“Please help us, Thomas.” Chief patted me on the shoulder and stood. “The truth is, time’s running out for all of us.”
Then he walked away, leaving me to wonder what he meant.
CHAPTER 20
We had an hour before dinner and everyone was resting. Jerren had said he didn’t think we’d all fit into the room, but he was wrong. A few weeks ago, Hatteras Island itself had felt too constraining for our colony. The nine of us who were left now fit inside four walls.
The tiny lantern that Griffin had been using that morning cast a feeble glow against one corner of our room. It was just enough light for me to see that Father was sitting up in his bed, back against the wall. He tried to smile as he saw me, but his face was still too scabbed for the expression to come naturally.
I sat beside him. “You seem better.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Everything’s relative. But Rose has been making sure I eat and drink.”
I was about to thank Rose when I noticed her mother watching us. From her expression it was clear how much Marin disapproved of the way Rose had ignored Kyte’s dying wish to avoid my family.
“Have you been working with your element, son?” Father asked.
He took my hands in his. I responded by sending energy into him. It was a foolish thing to do, to try to impress him like that. Especially after I’d told Rose to stop using her element.
“Yes, I can feel you have,” he said.
The pride in his voice crushed me. I didn’t deserve it, and I didn’t want it—at least, not for my element. “We have to let our elements go now, Father. We all discussed it.”
“Well, I didn’t. And I never would’ve agreed to it.” He looked confused. Winded, even. Hands still connected to mine, he furrowed his brows in concentration. He was trying to summon his element—to return power to me, and show me what we shared—but there was nothing passing between us now.
He loosed my hands and gave a melancholy smile. “All those years I kept wishing for it to go. Now it’s gone, and I feel empty.” He leaned closer. “Elements peak early, Thomas. You have power now, and you need to use it.”
I felt Rose watching me. “No. Not here.”
“Especially here.” His face hardened. “You know nothing about these people.”
“And I know nothing about you. If my element is so important, why did you hide it from me all those years?”
He sighed. “I made a promise. They were going to make us leave the colony, Thomas.”
“But why?” I was almost shouting and couldn’t stop myself. “Why?”
Marin produced a humorless laugh. “Go ahead and tell him, Ordyn. How we’re godless. How we’ll die for our sins, every last one of us.”
“That’s enough,” Father muttered.
Rose’s mother was undeterred. “No, it’s not. It’s time everyone knew what we are, what we’ve done. Just don’t leave anything out, Ordyn. Especially not the story of the boy you killed.”
My heartbeat flew, as sudden as a sail catching the wind. I waited for Father to deny it. He didn’t, though. Just tugged at his tunic’s bloodstained cuffs.
Silence fell over us. Then, to my surprise, my father spoke: “It happened just after you were born,” he said softly. “The boy was a refugee from the mainland. About Griffin’s age. Probably got left behind when his family evacuated.” He opened his mouth, then closed it. Once again, a conversation that he’d had years to prepare for seemed to have caught him by surprise. “We still had some working machines on Roanoke back then. One of them was a saw. It was a great big powerful thing, could slice through lumber in no time. The boy was playing with the blade, trying to make it start.” His jaw twitched. “And I panicked.
“I grabbed him. But it was the blade I was worried about. My heart was pounding and—” Father stopped as his eyes welled up suddenly. “My energy went straight through him. The blade turned, pulled him in and sliced straight through him. He bled out so fast, I’m still not sure he realized what was happening to him. But I did.” He shook his head, trying to shake the image. “I saw his life slip away.”
More silence. I handed my father a water canister. He took a sip.
“The colony was larger back then,” he continued. “Not just elementals, but regular folk too. None of the non-elementals knew what happened. They thought it was an accident, and we were used to tragedy. Life moved on.” He blinked away tears. “But I knew. And so did the other elementals. You’d just been born, Thomas, and revealed the same element as me. Everyone warned me I could hurt someone again. Even worse, you might, without realizing it. I had to ask myself: How would I feel if you had blood on your hands too?”
I thought of Joven, and what my element had done to him. “It was an accident.”
He swallowed hard. “Doesn’t matter, son. When you see something like that, blame is irrelevant.”
Griffin was sitting on the end of our father’s bed, his attention fixed on us, just like everyone else. Ananias had been signing for him, but I’d have to tell him everything later. There weren’t even signs for some of the things my father was telling us.
Seeing Griffin reminded me of something. I grabbed his bag and pulled out the two journals. “Who is Virginia Dare?”
Alice’s mother, Tarn, turned white. “Where did you get those?”
“From your dune boxes.”
“Where’s the third?”
“Kyte’s box was left on the beach at Hatteras.”
Tarn sat on the floor and hugged her legs. I couldn’t tell whether she was distraught or relieved.
“Who is Virginia Dare?” I growled.
No one answered.
“Who is John White?”
Still no answer.
“Just tell us the truth!”
In the silence that followed I felt everyone watching me. Ananias, Alice, Rose, Griffin, and even Dennis. But I also felt their expectation, their need to know who we were at last.
Tarn walked over to the door and closed it. It didn’t fit the frame and there were gaps around it. As she returned to her place, she moved slowly, not at all like the proud, confident woman I’d known back on Hatteras. The loss of Joven and Eleanor was weighing on her like it weighed on Alice, and it was hard to imagine anything that might lighten their loads.
“The truth,” Tarn murmured. She made the word sound ugly. Deceitful. “The truth is that hundreds of years ago, white settlers crossed the oceans in search of new colonies. They built the first on Roanoke Island. But they weren’t self-sufficient. They didn’t understand the land and the climate and the native tribes that already inhabited the region. They needed additional supplies, so their leader returned home to request help. His name was John White.”
She licked her dry lips. “Back in his home country, everyone was preparing for war. By the time it was over, years had gone by. White brought a supply ship to Roanoke, but most of the settlers had left by then. And those who remained weren’t the same.”
She paused as wind nudged the door. She didn’t want us to be overheard.
“The youngest children had developed the ability to control the elements,” she continued. “White was amazed. He’d gone in search of a new world, and he’d found one—a land in which the accepted laws of nature no longer applied. But he also knew that others would see things differently. He suspected that the other colonists had left because they were scared of these elementals. He was afraid his crew would accuse the children of witchcraft, and attempt to free them of evil spirits by drowning or burning at the stake, as was the custom. So White lied to the members of his expedition; he said he’d found no one on the island. The crew returned home, and a legend known as the Lost Colony was born. It’s a legend we’ve maintained ever since.”