us!” she announced with great satisfaction. Pema and Sarah came in just behind her and the wide room was suddenly full of noise and movement.
“What? Who?” Lucinda realized she had been standing over the sink for several minutes, lost in thought.
“Gideon, girl! Caesar is giving him a bath and dressing him!” Azinza put the tray down so hurriedly that the cups and bowls rattled. “Which means he will also be told your brother’s secret! A happy day! I will bring some flowers for his room.”
“Just a few!” said Sarah. “The parlor will be full of people. I don’t want anyone to knock over the good vases.” But the cook was clearly excited too. All the women had been helping take care of Grace up in Lucinda’s room and all of them were agog to see what would happen when Gideon and his long-lost wife were reunited.
“Whoa.” Lucinda felt a sudden pang of worry. For some reason, she just couldn’t imagine that Ragnar and Mrs. Needle would both stand quietly by without telling Gideon what had been going on during his illness. Ragnar would tell the truth, of course, but Mrs. Needle would have to lie, and then things would get very, very difficult…
“I have to go talk to my brother,” she said abruptly and headed for the door, leaving Sarah, Pema, and Azinza to look at each other in surprise.
It was a slightly weird scene upstairs, in what had been Lucinda’s room until the night of the storm: Grace was sitting on the bed with Ooola kneeling behind her, brushing Grace’s thin white hair. (The Ice Age girl, after a lifetime of bear-grease and tangles, had taken to clean hair and brushes with joy and would sit for hours happily tending the hair of the other women. Lucinda had been amused at how many times Ooola had asked Tyler to let her brush his hair as well, and how adamantly her brother had always refused.)
Tyler was pacing back and forth in the middle of the room like the producer of a Broadway show just before opening night. “What is it?” he asked. “Is Gideon up yet?”
Lucinda could only shake her head. “Why are you making such a fuss of this? Why have you kept it a secret from Gideon?”
“Because he’s been unconscious most of the time. Duh!”
Grace had looked up at the mention of Gideon’s name, her eyes mild and slightly anxious. “Do I know you?” she asked Lucinda.
“Yes.” It was hard to connect this frail, blinking creature with the beautiful, bright young woman in all the old photos. “I’m Tyler’s sister-this is my room, remember? Gideon’s our great-uncle.” She turned to her brother. “We should have taken her to a hospital, Tyler. There’s something wrong with her.”
“Nothing that seeing Gideon again won’t fix,” he said stubbornly.
“Gideon.” Grace shook her head. “Will he… will he be mad at me? For coming back?”
“Are you kidding?” Tyler said. “He’ll be thrilled!”
Lucinda was not so certain-mad at her for coming back? What did that mean? But before she could ask any more questions Azinza appeared at the door. The young African woman had put on her best dress, a wrap of cotton cloth in bright browns, yellows, and reds that draped her long slender form all the way to the floor. She really did look like some kind of royalty.
“He is ready for us,” she announced. “Come down!”
Tyler turned to Ooola, who was making a few last adjustments to Grace’s hair. “You wait with her at the top of the stairs. I’ll call you when it’s time. Understand?”
Ooola nodded at this great responsibility with a solemn, almost worshipful expression. Lucinda liked the cave girl just fine, but she thought that someone who listened to her brother that seriously had to be a bad influence on him. Sometimes Ooola acted as though Tyler had showed up in the Ice Age on purpose just to rescue her, instead of by messing around with something he should have left alone, which was what had actually happened.
She felt a moment of regret for this hard thought as she went down the stairs. Yeah, but if he hadn’t done something stupid then Ooola would probably have been eaten by that bear…
“Just please don’t do anything too dramatic and embarrassing,” she begged Tyler quietly as they reached the bottom of the stairs. The rest of the farm folk were filing into the entry hall, murmuring quietly among themselves.
He gave her an irritated look. “You’ll be thanking me when this is all over, just watch. You’ll be calling me Mister Genius Dude.”
“If you say so.” She was too worried even to tell him what an idiot he was sometimes.
The Snake Parlor was a good-sized room, but it would have been crowded just with all the farm-folk in it. With Gideon’s bed taking up the center of the room, it felt like she was elbow to elbow with the other passengers on a crowded train, and it reminded her how soon she and Tyler would be on their way back home again.
Both Gideon and Mr. Walkwell were sitting up, although for once Lucinda thought she might have picked her great-uncle in a race, or even a wrestling contest between the two of them: Simos Walkwell looked weirdly pale and frail, while Gideon, although not at his strongest, was obviously healthier than he’d been for weeks. As usual, his hair stuck up in unruly wisps-it was clear that another of Caesar’s attempts to tame it with a comb and water had already failed.
“Uncle Gideon, it’s good to see you,” Lucinda told him, and she meant it. From the expression of his eyes and face she was pretty sure they had the old Gideon back. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
He nodded and smiled at her, but he was listening to something Ragnar was telling him; when he did lean away from the big man it was to wave to the Three Amigos, who had stopped in the doorway and stood shyly, their hats in their hands. “Please, come in,” Gideon told the herders, and his voice was so mild that for a moment Lucinda was frightened that she might have been wrong, that her great-uncle might still be some kind of brainwashing victim. Then Gideon frowned and waved emphatically. “For heaven’s sake,” he said in an irritated tone, “I said come in, already!” Lucinda was relieved.
The nervous Mongolians scuttled forward and squeezed in behind Ragnar and Haneb and the kitchen women.
As she went past him, Lucinda stopped beside Simos Walkwell.
“How are you?” she asked. “I came to see you yesterday but you were sleeping.”
The ancient faun looked at her with weary eyes. Even the stubs of his horns seemed dull. “That thing had me for a long time,” he said slowly. “Like you, I breathed its poison seeds, but I breathed them for nearly an hour. I saw… terrible things.” He shook his head. “A world where that demon was the only living thing left on the earth. I dreamed that it was reaching up to conquer the heavens themselves
… ” Mr. Walkwell trailed off, then lifted an unsteady brown hand to pat her on the arm. It was strange and disturbing for Lucinda to see him this way. “Forgive me, child. It is a long time since I have been brought so low. Go and sit. There is much to discuss today.”
All the farm’s inhabitants seemed to be present now, even Colin and his mother, who had come in last and arranged themselves at the foot of Gideon’s bed where they stood with stony faces like mourners at a funeral.
“Well,” Gideon said, “it’s a pleasure to see you all-more of a pleasure than you can guess!” He smiled as if at a private joke. “There have been times in the last few weeks when I didn’t think this would ever happen again-you, me, all of us here together on the farm. Needless to say, I am grateful for the extra work you all did during my illness, but I am even more conscious that much of the confusion was my own fault.” He nodded his head. “Yes, my fault. I am an old man and I hold the safety and happiness of many people good people in my hands-you people. I cannot afford to be so careless.”
Lucinda was impressed. Was Gideon actually going to admit for once that he might not have all the answers? But that still wouldn’t solve the farm’s worst problems. She snuck a glance at Mrs. Needle, the farm’s most dangerous problem as far as Lucinda was concerned, and caught Colin looking back at her with an odd, unreadable expression on his face. When he met Lucinda’s eyes he quickly dropped his gaze.
“So what I wanted to tell you,” Gideon went on, “is that I’m going to make things a lot clearer about what happens if I’m not around
… no, let’s be honest-when I’m not around. Because I won’t live forever.”
“Don’t say this!” Sarah the cook crossed herself vigorously. She sounded genuinely frightened, and little Pema looked as though she might burst into tears.
Gideon laughed. “Come, come, my dears. We all die someday, and we all have a responsibility to be ready for whatever changes will come. After all, if it weren’t for you and Patience nursing me so ably over these last weeks, I might not have been here today to give you this little speech!” He chuckled, but the rest of the farm folk looked at
