“But first, I suppose, you should take the other devil machine and return these children to their own home,” Mr. Walkwell told Ragnar. “It will be dawn soon.”
The Carrillos walked back to the farmhouse yet again, this time with Tyler, and silent Colin, wiping his eyes on his sleeve. Mr. Walkwell carried exhausted Lucinda on his back, her head nodding. Ragnar had the backpack with the dragon’s egg in one hand and the briefcase full of money in the other.
“Seems like you guys must have had a pretty interesting summer,” said Steve Carrillo.
“You could say that,” Tyler agreed. “Yeah, I guess ‘interesting’ would sum it up pretty well.”
Chapter 30
“W ell,” said Gideon Goldring, wrapped in a clean bathrobe and looking like an ancient king as he stared down the length of the breakfast table, “I knew it was going to be a big morning, what with our guests heading back home today-but I didn’t expect things to be quite this exciting.”
The briefcase full of money was in his lap. Meseret’s egg sat in a nest of towels at the center of the table as if it was the main dish. The official story, constructed in haste, was that the she-dragon had sensed where her mate had taken the egg, broken out of the Sick Barn in fury, and recaptured it. The injury to her wing from the helicopter blade was now a battle wound from a scuffle with Alamu.
Lucinda didn’t like having to lie, especially about things this big. Unable to look at Uncle Gideon, she turned and looked at Colin Needle, who was also avoiding Gideon’s eye. Or perhaps it was the gaze of his mother, sitting at Gideon’s right hand, that he was avoiding. Whichever was the case, Colin had a pale, sickly look, and for the first time since Haneb had told her of Colin’s role in the theft of Meseret’s egg she felt sorry for the older boy. He had been stupid and reckless and arrogant, but she believed him when he said the farm was important to him.
Gideon looked at the briefcase again, then at the egg, and shook his head in disbelief. “My goodness. I can’t get over it. A dragon fight, attempted industrial espionage, and I slept through it all.” He turned to Ragnar. “How is Meseret?”
The blond-bearded man laughed in a hollow way. He was still wearing the same dirty, sweat-stained clothes from the night before. “She is sleeping. We’ve given her more medicine. The tractor man should have a loader and a trailer ready this afternoon-I’ll bring them back after I take the children to the train station. We’ll have her back in the barn by tonight.”
“And the damage?”
“We will be able fix everything, I think.” Mr. Walkwell was leaning in the doorway, dressed and looking almost normal again. He had not bothered to put his newspaper-stuffed boots back on: his hooves stuck out the bottom of his pant legs. “But it will take time to replace the things for animal medicine and put up new shelves in the Sick Barn. Most are ruined.”
Gideon suddenly laughed. “I was going to say it will take money we don’t have-but we do have it now.” He patted the briefcase. “Mercy me. As you can tell, I’m quite surprised by all this!”
“We all are, Gideon,” said Mrs. Needle with chilly sweetness. “We all are!”
Another long silence dropped over the table. Lucinda wondered how long it would be until Mrs. Needle squeezed the entire story out of Colin. She had drugged Lucinda and set a vicious, unnatural animal on Tyler-goodness only knew what else she could do. And she was Colin’s mother! No wonder he acted like he did. It turned Lucinda’s stomach.
“My only sadness,” Gideon said at last, “is that we have the egg back so we can study it, but we still we have no baby dragons and no idea of what the problem is.”
Something tickled Lucinda’s memory but stayed just out of reach.
“I wish you would let me take a hand, Gideon,” said Mrs. Needle. Her hand came to rest on Uncle Gideon’s arm like an ivory spider. “After all, Walkwell and the Norseman have failed three times now to keep an egg alive. There are charms that I know, herbs I could give her that ensure healthy births in cows and sheep and even poultry
…”
“There is nothing wrong with my care of these animals,” said Mr. Walkwell in a flat, angry voice.
Suddenly Lucinda remembered. “Wait! Maybe the egg isn’t dead!”
“What nonsense are you talking, child?” demanded Mrs. Needle. “Leave these things to your elders.”
“Just a moment, Patience,” Gideon said, shaking his arm loose from her clutch as he turned to Lucinda. “What do you mean?”
She told them how the dragon’s thoughts had seemed to stream through her mind as she rode her, most of them quite strange and alien, but some of them so clear that she felt sure she had understood Meseret’s meaning. “She was thinking about the egg-she didn’t think it was dead, just that it needed… something to start it moving.”
“Quickening, it is called,” said Mrs. Needle with a certain cold authority. “But what does that matter? The conceptus has been lifeless each time. There is no life to quicken.”
“It’s just… ” Now Lucinda was embarrassed. What had seemed so clear when she had touched the dragon’s thoughts now seemed strange and dubious when she had to explain it, especially with Mrs. Needle staring daggers at her. “It just felt like she thought there was something she was supposed to do. She thought about breathing on it-breathing fire. But there was something wrong with the shell. Meseret needs to eat something to make the shell… I don’t know, right. Some kind of dirt, or rocks, or… something.”
“Some kind of dirt?” Mrs. Needle summoned a tight smile. “Surely you misunderstood, Lucinda. After all, you were terrified-struggling for your life… ”
“Now, hold on, Patience,” said Gideon. “Animals eat all kinds of things to help themselves. Remember when we kept losing the first basilisks until we found out they needed rocks in their stomach to grind up the bones of their prey?” He turned to Lucinda and Tyler. “They eat mice and lizards and whatnot-just gulp ’em down, swallow ’em whole,” he informed them with a certain relish, then looked around the room. “Where’s Haneb? He’s the one that came with the dragons-if anyone’ll know, he will.”
“He did not want to come in to breakfast,” said Ragnar.
Of course he didn’t, Lucinda thought. He’s afraid he’s in trouble.
“I will find him,” said Mr. Walkwell. It was a pleasure to see him turn and go out the door so swiftly, so gracefully, instead of limping like an accident victim. She hoped he would keep his boots off from now on-around the farm, anyway.
Mr. Walkwell returned in only a few minutes with Haneb beside him, looking as though he was trying to become half his ordinary size.
“Haneb, what are you cowering for, boy?” Gideon boomed. “We need your help. We want to know about what the dragons ate back in your country.” He turned to Lucinda and Tyler. “It’s part of Turkey now, but a long time ago Haneb’s people, the Hittites, had much of it to themselves.”
Haneb still looked startled and fearful. “Ate?”
“Yes, ate, confound it! Did they eat stones? Anything unusual like that?”
He kept his head down as he thought, his hair masking the scars on his face. He had worked hard to avoid Lucinda’s gaze. “No stones,” he said at last.
“Nothing strange at all?”
Haneb winced. “I am sorry, Master Gideon. I am thinking.” He frowned and looked as though he was about to burst into tears. “Sometimes they ate Earth-flax…,” he said at last.
“Earth-flax? What is it? Describe it!” Gideon demanded.
Haneb waved his hands. “It is like ordinary flax, but it grows in the rock, not in the ground. You can make cloth of it and the cloth cannot be burned.”
“By God, he’s got it!” shouted Gideon, making Haneb jump so badly that only Mr. Walkwell’s steadying hand kept him from falling over. “ Asbestos! My goodness, Lucinda, you’re right!”