“B ut I still don’t get it-where did the unicorns come from?” Lucinda asked as the wagon bumped along. “And the dragon?”
Ragnar smiled and shook his head. “I have said many times: that is not for me to answer. But look there and you will see something.”
Lucinda didn’t want to look at anything else. She wanted to keep the amazing sight of the unicorns in her memory and not let anything else push it out-that cloud of manes and tails and flashing eyes and horns.
And horns, yes. Poor Haneb. The farmhand had only been trying to protect her. She still felt bad about how she had reacted.
“What is it?” Tyler asked. “It’s… huge!”
Lucinda looked up, suddenly fearful that they were being taken to something even more terrifying than the dragon-a chained ogre out of a story, or some monstrous, girl-grabbing gorilla. Instead she saw only a pale, whitewashed building stretched along the valley floor below them. But what a building it was, sunk half into the hillside, a single low wooden structure like a dozen oversized shoeboxes placed end to end, its roof covered in solar panels. It seemed as long as the immense playing field at her school. “It’s… a giant barn,” she said.
Ragnar nodded. “It is, child. That is the dragon barn. No dragons in it now, since Meseret is in the Sick Barn, but you will see what else is there.”
“Was it built just for the dragon?” Tyler asked as the wagon crunched to a stop.
“No, this was made for an earlier owner of the land who kept cattle. We tore out many of the stalls to make space for Meseret. You will see.”
“There are train tracks going right into it,” Lucinda said as they walked through the low, dry grass toward the high doors.
“Of a sort,” Ragnar said. “They are for a rolling flatcar, to bring feed. And to move Meseret when it must be done.”
“Why would you even do that?” Tyler asked. “That dragon must weigh as much as a whale!”
“A small one, yes. But these creatures are delicate, and what makes one animal sick can sweep through them all. So we move the sick ones to the special barn. But you are right-it is not easy to move Meseret, even with the lifting-thing.”
Lucinda was too startled by the smell and the heat that hit her as they went through the big doors to wonder what a “lifting-thing” might be. The ceiling of this barn was dauntingly high, twice as high as the Sick Barn’s, spider-webbed with metal girders and dozens of bright hanging lights. The odor of the place made her nose prickle and her eyes water. It smelled like the dragon, but more so-more musky, more sour, more… strange.
Stranger than a dragon? she couldn’t help thinking. A day ago she couldn’t even have imagined meeting a dragon at all. She heard a sound behind her and turned to see Colin Needle coming in after them.
“Hello, Lucinda,” he said. “Looks like I caught up with you.”
“Are you not supposed to be working on the feed budget, Master Needle?” asked Ragnar sternly.
For a moment, as the pale boy stared angrily at the big yellow-haired man, Colin didn’t look very nice at all. “As it happens, my mother sent me here to ask Gideon something.”
Ragnar was still frowning. “Mr. Goldring is here? I thought he was ill this morning and was going to stay in bed.”
Colin shrugged. “He changed his mind. My mother wasn’t very happy about it, but you know how Gideon is-”
Just then something screeched, a noise like failing car brakes. Lucinda jumped. “What was that?” she demanded. “You said the dragon was gone!”
“Don’t be such a baby,” Tyler growled.
She wanted to slug him. Like he wasn’t ever scared of anything! How about when Mom tried to get him to eat sushi?
Ragnar patted her shoulder. “I said no dragon. But the other serpents-this is their home too.”
“And not just reptiles,” Colin said helpfully. “Almost all of our cold-blooded animals live here. There are amphibians and some… well, not fish, exactly.”
“Their water must boil,” she said. “It’s so hot in here!”
“We turn up the heating lights while Meseret is gone,” Ragnar explained.
“Why?” asked Tyler.
Colin was happy to show what he knew. “Most of the time, she contributes a lot of the warming of this place all by herself.”
Tyler scowled. “What, she breathes fire on everything?”
“No, Tyler.” Colin said “Tyler” like he was an elementary school teacher. “Just with body heat. She’s extremely large and she’s warm-blooded.”
They crossed the open area inside the doors and trooped up the stairs behind Ragnar, who didn’t look quite so big in this building. The second floor ran like a giant balcony all the way around the interior of the massive barn, leaving the middle open. From up there Lucinda could see the huge, empty expanse of straw-covered concrete where the dragon usually lay.
“Gideon is probably in the cockatrice pen,” said Colin.
“Well, perhaps, then, we show those to you, if Gideon is there,” Ragnar told Lucinda and Tyler. “But everyone must wear the eye shields.”
“Goggles,” Colin translated.
A large wire enclosure took up much of this side of the second floor, and someone was moving around inside it. The figure straightened up when it saw them and gave a jerky wave with a garden-gloved hand. Lucinda could tell it was Gideon only by his skinny shape and his bathrobe, since his head was covered by something like a beekeeper’s hood, which made him look like a very badly dressed space alien. It came to her suddenly that she didn’t know what frightened her more-the animals or this stranger, this supposed relative, who, out of the blue, seemed to have claimed their lives.
Scattered on a table near the beginning of the wire mesh lay thick plastic goggles, each with its own elastic strap, and the kind of paper masks people wore in hospitals. Ragnar passed Lucinda and Tyler one of each, but Lucinda only stared at hers with dismay. “Do these cocky-whatsits have diseases? I don’t want to catch some snake disease.” She heard Tyler snort but ignored it. Someone had to be practical.
“Not for disease.” Ragnar pulled on the goggles and tugged the mask into place-the elastic barely stretched around his big head and bushy beard. “For spit.”
“What?”
“You’ll see,” said Colin. “Don’t worry, Lucinda, we’re not going inside the pen. They’re too nasty-and they bite, also. But it’s the spitting you really want to avoid.”
“Gross!” she said.
“Excellent!” said Tyler.
Uncle Gideon came out of the pen, being careful to latch the door behind him. Lucinda could see movement inside, but the enclosure was full of boxes and boards piled haphazardly and it was hard to make out what was actually in there. Gideon pulled off his hood and gave them an uncertain look. Lucinda, though she quaked inside, determinedly met his gaze. Gideon said, “What did you think of the unicorns?”
“It was amazing,” Lucinda said. “They’re beautiful!”
A broad grin spread across Gideon’s face. “Aren’t they?” he said. “Aren’t they?”
“Where do they come from?” asked Tyler.
“Yes, when I see them running, I believe that what we’re doing here is worth every dollar and every drop of sweat.” Gideon mopped his brow with his sleeve. He was wear ing ordinary pants under his bathrobe, but had bedroom slippers on his feet instead of regular shoes. “And in here we have the cockatrices and the basilisks. Don’t take those goggles off until we tell you it’s all right.”
“What are they?” she asked. “Ragnar said they spit.”
“Yes, yes. But it’s perfectly all right.” He frowned.
“Haven’t you even heard of these creatures before? Devil me, what happened to teaching children the classics? Basilisks go clear back to Pliny the Elder in ancient Rome-although old Pliny could have learned a thing or two from taking a tour of our little zoo.” He wiped his forehead again. “For one thing, he’d find out that the cockatrice and the basilisk are actually the same creature.”
“I don’t know what either of those are,” said Lucinda, trying to peer more closely through the wire without actually touching it. She was very nervous something might jump out at her. Considering the brightness of the lights overhead, the pen was quite dark and it was hard to make out anything. “Cockastripe?”