“Running back to the house, was he? Thanks a lot, Needle, you creep.” With the girl’s help he managed to scramble up one of the heavy tree branches that supported the nest-she was at least as strong as Tyler himself, although she was a few inches shorter. “Wow. You really saved my life, Ooola.”
“Me, you,” she said simply. “You, me.”
Tyler hoped she just meant she had returned the favor he’d done for her, not that she was going to follow him everywhere from now on. He clambered down out of the tree with shaking legs and made his way carefully down the slope, examining the dozens of pieces of the horde that had worked their way loose from the nest and tumbled out. Nothing that looked anything like a Continuascope was on the ground or visible in the parts of the Alamu’s chaotic hoard he could see, nor had he run across anything like it while he was in the nest. “We’d better get out of here,” he said at last, trying not to be disappointed. He was lucky he wasn’t dead or crippled. He didn’t think he’d be bragging much about this adventure. “I’m sure not going back in there to look some more.”
“You lose?” Ooola asked. “What is gone?”
“Nothing really. But I came here looking for something and I didn’t find it… ”
Ooola nodded as if she understood something now. “Shiny thing. Like this.” She made a circle the size of basketball hoop with her arms.
“Yes, as a matter of fact. What do you mean?”
“Colin. When I see him run down hill, he carrying shiny thing.”
Tyler stared at her. “ Shiny thing…?”
She moved her fingers in a series of vague shapes, as if trying to draw circles and spokes and protrusions in the air, but, “Shiny thing,” was the only words she had to describe it.
Despite his aches and pains and numerous cuts and bruises, Tyler took off down the hillside path at a trot, scarcely even keeping an eye out for Alamu anymore. Ooola caught up with him within a short distance. “Why you run? Help sister?”
“Because I have to catch Colin. He has something of mine.” He slowed for a moment as he finally processed what she’d said. “Why would I run to help my sister?”
“Because she very sick. That why Ooola come find you.”
“What?”
“Your sister Lucinda very sick. Fall down in garden, not talk. Ragnar carry her to bed. She white face, make bad noises.”
“Oh my God.” Tyler now hurried downhill even faster, his pace so brisk that several times he almost slipped and hurt himself badly, but now he was not just furious with Colin Needle, he was also terrified that while he had been out taking stupid risks, something really bad had happened to Lucinda.
Chapter 20
Lucinda was in a cave that was also the farmhouse, sitting on one side of a table set in the middle of a room full of photographs. On the far side of the table, teapot held in a clawed foot, sat the young dragon Desta, smiling kindly.
“It’s really rather simple,” Desta explained. “You’ve been eaten alive. It happens all the time. My mama tells me that sometimes it’s easier just to swallow a deer or a cow whole than struggle with carrying it back to the nest. More tea?”
Lucinda nodded, although she did not remember having had any tea in the first place.
“It’s made with roses,” Desta said, pouring for both and then picking up her own cup. “Very good for girls. Girls like roses. You like roses, don’t you?”
Lucinda couldn’t remember whether she did or didn’t, but she nodded anyway. “Oh, yes, of course. Lovely roses.” But it was hard to talk-her tongue felt huge and her face was very hot. The walls of the cave-parlor were covered in a green paper with plant designs that actually seemed real, curling stems and dark, spiky thorns that hung even from the ceiling. Lucinda wondered if Desta might even have made the tea from those wallpaper plants- the back of her throat felt very prickly and thorny indeed. “When did you learn to talk so well?” she asked.
Desta had another sip of tea, her wing raised to her mouth, her smallest foreclaw protruding. “I’ve always been able to talk. You had to learn how to listen.”
“But I thought dragons didn’t like humans. Why are you being so nice to me?”
“Because you’re probably dying.” She nodded somberly. “So if we don’t have this conversation now, we probably never will, and I wanted to tell you that Azinza was right.”
Lucinda was confused and sad. She didn’t want to die. “Azinza?”
“About the monster. Something with a very long reach. Very, very long… ”
“What do you mean? I don’t understand!”
“Lucinda!” The dragon’s voice grew cold and sharp. “You must sit up.”
“But I don’t understand!”
“Sarah, make her sit.”
Lucinda couldn’t understand where the cook had come from, or why she couldn’t see her, but before she could ask about it someone clutched her with strong hands and pulled her up out of her chair. As Lucinda fought against the invisible attack her tea spilled on her face.
“You stupid girl!” the dragon’s voice said… but it wasn’t the dragon’s voice any longer. “See what you’ve done-you’ve spilled it all! Now I will have to make more!”
Lucinda opened her eyes to find herself in the Snake Parlor, stretched out on one of the old couches. She could dimly make out the bulk of Gideon’s bed, pale as a ghost-ship at the other side of the room. Sarah the cook sat over her, mopping her forehead with a damp cloth. Lucinda sat up. Not just her forehead was wet-she was sweaty all over. “What…?”
“You must not struggle, Lucinda,” Sarah told her, but her voice was kind. “You have your medicine spilled all around. She goes to make more.”
“What happened to me?”
“It is not sure. Pema and Azinza brought you in from the garden-they say you fell down and that you were very sick. Mrs. Needle gives you medicine to make you better.”
Before Lucinda could ask any more questions the slim figure of Mrs. Needle swept back into the room, a cup in one hand. She laid her thin, hard arm against Lucinda’s chest to hold her firmly in place. “No more playing up, now, child. Drink this.”
Lucinda didn’t have the strength to fight. Besides, she thought, if she wanted to poison me she could have done it already. Still, she smelled the dark liquid carefully before she drank it. It had a slightly musty taste, but had been sweetened with honey; Lucinda managed to drink it without much trouble. When she was finished Mrs. Needle leaned over her, looking carefully at Lucinda’s face, her delicate nostrils flaring as she sniffed for odors. She pulled back Lucinda’s blanket and began a painful examination of her belly.
“Spleen,” Mrs. Needle muttered as her long hard fingers dug in just below Lucinda’s ribcage. “Kidneys.” The Englishwoman seemed to be feeling as many different organs as she could-it was a dreadfully intimate sensation, but Lucinda was still too weak to resist.
When she had finished, Mrs. Needle wrote a few notes in a small book. “No harm to the organs,” she said.
“What happened to me?” She could only remember being in the garden, looking at the dead and dying animals. Beyond that she had only images, the greenhouse, the tangled roses, but it all seemed foggy and uncertain, as though it had happened to someone else.
The housekeeper gave her a cold look. “Who can say, child? The garden is full of medicinal plants-dangerous things. You have been told that many times. Only a fool would go touching things she knows nothing about. You are lucky you are not dead.”
“I swear I didn’t do anything wrong!” But was that true? She wasn’t entirely certain. “I would never touch any plants I didn’t know about… ”
