“He looks like he’s going to die,” Andrea whispered. “Quick! Help me put him back with his tracer!”
But just as she started to tug on his shoulder-before Jonah had a chance to even think whether that was the right thing to do-John White’s tracer lay back down, rejoining the real man completely, even down to the closed eyes. Was the tracer giving up?
No. He was still struggling to speak, even as he seemed to be slipping toward unconsciousness.
“Please,” John White said, the tracer and the man talking as one now that they were back together, thinking alike. “Please take me to Croatoan then. Canst thou take me to Croatoan Island?”
Jonah glanced up just in time to see the tracer boys nodding their heads yes.
26
“That’s it!” Andrea exclaimed. A smile spread across her face, instantly hiding the anguish. “That’s how everything is supposed to work! I understand now! We’ll all go to Croatoan, and that’s where we’ll find my tracer! It makes sense, if that’s where the Roanoke colonists went. And when I’m with my tracer, my grandfather will be able to see me… He’ll be whole again; there won’t be anything throwing him off…”
She bent down and hugged her grandfather’s shoulders. The real version of the man flinched and she sat back.
“Andrea, remember, your tracer will be a three-year-old,” Jonah cautioned. “When you join with your tracer, you’ll have to go back to being a preschooler again-not that they probably had preschool in this time period.”
Andrea’s smile trembled slightly, but she replied evenly, “I don’t care. It’d be worth it, being a little kid again, if that’s how things are supposed to work for my grandfather to see me.”
How things are supposed to work, Jonah thought, a little dizzily. It wasn’t just the lack of food that was making his head spin. Was this what JB would want for them? Was this the way to fix time and rescue Andrea? Or was this another setup?
“What if this is just part of Second’s plot for us?” he asked. “You said in original time, John White never made it to Croatoan Island. He never saw you or anyone else from his family again!”
“But they’re taking him!” Andrea said, pointing. Already, one of the tracer boys was bending down, as if preparing to carry John White away. “The historical accounts that I read were wrong about other things-they must be wrong about this, too!”
“Or Second is tampering with time again,” Jonah said darkly. “Tricking us…”
“How could he?” Katherine said. “Andrea’s right-if the tracers are taking John White to Croatoan, that’s how original time went. Tracers are always right-er-accurate, I mean. They have to show how time really went.”
Jonah squinted at the girls.
“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
27
“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.