For a long moment he couldn’t see or feel anything except the beginnings of what it was going to be like to freeze to death here on the hillside. Then the girl took his hand in her own and the trace of warmth, instead of distracting him, reminded him of what he was looking for-home.
Something like a faint light in the distance almost startled him into opening his eyes, but it was not a light from the world around him, it was a light inside his thoughts. Tyler moved toward it, or it moved toward him. It wasn’t easy-other currents pushed and pulled at him, trying to tug him off the track, but he did his best to ignore them and to keep moving forward. The light became stronger, but whatever resisted him became stronger, too, until Tyler felt that he was trying to shove his way through water that was hardening into ice all around him.
Lucinda, he thought. She’ll get hurt if I’m not around. I have to get back. She needs me to help her be brave.
And he needed her, too, he realized, to remind him there were other ways to do things besides charging straight ahead.
The thought gave him an idea: Tyler changed his angle and found he could move toward the light not by fighting his way, but by slipping ahead through the areas of least resistance while remembering always what his final destination was. The light came closer-a light he could feel in his bones, so that he wondered if he was glowing from the inside out like an X-ray. He reached for it. He found it and stepped through.
It was only as the warmth rose all around him that he realized the girl from the winter world was still holding on to his hand.
Tyler opened his eyes. For a moment disappointment washed over him like a drowning tide. It was too dark to see anything, but he could feel rough stone under his hands. It was another cave, more rock and dirt. He wasn’t home-he hadn’t managed to do anything!
He crawled forward, pulling his flashlight out of his sweatshirt pocket and shining it over the rock walls. It seemed to be something like the bear cave. Then he saw a flat roof above him that looked too solid and smooth to be natural stone.
The girl had scrambled away from him, cowering from the light, obviously terrified.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “It’s just a flashlight. See?”
“ Uhawa ganu dut? ” she asked, eyes wide with alarm.
“Huh? Can’t you understand me?” He shook his head. Why should things suddenly be any less weird on this farm?
The flashlight beam revealed the trapdoor in the flat ceiling above them, and Tyler finally realized where they were-in the silo, under the floor. He swept the light back across the cavern and saw that the silo had been built on top of a crevice in the ground, a great mouth of rock and dirt. He and the girl named Last One had just crawled out of it.
The Fault Line, he thought. Octavio Tinker’s Fault Line! This is it!
He clambered up the ladder bolted to the cavern wall next to the trapdoor, but the door was locked, and all his rattling and shaking couldn’t open it. They were trapped in a deserted building.
Oh well, he thought, then began to shout. “Hello! Help! Somebody help us!” He pounded on the trapdoor. “Ragnar? Mr. Walkwell? Somebody? Help!”
He had been calling for about five minutes when the trapdoor above him rattled and he heard the snap of the lock opening. The door lifted and fell back with an echoing thunk, then a bright beam of light came through the opening in the ceiling and swept the cavernous room, blinding Tyler for a moment. The cavegirl growled in fear. Tyler swung up his own light as if in self-defense and the light moved off him. A dark shape clambered down the ladder and dropped to the floor.
“Oh, Jenkins, you idiot,” said Colin Needle, shaking his head in gleeful disgust as he looked from Tyler to the cavegirl. “You just couldn’t mind your own business, could you? And now you’ve really messed up. You might as well go pack your bags.”
Chapter 21
O ne thing Colin really liked about those Jenkins kids: they were their own worst enemies. It never seemed to have occurred to them that he might be keeping track of where they were. Both of their rooms empty after nightfall? Something had to be up. Noises in the silo, a building that was kept empty at all times? Who else would it be?
But it wasn’t just Tyler Jenkins he had discovered in the Fault Line cavern. There was a girl, too, a stranger-Paleolithic, from the looks of her. It happened occasionally with the Fault Line, these spontaneous manifestations. Like stuff washed up on a beach, he supposed, or left behind on a riverbank, tossed out of the flow of time. It wasn’t the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. But Jenkins screwing up so badly- that was something Colin had been waiting for.
“I’m serious,” he said. “Go pack your suitcase. You’re as good as gone.”
“You creep!” Tyler stomped toward him, pointing a finger. “What are you doing, following me everywhere I go?”
“Gideon should never have brought you to the farm.” Colin turned his back and went quickly up the ladder and through the trapdoor, into the empty silo. “But now he’s going to realize his mistake, because I’m going to tell him what you’ve been doing-messing with his biggest, most important secret.” He shoved open the door and went out into the warm night.
“Oh yeah?” said Tyler. He ran up the ladder and out the door after Colin, waving his flashlight like it was a Star Wars light saber. Colin laughed-did the kid really want to pick a fight? He was a full head shorter than Colin was. Still, the idiot kept coming at him, and the light got in Colin’s eyes, blinding him. He had underestimated and did not get his hands up in time as Tyler Jenkins swung a fist and hit him in the neck. Colin stumbled back, choking, and the younger boy was on him with arms windmilling so fast Colin was driven farther backward.
“Tyler, stop!” someone shouted even as Colin slipped and fell.
The Jenkins kid seized the advantage and began pummeling the side of Colin’s head. Colin swung his own right hand around and delivered a satisfyingly nasty blow to Tyler’s face, then he was back in the game again, slapping and scratching and butting with his head until he could get off his back. Another flashlight was playing over them and someone was still shouting at them as they jumped at each other.
“Tyler, no, no! Let go of him!” It was Lucinda’s voice.
They were rolling, struggling with each other like wild animals. Jenkins managed to get on top of him again and Colin was lashing out, hitting anything he could, when Tyler suddenly straightened up. Lucinda had grabbed the neck of her brother’s sweatshirt and was pulling as hard as she could. She had caught him by surprise. Tyler fell back, allowing Colin to struggle free.
“What are you two doing?”
The words were barely out of her mouth when Colin jumped past her and tackled her brother again-he wasn’t going to lose the advantage she’d given him. The two of them went down again, kicking and thrashing so that dust flew up in a cloud, obscuring the beam of Lucinda’s flashlight. Then, suddenly, there was triumph: Colin was atop the wretched Jenkins boy, sitting on his chest. He put his forearm on Tyler’s throat and heard the choking sounds begin. God, he was going to enjoy this!
Then a shadow moved over Colin and something smashed down on his head, turning his bones and muscles to water. After that, it all just went blank.
The next thing he felt was a throbbing in his head like the aftermath of an explosion, as if something had blown his skull into hot pieces that were barely holding together.
My brain, he thought. Somebody knocked my bloody brain out.
Colin tried to sit up, but just the tiny movement of bracing his hands against the ground made him feel dizzy and sick so he gave up. It was dark where he lay, which was just as well. Light in his eyes would have felt like a blowtorch.
“What’s with this farm?” Lucinda was saying. “I mean, Tyler, who are all these people? What are they up to?
