“Oh, Jonah,” Andrea said, shaking her head sadly. A hint of tears glittered in her eyes once again. But, oddly, this time it seemed as if she was about to cry over Jonah. She was staring straight at him, just as intently as she’d always stared at her grandfather. “You never give up, do you? I just hope . . .”
She broke off, because something strange was happening to Second. He let out a strangled cry: “Erp—” It sounded like he was having trouble swallowing.
No. It was more like he was being swallowed.
In the next moment, Second seemed to age several years at once. His blond hair suddenly looked blond and brown, all at once. His face seemed to unravel and reknit itself into a completely different form.
And then Second pitched forward, looking like himself again. But he left behind someone else in the space he’d occupied a moment earlier. Someone taller and older, with darker hair.
JB.
JB glared down at Second on the ground before him.
“Traitor,” JB said.
The next thing JB did was surprising: He reached out and grabbed Katherine with one arm and Jonah with the other, so he could draw them both into a tight hug.
“I was so worried about you,” he murmured. “Are you all right?”
Jonah pushed away, because he wanted to show JB he could stand on his own two feet.
“We’re fine,” he said. He couldn’t stop himself from adding the rest: “Now that you’re here.”
It was such a relief to know that JB would fix the mess that Second had made of time. It was such a relief to see the smug look wiped from Second’s face. He seemed almost harmless now, lying stunned in the sand.
“I’m sorry,” Jonah told JB. “We let him manipulate us.”
“You did the best you could, under the circumstances,” JB said. “Nobody could expect any more than that.”
Katherine surprised Jonah by pulling away from JB and kicking Second’s shoulder.
“You lied to us!” She cried. “You were working for Gary and Hodge the whole time, weren’t you? You were going to steal Andrea and Brendan and Antonio—and, and Jonah—and take them off to be adopted in the future . . . and you probably would have left me here alone. . . .”
She would have kicked him again, except that JB pulled her back.
“Katherine,” he said warningly. “He actually didn’t tell you any lies. A few evasions, yes, a few partial truths, but no actual lies.”
Katherine stopped in confusion.
“But—he said he worked for you! He said he was your projectionist!”
“That’s true,” JB said grimly. “Or—it was.” He narrowed his eyes, peering down at Second. “You’re fired.”
“Wh-what?” Second moaned.
“You heard me,” JB said. “Would you like to hear my reasons? Number one, for sabotaging a crucial time mission, completely subverting the purpose of sending these kids back in time. Number two, for repeatedly endangering six lives—all the kids’, plus John White’s. No, make that seven lives. I’ll count the dog, too. Number three, for double-crossing my every effort to find Jonah and Katherine and Andrea after they disappeared from contact.”
Jonah felt oddly cheered by this item on the list. He knew JB wouldn’t have left them stranded and scared on Roanoke.
“Weren’t you looking for Brendan and me?” Antonio interrupted. Jonah was surprised—he hadn’t even noticed when the other two boys and Dare had shown up beside them.
JB glanced sympathetically at Antonio and broke off his list making.
“To the best of my knowledge—which, obviously, wasn’t very good—I thought the two of you were still safely in the twenty-first century,” JB said. “You were supposed to be going on with your lives, waiting your turn to go back in time. And”—JB glared at Second again—”it wasn’t their turn yet.”
“But—but—Andrea and us,” Brendan said. “We’re connected.”
“Not really,” JB said. “Only because Gary and Hodge were supremely lazy and sloppy in the way they pulled the three of you out of time in the first place.” He sighed heavily. “This was all so unnecessary.”
“How can you say that?” Andrea asked wildly. Her voice was thick with emotion. “My grandfather—”
“Was a remarkable man,” JB said. “History has never given him the respect he deserved. But neither did time.” He sighed again. “His best efforts were doomed to fail. His connection to you—except as a fairy tale, a pleasant story your mother told you—all of that was supposed to end when you were a baby. You truly were never supposed to see him again.”
“That’s so wrong!” Andrea complained, and this time she made no effort to hide the tears brimming in her eyes.
“You of all people know that things go wrong all the time,” JB said gently. “And I know it’s no comfort, but as a time traveler, I’ve seen so many ways that wrong things can turn out to be right after all, that bad can lead to good, that no one can get the good without the bad coming first. . . .”
“You’re right,” Andrea said, snipping off the ends of her words. “It’s no comfort.”
JB shrugged helplessly.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“What was supposed to happen to Andrea and Brendan and Antonio?” Katherine asked. “What were they supposed to do when they came back in time?”
JB nodded, as if he thought this would be easier to talk about.
“Gary and Hodge kidnapped Andrea from Croatoan Island while she was in the midst of burying all the skeletons and corpses,” he said. “She actually would have been a good candidate for them to take to the future, if they’d just waited a few extra days, until she’d finished.”
“Only the animal bones were left,” Andrea murmured.
It took Jonah a minute to grasp this.
“Hold on,” Jonah interrupted. “That’s all you wanted me and Katherine to do when we came back with Andrea? Help her bury some bones?”
“Not even that,” JB said, shaking his head. “You just needed to be there. My brilliant projectionist said you and the dog would provide the ‘emotional support’ she’d need during her task, which would be too ‘traumatic’ otherwise,” JB’s tone cast doubt on every word. He snorted scornfully. “And I fell for it!” He nudged Second’s shoulder with his foot. “You must have thought I was a complete fool! Trusting you!”
“Wasn’t complete lie,” Second muttered. “Jonah . . . gaga . . . over Andrea . . . Romance always . . . distracting . . .”
Now Jonah felt like kicking Second too. He didn’t quite dare to look at Andrea—or anyone else—to see how they took this news. He was grateful when JB ignored Second and kept explaining.
“You wouldn’t think a scattering of animal skeletons would matter so much in the grand sweep of history,” JB continued. “But if Virginia Dare hadn’t moved them, Croatoan Island would have kept its reputation as an evil island. The memory of the plague spread by the Roanoke colonists would have lingered, setting off massacres when the next wave of English colonists arrived. . . .”
“So Virginia Dare did do something crucial to history,” Katherine said. “It wasn’t just that she was famous for being born.”
Andrea ducked her head. Jonah couldn’t tell if she was being modest or if she was still annoyed with JB.
“Which was the reason I was kidnapped?” Andrea asked. “Because I did something important or just because I was born?”
There was bitterness in her voice—Jonah decided she was still upset.
“It’s hard to know for sure,” JB said gently. “For generations you were known only as the first English child born in the Americas. Before time travel, that’s all there was to know about you. That was enough for Gary and Hodge to want you for their baby-smuggling operation. But one of their customers also specified that they wanted a famous child who was capable of being brave and loyal, who was willing to take risks in desperate times. So we know Gary and Hodge planned to charge more for you, because they knew more of you
r story.” He swept his hands out helplessly. “Who can say how much that affects time and history?”
“That’s why you thought it had to be Andrea who came back to bury the bones,” Jonah said, catching on. “That’s why it had to be her and not me or Katherine or just some random time traveler. . . .”
JB nodded.
“Authenticity matters,” he said. “We can never know all the consequences of any action, so we were trying to err on the side of caution and restore everything we could.”
Jonah looked down at Second, who had not erred on the side of caution, who’d been gleeful about changing time, rather than restoring it. Everyone was quiet for a minute.
“What about Brendan and me?” Antonio asked. “The ex-slave and the Spanish orphan turned tribesmen? What made us famous and worth being kidnapped?”
“Your artwork,” JB said.
“Yeah, right,” Brendan said, laughing. “Very funny. Tell us the truth—were we in some famous battle? How brave were we? Don’t worry—I won’t brag too much about it when I find out.”
Antonio just stood there.
“Dude,” he said. “I think he’s serious.”
“Huh?” Brendan said.
“My tracer—he’s been thinking a lot about the drawings John White showed them,” Antonio said. “He’s been wondering if the old man could show him how to draw like that. . . .”
JB nodded.
“It’s true,” he said. “After you two rescued John White, he got well enough, temporarily, to give you a few art lessons. And then—art’s not my specialty—but I think the proper term is that you fused the various traditions, English art and Native American art and African art and Spanish art, and the two of you came up with something completely new, far ahead of your time. You were like twin Leonardo da Vincis—except that Leonardo’s work survived, and yours was all destroyed in a fire that blew through your village . . . also killing you.”
“That’s seriously twisted!” Brendan said.
“That you died with your work?” Andrea asked softly.
“No—that I’m supposed to be some famous artist,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I almost flunked art last year!” He stopped, a thoughtful expression on his face. “Because . . . I thought the teacher was wrong, always wanting to have separate categories of art. . . . You say we were famous for mixing things up?”
JB nodded.
“But . . . we weren’t really famous,” Antonio said, “not if everything was destroyed, and nobody ever knew what we did.”
He already looked sad at the thought that artwork he hadn’t created yet would never be seen.
“But time travelers saw the work, right?” Katherine asked. “They’re the ones who would have made you famous.”
“Right,” JB said. “There was a strong—and illegal, I might add—art-smuggling effort, where renegade time travelers managed to rescue all your work, right before it burned. It made for some very dramatic time-travel stories.”
“Wow,” Antonio said, puffing up his chest. “Famous artist! Worth having his work stolen!”
“But then Gary and Hodge decided, why steal the art when you can steal the artists instead?” JB said. “So they yanked you out of time right when they pulled Virginia Dare out, while they were in the neighborhood. Before you’d rescued John White. Before you’d done any of your art.”
“So that created a paradox, didn’t it?” Jonah asked.
“Exactly,” JB said. “If there’s no artwork, there’s no reason Brendan and Antonio are famous, so there’s no reason Gary and Hodge would kidnap them.”
“Not . . . paradox. If ripple . . . stopped,” Second murmured, from his position on the ground. He’d managed to roll to his side, but it looked painful.
“Ah, yes,” JB agreed, frowning. “As my former projectionist reminds me, there isn’t a paradox, or isn’t one yet, because we put up a time barrier to prevent the results of your kidnappings from rippling on into the future. So there’s still time to fix things.”
“So you still want me to move all these bones?” Andrea asked, looking down at the skeletons strewn along the sand.
“And we have to do all that artwork?” Brendan asked. His words made it sound as if he didn’t want to, but he had a faraway, dreamy look in his eye.
“We’ll help as much as possible,” JB said, looking toward Andrea. “And . . . I will make sure I get you out of this time period before your village burns, Brendan and Antonio. And before you drown, leaving Croatoan, Andrea.”
His voice was soft, saying Andrea’s name.
“What about my grandfather?” Andrea challenged.
JB sighed.
“I’ll see what we can do about him,” he said.
Jonah wasn’t quite sure what that meant. But he remembered what Second had said about JB, implying that he wasn’t such a time purist anymore, that he’d gone softhearted.
And JB said that Second didn’t lie to us, Jonah thought. Still, something nagged at him, something he’d missed.
He remembered what it was.
“Are you sure you’ve told us everything we need to know?” He asked JB, a bitter twist to his words. “Or are you still working on not keeping secrets unnecessarily?”
JB’s face flushed.
“Sam—Second—he told me I had to say it like that,” JB said. “To make Andrea feel like it was okay not to tell you about her parents from the beginning. I swear, I wasn’t saying it for my own benefit!”
Jonah believed him.
“Add that to . . . the list,” Second muttered.
“The list?” JB said blankly.
“Of reasons I’m . . . being fired,” Second whispered from the ground. “Tell me all of them.”
“Got a couple centuries?” JB joked. “There’s the time smack, of course, with Antonio coming into 1600 in the same space as Jonah. Though, actually, I’m grateful for that, because that was the clue that helped me find you. You camouflaged all your other tracks, but you couldn’t hide that. So maybe the time judge won’t charge you for that one. But I don’t think anyone will forgive you for forcing me to do a time smack, hitting you, because it was the only way I could get in to rescue these kids. . . .”
Second gulped.
“That was a time smack then too?” he asked. “An authentic one? Not just a very, very close call?”
“Perfectly planned, perfectly executed,” JB bragged. A hard look came into his eyes. “I did all the calculations myself.”
Second’s face went pale.
“But there was only a 38 percent chance that you would find us, only a 20 percent chance that you would take such a huge risk . . . ,” he whispered.
“Obviously you underestimated me,” JB said.
Second looked up at Jonah.
“That day in the canoe,” Second murmured. “Yesterday. After your . . . time smack. Did you have to sleep the rest of the day? Or were you just being lazy?”
“It just happened,” Jonah said. “I couldn’t help myself.”
Second’s face turned even paler.
“Then I don’t have much time,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to work things this way, but . . .”
With great effort, he forced himself up from the ground. He staggered toward Andrea, reaching his hand toward hers.
“You take . . . Elucidator,” he whispered. “You have the most interest . . . in seeing this through. Just press . . . No, wait, I can do that. . . . My one last . . .”
He collapsed to the ground at her feet. A hearty snore escaped from his mouth.
“He’s out,” JB said, sounding relieved. “He’ll sleep for hours. Except—Andrea, did he hit that button?”
Andrea was staring down at the Elucidator that Second had dropped into her hand.
“I don’t—” she began.
Just then, something like a movie screen appeared in the trees behind them.
“He did,” JB muttered. “But why? What’s he trying to do?”
Second’s face appeared on the screen, beaming and confident.
“I can answer that,” he said.
Jonah stared in confusion back and forth between the sleeping man on the ground and the grinning, triumphant-looking man on the screen.
“He knew ahead of time what JB was going to ask?” Katherine muttered.
Oh—it’s pre-recorded, Jonah thought. Video, or something like that.
“Actually, I’m only 94 percent certain that you would ask, ‘What’s he trying to do?’” Second continued, speaking from the screen. “And only 88 percent certain that Andrea would press the button, if I couldn’t. But, as you can see, I prepare for every eventuality. It’s what JB’s been paying me top dollar for, all these years.”
He cleared his throat.
“Speaking of dollars, I want to be clear—I am not in this for the money. I am not like those greedy bumblers, Gary and Hodge. Then, why did I do this, you ask?” He stroked his chin, like an actor trying to look deep and thoughtful. “The short answer is: hope.”
“Oh, please!” JB erupted. “You know better than that!”
“Hope, and . . . I have to admit . . . a bit of boredom,” Second continued. “In my job, I watch the same bit of history again and again, sometimes hundreds of times. Can you blame me for getting a little tired of it all? For wanting to do something besides always making sure everything turns out the same way? For wanting something . . . better?”
“How can you be so sure your changes would be better?” JB yelled at the screen.
“You doubt my certainty?” Second asked, as if he’d anticipated JB’s outburst. “Never mind. I am done with all that. I am finished with projections and predictions and everything we were always so sure about. Let the changes begin! Because . . .” He smiled sweetly. “I have released the ripple.”
“No-o-o-o-o!” JB wailed, diving toward the Elucidator in Andrea’s hand. He fell short, landing on Second’s unconscious form. “No,” he moaned again.
“Too late,” Second taunted from the screen. “It’s already happening.”