“In the valley on the other side of the hills,” said Mr. Walkwell.
“It’s a long way. Why didn’t you bring a car?”
He turned and gave Tyler a look that was downright unfriendly. “No. I do not like those noisy machines. They are unnatural.”
Lucinda groaned. Tyler almost did the same. The farm was beginning to look like a very bad bet for television and other modern conveniences. He tried not to think about the horror of being unable to recharge his GameBoss Portable for an entire summer.
As they crossed the crest of the hill they came out of the trees and saw Standard Valley stretched before them, carpeted with golden meadows, walled here and in the far distance with tree-covered hills that were surprisingly high, just a little short of being mountains. Below them wound a stripe that flashed silver in the afternoon sunlight-a river. In the very far distance, like a wall at the edge of the world, loomed some true mountains, the Sierras. The valley looked like something out of an oil painting. A nice one.
“Wow,” said Tyler. “It’s… ”
“It’s beautiful.” Lucinda sounded surprised. Mr. Walkwell smiled for the first time, which brought a whole different look to the old man’s weathered brown face, something charming and wild, the grin of a rascally pirate. He flapped the reins against the horse’s back and they started down.
Soon they could hear the sound of the river, a gentle rush like wind in the treetops. The meadows they passed looked like there should be cows in them, but there were none to be seen anywhere, or pigs, or, in fact, anything farmlike at all.
“Where are the animals?” asked Tyler. For a moment he wondered if it was the kind of farm that only grew cauliflower or something, but Uncle Gideon had definitely sent them a book about cows-about some kind of cows, anyway-and besides, they weren’t seeing any asparagus fields, either.
“You can’t see them from here,” the old man said, then looked up at the empty sky. “But perhaps some of them are watching you.”
Tyler and Lucinda exchanged another worried look.
As they neared the bottom of the hills, the road turned away from the river and mounted a low prominence. From the top they could see what had lain hidden near the base of the high ridge.
“It’s… it’s huge!” Lucinda said quietly.
Tyler had never seen anything like it. A cluster of wooden buildings stretched below them, connected by walkways and gardens, all wrapped around a gigantic wooden mansion several stories high in places, a sprawling pile of roofs and walls, with balconies and oddly shaped windows and even a tower on one side of it that looked a little like a wooden lighthouse. The hodgepodge of buildings was painted way too many colors to make sense, mostly reds and yellows and light brown and white, and it all looked like someone had created a gigantic space station out of really old buildings, then set it down carefully here in the middle of nowhere. Tyler could only stare. “What is it?” he said at last.
“That?” said Mr. Walkwell. “That is the house. That is Ordinary Farm.”
“It’s like something on television!” Lucinda whispered to Tyler as Mr. Walkwell drove the cart toward the huge, ramshackle farmhouse. “Like Survivor: Transylvania.”
“Or a game,” he said. “ Castle Gorefest, with ghouls in the towers and dungeons full of canker- monsters.”
Whatever it looked like, it certainly wasn’t what Lucinda had expected. Instead of a boring old farmhouse with a red barn or something, this place looked like someone had started with a normal farmhouse a long time ago, but just decided for some reason to keep on going, adding bits and pieces like a hyperactive kid who had been given several extra sets of Lego and was intent on using them all.
“Who built this weird house?” Tyler asked.
“Octavio Tinker,” said Mr. Walkwell. He frowned, which brought something scary into his face. “You will keep respect in your voice for Ordinary Farm, and for those who have crossed the river. In his day Octavio Tinker was a very famous man-and a very, very wise man as well.”
Crossed the river? He decided it must be the strange-old-farm-guy way of saying “dead.” As far as the famous part went, however, he was impressed. But besides being famous, this Tinker guy must have been seriously weird-the house sure was. The pattern of it almost had the look of something natural, like a spiderweb or the coral in his science class aquarium, a spiraling of outbuildings, sheds, and odd square towers that swirled out from what was clearly the main house at the front and center of the property.
They rolled down and around the long half circle of driveway. The farm buildings and the different parts of the house seemed to face in a dozen separate directions, as if they had been set in place almost at random. The afternoon sun bounced back from the windows in unexpected ways that made Tyler feel dazzled and a little sick. Nearly at the center of the ring of odd structures, almost a hundred yards away from the sprawling front of the house, stood something that looked like it belonged in a psycho-killer movie, a gray wooden building several stories high with a big pipe slanting down from near the top, and no windows.
“Check out the haunted house,” he whispered to Lucinda from behind his hand. “Who do you think lives there, Freddy Krueger?”
“Or maybe the Friday the 13th guy,” Lucinda whispered back.
“It is a grain silo, but it is not being used,” Mr. Walkwell informed him. “I do not know the names you say. No one lives there. And it is a dangerous place for children. Mr. Goldring will be very angry if you try to go there.”
They were so daunted by his sharp ears that they both stopped talking.
The wagon rumbled to a halt beside a long porch that ran along the front of the house but just stopped at both ends, as though it had once connected two other parts of the main building that weren’t there anymore. The huge front door was surrounded by panels of stained glass.
“Get off, now,” said Mr. Walkwell, as if he had been waiting patiently for quite long enough.
The children jumped down, still looking around. As they climbed up onto the porch, some distance away a tractor towing a huge empty trailer appeared from around one corner of the house, putt-putting along not much faster than a person could walk as it headed out across the open space. The big bearded man driving it swung around in his seat when he saw them and waved to Mr. Walkwell. “I took her to the Sick Barn!” he shouted.
Mr. Walkwell raised his hand to show the man he’d heard. “That is Ragnar,” he told them. “You will come to know him well.”
“Ragnar? Wow,” said Tyler. “Sounds like some barbarian hero out of RuneQuest. And put who in the Sick Barn? Was it one of the animals? One of the cows?” He felt like he’d been holding in the questions for days. “And what’s up with the cows here, anyway-do they catch on fire all the time or something?”
Mr. Walkwell stared at him for a moment, then pointed a brown finger toward the front door. “Mrs. Needle waits for you there. She will take you to Mr. Goldring, your uncle. Save your questions for him.”
Tyler was feeling a little better-the tractor showed that there was some technology on the farm, whether Mr. Walkwell liked the stuff or not. All Tyler really needed was enough electricity to recharge the GameBoss. And this Mrs. Needle-he could tell she would be a plump, kindly little old lady like Mrs. Santa Claus from some children’s Christmas special. She’d greet them with cookies and lemonade and say “My goodness!” a lot.
The front door swung open before they could knock, revealing a young man with a thin pale face. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt and gray slacks, as though his parents had just forced him to dress up for church. His thick black hair had been combed down with water at some point, but was beginning to pull loose into funny crooked tufts.
“Ah,” he said. “You must be the children.”
Tyler didn’t like his superior expression, and he sure didn’t like being called a child, either. “Yeah? Who are you?”
The young man’s eyebrow rose, as though questions were rude. “My name is Colin.” He couldn’t be much more than Lucinda’s age, Tyler guessed, but he seemed older because he was tall and because of his weird grown-up clothes and the stiff way he stood.
“We’re supposed to talk to Mrs. Needle.”
“That’s my mother. She’s very busy right now, but I suppose I can take you to her.” He stepped aside, beckoning them in as though he too was very busy and was just making some time for them out of kindness. He didn’t offer to help with the suitcases.
