“You know, it’d be nice if it turned out that you were going off to talk to your girlfriend, who’s babysitting a little three-year-old girl named Virginia,” Jonah muttered. But John White had said, Please find it, I beg of you-it, not her. Jonah didn’t have any hope that things could end so easily.
The tracer boy turned and stared directly at Jonah. He couldn’t have heard Jonah, but it was unnerving how the tracer was looking toward Jonah so coldly, so calculatingly. In a split second the boy had an arrow out of his pouch and lodged against his bow. A split second later, the arrow was zinging toward Jonah.
Jonah threw himself at the ground. He lay there for only an instant-his heart pounding, his shoulder throbbing from the impact-before he rolled to the right, just in case the boy was already loading again, aiming again.
Why is he shooting at me? He’s not supposed to be able to see me!
Dare raced toward Jonah, barking furiously. Jonah smashed into thick grasses and dared to look up. Off in the distance, some sort of bird-a duck? a goose?-was rising into the sky, squawking its protest against Dare’s barking. And, slightly behind it, the bird’s tracer rose like a shadow, its wings flapping just as frantically, its beak opening and closing just as angrily. Only, the tracer couldn’t have been bothered by the barking. It was protesting…
Being shot at, Jonah realized. The boy was shooting at the bird, not at me.
Jonah’s heartbeat slowed slightly; his tensed muscles slipped out of panic mode. He rolled his head to the side so he could see the tracer boy, who might right that minute be putting another arrow against his bow and aiming for some tracer groundhog or beaver waddling near Jonah.
But not at me, Jonah thought, hoping to calm down his reflexes. The tracer can’t shoot me. Even if he did, the tracer arrows can’t hurt me. Got it?
But when Jonah looked up at the tracer boy, he wasn’t slipping another arrow into his bow. He was letting his bow slip to the ground, his shoulders slumped.
The tracers are worried about food too, Jonah thought.
Jonah sat up, studying the tracer more carefully. This was the one with the longer, curly hair. It was hard to tell skin color with a see-through tracer, but Jonah didn’t think this boy’s skin would be much darker than Jonah’s with a tan. The boy’s nose and lips were narrow; his eyes would have been round if he hadn’t squeezed them into such dejected-looking slits.
“I guess you could be English,” Jonah muttered. “Are you one of the lost colonists?”
But then, why was he dressed like an Indian? What had happened to all the other English colonists if he was the only one left? And why was this boy hanging out with the other tracer, the one Andrea was so sure had come from Africa?
Jonah shook his head, trying to shake away the questions. At the same time, the tracer boy shook his head and slung his bow over his shoulder again. Dare whimpered.
“Come on, boy,” Jonah told the dog, almost forgetting that he suspected him of being a decoy or a spy. “We’re going on.”
The dog stayed a few steps behind Jonah and the tracer the rest of the way. Maybe the bow and arrow had spooked him, too; maybe he was afraid that Jonah would suddenly throw himself to the ground once more. But Jonah found himself trying to stay as close as possible to the tracer boy. It was a shame Jonah couldn’t hear the tracer’s thoughts just by stepping into his space. Several times the boy stopped and Jonah walked right into him, his knees raised at the same height as the boy’s knees, his arms swinging at the same angle.
To understand another man, you must walk a mile in his moccasins, Jonah thought, remembering a phrase an old scoutmaster had been fond of-a phrase that Jonah and his friends had laughed at so hard that one of his friends had even peed in his pants during a campout years ago. Even now (well, now in Jonah’s regular time), all someone had to do was whisper, “moccasins” during a flag-raising or some other supposedly solemn ceremony, and the whole troop would instantly be fighting giggles.
But walking where the tracer boy walked, and following his gaze whenever he turned his head, Jonah could tell: The boy was hunting. Hunting without much hope that he’d find something.
“So there’s not enough food on this island, not even for just two boys,” Jonah whispered. “So why are the two of you here?”
It was just another layer of mystery: Why were the tracer boys on Roanoke Island? Where were their real versions? Why didn’t John White’s return to Roanoke match up with history? What was wrong with him and his tracer? Where was Andrea’s tracer? Why had Second wanted to send Andrea someplace apart from her tracer? Who was Second anyway?
Before Jonah ran out of questions-or came up with a single answer-they reached the shoreline and the tracer boy went to stand on a small spit of land jutting out into the water. Jonah thought maybe it was the same spot where Katherine had stood yesterday to throw the branch out into the water. But he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t exactly had time for sightseeing before.
The tracer boy stood gazing out at the choppy waves. He put his hand against his brow to shield his eyes against the sun and turned slowly, methodically scanning the water before him. Jonah did the same. But Jonah was done in about three seconds-yep, there’s a lot of water out there. And maybe a bit of land out there to the right-too far away to really see without binoculars. Meanwhile, the boy was still staring, as if each square inch of water was more fascinating than the last. Once he finished studying the water, he shifted to peering out along the coastline just as thoroughly.
Suddenly the boy’s mouth opened and closed-if Jonah had had to guess, he would have speculated that the boy had said something like, “There it is!” The boy jumped down from the outcropping of land and began to run along the shore. Dare barked at the unexpected movement.
“Okay, okay-ssh!” Jonah hissed at the dog. Jonah took off after the tracer boy.
Debris from the storm had washed up onto the shore, so Jonah had to dodge dead jellyfish, spiky shells, and, here and there, splintered scraps of wood.
From John White’s boat? Jonah wondered. It was frightening how small the wood fragments were, how thoroughly the wind and water had smashed them to bits.
The tracer boy was several steps ahead of Jonah; now he stopped and bent down among some rocks. He seemed to be searching frantically along the water’s edge, all but ignoring the waves that slapped against his bare legs.
If he’s going to this much effort just to find a single crab or a single clam, I give up, Jonah thought.
Suddenly the tracer boy rose up, hoisting a tracer version of a rectangular box onto his shoulders.
No, not a box, Jonah corrected himself. A chest. A treasure chest?
24
Jonah scrambled over the rocks, hoping he could get to the real chest before the tracer boy moved away. As far as Jonah was concerned, one rock looked pretty much like any other. Without the tracer boy standing there, Jonah might have to search for a long, long time.
The tracer boy stepped to the next rock, the tracer chest balanced on his shoulder. It was that other rock where he bent down and found the chest, Jonah thought, the rock shaped like a witch’s nose… The tracer boy was walking faster now. He was three rocks away. Jonah crouched low and dived forward, straight through the tracer boy.
The witch-nose rock was hard, with razor-sharp edges.
“Note to self,” Jonah mumbled. “Don’t tackle rocks.”
He’d scraped both the palm of his right hand and his right knee-ripping right through his blue jeans. And, for the first time, Jonah realized that his dive might have been for nothing: What if some time change affected the chest, too, and the real one isn’t here? he wondered.
But it was right there at the base of the witch-nose rock. Waves still slapped against the lower half of the chest, but it was wedged in so tightly that it wasn’t being battered like the boards from the boat.
Jonah reached down and tugged on the handles. Once again, Jonah was in awe of the tracer boy’s strength: Jonah had to tug so hard, and the tracer boy had picked up the chest as if it was nothing.
Maybe it wasn’t wedged in as tightly, in original time, Jonah rationalized.
Grunting, he managed to free the chest from between the rocks and drag it up to more level, dry ground. The
