and made dark spots on the street.

Lucinda let out the breath she had been holding so long she had become dizzy, and then she ran.

“Never go near that man! Never! ” Mr. Walkwell was so upset he nearly knocked over his cup of coffee. Inside Rosie’s, heads turned at every table.

“He came up to me in the street.”

“Next time you see him, do not talk-run away. He is evil.” The old man shook his head and growled, a startlingly inhuman sound.

For just the briefest moment Lucinda remembered Mr. Walkwell dancing on his naked hooves along a hillside beneath the night sky, a wild thing from elder days. We’re surrounded by legends and fairy tales! she marveled yet again. And monsters, too. “But who is he, this… Kingaree?”

“He came out of the Fault Line, of course,” said Colin Needle quietly, eyes still on his laptop screen. “Like we all did, in one way or another.”

“What?” Lucinda was distracted by this. “But you said you were born here, Colin.”

“I was. My mother was pregnant when Gideon brought her here.”

Lucinda wondered, not for the first time, who Colin’s father had been; neither of the Needles ever talked about it. “But if that man came out of the… ” Colin looked up at her sharply, so Lucinda mouthed the word, “… Fault Line too, why doesn’t he live at the farm?”

“He did-for a while,” said Colin. “But he didn’t like the rules.”

Mr. Walkwell looked around to make sure no one in Rosie’s was listening to their quiet conversation. “No more talk about him until I have spoken to Gideon.”

“Kingaree came with old Caesar,” Colin whispered to Lucinda as they followed Mr. Walkwell out of the diner. “That’s all I know.”

“With Caesar?” She couldn’t put ancient, sweet-tempered Caesar together with Kingaree-with that face full of sharp edges and violence. As they approached the wagon she looked nervously up and down the street, seeing Kingaree’s menacing form in every shadow. As a result, she stared right at Steve Carrillo standing in front of the general store with his popsicle for several seconds before she recognized the husky boy.

“Steve!” she shouted. “Oh, wow, Steve! It’s me, Lucinda! We’re back!”

He waved and then called to someone inside the store. A moment later Carmen Carrillo, his older sister, came hurrying out onto the sidewalk. She saw Lucinda and ran toward her, Steve following, and they met in the center of the street to exchange hugs and excited greetings. Colin watched them embrace for a moment, then walked on toward the wagon without saying anything.

Carmen was taller and had lost weight-she looked quite glamorous, Lucinda thought, but Steve seemed like he might have put on a few pounds. “I missed you guys so much!” Lucinda said. “I was wondering when we’d get to see you! Tyler’s back at the farm. He’ll wish he came along, now.”

“Yeah, Alma’s back at our place,” Steve said of the third and youngest Carrillo child. “She’s sewing stuff this year and she hardly ever comes out of her room.”

“She gave up wood carving?” Lucinda asked. “That’s too bad!”

Steve laughed. “Naw. She still carves, too. And does clay sculptures. Her room is more cluttered up than mine!”

“Not possible,” said Carmen. “Wow, great to see you, Luce. I shared your emails with Steve and Alma.” She smiled. “Well, not everything… ”

“Thank you! How are you guys?”

An odd look crossed Carmen’s face, sliding like a shadow. “Okay, I guess. Kind of. We’re having a lot of weird trouble with that guy from last year.” She looked around but the small street was all but empty. “The one who landed on your farm in his helicopter.”

“Edward Stillman?” Lucinda suddenly felt a chill. This new guy Kingaree, the crazy rich guy-what did the universe have against Ordinary Farm? “What kind of trouble?”

“He keeps offering our folks money,” said Steve.

“He’s buying up land all around your property,” Carmen explained. “So of course he wants our farm, because we’re right next door.”

“He’s offering tons of money, too,” Steve said. “We heard our mom and dad talking about it. They don’t want to sell… but it’s a lot of money. My dad keeps trying to talk to your uncle Gideon about it, but your uncle won’t ever call him back or anything. Dad even went over to see him but Gideon wouldn’t even come out to that big old crazy gate he built. Have you seen that? Oh, right, you must have.”

Lucinda smiled, but her joy at seeing two of her friends had soured. Stillman back, and now this Kingaree hanging around. What next?

“Hello, you bad children,” Mr. Walkwell greeted the Carrillos, but without his usual sly good cheer. “Lucinda, we must go back. We have things to discuss with Gideon.”

“Tell him my father really needs to talk to him, Mr. Walkwell,” Carmen said. “Please. It’s important.”

The wiry old man looked overwhelmed in a way Lucinda had never seen before. “I will tell him, of course. But Gideon Goldring does what he wants, always. Come, Lucinda.”

“Bye, guys!” she shouted when she’d climbed aboard the wagon, next to silent Colin. “See you soon, I hope!”

“Come for the Fourth again!” yelled Carmen. “That was totally fun last year!”

To Lucinda’s surprise, Ragnar was waiting for them out by the new gate. The big Norseman did not smile as they came in, only held the gate open and waved the cart through, then closed it by hand afterward and secured it with a bolt.

“What’s wrong with the gate?” Colin asked. “It should open and close by itself.”

“The invisible lightning is gone,” Ragnar said. “Your mother turned it away, or off, whatever you say. Until we know what is happening.” He was clearly agitated. “Did Gideon go with you? Did he stay in town?”

Mr. Walkwell seemed as surprised by this as Lucinda. “No. Gideon was here when we left. He did not go with us.”

Lucinda was beginning to feel really frightened. She looked at Colin but he seemed as confused as she was. “What’s going on?”

“We cannot find him,” Ragnar said. “We have been looking everywhere since just after you left this morning. Everyone on the farm has been searching and we have looked in every place we can think, all through the house, the barns, the hills, the pens.” He shook his head. “But Gideon has disappeared. He is gone.”