We moved along the deck and pushed the winch handle to lower one of the mainsails. I’d seen the massive canvas sheets on the clan ships that passed our colony from time to time, but hadn’t realized how truly gigantic they were until now. As soon as the wind caught it, the ship jarred into motion, gobbling up water. The pirates in the cutter fell back so quickly, it was like they’d stopped moving.
While I caught my breath, Alice stared at the giant waterway before us. “I’m worried,” she said. “I don’t know how deep the sound is, but we need to get out of here before low tide. The currents are fierce. If we run aground, the Guardians will drown.”
Usually that would have sounded crazy. Every one of us was a strong swimmer. But a quick look at her parents assured me that she was correct. Her mother, Tarn, couldn’t stand up. Her father, Joven, was crawling down the staircase, presumably to check on Kyte. Neither of them had the strength to fight strong currents.
Waves crashed against the bow, powerful but oddly comforting. What lay beneath the surface was a mystery, though. Rose had once told me about the remains of ships that rested on the waters around Hatteras. She saw them when she was diving.
“Let’s head for the ocean,” I said.
“And go where?” Alice asked.
I didn’t want to tell her about the message I’d heard in Dare’s cabin, not like this. I wasn’t even sure she’d believe me. “Griffin found a map in one of the cabins. There’s a refugee colony to the southwest.”
I waited for her to ask which cabin, but she didn’t. She didn’t ask for more information about the refugee camp either. Maybe she didn’t want to press me for details while Ananias and her mother were around to overhear. “How do we know it’s safe, Thom?”
“It can’t be any more dangerous than Roanoke Island, right?” A weak answer, but she let it slide.
We were fast approaching the southern tip of the island. We’d need to make a decision soon.
“What if Kyte’s telling the truth and our elements fade as we leave Roanoke?” she asked.
I shrugged. “Kyte also said there were only four elements, remember? Earth, water, wind, and fire. If he was wrong about that, he might be wrong about this. Anyway, wasn’t it you who told me we’re more than the sum of our elements?”
She smiled at that. “Yes. I guess I did.” She stared into the distance and narrowed her eyes, engaging her element, or whatever it was that heightened her senses. Like me, her main power didn’t fit the Guardians’ tidy definitions of what an element ought to be. Because of that, she’d kept it hidden from us her whole life. Even though I’d discovered her secret a couple of days before, it was still hard to believe what she was able to do.
“The Oregon Inlet is about six miles away,” she announced. “At the speed we’re going, that won’t take long. This ship is amazing.”
She was right. Now that we were on open water, the wind freshened and the ship sliced through the water like a knife.
With her hair flapping about, Alice seemed to become part of nature itself. She didn’t even blink as she focused on the inlet, too far away for me to make out. She didn’t press me for information on the map either, or where we’d found it. Or how far away the refugee colony was, or how I could be sure it was still there. What if we sailed for days, only to discover another ruined, deserted colony? What if we didn’t have enough food to make it that far? It was a miracle that Alice hadn’t demanded answers.
That’s when I realized that Alice had been looking for an excuse to leave all along. She’d always told me she would do anything to escape our Hatteras Island colony. At last she’d have that chance.
»«
The Oregon Inlet was a mile-wide channel dividing the southern tip of Hatteras Island from the island to the south. Massive stone columns rose from the water, the remains of a collapsed bridge. I didn’t dare to imagine how close to the surface the rest of the bridge was.
“How’s the water level?” I asked.
Alice’s eyes flickered left and right as she steered the ship between the columns. “All right, I think. But we lost speed when we changed course.”
Sure enough, the mainsail shifted against the mast as though sniffing out the wind.
In the distance, hidden among grassy dunes, were the shells of a few wooden cabins—a tiny settlement I’d never seen from Hatteras.
“What’s that?” I called to her.
Alice turned to her right but didn’t answer at first. “I don’t know. I didn’t realize it was there.”
Ananias and Griffin had noticed it too now. They stood beside the rail and stared at the mysterious settlement.
“It was a colony,” explained Tarn. I’d almost forgotten that she was on deck with us, let alone listening. She ran her fingers through her hair, short like her daughter’s, but matted and coarse. “Not so different from ours on Hatteras.”
“What happened to it?” asked Alice. “Where is everyone?”
“Dead. Died years ago.” Tarn stared into the distance, gasping shallow breaths. Her voice was hoarse. “No one believed the rats could make it out this far. The island settlements are so irregular—entire regions uninhabited. Rats need food and human waste to survive, and there’s so little of it here. But then one of the clan ships weighed anchor to trade. No one knew they had rats on board. Or that a couple would get into the bags they brought with them on the cutter.” She made it sound simple, almost inevitable.
“You saw it happen?” I asked.
“No. But we used to trade with the colony too. We’d row to the middle of the inlet . . . exchange news and goods and food. Then, one day, they didn’t come when we signaled.”
Ananias wiped sweat from his brow. “Why didn’t they cross the inlet? Try to escape.”
“The colony was small. The people were old too. You wouldn’t understand, but sometimes it’s better to die with a loved one than to live alone.”
We’d passed the columns now, and the settlement had disappeared from view so completely, I would have sworn I’d imagined it. Half a mile farther and we’d be able to look back at Hatteras Island. We might catch a glimpse of Bodie Lighthouse, and imagine the place farther up the coast where our colony used to be. I wondered if we’d ever see it again.
“What’s Croatoan?” asked Ananias.
I followed his gaze to the left-most column, where the word was written in giant letters.
Tarn hesitated. “Croatoan is a myth—a story of a colony that mysteriously disappeared from this area hundreds of years ago. Legend has it they left nothing but the word croatoan carved into a tree. Our neighbors would’ve known about the legend. They probably wrote that when they knew the end was near. Their own farewell, in a way.”
There was something familiar about the word, but it took me a moment to realize why. Alice and I had seen the letters CRO daubed on a cabin on the mainland across the sound from Roanoke Island. More mysterious letters from an extinct civilization.
Alice beckoned me over. “Grab your binoculars,” she whispered as I drew near.
“I don’t know where they are. Why?”
“There are two words on that column.”
Sure enough, when I squinted, I could see two sides. On the east-facing side, the word CROATOAN was large and clear. But on the south-facing side was another word, too small and faint for me to read. “What does it say?”
Alice hesitated. “It says . . . murder.”
Before I could respond, footsteps sounded on the staircase. Eleanor paused before us, long brown hair flowing in the breeze, looking for all the world like an apparition. Only her bruises looked real.
“Kyte, Guardian of the Wind, has passed on,” she said. Her voice was quiet and emotionless. “Kyte is gone.”