Sabotaged (18 page)

“How did John White know to ask to go to Croatoan?” Jonah asked. “He hasn’t even been to his old colony yet, to see the word carved in wood.”

“Maybe he was actually
leaving
Roanoke Island when his rowboat broke up, and we rescued him?” Katherine suggested. “Maybe he was here two days ago, went back to his ship, and then came to Roanoke again only because the ship was wrecked?”

“None of that’s what history says,” Jonah said stubbornly.

“But this is what
time
says is supposed to happen,” Katherine said, gesturing toward the tracers.

“You want to make time go right, don’t you?” Andrea asked softly. “Don’t you think we should go to Croatoan with the tracers?” She was looking at Jonah, not Katherine. And, for that matter, Katherine was looking at Jonah. Both of them were waiting to see what he had to say. He thought about making a dumb joke:
Hey, America isn’t a democracy yet. You don’t have to wait for my vote!
But they were all in this together. Andrea and Katherine did need to hear Jonah’s vote.

Jonah frowned, trying to think through everything.

“I guess you’re right,” he finally said. “Nobody was at the Roanoke village, and we saw the word
Croatoan
with our own eyes, so we know that part of the story’s true. And if all the tracers are going to Croatoan Island and that’s where Andrea’s tracer probably is . . . what good would it do to stay here?”

“Exactly!” Andrea said, grinning.

Jonah tried to keep himself from noticing once again how pretty Andrea looked when she was happy. He wanted to be able to think clearly. He wanted to be able to analyze this new development for ulterior motives or secret behind-the-scenes plans by Second. Could things really fall into place this way? Or . . . was there more reason than ever to be suspicious?

“If we’re going to keep up with the tracers, we’d better get moving,” Katherine said.

While one tracer boy crouched beside John White, the other was pouring water on the site of their fire from the night before. Then he went toward a hut at the far end of the village, at a distance from all the others.

“I’ll go see what he’s up to,” Jonah volunteered.

He reached the hut just as the tracer boy began putting strips of dried meat into a deerskin bag.

Venison jerky from that deer they killed?
Jonah wondered.
But where did they dry it?

The tracer boy poured water on the floor of this hut too. For the first time, Jonah noticed that there had been a tracer fire going here as well.

Oh, this is a smokehouse. . . . They must have come straight here and started the fire right after they shot the deer, before they went to the beach and rescued John White,
Jonah realized.
They could have been getting up every few hours through the night, to turn the meat.

It bothered him that he hadn’t noticed any of that—he hadn’t even thought to wonder about where they’d cooked their meat.

What else am I missing?
Jonah wondered.
What else am I just not paying attention to?

He realized he hadn’t looked into all the huts in the village the day before—or since, even after he discovered the melon with the message from Second.

“I really don’t want any more messages from that guy,” he muttered.

But as he walked back toward Katherine and Andrea and John White, he poked his head into every hut along the way. All of them were empty and dark, their dirt floors bare except for the occasional unhealthy-looking plant. The melon plant in the broken-roofed hut looked like it was thriving, by comparison. Jonah glanced into that hut quickly . . . and then stopped.

There on the floor, nestled among the melon leaves, were two jars. Jonah bent over and picked them up.

They left no tracers.

And they each had the same words engraved on their stoppers:

With my compliments.

—Second

“What’s this? Ketchup and mustard for the little food pellets?” Jonah muttered.

He pulled the cork out of one of the jars and got a whiff of the thick purplish liquid—it was paint.

In fact, the jars were identical to the ones in John White’s trunk.

“You have a really sick sense of humor, Mr. Second,” Jonah murmured. “Given everything we don’t have—all the
answers
we don’t have—and you just send us more paint?”

“Jonah! What are you doing? Come on!” Katherine called from outside the hut. “The tracer boys are leaving!”

Jonah came out of the hut waving the jars of paint.

“Look what else Second left for us,” he said. “‘With my compliments,’ he says.
I
say we take a stand: Second, we don’t want your stupid presents!”

He tossed the jars back into the melon plant. They broke off several of the leaves, creating a line of tracer leaves.

Katherine frowned at him.

“No, wait,” she said. “We should take those along. Not leave behind any more time mess-ups than we have to, you know?”

“All right, all right,” Jonah mumbled. He fished the jars back out of the melon leaves. He went over to the trunk and dropped them in with John White’s other art supplies.

“I’m glad we’re getting away from this creepy island and that creepy hut and that creepy guy Second’s gifts,” Jonah said. Somehow, he was sure Croatoan Island would be different.

“Some help?” Katherine muttered.

Jonah realized that Katherine and Andrea were attempting to pull John White across the clearing, following the tracer boy carrying the old man’s tracer.

“Oh, right. Sorry,” Jonah said.

He rushed over to the girls. They had been trying to tug the old man by his armpits, but with all three of them working together, they were able to lift him up, almost into a standing position. John White’s head sagged forward; his legs dragged uselessly.

“We’ve—got to—get him back with his tracer!” Andrea grunted.

Ahead of them, the tracer boy placed John White’s tracer in the crook of the branch they’d carried him on the night before. Much less gracefully, Jonah, Katherine, and Andrea settled the real man into the same spot.

“Now he looks so much better,” Andrea said.

It was true. John White’s color instantly improved. The sweat beads disappeared from his face. And even though his eyes remained closed, his whole countenance looked more peaceful now.

Does it really help John White that much to be with his tracer, like Andrea thinks?
Jonah wondered.
Or is it just that the tracer’s healthier, and that’s what we see?

Dare began barking. The second tracer boy was carrying the tracer chest over to put on the branch beside John White.

“Right. Don’t worry—I’m getting it, boy,” Jonah muttered.

He was glad that Andrea and Katherine were looking down at John White and didn’t notice that Jonah just dragged the chest. No, now the girls were peering through the trees ahead of the branch. As Jonah heaved the chest onto the branch—almost splintering it—he realized that they were looking at a small sliver of water visible through the woods.

“Do the tracers think this branch is going to float?” Andrea asked. “If we’re going to a whole different island . . .”

Jonah hadn’t thought of that. There was too much to keep track of.

“John White would fall off,” Katherine said. “He wouldn’t even make it across a puddle, if this was all he had holding him up.”

“Surely . . . ,” Andrea began.

She broke off because the one tracer boy was pushing the branch forward—all by himself.

“Show-off,” Jonah muttered.

The other boy was walking down toward the water.

“We have to push too!” Andrea said. “We can’t let my grandfather get separated from his tracer!”

It took all three of them heaving and shoving to get the branch lined up again with the tracer boy’s branch. Fortunately, from that point, there was a slight downhill tilt, so the main problem was controlling the branch’s slide.

The next time Jonah looked up, they were at the water’s edge, and the second tracer boy was a few yards down the shore. He disappeared behind a tree. Then he reappeared
on
the water—in a tracer canoe.

“Oh, there’s a canoe,” Jonah said. “That’s how it’s going to work.”

He was a little annoyed with Andrea and Katherine for scaring him. Of course the tracer boys wouldn’t try to sail an old man and a treasure chest from one island to another on a splintery, unstable branch.

Jonah dashed over to the tree where the tracer boy had stood just a few moments before. This was like searching for John White’s treasure chest. Jonah just had to look in the same spot where there’d been a tracer. Granted, the tracer boy had disappeared behind the tree, but he’d reappeared so quickly in the canoe that the real version of it would have to be right there.

Jonah looked down.

No canoe.

He looked to the right.

Nothing.

To the left.

Nothing.

Jonah peered far down the shoreline, in both directions, then out into the water, as far as he could see. Nothing, nothing, nothing. There wasn’t a real canoe anywhere in sight.

“Oh, no,” Jonah groaned, dread creeping over him. “Oh, no.”

It made so much sense that the tracer boys would have a canoe. They’d been alone on an island, after all—they
had to have gotten there somehow.

But they weren’t here for real,
Jonah thought dizzily.
In our version of time, they weren’t here. So . . . neither was their canoe?

Jonah didn’t want to trust that conclusion. He leaned weakly against the tree, trying to think through everything again, trying to come up with a different answer.

The tracer boy was angling the canoe up against the shore. He held the canoe steady while the other boy helped the tracer version of John White climb into the canoe. Then the second boy loaded the chest and the pouch of venison jerky. He shoved the canoe out into deeper water before jumping in and grabbing a paddle.

Then, without a backward glance, both boys paddled away with John White’s tracer.

“Hey!” Andrea screamed, waving her arms uselessly. “Wait for us!”

The tracer boys kept paddling.

“Jonah! Hurry up with that canoe!” Katherine yelled.

“There isn’t a canoe!” Jonah yelled back. “Not a real one!”

“What?” Katherine hollered back.

Both girls scrambled out toward the water’s edge, to look up and down the shoreline for themselves.

“Maybe the branch would work better than we think?” Jonah said.

The branch was already sagging down into the water. A wave hit it, and Andrea reached back just in time to keep her grandfather from toppling over. He would have fallen in if they’d been out on the open water.

“Or we could swim?” Jonah revised his suggestion. “I carried John White yesterday. . . .”

Katherine fixed him with a withering glare. She didn’t have to say,
Are you crazy? Do you want us all to drown? Can’t you see how far away the nearest land is?

The nearest land was just a sliver on the horizon. Everything was so flat, Jonah wasn’t even sure it
was
land. The thin layer of green and brown might have just been a trick of the eye.

And who knew how far it might be to Croatoan Island?

“Second!” Andrea screamed at the sky. “If you really want to help us, give us a canoe! A canoe! That’s all we need!”

Nothing happened. No canoe floated down from the sky.

Andrea slumped against her grandfather’s side.

“It figures,” she muttered. “Second’s just been toying with us all along. And now look at my grandfather!”

John White’s skin looked clammier than ever. A pained expression covered his face, as if he was being poked in the back by various twigs and other sharp, pointy offshoots of the branch.

“Maybe the stuff I thought was paint is actually medicine?” Jonah suggested.

“Wouldn’t Second tell us that if he really wanted to help?” Katherine asked. “So we wouldn’t poison Andrea’s grandfather by mistake?”