The Secrets of Ordinary Farm

Chapter 6

After everything that had happened the night before, Tyler thought it was wonderful to be out of the house, away from the Needles, and rolling across the farm with Uncle Gideon and Mr. Walkwell. They picked up Haneb outside the Sick Barn. The shy little animal-keeper nodded to the children and might even have said hello, but he spoke very quietly as always, keeping his head turned away to hide the scars on his face.

They headed out toward the pasture lands, the horse cart rattling up and down the dirt roads and through the golden hills. Beyond the hills the valley was fenced by mountains, dark purple shadows against the sky in every direction Tyler looked. Even the air smelled different here in Standard Valley, wild as ocean air, full of mysteries.

As Lucinda had requested, their first stop was the unicorn pasture, where they found Ragnar already pouring feed into a huge trough. He summoned the animals with three loud whistles and they appeared over the rise less than a minute later, a spiky, thunderous cloud of dust and horns. Tyler, Lucinda, and sat watching from the cart while the Norseman, Mr. Walkwell and Haneb worked with the unicorns. A foal was corralled and given a shot of antibiotics. Several others had their delicate hooves inspected, cleaned, and trimmed. Shy, scarred Haneb gently felt the stomach of one skittish, expectant mother.

“Her time coming soon,” he announced.

“Well, that’s something to look forward to!” said Gideon. He settled back against the seat. “Ah. What a fine day. This is heavenly!”

Lucinda said, “Can we go see the dragons next?”

He frowned. “I told you, we’ll see. First, we truly do have to talk about security, if only for your safety. You’ve seen how hard we’ve been working to improve things since you were last here. Many things have changed.”

“How many fences are there now?” Tyler asked. “And are all of them, like, electrical?”

“There are three,” Gideon said. “One around the very outside of the property, one around the main buildings, and one just around the house itself.”

“How come so many?” What Tyler really wanted to see was what would happen if someone tried to climb over one, but he felt sadly sure that wouldn’t be part of any demonstration.

“It will be easier to explain once you see the rest of our precautions,” Gideon told them, his good spirits returning. “And it was all possible because of that money Stillman left here last year! Half a million! Even if he’s a billionaire, I bet that still hurt!” The old man let out a sudden cackle. “I’ll bet he’s kicking himself. He tried to ruin me, but it only made me stronger!”

“Has he tried to do anything else since then?” said Tyler.

“He never stopped,” his great-uncle growled. “He seems to have a new plan every week. Right now he’s trying to buy all the properties along the border of Ordinary Farm-throwing money at my neighbors like the soulless pig that he truly is. He wants to surround me! Do you wonder I’m trying to protect the farm?”

As they the wagon creaked and bumped back toward the center of the property, where they could again see the jumbled silhouette of the farmhouse, Tyler found himself coming back again and again to Uncle Gideon and Colin Needle. What was Colin doing for the old man in the library?

It hit him just as they made their way past a row of huts that might once have been workers’ cabins.

The necklace, he thought- he’s wearing Grace’s necklace. And where did I tell him I found it? The library-which was partly true. He had not told his great-uncle the rest of the story, how he had been given the locket by a woman Tyler was certain had to be Grace Goldring herself, a woman lost in a strange, backward version of Ordinary Farm on the far side of a magical washstand mirror Tyler and Lucinda had found in a little room off the library. Gideon’s got Colin trying to figure out how Grace’s necklace got into the library. Tyler doubted Colin would ever guess what had really happened, but knowing that the pale, unpleasant boy had been given free run of the library bothered Tyler. A lot.

Gideon cleared his throat as they reached a little wooden bridge over the stream that ran through this part of the property, only a few hundred yards from the house itself. “Now,” he said, pointing at the water, “I know you’ve seen this before, but do you know what it’s called? It’s Kumish Creek-that’s an Indian name. ‘Course, the creek recedes a bit as the summer goes on, but even in mid-August it’s more than wide and deep enough for a man to go down the middle in a canoe or even swim it. It runs all the way from the hills outside of the valley almost to our farmhouse door.’

“Why don’t you just make it run through a pipe or something?” Tyler asked.

Gideon scowled. “Oh, Lord, what would I ever do without children to point out the obvious? Because, boy, if we meddle with the creek it might flood the Fault Line chamber, which is just a few hundred yards away, over there. So we had to find another way to defend it.”

With Tyler smarting a little at his great-uncle’s rebuke, the cart rolled on over the little bridge before Mr. Walkwell pulled it off the road and reined up. They could see the dark water better now that the sun was behind them. The creek was muddy green and brown with bumps of light in it as it splashed over rounded, multicolored stones, and surprisingly noisy.

“It’s all the spring rain,” said Gideon as they pulled to a stop. “We’ve had a wet year.” The cart had come to a halt under some leaning alders, just at a point where the earth turned to shale and reedy grasses. “So here is our first new line of defense,” he said.

Tyler stared out across the reeds to the river. “I don’t see anything.”

“Don’t worry, you will.”

Tyler’s sister let out a little moan of worry beside him.

“Not unless we tell them we are here, Gideon,” said Mr. Walkwell.

“Ah, of course, silly of me. Do the honors, will you, Simos?”

Mr. Walkwell bent and found a large rock that Tyler would have had trouble even lifting, then flicked it with one hand into the river where it disappeared with a loud blurp.

“You see,” Gideon said, “even if they’re half a mile away they feel the vibrations. Even with as strong a current as the Kumish has. I think they must have some kind of special gland-platypuses do, you know, and the two species are related.”

“I don’t get it,” said Tyler. “ What feels the vibrations?”

“Sssshh.” Gideon held his fingers to his lips. He pointed out to the far side of the river, where something was making the tall reeds shiver and bend. It slipped into the water without ever once showing itself clearly, then something very large was moving beneath the surface, quickly and silently. “Here it comes… ”

Lucinda’s fingers were gripping Tyler’s sleeve. “Uncle Gideon,” she said, “You’re scaring me.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, child.” He didn’t sound like it. “I am just very proud of them. They’re creatures right out of Australian Aboriginal myth-bunyips.”

“ Bunyips?” said Tyler with a snort of laughter. “That sounds like some kind of Japanese kiddie anime.”

“Don’t sass me boy, and don’t take these creatures lightly!” Gideon’s anger was swift as a summer storm: a moment later he had recovered himself again. “Yes, bunyips, I suppose it is a funny name. Legendary swamp demons-but they’re quite real. And even more fascinating, they’re monotremes.”

Something rose in the center of the creek, out of a dark spot where the bottom dropped away. The water bulged and then a broad, flat brown head emerged, a few twigs and limply streaming grasses snagged in the creature’s bristling, thorny pelt, its eyes all black and big as saucers.

“It’s huge!” Tyler said, his heart speeding. It was one thing to see something that big behind bars in a zoo, quite another to find it staring at you from open water a few yards away. “Bunyip. Is it going to come out?”

“Not if we stay out of the water… but I wouldn’t get too close, anyway,” Gideon said. “They’re all male, very territorial. This one came because he felt the splash. They’ll swim half a mile to attack one of their rivals and protect their territory, like bull crocodiles. Make a tremendous noise when they’re fighting-they roar like elephant seals! We hear it, come and save the poor fool, then give him one of Patience’s forget-your-own-name potions… ”

“What’s… what’s a monotreme?” asked Lucinda worriedly. She had backed right against the far side of the wagon seat.

“Same family as the echidna and the platypus,” Gideon said cheerily. “They’re the only poisonous mammals, and the only mammals that lay eggs-very weird critters. But my bunyip was a hundred times bigger than any modern monotremes and has been extinct for thousands and thousands of years.”

For just a moment the thing at the center of the river splashed upward instead of sideways, rising a little way out of the water. It was big as a hippo but shaggy or maybe prickly-Tyler thought its silhouette looked a little like a giant porcupine-and its blunt, huge-eyed head ended in a short trunk with wiggling fingers at the end, like the snout on a star-nosed mole.

Lucinda gave a shriek of dismay and Tyler jumped in alarm too. The bunyip slid back into the water, a large, flat island rippling its way back across the river to disappear into the crackling reeds.

“Wow,” Tyler said.

“You bet!” replied Gideon, smiling broadly. “Don’t you feel safer just looking at that magnificent animal?”

They left the creek behind, following the line of the innermost fence away from the farmhouse. Mr. Walkwell, who as usual had not said twenty words all morning, suddenly narrowed his ageless brown eyes and said sternly to Tyler and Lucinda, “You must behave now, children. Remember, there are beasts on this farm who can repay impatience with blood or even death.”

“I know,” said Tyler. “We just saw one, right?”

Mr. Walkwell ignored him. “Hear me! No games where we go next, Tyler Jenkins.”

“Hey,” said Tyler, “I’m all grown up now.”

Mr. Walkwell made a noise that Tyler couldn’t quite convince himself was a grunt of agreement. Lucinda’s face had gone quite pale. In fact, she hadn’t looked very comfortable since the creek. “Do we have to do this?” she asked.

Gideon had his hat tipped low to keep off the worst of the sun. Eleven o’clock in the morning and it was already very hot. “People would pay thousands just to see what you’re going to see next. We have amazing things on this farm-taking care of them and this place is a sacred trust.” As Tyler watched, one of the old man’s hands reached up to his throat and Tyler guessed he was fondling his wife’s necklace again.

“Uncle Gideon, where’s Zaza?” Tyler asked suddenly. “The flying monkey? I haven’t seen her yet.”

The old man waved his hand vaguely. “She’s around somewhere,” he said, but he was thinking about something else. For someone who basically owned the most astounding zoo in the world, Gideon Goldring sometimes seemed almost indifferent to the individual animals, especially those who weren’t a new project…

Mr. Walkwell punched in the numbers at another gate and it slid open to let them through. Within a few moments they crested a rise and saw a large tan brick building sitting by itself in the middle of an otherwise empty dirt lot. Its shiny metal roof stood out dramatically above the earth-colored walls.

“Is that building new?” asked Lucinda.

“No, but the roof is. We had to fix it up for our new guards!”

“Guards?” Lucinda looked relieved but still confused.

With relish, Gideon said: “Yes, the ‘manties’, as Colin calls them. Our manticores.”

“Manticores!” Tyler was impressed. “But you said last summer they were vicious.”

“They are,” said Mr. Walkwell as the wagon pulled up and stopped beside the building. “Come along, follow me-don’t hang back!”

“It’s so much cooler in here!” said Lucinda as they all entered the barn. She was trying to sound cheerful, but her voice was even more nervous now and Tyler could guess why-the place stank with the sharp, nose-burning urine of predators.

“Cool, yes. It’s the adobe,” said Gideon. “It keeps the temperature down. People have used it around here for years.”

Most of the barn’s interior was taken up by a huge cage, which extended up to the new metal ceiling and ran along most of two walls. The cage floor was covered in sand and sticks. At the center a pile of large concrete blocks formed an artificial jumble of boulders.

“Enough,” said Gideon Goldring. He had lowered his voice. “No more talking now. Simos, go and bring them out.” He turned to the children. “They’re usually sluggish during the daytime. They’re night hunters.”

Tyler watched avidly as Mr. Walkwell made his way around the two walls of the cage on his deceptively delicate hoofed feet, whistling a series of repetitive notes and keeping well away from the bars. Lucinda hung back near the door, her eyes wide and her face making it clear she would rather be somewhere else. Even Tyler, who normally enjoyed anything spectacular or dangerous, was beginning to feel anxious.

“Hurry them up, Simos,” said Gideon after Mr. Walkwell had been walking back and forth whistling for half a minute or more. “We don’t have all day.”

Walkwell gave him a look, but took a long metal pole off the wall and reached it through the bars to rap sharply on one of the concrete blocks. The first manticore emerged a moment later, sloping out into the open as leisurely as a sullen teenager.

“Whoa!” said Tyler. “They were tiny last summer!”

“They did grow up fast, didn’t they?” said Gideon.

Two more followed the first. Once out in the open the manticores sat on their haunches, pale tan faces half-hidden in the ruff of mane, watching the visitors with surprising orange eyes. Each one was the size of a full-grown lion, but it was something else about them that made the children stare.

Lucinda’s voice was very shaky. “Their faces… they look like

… ”

“They look almost human, don’t they?” said Gideon. “Manticores are a sort of simian, I think-like a giant baboon, but their faces are more like those of apes. But tan instead of black-skinned, like gorillas or chimpanzees.” He laughed.

“They’re horrible,” Lucinda said.

“I’m disappointed in you, child,” said Gideon with a frown. “These are amazing creatures. My goodness, these are more wonderful than the dragons! You have no idea how hard it was to raise so many to adulthood! We’ve been struggling with them all year-several of them died when they were small. And just training them to take simple commands-here, I’ll show you.” He stepped to the bars and whistled in much the same way Mr. Walkwell had. The manticores turned to watch him. Six had now come out of their artificial den. He whistled again and they slowly drew closer, then lay down on the sand in front of him with obvious reluctance, twelve orange eyes watching his every move. Only the bars stood between Gideon and the weird, manlike faces.

“Oh,” said Lucinda. “Oh. They have such big teeth…!”

“The old stories claimed they had rows and rows, like sharks,” said Gideon, grinning rather impressively himself. “Now, up, you lot! Up!” He raised his hands in the air: the bright orange eyes and the expressionless, masklike faces watched him. Slowly, the manticores began to rise to their feet. “Do you see? They know who’s the master!”

Mr. Walkwell was watching intently, standing very close to the bars: Tyler suddenly saw the monster nearest him had fixed the old Greek with its tangerine-colored stare. Its tail twitched. Could it reach him through the bars with those jagged-nailed hands? It was so still, so watchful…

“Mr. Walkwell!” he cried, sensing something, and at that same instant the manticore leaped forward, silent as air until it slammed heavily against the metal bars. But Mr. Walkwell had already stepped back out of reach.

“Hee-hee!” laughed Uncle Gideon. “Keeping you awake on your hooves, eh, Simos?”

Mr. Walkwell only shook his head.

Gideon said, “Well, obviously this is all too distracting for the manties. They’ll never behave properly with all these new smells and people. We’d best get on now.”

“What… what are you going to do with them?” Lucinda asked as they climbed back into the wagon. Back out in the sun, Tyler found himself sweating.

“We let them out at night, of course. They roam between the two fences here on the property. If one of Ed Stillman’s spies gets over the outer fence, or even tries to parachute in…!” He let out a breathless laugh. “He’ll be begging us to save him when the manticores come after him, I’ll tell you that much.”

Or not begging for anything, because he’ll be dead, thought Tyler. How are you going to deal with that, Uncle Gideon? But of course he didn’t say anything.

“The new, improved Ordinary Farm!” crowed Gideon. “There you have it!”

Tyler looked at Lucinda. He could see on her face that she was even less comforted by these so-called improvements than he was.