keyboards and computer parts. Considering all the time it had been in the dragon’s nest, Octavio’s device seemed to be in amazingly good condition; under the dirt it appeared largely undamaged.
When he got hungry Colin trotted back across the grounds to the kitchen and helped himself to some leftover dinner rolls, as well as some pickles and slices of ham from the refrigerator. He also grabbed a pitcher of cold milk, then carried it all back to the library so he could keep working.
It was early afternoon by the time he finished cleaning. Colin touched the crystals in their tight baskets of coiled golden wire. They might have been a little warm to his touch, but that might also have been his imagination because he was very excited. After so long, after so many nights hunting journals and information, and after the mind-numbing fight to understand the things Octavio Tinker had written-and after he had twice risked his life too, searching the dragon’s nest-all that work, and now here he was, holding the actual article in his own trembling hands.
The most powerful thing in the world-and it’s all mine.
Colin surprised himself-it was as if someone else had thought it, not him. But it was true, wasn’t it? Governments around the world would pay millions-no, billions!-for this thing, and even more for Ordinary Farm itself. Look at that crook Ed Stillman-he had brought half a million just to buy what he thought was a live dinosaur egg. How much would he have been ready to pay if he had known it was from a real, live dragon…? And what would he give for the ability to travel to any time in history…?
No. Colin did his best to clamp the lid on such thoughts. Maybe later, when he had assumed real control of the farm, he could think about all the different possibilities; now he had more important things to do. He would study and study and study, and when he was ready he would take the Continuascope and then he, Colin Caiaphas Needle, would make the Fault Line his own.
Chapter 23
Ragnar groaned and straightened up in the seat. Tyler was frightened by the blood on the Norseman’s face and chest, but Ragnar felt himself carefully, then declared, “Nothing but swipes.” He touched the back of his head. His hand came away bloody. “But that thing rattled my brains against the ground. What happened?”
When Tyler told him, Ragnar grinned through the drying blood. It made him look frightening and fierce. “Then the worm saved my life because the Manticore would have had my guts. I had never thought to owe a dragon thanks, but I do.” He looked at Lucinda. “Your sister?”
“I don’t know. She’s sick.”
Ragnar leaned over to touch Lucinda’s forehead, nodded, then saw the mess he had made of the seat behind his head. “I apologize, Hector Carrillo,” he said. “My blood is in your car.”
Mr. Carrillo didn’t say anything, but Tyler could see the man’s eyes were still wide with fright and he was hunched over the wheel as he drove like the devil himself might be chasing them.
Tyler didn’t understand how sick his sister really was until they reached the Carrillos’ farm. As Mr. Carrillo pulled up in front of the house Lucinda, who had been leaning on Tyler’s shoulder for most of the trip, began to slide off the seat. He clutched her arm and shook her but she was out cold, although “cold” was the wrong word to use- Tyler could feel the heat coming off her like a light bulb that had been burning for hours.
“She’s really hot,” he said, struggling to keep her sitting upright, but his sister was as limp as a rag doll. A very heavy rag doll. “She’s got a bad fever!”
“The Carrillos will see that she has what she needs,” said Ragnar, but he didn’t sound very convinced. It was strange to see the huge Norseman at a loss for what to do, but it was also frightening.
Tyler was so busy trying to get Lucinda to wake up that he hadn’t noticed Mr. Carrillo had got out of the car until he returned with his wife Silvia. Mrs. Carrillo looked almost as worried and frightened as Tyler felt, but she took control quickly. “Lift her out and carry her inside,” she told Ragnar. “Hector, get me some water and some towels.”
As they brought her into the house the Carrillo children came running to see what was going on.
“Is she all right?” Carmen asked. “What happened?”
“Your father said she’s got a fever. Go get a pair of your pajamas and a bathrobe,” her mother said. “She’s going to need a change of clothing-everything she’s got on is soaking wet.” When Carmen was gone and Ragnar had put Lucinda down on the couch Mrs. Carrillo wrapped Lucinda’s head in damp towels, then stuck a thermometer in her mouth.
“You couldn’t warn me?” she asked her husband.
“Phone never works over there.” He frowned. “Should we take her into Liberty?”
Mrs. Carrillo scrutinized the thermometer. “A hundred and one. Not too bad. I’ll sit with her. If it goes up any we’ll take her in.”
Lucinda’s eyes fluttered open. She looked around but it didn’t seem like she could focus. “Tyler…?” Her voice was a cracked whisper.
“I’m here, Luce. You’re going to be okay. We’re at the Carrillos’ house… ”
“Something… in… g-g-g… ” She closed her eyes, defeated for a moment, then tried again. “G-Green… house… ”
“We know. You were out in the garden near the greenhouse when something made you sick. Do you know what it was?”
“ Greenhouse…!” she said, almost crying. The effort seemed to exhaust her. She closed her eyes and seemed to fall asleep again.
Tyler held his sister’s hot, damp hand. Seeing her like this frightened him, and for the first time in a long time he wanted his mother. “Man,” he said to no one in particular. “What happened over there?”
It got worse before it got better. Lucinda had to be carried off to Carmen’s room twice during the evening to have her sweat-soaked clothes changed. She moaned and thrashed for much of the evening, sometimes talking to a Tyler who wasn’t there (instead of the Tyler who was sitting next to the couch watching worriedly); other times she seemed to be speaking to the dragons-once she even asked Desta to pass the tea. And a few times she seemed to be talking to something else entirely, something that frightened her badly. “No!” she kept saying. “Don’t want to! Don’t want to go!” During those moments it was all Tyler could do to hold onto her slippery hand.
At last Lucinda’s skin began to cool and her sleep became less disturbed. She also stopped talking.
Mrs. Carrillo examined the thermometer. “Just under a hundred. I think she’ll be okay. You kids, off to bed. Steven, get Tyler a sleeping bag and an air mattress out of the garage-and don’t forget to shake out the spiders!”
Tyler laughed. “I’m so tired I could sleep in a whole nest of spiders.”
Grandma Paz, who had been helping Silvia Carrillo nurse his sister, crossed herself hurriedly. “Don’t say such a thing-you will bring the susto on yourself.”
“A susto’ s kind of like a curse or something,” Steve whispered. “It comes from being scared.”
“As it is, I will have to sweep your sister,” said Paz. “You too, maybe.”
“What does that mean?” Tyler whispered. “I don’t want to be swept.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Steve told him quietly. “You just lie down and she waves a broom over you. But don’t let her near anything bleeding. I fell off the monkey bars at school once and my leg was all bloody and she wanted to put powdered rattlesnake in the cuts.”
In fact, now that it seemed like Lucinda was going to be all right, Tyler was beginning to feel all his own cuts and bruises from his time in Alamu’s nest: every inch of his body seemed to have been scraped or poked; but Tyler’s idea of medicine did not include any kind of poisonous snakes. “So, yeah,” he told Steve. “That’s really interesting, about your grandmother and everything. Maybe I’ll just sleep in the front yard tonight.”
He didn’t, of course. In fact, Tyler woke up several times during the night, frightened for his sister, but each time he went out to check on her she was sleeping more or less peacefully on the couch with either Grandma Paz or Mrs. Carrillo asleep in Mr. Carrillo’s big armchair beside her. At last, sometime before dawn, he was able to fall asleep for good, but his dreams were full of tangles and snags and the sounds of something large trying to find
