The Secrets of Ordinary Farm

Chapter 17

According to Mr. Walkwell, the male dragon Alamu had been around the night of the laboratory fire and had probably even caused it. Octavio Tinker’s Continuascope had been gone since then. Jackson Kingaree had also disappeared that night, but hadn’t shown any sign of having the Continuascope then or now. And Haneb said dragons, and especially Alamu, loved to collect shiny things for their nests. The Continuascope had been very shiny.

Elementary, my dear Watson, Tyler thought. Find Alamu’s nest, find the Continuascope. More important, make sure Colin Needle didn’t find it, because if Colin got hold of Octavio’s invention he’d be able to use the Fault Line. He’d be able to travel back and forth through time. In fact, Colin might even find a way into the washstand mirror world to rescue Grace, and then Gideon would put him in the will instead of Tyler and Lucinda.

The biggest problem, of course, was that Lucinda had opened her mouth and started babbling about dragons and shiny things and what Haneb said right in front of Colin Needle. Yes, if someone forced him, Tyler would have admitted that he loved his sister, but right now he didn’t like her very much. Colin might be a total jerkwad but he wasn’t stupid-he would definitely be thinking the same things as Tyler.

So it all came down to two questions: where was Alamu’s nest and how could he get to it before Colin did?

Almost halfway through his second summer on the farm now, Tyler knew better than to walk around asking people where Alamu kept his hoard. He didn’t want to talk about it to Lucinda, even if he hadn’t been angry with her, because he knew she would have a fit at the idea of him going anywhere near a dragon’s nest. His sister was the kind of kid who always waited for the grown-ups to fix things. They didn’t, of course, which was why she was grumpy a lot. Tyler had figured out a long time ago that if you wanted something you had to do it yourself: if he was hungry for cookies he scavenged money from under the sofa cushions and went and bought some at the store, because Mom sure as heck wasn’t going to bake any. But finding double-stuffed Choco-Marshes in the grocery aisle was quite a bit easier than finding a dragon’s nest in a farm the size of a state park.

It turned out to be a good time to ask questions. With Gideon back at home, people were bustling in and out of the house all day long and Tyler had plenty of opportunities to talk to the farm hands. Kiwa, one of the three Mongol herdsmen and the one who spoke the least English, still managed to tell Tyler a few things he hadn’t known, and his fellows Jeg and Hoka were even more help, letting Tyler know all the places that Alamu seemed to frequent. Even Ragnar had useful information to offer.

“Of course he spends a lot of time around the Reptile Barn because that is where his mate and her child live,” Ragnar told Tyler, “and he comes there when we put food out as well, but he also spends many warm afternoons in the sun on that rocky hill there.” The big Norseman pointed to a distant granite face, a shiny smear along one of the hills that fenced the valley. “Why do you write down these things, boy? You are not going to go near the worm, are you? He will kill you and eat you. That is no joke.”

“Trust me-I don’t want to go anywhere near him,” Tyler said, which was true. “I’m just making notes.” Ragnar’s hard green eyes were full of doubt; Tyler began to regret having asked him anything in the first place. “Okay, I have a sort of… bet with Colin Needle. That I can predict something better than he can. I don’t want even to see Alamu, I just want to figure out where he goes. Honestly, it’s nothing important… ”

Just then Ragnar was called to help Mr. Walkwell with something, but Tyler knew he’d better stay away from the big man from now on-Ragnar suspected that something was up. That was certainly something they didn’t teach you in school: how to deal with a suspicious Viking.

To his delight, Tyler discovered that little Pema, the young Tibetan woman who worked in the kitchen, had been paying attention to the dragon as well.

“I love to see him fly,” she said, and he could see how much she meant it-her dark eyes were shining with excitement. “When I was young my grandmother told me stories of the dragons-we call the country my family came from Druk Yul, the Dragon Land. So it is a great goodness to live so close to them now. And Alamu… ” She blushed and smiled. She was older than Tyler had realized-not a girl but a young woman who just happened to be small. “He is so beautiful. His wings are like hammered copper! The dragons are messengers of the gods, you know.”

Tyler wasn’t certain what to say to that, but he was definitely interested in hearing more. “Do you see him in the same place all the time?”

Pema shook her head. “He flies past sometimes on his way out to the east.” She pointed out over the gardens toward the distant hills. “Sometimes he also flies over the garden, looking for things to catch-rabbits, other animals. But for some reason he does not like to fly above the garden this summer… ”

Tyler wrote everything down. Pema was a careful observer, and the fact that she considered every sighting of Alamu to be a good omen meant she had plenty of information to share.

On his way out of the kitchen Tyler met Colin Needle. Colin was looking for extra blankets to help his mother prepare Gideon’s new bed in the snake parlor, where she could nurse him and still keep an eye on everything else in her domain. Tyler was delighted to see that Colin was being kept on a short leash.

“Staying busy, are we?” he asked.

Colin glared at him. “You better not be going anywhere, Jenkins. Everyone’s supposed to stay around the house and help.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Tyler said. “I am helping… in my own way.” He was enjoying Colin’s discomfort. “In fact, I’d better get going-and so should you. Don’t want to keep your mother waiting.”

“You’d better not leave the house,” Colin almost hissed. “You can’t afford to get into any more trouble!”

“And who’s going to stop me? You?” Tyler stepped around him. “Run along now. Help your mother. Be a good boy.”

Colin just stared, as if he couldn’t believe that Tyler would dare to talk back to him. “You… you have quite a big mouth, Jenkins, and one of these days… ”

“Colin!” Mrs. Needle shouted from the Snake Parlor. “Where are you?”

Tyler waved as he walked away. “Enjoy your afternoon!” He made a point of sauntering out the front door in case Colin had doubled back to watch. It would drive him crazy to think that Tyler might already be going out in search of the nest.

Dude, this is crazy, Tyler thought. Who would ever believe I’d ever be glad I took math?

But his teacher Ms. Shah had taught him how to make a Cartesian Plane, which was basically a piece of graph paper with a big cross in the middle of it and a zero at the center point with numbers going off in each direction so that they made a cross. Each number then became half of a coordinate, so Tyler drew the whole thing in pencil on a copy of an Ordinary Farm map from the Yokuts County Assessor’s Office he’d found in the library and then began marking in everything the farm workers had told him about where they usually saw Alamu. When he’d finished with that he spread his newly marked map over his bed and studied it.

Tyler needed to find the place the male dragon went back to every time-that would probably be his nest. So if he marked every position where the dragon had been sighted, then drew a big circle around every mark, the place where the most circles overlapped should be a good central place to start looking for a nest… and in fact, Tyler thought he’d spotted a likely area: all of the dragon’s favorite hang-outs seemed about the same distance away from the high hills on the western edge of the farm, an isolated area far from neighbors and roads.

So let’s have a look for that nest of yours, dragon-dude, Tyler thought, -and all your shiny treasures. But not tonight-no way. The idea of hunting for a dragon’s nest in the dark frightened even Tyler the Impulsive. No, I’ll go tomorrow, when the sun’s up and you’re out making your rounds…

The next day he raced through his chores so quickly that even Mr. Walkwell (who himself hardly ever slept or even took a break) suggested he might be working too hard. When he had finished he made himself a sack lunch, then waited to set out until Colin Needle was upstairs being lectured by his mother.

It took Tyler a good part of an hour to cross the farm and reach the hills where most of the Alamu reports seemed to overlap. According to his marked-up county map the tallest hill was called Miners Mountain; he decided that would be the best place to start looking, because even if he didn’t find anything on the hill itself he’d have a good view from the top.

The late-morning sun was already baking the ground and the dry grasses were buzzing with insect noises. By the time Tyler reached the top (and had found no sign of Alamu’s nest) he’d emptied half his canteen; by the time he’d eaten the sandwich he brought along he’d drunk most of the rest. The scrubby trees on the hillside didn’t provide much shade, either.

An hour later he had finished the rest of his water, had watched the sun move all the way across the valley like someone wiping a window clean, and had stared through his binoculars until his eyes hurt, but still hadn’t located anything that looked the least bit like a dragon’s nest. He had also discovered that some of the bugs singing in the dry grass liked to bite people-liked it quite a lot, in fact. He was beginning to rethink the entire expedition when he noticed something glimmering in a fold of a hill near Miners Mountain.

Even with the binoculars he couldn’t make out much more than a glint in the undergrowth, so he didn’t leap up: he had already been fooled a couple of times by other shining things, discarded bottles, glass insulators from power lines. But though he stared and stared through the expensive binoculars his father had given him as a guilty late-birthday gift, this particular bright spot remained stubbornly mysterious.

Tyler finally decided that although it was mid-afternoon already, he wanted to go down Miners Mountain and go climb the other hill. Who knew when he’d get this much free time again?

Tyler didn’t know the name of this second hill, but discovered quickly that although it was not as tall as Miners Mountain it was actually a much more difficult climb, with no obvious trail and the way up blocked tangled undergrowth and by outcrops of layered stone that looked like haphazard piles of books. Each outcropping had to be either climbed or avoided, and by the time Tyler had got near the top even more of the afternoon had slid away and the sun was hurrying down the sky like an animal going to ground. For the first time Tyler started to worry. He didn’t want to have to climb down rocky, dangerous slope in darkness, and he had left the house so early he hadn’t even thought of bringing a flashlight.

Lucinda’s right-I really do stupid things sometimes, he told himself angrily.

He clambered up over the last large bulge of pale stone and into the shade of a tangle of oak and madrone trees where he crouched to catch his breath. He forced himself to get up again after only a couple of minutes and climbed the last hundred feet of the uneven slope, then stepped out onto the flat, windswept summit of the hill. And there it lay in front of him-not just a single object, but a shining, sparkling line several feet long snaking through a trail of trampled grass. He’d found it!

Tyler’s heart sped in triumph. He hurried toward the glittering track, then slowed, looking high and low to make sure that no one, scaly or otherwise, was watching him. Heart pounding, he paused beside his discovery…

… And found that it was nothing but a few dozen bottle caps strewn across the hilltop like confetti.

“Huh?” Tyler stared, disbelief rapidly turning into fury. What was this crap? Was this it? The thing he’d been searching for all day-the thing that he had climbed two high, hot hillsides to find?

“Crap,” he said, kicking at one of the shiny things. “Look at me,” he shouted in disgust, “Oh, yeah, I’m a hero! I’ve found the famous hoard of ancient bottle caps! ”

And they weren’t even that ancient-most of them looked like they were from regular modern pop bottles. So they weren’t even worth anything.

Tyler reached for his canteen, then remembered it was empty. Was this pathetic scatter really Alamu’s horde of stolen shiny things? Bottle caps, a couple of shiny pennies and a few bits of foil? Disgusted and very tired, Tyler was about to admit defeat and head down the hill when he noticed the bottle caps weren’t just scattered, or at least they didn’t look completely random, but lay in a rough line. In places the line stopped completely, but as he squinted his eyes against the afternoon light he could see that they did form a kind of trail across the hilltop, as if something had dropped them from a clumsy, toothy mouth…

On the way to where…?

He squinted his eyes, doing his best to follow the almost invisible line, which petered out at the top of the slope which faced away from the distant farmhouse. He looked down and saw another flash of reflected light in a clump of undergrowth about twenty yards down the steep slope-something very much larger than any bottle cap. He almost lost his balance several times as he hurried down the slope, racing the dying afternoon. As he drew nearer he saw that it was not an aimless growth of shrubs and small trees but a pile of trees and sticks and branches almost fifty feet wide, the sticks covered with brown leaves and the whole mass propped between the twisted trunks of several madrone trees growing at an angle on the hillside.

It was a nest. A very big nest.

I found it! he thought. I was right! I did it all by myself!

Tyler began to make his way down the slope, leaning so far backward to keep his balance that half the time he just gave up and slid down on his butt. Alamu, whether from brains or instinct, had built his nest on far the side of the hill from the farmhouse, out of sight, with nothing but the trail of bottle caps on top to lead whoever it was supposed to impress… Meseret, pretty obviously

… to where the real thing was hidden just below the crest.

As he got near the thicket Tyler realized he was making a lot of noise and settled into a crouch. There hadn’t been any sign of Alamu but he couldn’t see the whole nest because of the trees and the angle of the hill and he certainly didn’t want to encounter an angry dragon on this naked hillside…

The wind changed direction, and as the animal stench of the dragon’s nest struck him he realized he had been upwind of it all this time: if Alamu had been home he would have smelled Tyler a long time ago. He could almost hear Lucinda asking him whether he wanted to get eaten.

The closer he got the stranger and more impressive the nest appeared, a huge shape wedged between the madrone trunks like a bushy flower head. It might be hidden from the farmhouse but Alamu had still built it right out in the open, with all the arrogance of his position at the top of the food chain, and then filled it with his scavenged treasures-hub caps, bicycle wheels, a crutch, wire fencing, aluminum garden furniture, all things that had glittered once, though many were rusted now. Tyler wondered how long it had taken the dragon to collect so much junk with no way to carry it but claws and jaws. The variety was amazing-there was even an artificial Christmas tree like a toilet brush made of tinsel. If Alamu had indeed stolen the Continuascope, then this had to be the place to find it.

He looked around for the dragon once more, then climbed carefully down into the nest, which swayed in a very alarming way: Tyler had to grab onto a huge tangle of baling wire to keep himself upright. Several seconds passed before he was sure that the whole thing wouldn’t slide down from between the trees and take him tobogganing down the hill in a pile of jagged, rusty metal. How did it support the dragon, which must weigh something like a thousand pounds?

Tyler eased forward like a man crossing a frozen but thawing river, stopping at each unusual sound or movement beneath him, and as he moved he sifted cautiously through the dragon’s hoard, bits of pipe, chrome from cars, the rusted remains of a giant ceiling fan as big as the propeller of an ocean liner. Tyler couldn’t even imagine where Alamu had found that.

Not only was he becoming more and more desperate to find the Continuascope before the light failed, the bottom of the nest had proved itself little more than a loose weave of madrone branches, so he kept his head down as he moved.

“Owww! Rotten lizard and his stupid trash!”

The sudden sound of a human voice was so startling that Tyler almost lost his grip and tumbled through the bottom of the nest. Colin Needle’s pale face appeared above him, sucking on a bloody finger. When the older boy saw Tyler a flurry of emotions passed over his face-surprise, a little fear, but most of all, triumph.

“You! You creep!” Tyler shouted up at him. “You followed me!”

“Really? You figured that out, did you, Jenkins?” Colin rubbed his finger on the sleeve of his shirt and left a bloody smear. “So what? I would have found it myself if my mother hadn’t made me do all those stupid chores.”

Tyler began to clamber across the mat of branches and junk, heading straight toward the older boy. “Yeah? Well she’ll have a chore of her own-putting your face back on after I beat if off you!”

Colin’s eyes widened. “Stop! Right now!”

“Why?” said Tyler. “You going to stop me?”

Colin looked more terrified than dangerous. “Just… stop, Jenkins. I’m serious. Behind you… ”

“Oh, nice one…!” Tyler began, then a huge shadow fell across him and he whirled to see Alamu sweeping down from the hilltop, wings spread. Tyler tried to throw himself forward to where Colin crouched at the edge of the nest but fell short. He could hear Alamu’s deep rumble of fury as the gliding dragon darted its long head at him and just missed by inches, then the orange and bronze monster swept past, wheeled in the air, and hurtled back toward him again, little pennants of fire trailing from its open mouth. Tyler tried to scramble out toward Colin Needle, but before he could reach the edge of the nest the part of the nest beneath his feet suddenly shuddered and then collapsed and Tyler tumbled into a chaos of broken branches and rusting metal.