Tyler and Lucinda had moved up to within a couple of feet of the bars. The dragon’s nostrils twitched like little volcanoes getting ready to erupt. It was all Lucinda could do not to run away. The smell, the size-she was terrified.
“Move slowly and quietly, will you?” said Gideon. “She has very little experience of human children. In fact, as far as we know, before today she hasn’t met any except Colin.”
“Poor dragon,” said Tyler, too quietly for anyone but Lucinda to hear.
The dragon fixed Lucinda with an emotionless stare. The huge eye glowed with red-gold light like the coals of a fire, and for a moment it seemed something Lucinda could fall into, fall forever, twisting helplessly downward… She backed away, knowing that if she didn’t she’d scream again. “This is too weird,” she said. “Everybody here’s acting like… like this is all normal! Like it’s… ”
“Ordinary?” asked Uncle Gideon, the light winking off his spectacles. He looked amused and angry at the same time, a strange combination. “Yes, I’m afraid the name of the farm is a trifle deceptive.”
“Oh, man-flaming cows!” Tyler said, laughing a little wildly. “Flaming cows! Now I get it!”
Uncle Gideon nodded. “Ah, you did receive the book, then. I was worrying I’d missed getting it in the mail in time. Good. Obviously it’s not really about cows. And I do want you to memorize it. They’re not at all like ordinary animals, dragons.”
Lucinda felt like her head was going to blow up. “But this can’t be real! If this was really true, it would be in the news… people would know… it would be on television!”
Without warning something grabbed her arm, and a second later she and Tyler were both being dragged across the Sick Barn by Uncle Gideon. He was holding her wrist so tightly her bones ached, and his face had gone red with anger. When they got out into the glare of the outside spotlights he abruptly let go. They both staggered. From the corner of her eye Lucinda registered the others coming out of the Sick Barn, too, but no one said anything.
Gideon stood in front of them, and he didn’t just look like an eccentric old man in a bathrobe anymore. He looked really mad and really scary. “Now you listen to me,” he said in a voice that trembled with fury. “You have no idea- no idea, I tell you -of the great privilege you have received in being invited to this place. And yet I find that the first thing you two do when you get here is abuse my hospitality. You, boy, do exactly what you are told not to do. You were told not to leave the house, weren’t you?”
“I warned him, sir,” said Colin. He sounded pleased.
“And then you, girl, start telling me this place should be on television.” Gideon made a sputtering noise, like a snake about to bite. “You have been here five minutes and you would give away our hard-won secrets to a society of idiots and thieves, would you?”
“No, I didn’t… ” she began, but there was no stopping Gideon Goldring.
“I cannot tell you how deeply disappointed I am in my first impressions of you both. Moreover, you just confirm my worst fears. Once people have been allowed into Ordinary Farm, there’s no control-no control at all! Yes, children, if you haven’t guessed, I am very, very angry.”
Tears sprang into Lucinda’s eyes and her heart hammered. She looked to Tyler, but he had his head down, avoiding Uncle Gideon’s eyes. Her little brother wouldn’t argue, but he wouldn’t give in, either. He was too stubborn for that.
“Give me your hands,” Gideon said, suddenly and loudly. “Right now! You are going to swear me an oath.”
Lucinda saw the mouths of some of the others fall open in shock. She looked at Tyler.
“ Now! ” roared Gideon.
They did so. Somehow there seemed nothing else they could do. Lucinda heard distant birds in the trees, a breeze ruffling leaves, the ragged breathing of this terrible man, their great-uncle.
“Promise me,” said Gideon, “swear on everything you hold sacred, that you will never, never betray the secrets of Ordinary Farm to the outside world!”
The old man’s grip was so tight that she could feel him trembling, and she suddenly had the feeling that he was more than just angry-Gideon Goldring was frightened. Really, seriously frightened that they might tell people about the farm. An odd calm came over her. “Yes,” she said, “I promise.”
Tyler didn’t say anything for a moment. “As long as you don’t try to hurt me or my sister,” he said. “Remember, you asked us to come here.”
Gideon let go of their hands. He sounded surprised. “Hurt you? You are my relatives-you are family!”
“Okay, then, I promise.”
Another silence fell. When Lucinda looked up at Gideon to see if he was getting over his anger, the heels of his hands were pressing his eyes. “God,” he cried suddenly, “oh, God, my head!” Suddenly he swayed and almost fell.
Mrs. Needle, black hair streaming, ran to his side. “Gideon, enough! You are still unwell. You must come away now and lie down.” And she began to lead him to the house. Gideon leaned into her, hobbling and wiping at his eyes.
“Just like Mom told us,” Tyler said quietly. “Right, Lucinda? A nice, old-fashioned summer on the farm.”
Chapter 6
B y the time they reached the grand lobby and its blind staircase, Colin could just barely hide his anger. Only a few hours on the farm and these two interlopers were already getting special treatment! The boy-what was his name? Tyler-had immediately broken the rules, but instead of being sent home they had both been rewarded. Already they had been shown the second biggest secret on the farm!
Of course, Colin had known that having strangers on the farm would cause trouble, but who could have guessed it would have begun so quickly? Now he understood and could even sympathize with his mother’s dark, cold rage when Gideon had announced it.
His mother had taken Gideon upstairs, the old man stumbling like a sleepwalker. No matter how much medicine she gave him, Gideon didn’t seem to get any better. That was strange: it wasn’t like Patience Needle to come up short, although she hadn’t had much luck with the female dragon, either. It gave Colin a strange, slippery feeling-half joyful, half terrified-to think of his mother failing at something.
At Colin’s mother’s order, Caesar came down from Gideon’s rooms to lead the two Jenkins children back to their beds. Colin avoided the bent old black man. He had made the mistake once of referring to Caesar as a servant-what else would you call someone who took trays to Gideon, turned down his bed each night, and ran his bath and folded his clothes?-but Caesar had turned on him. When the man straightened up, Colin had discovered, Caesar was actually quite tall and more than a little frightening.
“Don’t you ever call me that,” Caesar had said, his weary, wrinkled face twisting into something quite different. “I work for Mr. Goldring because work is all I know how to do and because I owe him a big old favor, but I am no man’s servant. Not ever again. Do you hear me, child? Do you hear me? ”
All Colin had been able to do at the time was squeak a yes. He had done his best to avoid the fellow ever since.
“Come, children,” Caesar now said as he led Tyler and Lucinda away. “Must be tired, you two. Quite a day, quite a day. Ordinary Farm ain’t like other places, and now you know it. Enough to tire anyone out. Come along to bed.”
When they had gone, Colin stood in the silent lobby, too disturbed for bed, too full of irritated thoughts and anger. Gideon had actually had the nerve to suggest that Colin would enjoy having “people his own age” on the farm this summer. As if these two children were anything like him! As if he himself were a child instead of an adult in all but the official sense. Which is what any kid had to be if they were like Colin, a boy without a father, but also with a mother who never spoke about her previous life and treated Colin more like an assistant than a child. All in all, he hoped Gideon had learned a lesson about who he could trust and who he clearly couldn’t.
Colin Needle’s attention was suddenly drawn to a rectangle of white sitting on a silver tray. It was the tray
