footprints. I suppose that is also the good news, because if he had entered the Fault Line there would be nothing we could do to follow him. It has now been locked again. No one else go near.”
“Time to begin the search, then!” said Ragnar before Mrs. Needle could say anything. “Hoka, Jeg, the rest of you men, come with me.”
“What if we don’t find him?” Lucinda asked. The faces of the others showed that they had been wondering this too.
It was Ragnar who answered. “That is too hard a question for today, child. While we search things will go on as they have. Mr. Walkwell will run the farm, Mrs. Needle will… will see to things in the house.”
Patience Needle favored him with a poisonous smile. “Thank you for giving me permission to do my job, Ragnar Lodbrok.”
“Enough arguing.” Mr. Walkwell broke his silence. “Back to searching. Search everywhere again. Gideon is old and he might be hurt. Waste no time.” He turned and walked out the door, hooves clicking on the wooden entry hall floor. Most of the men of the farm followed him-but where, Tyler wondered, was Colin Needle? He spotted him a moment later, talking urgently to Lucinda, which bothered Tyler more than it should have. He didn’t want the pale young man being friendly to his sister. It was just… creepy. Creepy and wrong.
“Hey, Needle,” he called. “Needle!”
The older boy shot him a resentful look. “What do you want, Jenkins? I wasn’t talking to you.”
“I think your mother knows something about Gideon disappearing-something she isn’t telling us.”
“Tyler,” Lucinda said warningly, “don’t… ”
He ignored her. “Don’t lie to us, Needle. You know she had something to do with it, don’t you?” Tyler took a step nearer; to his satisfaction, Colin took a step back.
“Just shut up, Jenkins!” sad the older boy. “You don’t know anything. You’re busy ruining everything while people like me are trying to save this place.”
“Stop it, both of you!” Lucinda cried, but Tyler was just getting started.
“Oh, sure,” he said. “Save the farm… like when you tried to sell Meseret’s egg to the person Gideon hates most in the world? When you pretty much gave away the secret of this place? Yeah, you really care…!”
Tears actually came into Colin Needle’s eyes. He balled his fists and for a moment Tyler thought the older boy might take a swing at him, but instead Colin turned and hurried out of the Snake Parlor toward the front door.
Tyler stared after him. “What’s his problem?”
“You’re a creep, Tyler Jenkins,” Lucinda said. “He came to me for help! He wanted someone to listen to him! And he might have had something important to say about Gideon, but no, you had to be… you had to be… ” She turned and stomped out of the room, headed for the kitchen. As the door fell shut behind her, she shouted back, “
… A big creep!”
“Huh?” Tyler said it out loud, even though he was now the only person left in the room. “I don’t get it? What did I do?”
Chapter 11
“Oh, sweet! Careful, now…!” Lucinda laughed a little nervously as Desta took another carrot from her hand. Lucinda had just discovered to her astonished delight that Desta’s long tongue was as blue as a summertime sky. “Will it stay that color?” she asked.
Ragnar looked down from the landing above where he was hosing out the cockatrice cages. “I do not know. Her mother and father are not that way, but they might have changed-I don’t remember what color tongues they had as young worms.” He laughed. The sound startled the displaced cockatrices, which hissed at him from their temporary wire cages.
“Where is Haneb today?” Lucinda asked. “I thought he was the one who took care of the dragons?”
Ragnar shrugged as he swept the water toward the drain in the concrete floor. “Simos has taken him and your brother and others to walk the hills and canyons. There are many trees and deep spots there which could hide… someone.”
A man’s body, he had almost said. Because now that he was three days missing, Ragnar, Lucinda, and everyone else knew Gideon Goldring might very well be dead. A cloud of fear hung over Ordinary Farm.
Lucinda swallowed hard. “Ragnar? What if Uncle Gideon doesn’t come back? What if we never find him? What… what happens next?”
Who will get the farm? That was what she was really asking. Who will take charge of this strangest, most wonderful place on earth?
When the Norseman had all the creatures back in their cage he latched the door, then pulled off the hood of the hazard suit he wore to protect himself from the creatures’ poisonous saliva. He clanked down the stairs to join Lucinda as the cockatrices stepped awkwardly around the puddles, hissing at each new outrage to their familiar home-sawdust and sand now clean and new, their droppings washed from every surface.
“What happens if he’s really gone?” she asked again.
“Here you make a testament, yes?” Ragnar asked her. “A… will? Writing down how your treasure will be shared after you are dead. But first someone-one of the city-chiefs, what are they called…?”
She thought for a moment. “Police? Government?”
“Government, yes. They will send someone, as Gideon always warned us. And how can we let that happen? How can we explain anything about this place? No, child,” Ragnar said seriously, “believe me, it will be much better if we find Gideon alive. Much better.”
Ragnar stood now and watched, shaking his head, as Desta wrapped her sky-blue tongue around Lucinda’s last carrot and pulled it into her mouth. The dragon crunched contentedly, her long teeth flashing as her jaw opened and closed, then eyed Lucinda to see if there was any more. Haneb had been right-Desta definitely liked carrots.
No more today. Lucinda tried to make each thought clear and individual. That’s all. But I’ll bring you more carrots soon. Would you like that?
For a moment the amber eyes bored into her, then the dragon, small but still bigger than Lucinda, turned and walked away in awkward dragon-fashion, stilting on its back feet and the elbows of its folded wings. But just before Desta pulled herself up onto her nest of straw and old mattresses, Lucinda caught a whisper of happy, greedy thought, faint as a breeze through branches. It was wordless compared to her own, but still had a meaning she could understand.
Yes. More. Bring more.
For a moment Lucinda thought she’d imagined it, then her heart seemed to spread wings inside her chest.
As the cart rolled along Lucinda watched the hills shimmering in the mid-afternoon heat. “Do you think that creepy Kingaree guy has anything to do with Gideon disappearing?” she asked suddenly.
Ragnar shook his big, shaggy head. “I do not believe it but it could be true. He is a crafty, wicked man.”
“Everyone keeps telling me that-okay, I believe it! But what did he do?”
Ragnar stayed silent for a while as the horse slowed to a stop beside Elliot’s Lagoon, as Gideon sometimes called it. The sea-serpent who lived in the small lake didn’t need regular feeding-the water just had to be restocked with fish twice a year-but Mr. Walkwell and the Norseman made a point to check in on Elliot every couple of days. Just now, though, Ragnar wasn’t even looking at the water.
“Things were better before the fire,” the big man said suddenly.
“The fire that burned down Gideon’s laboratory?”
He nodded his head. “Grace had been gone for several years. Gideon used his shiny toy almost every day to go into the Fault Line and search for her, but he would not admit that was what he did.”
“Shiny toy… You mean the Continuascope.” The thing Tyler was always going on about.
Ragnar nodded again. “He called it ‘collecting.’ He never found Grace, but instead he brought back animals…
