things often found floating on logs or root-system rafts. I am not sure I understand your argument as to why that precise spot at Moromboke should prove such a nexus for biological oddities and events, but I am very happy to report the fruits of my success! That is to say, I indeed found myself overwhelmed with the diversity of new botanical specimens. And am herewith sending many back to you.
I have a funny feeling they are not all Madagascan. Sorting through and understanding what we have here will take time and study. However I do wish to draw your attention to the prize of the group (as far as I am able to tell!) It is a fungus completely unlike anything I have ever known. I have included a small piece for you, but in the safety of a glass tube! Again, it is not native to Madagascar, but enough have landed on the shores over the years that the Mikea tribes have incorporated it into their myths, naming it what is best translated as “Call-You Spirit Plant”. Their tales claim that the thing is something like the Sirens or Loreleis of the esteemed ancient poet Homer! Many tribal stories tell of people summoned to die by the “Call-You”, and that they are helpless to fight against it-as if their will was no longer their own. My tests suggest it is simply a fungus, although a highly complex one! Anyway, I send it to you, learned Dr. Goldring, with the hope you may find it as interesting as I did…
The letter was signed, “Your friend and colleague, Fabien Koto.”
Lucinda put the letter down, her heart beating wildly. An entire box of rare and unknown specimens had been sent to Ordinary Farm-to Gideon’s wife Grace, a scholar and a scientist trusted with the handling of rare and possibly quite dangerous specimens. But instead they had been hidden away for twenty years and now had fallen into the hands of Patience Needle. Had the specimens been labeled? Lucinda knew that Mrs. Needle and her son, unlike the rest of the farm’s workers, actually knew how to use a computer. Had Mrs. Needle been able to find out something about the dangerous secrets that had been lurking in that box all these years? Had she decided… to grow some of them?
Several things clicked into place in Lucinda’s mind all at the same time. On the night they found the box Tyler had said the tubes were full of seeds, plant cuttings, and fungus. Mrs. Needle loved things like that. She was an expert in these things-botany, herbology. And the logical place to try to grow unknown tropical species would be
…
The old greenhouse.
And if the witch was going to plant one of those weird specimens, which one would she want to grow? Lucinda knew the answer to that one, too.
“Many tribal stories tell of people summoned to die by the ‘Call-You’ fungus, ” Fabien Koto had written, “ and that they are helpless to fight against it-as if their will was no longer their own.”
Those spores-it must have been the “Call-You” that I breathed at the greenhouse! she realized. I’m so lucky I only got a tiny bit… !
And what better way to control someone’s mind than with the mysterious Call-You, which even most doctors would never have heard of? What better way to make sure that Gideon Goldring behaved the way Mrs. Needle wanted him to behave? And what better time to do it than right when he was about to change his will to give Lucinda and Tyler the farm?
And once the witch is certain she’s figured out how to use it, she could use it on anyone… or on everyone. Then it wouldn’t be just mice and birds and bugs dying outside the greenhouse, pulled helplessly by the Call-You, it would be any victim Mrs. Needle chose.
The thought of what had almost got her, and what was probably still lurking inside her, made Lucinda feel ill all over again.
Chapter 25
“We have to do something, Luce!” said Tyler before he had even finished reading Fabien Koto’s letter. “This is terrible! Colin’s got the Continuascope and his mom’s brainwashing Gideon with some kind of zombie mushroom-we have to get back to the farm!”
“What good would that do?” Lucinda shook her head. “As long as she’s got Gideon under her control she can just throw us out-she can have us arrested for trespassing if she wants to. She could claim we stole something…!”
“They can’t arrest us without calling the police. They’re not going to do that,” Tyler said. “The Needles don’t want strangers on the property any more than Gideon did.”
“I don’t know. We have to talk to Ragnar about this.”
“He’s not here, Luce. He snuck back over to the farm to help Mr. Walkwell with the unicorns. A lot of them are sick.”
His sister frowned. “Wow. Maybe it’s because of that fungus. I mean, if it poisoned all those birds and bugs in the garden… ”
Tyler waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter now. We can’t wait any longer. We have to do something!”
“No! We can’t do anything until we figure out what it is we should do,” Lucinda said.
Tyler sighed and shook his head. His sister just didn’t get it. “If you don’t want to get involved,” he told her, “then just leave it to me.”
Grandma Paz was in the yard behind the house when he found her, throwing out food for the chickens from a plastic bin.
“Layer food, it’s called,” she told him, as if he had asked. “Nothing to do with layer cake. It means like laying eggs.”
The little old lady, Tyler was beginning to discover, liked to tell stories about everything, not just Ordinary Farm. At dinner she would often share long and occasionally funny tales about one of her relatives getting into trouble or making an embarrassing mistake. Sometimes she even talked about her Indian grandmother and the more distant past, but she never said anything about the stuff Tyler really wanted to hear, and he had been waiting for this chance to talk to her on his own.
He followed her around the yard as she scattered the chicken feed, which pretty much looked like ordinary birdseed to Tyler. “In Australia they call them ‘chooks’,” Paz said, exactly as if he’d asked that too. The birds scuttled after her, heads bobbing, making happy little purple-purple-purple noises in their throats.
Tyler took a breath. “The other night, you said something about
… about a haunted mine.”
“Ah, you heard that, did you? I was wondering when one of you would ask. You are the one who always wants to know, aren’t you? You must get in lots of trouble.” She laughed.
Tyler did his best to share her amusement. “Yeah, I guess that’s me. Is there really a place like that around here?” Ever since he had heard the phrase he had been thinking about it-it sure sounded a lot like the Fault Line. And if anyone around here had made it clear they knew some strange things about Ordinary Farm, it was Grandma Paz.
“ La Mina Frecuentada. That’s what my father and mi abuelo used to call it. Steven is right, it means ‘the haunted mine.’ But they didn’t go there. Too many stories. The whole place had too many stories.”
“Like what?” Tyler hoped he didn’t sound too interested-that was a sure way to scare off a grown-up. They started thinking, What if this kid gets into trouble? It’ll be my fault! Then they clammed right up. “Ghost stories?”
“Sometimes.” She was halfway around the pen now, the hens and chickens crowding along the fence near her feet like tourists looking up at a plump Statue of Liberty. “All kinds of things, child. Monsters. These hills have had stories since long before my abuela’s day. I told you about the Indian man who found the Land of the Dead, right…?”
Tyler remembered well, but it was rare to get her alone and talking. “Tell me again.”
“Don’t play with me, boy. I told you once, that’s enough. He went to bring back his dead wife and went all the way to the Place of the Spirits. That was in these same hills- Las Lomas Embrujadas, the old folks called them
