The Secrets of Ordinary Farm

Chapter 40

Lucinda didn’t even know why she was still trying to hang onto Gideon. She was out of strength, while he, deranged by the call of the greenhouse-thing, was still fighting as hard as ever. Colin Needle had tried to help but had failed completely and instead put himself in deadly danger. Even Mr. Walkwell had fallen to the thing. Ragnar, the only person left who might conceivably help, was on the other side of the farm. It was hopeless.

Yes, surrender, a voice urged her, although not in words: the words were all Lucinda’s, as if she was talking to herself, a soothing, reasonable version of her own inner voice… Come here. Join. Become. An impression of completeness beckoned to her, a promise of joy in belonging so powerful it wasn’t even an emotion but a state of being-so wonderful that words couldn’t even describe it. Come. Become us…!

Carrot Girl! Help! Scared!

The new voice in her thoughts, that of the young dragon, Desta, startled her back to herself. She realized she had almost lost her grip on her great-uncle and she grabbed his muddy bathrobe tighter.

Desta? Desta, can you hear me? But Lucinda’s thoughts seemed to drift up and be snatched away as if by the wind: nothing came back to her.

Another lightning flash made the rain seem to hang in mid-air. Shiny white strands of the monster fungus were rising all around the greenhouse, bursting through the soil and reaching toward the sky as if worshipping the storm, and even as these hundreds of strands twined upward, the main fungus body was growing larger by the moment, swelling like rising dough, pressing against the dirty greenhouse windows. Pieces of glass began to burst out of their frames or simply shatter with popping sounds loud enough that Lucinda could hear them even above the rising winds.

Carrot Girl…! The dragon’s thoughts were growing fainter. Help! Scared! Bad animals!

The Reptile Barn! Mr. Walkwell said the manticores were loose in the Reptile Barn! Remembering was like another painful blow. Oh, poor Desta! She did her best to push all the other thoughts away-struggling, deranged Uncle Gideon in her arms, that thing like a pile of rotted marshmallows swelling and oozing out of the collapsing greenhouse, and helpless Mr. Walkwell and Colin Needle…

Oh, God, Colin! He’s trapped holding that piece of metal, and there’s lighting everywhere…!

… and against all that painful clamor in her thoughts, she turned her mind back to the young dragon.

Desta…? It was so terribly hard to concentrate…! Desta, can you hear me? I’m here. Here! She thought she felt a momentary touch of the dragon’s thoughts, like a burst of radio music through a roll of static. Desta?

Carrot Girl… And with the faint call came a sort of vision, as if she was seeing what the dragon saw-shapes scuttling across the floor of the Reptile Barn, the weird, barking noises the manticores made as they hunted-but there was something strange about it, too. If she was truly seeing what Desta saw, the young dragon seemed to be looking down on the scene from above, perhaps perched on one of the catwalks near the top of the vast structure.

What are you doing up there? Desta’s wings had barely been strong enough to lift herself off the ground when Lucinda and Tyler had been banished. Did you fly up there?

Y es. Yellow Man let me out. That was what she called Ragnar because of his white-shot, golden hair.

Smart, Lucinda thought. Gives her a better chance of staying safe-the manticores can’t fly. And then something else occurred to her. Is Yellow Man still there? she asked.

Yelling. Running with stick. Fighting with bad animals.

For all his strength and bravery, the Norseman hadn’t been able to beat one manticore at the gate-what could he do against several? And are there other people with him?

Turn-Face and Hat Men.

That would be Haneb and the Three Amigos, she knew-Desta was always trying to steal the herdsman’s fur-lined hats. She hoped the farm workers would be able to hold off the manticores on their own, because she needed Ragnar. Bring Yellow Man to me, she told the dragon. ? What came back was confusion.

Bring him to me, Desta. You have to bring him to me. It’s important!

No-bad animals hurt Desta. No! The fear in the mess of jumbled ideas was very real-the young dragon was terrified of the manticores.

You have to. I need you. Carrot Girl needs you.

No. It was the panicky, absolute refusal of a child. No!

In the rainy garden across the farm, Lucinda wrapped her arms tighter around Gideon’s skinny chest as she did her best to fall into the dark, calm place where she could not just speak to the dragon, but feel her-and be felt by her. You have to. I need you. If you don’t, I won’t give you carrots any more…!

But no bribe or even threat was going to make Desta leap down from her perch in the rafters of the Reptile Barn. Lucinda realized she would have to do on purpose what she had done by accident that day when Desta tried to steal the bracelet.

Desta, she warned, if you don’t do what I want, I’m going to make you.

No! The young animal was beyond reason. Lucinda reached out until she could feel Desta’s thoughts, feel Desta whole. She applied pressure to those thoughts, imagining as carefully and thoroughly as she could what it would feel like for Desta to jump down. At first she did her best to make it seem that it would feel good to do what Lucinda wanted, but the dragon was either too frightened or-somehow, despite her age-too strong to be manipulated by kindness. A cold, miserable feeling settled over Lucinda, a feeling of pure need.

I’m so sorry… she thought, then reached out and squeezed Desta’s thoughts, hard.

No…! Hurts…!

Horrible, it was just horrible-Lucinda had never done anything that made her feel worse; it was using sharp spurs on a horse that was already doing its best, like spanking a child who didn’t know what she had done wrong. Even in the midst of all the other crazy, overwhelming sensations, what she was doing made her feel sick, but there was no other way to save Gideon, Mr. Walkwell, and Colin. Time had run out.

Let go! It was a silent but agonized shriek of pain and betrayal. Carrot Girl bad!

Pushing and squeezing at the dragon’s most sensitive feelings, Lucinda did her best to concentrate, to ignore the sense of betrayal flowing back to her along their connection like poisoned air as she forced Desta to spread her wings and leap down from the rafters, then clung to the dragon’s thoughts as the creature flapped in an awkward spiral and hit the upper floor landing with a painfully hard thump. Desta’s misery was a throbbing ache in Lucinda’s own heart, but she couldn’t afford to let go.

Now get Ragnar. Pick him up. Bring him to me.

Desta’s resistance had become as thoughtless as that of any wounded animal, but no matter what the dragon did, she couldn’t free herself from Lucinda’s control. Desta climbed onto the railing and then sprang out into the air to glide on trembling wings across the upper part of the barn. One of the Three Amigos looked up and shouted a warning, but Desta abruptly dropped down and caught Ragnar by the shoulders of his thick white overalls, then lifted him several feet in the air then glided toward the open front door of the Reptile Barn. The young dragon had the wingspan of a small plane but it was still hard for her to lift Ragnar. The big man fought back, of course, fought hard, and within a few yards of escaping the barn Desta had to drop him.

Get him again! Lucinda couldn’t afford to think about what she was doing, neither the pain she was causing to Ragnar nor to this beautiful, one of a kind animal. Grab him. Bring him to me.

The Norseman turned to hurry back into the barn but Desta caught him from behind, grabbing him by the reinforced collar of his safety suit, then beat her wings so hard that within only seconds she had lifted him a hundred feet in the air, where Ragnar recognized the futility of any more resistance. He stopped struggling and even reached up to grab the dragon’s legs and take some of the weight off the claws that must be digging painfully into his body through the heavy canvas.

I’m sorry, Ragnar, Lucinda thought, but of course he could not hear her thoughts as the dragon could. Now she just wanted the nightmare to end, one way or another. I’m sorry, Desta, I’m so sorry …!

A painful, hard thump against her forehead brought her attention back to the reality of the garden and the storm. Desta and Ragnar suddenly disappeared from her mind’s eye. Her great-uncle Gideon was trying to push away from her, his mouth opening and closing with a clack of teeth as though he were trying to say something, but his eyes were as empty as a department store mannequin’s. One of his flailing hands struck her on the jaw so hard it felt like a tooth came loose, then he was dragging her through the mud in the chaos of thunder and lightning flash.

Something dropped from the sky beside her and landed in an awkward jumble of wings and arms and legs and raspy protest. Ragnar rolled out of the thrash of dragon-limbs and stood up, ready to defend himself if Desta attacked again. The young dragon’s snaky head whipped around from side to side, hissing; when she saw Lucinda she backed up in alarm, as if unable to reconcile the Carrot Girl before her on the ground and the cruel mistress in her head who had forced her to come here. For half a moment Lucinda could so strongly feel the animal’s rage beating out at her like the heat from an opened oven door that she thought Desta might simply bound across the ground between them and snap her head off.

Carrot Girl…! The thoughts bombarded her, slapped at her-the dragon equivalent of shouting. Carrot Girl bad! Hurt us!

Desta leaped into the air with a loud slap and thrash of wings and flew off over the top of the farmhouse. For a single, lightning-painted moment she reappeared farther along the sky, then vanished again.

Ragnar stumbled toward Lucinda and dropped to his knees, then grabbed Gideon in his strong arms and imprisoned him. The master of the farm continued to struggle, but with no more luck now than a babe in arms. “What happened…?” the Norseman demanded in a voice made hoarse by shouting. “Did you send that wormling after me…?”

“We’re in trouble!” She quickly told him as much of the story as she could. “You have to help Colin! Help Mr. Walkwell!”

The Viking looked at the greenhouse and made a face. “Baldur’s blood, that is the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen…!” He turned back to Lucinda. “Master Needle had a good idea for once-set the cursed vegetable on fire.”

“What?” In the midst of her struggle with Gideon she hadn’t even grasped exactly what Colin had been planning. Now, as if thinking had awakened his resolve, the old man began squirming once more in Ragnar’s arms.

“I ask your pardon,” the Norseman said.

“What?” Lucinda was so exhausted that nothing made sense. “Why?”

“Not yours, child.” He lifted a fist big as a beef roast and struck Gideon sharply on the back of the head. The old man slumped and lay still.

“Now I go to get what I need to kill this demon,” he said and loped off toward the farm house. “Don’t fear,” he shouted over his shoulder. “I will come straight back!” Rain swirled past her, blown almost horizontally by the wind.

Freed from Gideon, Lucinda crawled across the wet ground to Colin, who had long since stopped struggling and lay silent and still in his net of fungal threads. She pulled at the aluminum fence post in his hand but although she could break any single one of the little white fungus threads easily, each time she did several crept back in to take its place and she could not break them in bunches. Lightning leaped down from the sky only half a mile away, making a dazzle on top of a nearby hill, and even as she watched the shrieking wind was rolling more black clouds toward them like a steamroller.

Colin opened bleary eyes. “Don’t let me die,” he begged her. “Please, don’t let me die. I’m sorry I took it. I’m sorry!”

She had no idea what he was sorry about, nor did she care. “I’m trying to help you!” Her wet fingers kept slipping off the strands. “Oh, God, I’m trying, Colin!”

“Stand away girl!” Ragnar came crashing back through the garden toward them, something heavy swinging in each hand. He set down the two large cider jars and wrenched the aluminum post out the boy’s hand, shredding hundreds of fungal threads with a horrid ripping and popping noise as Colin let out a screech of agony.

Ragnar straightened up, took a quick couple of steps, and flung the metal fence post toward the greenhouse. It wobbled through the air, trailing its wire like a giant threaded needle, but was pushed sideways by the powerful wind and fell to earth several yards short of the wall of dead and dying creatures that had piled up at the structure’s base.

“The gods curse it!” The Norseman turned to Lucinda. “I must go closer, but then the demon will be able to reach me as it caught Simos-unless I can set it burning. That will give me a few moments, I think!” He lifted and uncorked first one of the gallon jars, then the other. The smell of gasoline blew past her on the wind. Ignoring another cry of pain from Colin, Ragnar tore the sleeve off the boy’s wet shirt and crammed it into the mouth of the jar. He did the same thing with the other sleeve, prompting a weaker cry of pain and protest. Colin looked like he had all but fainted.

“Do you have fire?” Ragnar asked Lucinda. “Or any way to make it?”

She stared at him for a long, confused moment, then shook her head. She searched Colin’s pockets; he was in so much pain he scarcely seemed to notice. “He doesn’t either,” she said.

He smiled a grim smile. “Then I have no choice but to try to wade through those griping demon-fingers. If Simos could not do it, then I cannot, but I must try.” He reached out and patted her cheek with his gasoline-stinking hand. “I ask for your pardon, Lucinda.”

She flinched. “Are you going to hit me?”

Ragnar shook his head. “I ask pardon because I cannot sing my death-song well in your tongue, Lucinda Jenkins. Still, it must be sung so it can be heard by those who listen, and they say the gods understand all tongues!” He set the jugs down beside her and trotted through the rain toward the greenhouse. “This will be the second time I have sung it!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Let us hope that again it will be in vain!”

Lucinda didn’t know what he meant.

The monstrous thing inside the ancient greenhouse had long since broken out all the windows and was oozing out of every opening in the corroded metal cage, its uppermost extensions stretching thirty feet or more into the air and branching into hundreds of shapes as weird and alien as snowflakes. As the Viking approached, the starry profusion of shapes shuddered and the entire bulk of the fungus began to swell and rock.

The Norseman’s voice rose, each word loud and heavy as a great stone.

“It gladdens me to know that Odin sets out the benches for a banquet,” he sang, or rather chanted in a deep, booming voice.

“Soon we shall be drinking ale from cups of horn! A hero who is ushered into Odin’s hall does not lament his death, and Ragnar Leather shanks shall not enter Old One-Eye’s hall with words of fear upon his lips…!”

Shiny white strands began to climb the tall Viking’s legs, more and more of them coiling around him until he staggered to a halt several dozen yards from the greenhouse, not far from the motionless, cocooned shape of Mr. Walkwell.

“I have fought against foes in many battles,”

he sang, louder now to best the mounting thunder.

“My sons are gone, and their sons after them,

I myself brought an ending to many men

And now I am a king out of his time!

But I never imagined pale serpents like these

Would be the ending of my life…!”

Ragnar bent and ripped as many of the strands away as he could, then forced himself a few steps forward, tearing the pale rootlike strings out of the earth as he went, snapping dozens of them with each stride. He took a step. He took another step. Against all odds, he was still moving toward the thing, but each step was slower and more labored than the last.

Colin raised his head, clutching his arm against his belly as he spoke through chattering teeth. “Is he… is he g-g-getting close to it…?”

Lucinda watched a moment longer and then shut her eyes in despair. Rain warm as blood ran down her face. “No. It got him. It’s… it’s tangling him up like Mr. Walkwell.”

“It’s my fault… ” Colin said. “I should… I should have told you… that there was something weird… in the greenhouse

… ”

“Lucinda!” It was a new voice. “Lucinda! Where are you?”

She opened her eyes. “Here, Tyler! Over here!”

Something was crashing toward her through the garden rows like a charging elephant; a moment later her brother tumbled onto the muddy ground beside her. “Lucinda! What’s going on? And what’s that? ” He stared at the horrible white thing swelling from the greenhouse like rising bread dough. “This is crazy!”

Even as she tried to form the words to explain, Steve Carrillo came staggering up behind him. Steve leaned over, gasping for breath, and lifted a hand in a shaky sort of wave. “H-Hi, Lucinda.”

“You’re too late, Jenkins,” said Colin bitterly. “You and your dumb friend. We’ve already lost.”

“Ragnar said we needed to burn that thing.” Lucinda spoke quickly before he and her brother started to fight again. “There’s a pole with a wire on it over there, attached to the lightning rod. That was Colin’s idea, but Ragnar couldn’t throw it close enough. Then Ragnar made some gasoline bombs but we didn’t have anything to light them with.” For a moment she felt a sudden twinge of hope, foolish as it was. “Do you have something? Matches?”

Tyler thought hard, his face twisted in worry, then shook his head. “I don’t, Luce.”

She felt as though she were about to dissolve, as if the rain had beaten on her so long she was about to become water herself and flow away. “Oh, Tyler, where were you? How could you run off like that? There were guns… and the manticores are loose… and I think that thing is going to reproduce!” She pointed to the impossible thing growing out of the greenhouse. The strange, tentacle-like shapes extended from the main body like tiny chimneys, hundreds and hundreds of them, each one ending in strands that waved in the wind like seaweed. “That’s what it does! But if it puts out spores with all this wind and rain, it’s going to take over everything!”

“Hey, I have a lighter,” said Steve Carrillo.

“What?” Lucinda and Tyler both shouted it at the same time, so loud that Steve shied back.

“Sure,” he said, looking a little shamefaced. “I borrowed it from my uncle. You can’t make a fire on a night like this without a lighter or some matches and I wanted to make S’Mores. Heck, I thought we were going camping. ”

He had scarcely produced it from his jacket pocket before Tyler snatched it away. Tyler pulled the cider jars close and applied the flame first to one of Colin’s torn-off sleeves, then to the other. The fabric was wet but gasoline had soaked up into it from the jar and after just a few seconds both wicks caught and burned with a blue-yellow flame. Lucinda cowered away, thinking they might blow up any second.

“Don’t worry-that’s not how these things work,” Tyler said. “At least I don’t think so. Steve, you grab that one.”

“Me?”

“No, the other Steve. Look, my sister can barely sit up and Needle looks like his arm’s broken. Come on, dude. Hero time.” But although he spoke bravely, her brother looked pale and frightened, his lips almost blue in the weird storm light.

“Don’t do it,” Lucinda told him. “It already got Ragnar and Mr. Walkwell!”

Tyler only shook his head. He stood up, holding the jug away from his face; after a moment, so did Steve Carrillo.

“If we live through this,” Steve said, “I’ll need to use your phone to call home. My folks are probably really pissed.”

And then he and Tyler went loping down the rainy garden rows, slowed by the weight of the heavy jugs.

“Lift your feet,” Lucinda heard Tyler yell. “Don’t let those white things get a grip on you!”

Lightning flashed so bright that for a long moment everything before Lucinda’s eyes went black, even as the thunder made her very bones shudder. Then she dimly saw the lights of the two jugs bobbing near where Ragnar had stopped.

“You’re too close!” she screamed, but Tyler was also shouting.

“Throw it high, dude!” her brother called to Steve. “They have to break!” And he swung his own by the ring at the neck, spinning himself and the jar round and round like an Olympic hammer-thrower, then let it go. It flew up and then plopped down into the mud without breaking, a foot short of the pile of dead animals clustered against the greenhouse’s iron structure. The flame was still burning, though it guttered in the rain, and as gasoline spilled out of the jar it made a growing but unimpressive pool of blue fire.

“No!” Tyler shouted in despair. “Steve, you have to do it! You have to hit the greenhouse!”

Steven Carrillo stared for a moment as another lightning flash turned the entire garden into a kind of stage set, rows and rows of flat pictures, each set in front of the next-garden plants, the greenhouse itself, mountains, and sky. Then Steve bent down. For a moment, Lucinda thought he was going to set the cider jar down and simply walk away in defeat, but he was bending for balance. He spun, surprisingly nimble, holding the jug in both hands, and then let it go. It flew end over end, flaming wick rotating like a Catherine wheel, its arc not as high as Tyler’s but a little longer. Lucinda’s heart rose-it was going to reach the greenhouse!

It thumped against the uppermost part of the structure without breaking, the impact deadened by the pale, doughy globs growing out of the frame. For an instant it teetered there and it seemed the monstrous thing would simply draw the jug itself like a sea anemone snatching a fish, but it was too heavy and too delicately balanced. It fell away, rolled down the mound of dead creatures at the base, and smashed into the other jug, breaking them both. Fire splattered up the sides of the greenhouse and the pale, doughy flesh where it had oozed through the broken panes. More fire spread across the ground. The white tentacles spasmed in shock and what could only be pain. !!!!!!!!

The greenhouse-thing’s screaming thoughts, if anything so primitive could be called that, ripped through Lucinda, knocking her flat on the ground and leaving her dizzy, unable to make her arms and legs work. It was the worst thing she’d ever felt in her head, a convulsion of fiery agony that seized her and shook her like the jaws of some great beast. When the worst had passed she could only lie still for long moments with rain splashing her face, then finally found the strength to drag herself upright again, although the fungus-monster’s sensations of alarm and pain still battered her.

The part of the white thing that wasn’t on fire was stretching even farther into the sky now, mouthlike holes gaping in the pale spongy mass as if a thousand voices screamed at once, but all Lucinda could hear above the storm was the whistle of escaping gases. In its pain the creature had lost control of much of its network of threads, and Ragnar was busily tearing himself loose. When he could move his legs again he staggered over to Mr. Walkwell and yanked him free, but the farm’s overseer did not move and Ragnar had to carry him away from the burning greenhouse: Simos Walkwell, who could lift the farm wagon with one hand, looked as shrunken and lifeless as a withered turnip, but at least he was free. Beside Lucinda, the fungal strands fell away from Colin Needle and withdrew into the ground.

But suddenly, just when it had seemed they had destroyed their terrible enemy, the mass of the main fungus body began to split open above the places where fire was blackening its flesh. A transparent ooze began to flow from these cracks, extinguishing the flames that had been scorching the thing’s surface. The echo of its power still pulsed in Lucinda’s head, its single-minded need to spawn, its mindless determination to spread itself to the winds. The thing was not beaten.

Lightning flashed again.

“Everybody, back!” Ragnar shouted. “Quickly!” He bent and picked up the fence post from where it had fallen short and advanced toward the greenhouse like a knight marching into a dragon’s cave. Lucinda could barely hear him over the thunder and a bizarre whistling noise that was coming now from the thing, but she did as he had said, pulling Colin by his good arm until the boy finally managed to crawl on his own. She turned to look for Tyler and Steve hurrying after her, and saw something behind them she would never forget, although she would wish for the rest of her life that she could.

The charred white and black mass was stretching wider now, its strands quivering with the spores they were about to release, but the truly horrible thing was that was that for a moment she could see something of Gideon’s own face and shape forming itself out of the main body’s moving white surface, as if the fungus had tasted her great-uncle so deeply and so long that it wanted to be him.

A blinding flash of light whitewashed the sky. Ragnar threw the fencepost-spear again and this time it shivered through the air and thumped into the thickest part of the monstrous fungus, the wire trailing like a row of silver sparks. Thunder boomed and boomed again, very close, then the sky exploded in a monstrous flash, so powerful that the ground lurched, knocking her off her feet again. Blue fire crackled and arched where the fence post stuck out of the ground, and white strands curled into blackened threads all around the ruined greenhouse.

The body of the thing, a grotesque and unstable copy of Gideon, swelled and began to grow bigger-for a mad moment Lucinda thought it would pull itself out of the greenhouse wreckage and walk-but then burst into gouts of dripping fire. The monstrous Gideon face twisted in agony or fury, then fell back into bubbly nothingness. Spores poured out but caught fire and disappeared in clouds of burning sparks, popping in the air, vanishing like the falling fireworks at a Fourth of July show. Inky black smoke curled from the melting wreckage and was swept away by the wind.

Lucinda felt a hand on her arm, then one on the other side. It was Tyler and Steve Carrillo lifting her out of the mud.

“We’re alive,” was all she could say. “Alive.”

Tyler nodded, shook his head, then nodded again. “Yeah,” he said. “We’re alive.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she told him. “You guys have to carry Gideon. Ragnar knocked him out, but that thing had him really bad.”

With the boys awkwardly cradling the unconscious Gideon, they all turned their backs on the smoldering greenhouse and began to make their way back across the garden, toward the house. Colin was staggering along under his own power, holding his arm against his chest. Lucinda moved up to offer him some support, but he turned away from her and continued to make his own slow way. Ragnar was carrying Mr. Walkwell. The sight of the old man’s closed eyes and limp form frightened her.

“Is he all right, Ragnar? He’s not… ”

“Simos is alive,” the big man told her. He didn’t look as though he could claim much more himself. “But he is in a bad way.”

“We won, didn’t we?” she asked, but she said it quietly, mostly to herself.

“Oh, one thing, Luce?” Tyler said from behind her, grunting a little as he tried to balance his share of their great-uncle. “If you were going to go and lie down? There’s… there’s kind of someone sleeping in your room.” She turned to look back. Tyler had a funny expression on his face, a little nervous, but also quite proud. “You remember Grace? Gideon’s wife?”

Lucinda had no idea what he was talking about and was so battered and exhausted that she didn’t think she could string two more words together, so she opted for just one.

“Whatever.”