“Luce!” he shouted, but she didn’t acknowledge him.
He didn’t hurry after her-it was too much fun watching everybody trying to catch the swiftly-rolling snake. The chase had excited and upset many of the other residents of the Reptile Barn, the basilisks hissing and the tiny cockatrices spattering the insides of their enclosures with venom, until even Meseret lifted her massive head above the edge of her pen to have a look. Zaza got so excited she peed on one of the Amigos from mid-air, which only added to the shouting.
Wow, thought Tyler, enjoying the chaos-j ust look at this crazy place! Is there anywhere cooler on the entire planet? And me and Lucinda saved it again!
Chapter 42
Colin Needle had walked around for two days with his head full of unpleasant thoughts, but no matter how he had considered things, no matter how he tried to explain them to himself, he couldn’t make the worst one go away.
Tyler Jenkins had been right -Colin’s mother had been the one who had made Gideon sick. And in trying to change Gideon’s will, or whatever she had been up to on the night of the storm (he was still piecing the story together) she had also used her son’s computer and the security system Colin had so painstakingly set up to let the manticores out, bringing deadly danger not only to the other residents of the farm, but to her own son.
But how could she do such a thing? Colin had always known his mother was difficult and temperamental, even knew that she had a cruel streak, but this was different. She had told him so many times that her excesses were on his behalf that he had believed it in the same way he believed rain was good for plants. Now his life seemed to have been twisted into a completely different shape, one that he had never seen before and had no idea of how to use.
As Colin reached the bottom of the stairs he met Caesar coming out of the kitchen with what looked like Gideon’s lunch, a tray with soup and bread and a sparkling white napkin rolled up and held in a silver ring. Colin nodded as Caesar went past, and Caesar nodded politely back, but suddenly Colin felt certain that there was something other than politeness in the old man’s dark brown eyes-contempt? Outright hatred, hidden only by his polished manners?
Little Pema was dusting the furniture in the entry hall, and she too nodded to Colin as he passed, but despite the demure, downward cast of her eyes he fancied he could see her shrink back as if she did not want even his shadow to touch her. He knew the kitchen women did not like him, but he had always supposed it was because of his bad temper or the way he sometimes spoke without thinking, dismissing things he felt were plainly stupid. But was it more? Was their dislike of his mother deeper than what most workers felt for unsympathetic managers-did they really hate and fear her? Did that mean they hated and feared Colin Needle as well?
These were new thoughts, quite new, and Colin didn’t know exactly what to do with them. For most of his life he had known that the other farm residents didn’t like the Needles, but he had managed to convince himself that much of it came from the dislike the weak always felt for the strong-his mother was nothing if not strong. Sometimes her strength even scared her own son. Why shouldn’t it make others nervous?
But one day while Gideon was still missing, Colin had found a few envelopes from the Madagascar crate near the old abandoned greenhouse and had wondered why his normally so-careful mother would bring those foreign seeds and spores to the garden, where the risk of them causing mischief in an entirely new environment was so great. Why wouldn’t she simply raise them under controlled conditions? Later, when Lucinda had been overwhelmed by the spores from the greenhouse, Colin had begun to be suspicious, but still hadn’t been able to make sense of it. When Lucinda told him what kind of spores they were and he thought about Gideon’s mysterious disappearance and return did it all begin to make a kind of terrible sense. It wasn’t her experiments with the exotic plants and fungi his mother had needed to hide away from the house’s inhabitants, it was who she had been experimenting on-Gideon Goldring himself. His mother must have been hiding the old man out in the garden. Somehow his mother, Patience Needle, had knocked Gideon out and dragged him to the greenhouse all by herself, only to have him escape on the Fourth of July.
Witch. It was a word that came up out of the darkest places inside Colin like a belch of foul gas from the bottom of a deep pool. His mother was a witch, and not the good kind. It wasn’t the first time he had heard it, or even the first time he had thought it himself, but it was the first time he had really let himself feel what it meant.
My mother is a witch.
Colin Needle had never felt so alone.
He stood in the shade of the porch, sweat dripping down his face and making his clothes stick to his skin. Although the storms had passed, the sky was just cloudy enough to make the day as close as it was hot. He was thinking he might go and look at Eliot the sea-serpent, whose silvery splashing sometimes gave Colin a feeling of freedom that very few other things did, when a movement in the distance caught his attention.
Lucinda Jenkins was walking slowly toward the farmhouse, trudging through the shadow cast by the tall grain silo that stood over the Fault Line. He didn’t know what he was going to say to her, didn’t know if he could think of anything to say, but she looked like she didn’t feel any better than he did, so at least he wouldn’t have to try to make cheerful conversation. Colin knew he wasn’t very good at that.
He waved awkwardly as she climbed the steps to the porch. “Hi.”
She looked up at him and smiled, but he felt sure it was the same smile she would have given any stranger on the street. “Oh. Hi, Colin.”
She had paused for a moment but now she looked as though she was going to continue past him into the house. He suddenly didn’t want to be on his own again. “Ummm,” he said, as if it actually meant something. “Ummm. You… you want some lemonade? I think Sarah just made some.”
Lucinda looked at him again, more closely this time. After a couple of seconds she seemed to relax, although she still looked sad. “Yeah. Sure, that would be nice.”
“Just wait and I’ll go get it.”
When he came out again a few minutes later with two glasses she was sitting in one of the rocking chairs. He handed her one of the glasses and let himself down into the other one, careful not to spill. Just for once he didn’t want to do anything clumsy, didn’t want to embarrass himself.
“So… ” he said as she drank. “You’re going home tomorrow, huh?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I guess it’s just as well. Desta hates me.”
It took Colin a moment to put it all together. “Oh, the little dragon. Well, don’t feel too bad-they’ve always hated me.”
She gave him a slightly annoyed look. “You do know that’s your own fault, right, Colin?”
For a moment he wanted to argue, loudly if necessary-didn’t anyone understand that he was trying to make important things happen?-but just as suddenly as the need had filled him, it leaked out again. He took a deep breath and let it out. “Yes. Yes, I suppose you’re right. I’ve certainly done my share of stupid things. Selfish things.”
She lifted an eyebrow. Lucinda Jenkins was really quite pretty, he noticed again. Not flashy like the oldest Carrillo girl, who dressed like someone you’d see on a teenage TV show, all jangly bracelets and complicated hairstyles, but very nice nonetheless, her hair straight and shiny, her serious face, so pale a few weeks ago, now quite tan. “You really mean that, Colin?” she asked. “Or are you trying to butter me up for something?”