Nothing happened. Andrea sniffed once, defiantly. Her grandfather let out a soft moan. One of the tracer boys turned over in his sleep, his arm disappearing in Dare’s fur. And the fire that Jonah had worked so hard to build flickered out.
There’s proof then, Jonah thought grimly. He realized, in spite of everything, he’d been holding on to just a bit of hope that JB knew exactly where they were and that, somehow, everything was going according to plan. If JB’s projectionist really was the best ever, couldn’t he have predicted that Andrea would change the Elucidator code, that the Elucidator would vanish, and that Jonah and the others would save the drowning man? Wasn’t it possible that the three kids might do something on their own that was better than what they could do with JB bossing them around? It had kind of worked that way in the fifteenth century.
But what Andrea wanted to do-that was just reckless. JB would never allow it. So there was no way that JB knew where they were. Nobody knew where they were.
Except Andrea’s mystery man, Jonah thought.
It wasn’t a comforting thought.
“Andrea-” Jonah began.
“My mind’s made up,” Andrea said. “I’m not going to change it.”
She leaned down to whisper in John White’s ear, but Jonah could hear every word she said.
“Tomorrow. We’ll talk tomorrow…”
20
Jonah expected to lie awake the rest of the night, worrying and trying to figure out the right argument to make to Andrea, to stop her.
This is like Risk, he thought. There are too many sides, too many complications. There’s what Andrea wants and there’s whatever her mystery man is trying to do and there’s original time and there’s the historical account…
It was hard to stay awake in such complete darkness, in such complete despair and confusion. Jonah drifted off, and the next thing he knew, there was sunlight streaming in through the doorway of the hut.
The sunlight was odd, though: It didn’t seem to filter all the way down to the floor of the hut. Jonah couldn’t make out the lumps that would be Andrea’s sleeping form, and Katherine’s, and John White’s. He couldn’t even see any tracers.
Jonah sat up quickly. The problem wasn’t with the sunlight. Or his eyes. The problem was that he was the only person left in the hut.
Jonah was about to give himself over to panic when he heard a snoring sound coming from right outside the hut: It was a deep, masculine sound and had to belong to John White. Jonah couldn’t fathom why the girls had moved the sleeping man out of the hut-was Katherine trying to get him away from his tracer? Or was Andrea trying to keep him with it? But it was so good to hear the man snoring, to know that he was still soundly asleep, to know that nothing irreversible had happened yet. Jonah let himself relax a little, and he went back to thinking of arguments to use on Andrea.
She doesn’t care about time, but she cares about her grandfather… What if we tell her she can’t talk to him because that might worry him, she might scare him…
Something tickled at Jonah’s brain-an idea, something he might have thought of the night before, right before he fell asleep, or even in the middle of sleeping. Something important about Andrea. But he wasn’t awake enough; the idea slipped away, just a tease.
Along with the snoring, Jonah could hear a girl’s muffled voice outside-it was too muted for him to tell if it was Andrea’s or Katherine’s.
Katherine’s more likely to be talking, but Andrea’s more likely to talk softly, he thought, grinning slightly to himself.
Then he heard the rumble of a man’s voice in response.
Jonah froze, straining his ears. It had to be just the man talking in his sleep, right? Talking deliriously again? It couldn’t be John White answering Andrea, who was so disdainful of time that she might have said something like, Hi, Gramps. Long time no see.
Suddenly Jonah knew the perfect argument to use on Andrea, the idea he’d almost thought of earlier. The idea he should have thought of hours ago, when there was still time to stop Andrea.
Was there still time now?
In one motion, Jonah jerked to his feet and crashed out the door of the hut. He almost tripped over Dare, who was stretched out, sound asleep, just outside the doorway-oh, great, it had been the dog snoring. Jonah whipped his head from side to side, looking for Andrea, looking for her grandfather.
Andrea was sitting right in front of him in the clearing, her back mostly turned to Jonah, her mouth open. What if she was about to say the words that would ruin everything, right now?
Jonah dived toward Andrea. He thought he would just get close by and whisper in her ear, but he miscalculated. He ended up tackling her, knocking her to the side. He scrambled to right himself, to get his mouth next to her ear, to tell her what he’d just figured out.
“Andrea, it was only three years!” he hissed. “You said so yourself-Governor White came back to Roanoke after three years! That means… he’s looking for a granddaughter who’s only three years old!”
21
Andrea didn’t react right.
In Jonah’s wildest dreams, she might have thrown her arms around him and given him a big kiss and burst out, “Oh, thank you! Thank you! You saved me from ruining my life! And my grandfather’s!”
Jonah didn’t really expect that.
But he was kind of hoping for an “Oh, you’re right-I should have thought of that!” Or at least a “Thanks-you stopped me just in time!”
Andrea just lay in the dust and mumbled, “Whatever.”
Jonah slid back.
“You didn’t say anything to him yet, did you?” he whispered.
Andrea shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Doesn’t matter?” Jonah repeated incredulously. “Of course it…”
Jonah stopped talking, because Katherine came up just then and shoved him back into the dust.
“Jonah, you are a total idiot! What if John White had seen you?”
Jonah looked around and replayed everything in his mind. He’d come running out of the hut-and John White was sitting right on the other side of the clearing, in between the two tracer boys.
Jonah crouched down.
“He’s looking right at us!” Jonah hissed to Katherine. “What should we do?”
He’d been so concerned about Andrea ruining time by talking to John White, and now what had he done himself?
Suddenly he had an idea.
He jumped up and waved at John White.
“Aye, matey,” he said, trying to sound like an old-timey sailor. All he could think of was Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. “Sailing out on the sea for a long time, you can get to wearing some mighty strange clothes. And acting strangely too. But it be time to sail again, so I promise you, you will never see us again.”
He slipped into the woods, gesturing for Andrea and Katherine to follow him.
Katherine burst out laughing.
“At least sometimes he’s a funny idiot,” she said to Andrea.
Andrea gave a halfhearted smile.
“Shh!” Jonah hissed. “Careful!” He kept motioning for Andrea and Katherine to come into the woods with him, out of John White’s view. “He can see you!”
“He can’t see us,” Andrea said. “Or hear us.”
“Of course he can! His eyes are open!” Jonah whispered. “He’s awake.”
“Come and look for yourself,” Katherine said.
Jonah hesitated, then inched back into the clearing.
He could tell John White was joined with his tracer because the tracer boys, on either side of him, were taking turns placing some sort of food in his mouth. They were treating him like an invalid, tearing the food into such tiny morsels he didn’t even have to chew.
And, just as Jonah had said, John White’s eyes were wide open.