As he vanished into the gloom, he was singing a slow song Lucinda didn’t recognize.
“The big bell’s tolling in Galilee
Ain’t going to tarry here
Ohhhh Lordy
Ain’t going to tarry here…”
Chapter 18
R agnar appeared at breakfast and announced to everyone in the kitchen, “I have news, but it is not very good, I’m afraid. Alamu found his way into the Sick Barn and took the unhatched egg. Now we will not be able to study it to learn what went wrong.”
“Oh, no.” Lucinda looked really upset. Tyler usually teased her about her obsession with cute little baby animals-she loved any nature program with tiger or bear or lion cubs-but he felt the sadness too. These were the only dragons in the world, after alclass="underline" if they couldn’t reproduce, they would also be the last. “When did it happen?” he asked Ragnar.
“In the dawn. He fooled us, for he usually sleeps until the sun is high. Haneb saw him flying away with it in his mouth.”
Colin Needle had just walked into the room. “That’s terrible news!” he said, then began filling his plate.
The rest of July was hurrying past in a round of daily chores and other even less satisfying activities. Tyler felt more frustrated than ever. Mysteries bloomed around every corner but answers were a lot less common.
Uncle Gideon was barely to be seen. The people in the kitchen (who seemed to know pretty much most of what went on at Ordinary Farm) said he stayed locked up in his study day and night, performing experiments of some kind with Mrs. Needle. It meant a lot of extra work for Ragnar and Mr. Walkwell.
One evening Tyler ran into his great-uncle wandering alone in Mrs. Needle’s vegetable garden, distracted and apparently confused. When Tyler said hello the old man looked at him as if he didn’t know who Tyler was.
Was he ill? Crazy? Whatever the case, it made Tyler nervous.
Worst of all, though, every time Tyler went outside the house on his own the black squirrel followed him, ignoring both his shouts of protest and his attempts to shake it out of the trees. Even when he threw rocks at it, the squirrel scarcely reacted: if a stone came too close it moved just far enough to avoid being hit, but other than that it seemed completely unafraid. Tyler knew he was being watched-but by whom exactly, and why? Who could make a squirrel do something like that, anyway?
Prevented from exploring, Tyler devoted his afternoons and evenings to studying the few fragments about Ordinary Farm he had collected-Octavio Tinker’s mouse-gnawed journal, the children’s book, and the book of surveys Lucinda had brought back from the library and passed to him with shaking hands. Lucinda’s ghost message, OLIS, wasn’t in the dictionary, and Tyler had combed the shredded pages of Octavio’s diary for any mention of OLIS there, but with no luck. Another mystery.
The children’s book told him a little about Octavio Tinker’s early life. Born at the end of the nineteenth century in upstate New York, Octavio was a brilliant man who had been a pioneer in the science of crystals and had become famous-famous enough for a children’s book to be published, anyway!-for growing, at very high speeds, huge crystals that looked like diamonds and other jewels. He had demonstrated this technique all over the world-there was even a picture of him growing some crystals for President Franklin Roosevelt. But the picture that really got Tyler’s attention was one labeled “Professor Tinker and His Continuum-Scope.” The device he was holding in the photo looked very much like the one in the painting, except bigger-Octavio, sporting a very impressive mustache, looked like he was about to play a solo on the French horn.
So it was a real thing, after all, something he’d actually invented. After skimming the rest of the kids’ book, Tyler put it down and went back to the journal.
An hour later he had puzzled out a few more smeared or torn words and phrases, including scientific-looking terms like “crystallometry,” “Fulcanelli’s Cross,” “flux growth,” “covalent bonding,” and “node of pure Grailite,” but none of them meant anything to him at all. (After checking the dictionary, he suspected some of them might not even mean anything to his science teachers.) But he also pried apart two stuck pages and found a comparatively unchewed section of Octavio’s writings that he read with growing excitement:
The Chinese philosopher says, “The adept must… learn the method directly from those skilled in the art… What is written in books is only enough for beginners. The rest is kept secret and is given only in oral teaching… Above all, belief is necessary. Disbelief brings failure.”
Under this, Octavio had added,
But as a general rule, believers are not scientists and scientists are not believers. Where can I find someone to help me create the perfect Continuascope?
There it was, although spelled a little differently-a Continuascope! And when he was thinking about moving to California, Octavio was still thinking about improving the device. Tyler wasn’t certain about the rest of the passage-the dictionary said an “adept” was just someone who had secret knowledge. Octavio had wanted secret knowledge and he had also wanted help building a scientific instrument. So it was interesting, but it still told Tyler precisely nothing. OLIS hadn’t led to anything, either. A whole afternoon’s work, and he really didn’t know any more than when he’d begun.
Studying, he thought sourly. Grown-ups act like it’s so great, like you can do anything in life if you just study enough. Okay, I’m studying! And in my own free time! And what do I get for it?
Nothing but nothing, was the obvious answer.
“And Colin said he really wished he could go to school like we do-you know, a real school with other kids and teachers and everything. He’s homeschooled. His mom has always taught him here. Isn’t that sad? No wonder he doesn’t always know how to behave… .”
Lucinda was babbling away, but Tyler was still doggedly going through the Octavio Tinker material and hardly paying attention-especially since she was babbling about Colin Needle, who Tyler thought was about as interesting as a pimple on someone’s butt. He had the survey book in front of him open to the Ordinary Farm pages as he made notes on a piece of binder paper.
“… So maybe you should try being nicer to him,” Lucinda finished. “Maybe he could help us find out some of this stuff you’re so interested in.”
“Colin?” Tyler couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“You want me to make friends with Junior Doctor Evil?”
“He really seems like he needs friends, Tyler.”
“So does a skunk. That doesn’t mean I’m stupid enough to pet one.”
“You are so mean!”
“Hold on.” He waved his hand at her. Something had finally clicked. “Come here, Luce. Look at this.”
She scowled, but wandered over. “What?”
“Okay, this is what the farm looked like in 1963. Most of the buildings are pretty much the same, but there’s also a bunch of stuff that isn’t here anymore. See these buildings?” He pointed to a cluster of shapes on the survey map that looked as though they should be between the house and the library. “There’s nothing there now. Just a garden.”
“Maybe that’s the stuff that burned down in the fire.”
“What fire?”
“Ragnar said there was a fire-it was a long time ago. Uncle Gideon had a laboratory with all kinds of stuff in it. And he lost it all because the lab burned down.”
“Wow, really?” Tyler stared at the plans. “Okay, that probably explains some of the missing buildings. But that’s not what I wanted to show you. Look at this map. Really look at it.”
Lucinda squinted, wrinkling her forehead. “What am I looking at?”
“That’s just it. What are you looking at? Don’t you notice anything?” He put his finger on the survey and traced the shape.