“Most of the night.”
“But the door was locked. What if he needed to get out?”
“Lower your voice.” She grabbed my arm—no pain, except for her fingers digging into my skin—and pulled me over to the desk. “What do you see?” she demanded.
I was tired of playing along with her questions. “My brother. Imprisoned. By you.”
She flared her nostrils, but then her lips pursed, and she snorted with laughter. “A little dramatic, don’t you think?” She placed a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t even seem to notice, he was so engrossed. “I see someone who’s trying to discover why he’s the solution, and what it means. I see someone who has just about finished plotting Dare’s course for the past two weeks. And who has discovered the startling fact that, until a month ago, Dare hadn’t thought about the solution in two years.”
She leaned against the edge of the desk and folded her arms, giving the words time to sink in.
“Two years?” I repeated.
“Yes. It’s like Dare forgot the solution even existed.”
“Or maybe he realized it didn’t exist.”
“Maybe,” she allowed. Her eyes were narrowed again, a determined look that said she wasn’t close to done. “But then, what made him change his mind? Why’d he remember suddenly? Landing on Hatteras wasn’t an accident. He knew what he was after, and never doubted for a moment that it was Griffin.”
As if responding to his name, Griffin slid the last of the logbooks over to me and opened it to the most recent entry. I wanted to ask him how he felt about being the solution, and if he blamed me for not telling him the truth about that. But he was focused on the task before him. While Alice reattached the map to the wall, he rested a finger beside the mysterious row of numbers at the top of the page: 35°54'N 75°35'W Y:18 D:36.
We had already worked out that the last two numbers were a date, but the others were a mystery.
Griffin lifted the logbook and compared the numbers on it to those on the right-hand side of the map: 35°53' and 35°54'. There were numbers running along the top of the map too: 75°35' and 75°36'. Finally, he handed me the logbook and ran his fingers down and across the map in imaginary lines. They intersected at a point I recognized all too well.
“It’s our colony on Hatteras,” I said, struggling to keep my voice low. “The numbers mark a location.”
“They’re coordinates,” said Alice. “I overheard my father talking about them once. I’d never seen a map like this one, though, so it didn’t make much sense.”
I tapped the map. Griffin had marked several places on it. What. This? I asked him.
Dare. Journey. He flipped back through the logbook, tapping each row of numbers, giving me time to make the connection for myself.
I could hardly believe it. He’d mapped Dare’s journey to Hatteras. Why. Stop. Here? I asked, pointing to the last of the markings.
Griffin flicked through the logbook. Six days of log entries were missing.
“Pages have been torn out,” I said, running a finger along the rough edges left behind.
“Yes,” agreed Alice. “Someone didn’t want us knowing what led Dare to Hatteras.”
“Someone?”
“Dare wasn’t the only one of your family who had access to this room before us, remember?”
Tessa. My head spun with possibilities. I didn’t want to feel responsible for the bad things that had happened to our colony, but it was impossible not to notice that my relatives were involved in all of it.
“There’s something else,” said Alice. “Remember a couple days ago, when we were on the beach at Hatteras, spying on the pirates?”
“Of course.”
“Well, Dare said he knew there was a plot to kill him. Said he’d known ever since the pirates had thought it up twelve days earlier.” She stabbed one of the markings. “That would’ve been this day here. Notice anything?”
I looked closer. “It’s a long way from Roanoke Island.”
“Exactly. More than two hundred miles.” She patted the desk. “But somehow he read their minds. In other words, his element still worked.”
“So do ours. Just not as well as before.”
“Actually, it’s not that simple.”
I leaned against the desk and took a deep breath.
“Watch the Guardians today, Thom. Kyte wasn’t lying about our elements fading, but it wasn’t really us he was worried about. It was our parents.”
“I don’t understand.”
“We still have something. I can see the shore from miles away. If he concentrates, Ananias can make a flame. But the last time one of the Guardians’ elements worked was when your father touched Ananias and Eleanor yesterday morning. And it very nearly killed him.”
CHAPTER 8
Alice spent the afternoon measuring our progress while Griffin and Ananias pushed and pulled the winches, adjusting the large sails according to her orders. Her parents ventured on deck at last. Dennis said that Marin would be well enough to help soon, but he said it to Rose, not to me. Rose may have ignored Kyte’s dying wish to shun me, but it had taken root with Dennis.
After dinner, it was my turn to take the wheel. Everyone but me went to the cabins to sleep.
Clouds had been gathering throughout the afternoon and evening, smothering the sky in gray. I hadn’t paid much attention really, but now it was dark and I couldn’t see the stars. In less than one strike, the wind grew stronger too. I wished that I wasn’t at the wheel by myself. Such a big ship. Such a precious cargo. I couldn’t even be sure I was holding a steady course.
I heard footsteps on the stairs but didn’t see who was there until Rose was only a few yards away. She stared up at the sails and gave an anxious smile. “Wind’s picking up.”
“Yes.”
“Need a break?” She placed a hand on the wheel and sidled in front of me. Her hair blew back, brushing against my face.
No, I didn’t need a break. I just needed her to stay in front of me, tunic fluttering, so close that I imagined I could feel her heartbeat.
She seemed to want the same thing.
It felt strange to be on the ocean together at night—just the two of us under the immense sky. Not that we could see the stars behind the thickening clouds. The wind was gusting too.
Rose took the wheel as well to hold it steady. “Thomas, I—”
A large wave crashed against the bow and the ship tilted up. The wheel torqued, spun wildly. We grasped it and regained control, but the ship had changed course slightly now. I reversed course, hoping to get us back on track, only I wasn’t sure where we should be.
“I distracted you,” murmured Rose.
“No. It’s . . .” The wheel felt heavier than before, obstinate, like I was fighting the weight of the ship. The vessel creaked, straining against the wind. “We need to raise the sails. This isn’t good.”
“I’ll get help.”
She disappeared below deck as another wave jolted the vessel. I thought of the sails tearing, of being cast adrift on the ocean with no way to control our course. I wondered why no one had foreseen the changing weather, but it was me who’d suggested we could live without elements.
Ananias and Griffin were first to appear. Alice was right behind them. Powerful gusts rocked the ship, so they ran to the mainsail winch. Eleanor and Dennis followed, looking lost and confused.
“Eleanor!” Alice screamed her sister’s name. “The handle’s not moving. You’ve got to take the strain off the sails. Use your element.”