“Marta!” Jia cried. “How did she get up there?”
Marta hopped down from Blossom and ran around the car. They could just see her little towhead bobbing up and down along the windows. She stopped on the side of the car where the other person had fallen.
Haha opened the door. There was Marta, standing before a man who was just pulling himself up off the ground, brushing himself off.
Ruby gasped. “It’s Dad,” she said.
“Sort of,” Corey said.
Matt breathed a sigh of relief. It was their dad, though he was younger by a good twenty years, just like their mom. That must have been when Captain Vincent blew up his time tapestry.
“Marta, what is that you have?”
Marta had her hands full of iridescent threads. “Råtta,” she said.
“Time tapestry threads,” Matt said. “She must have pulled someone else through with her.” She was still weaving it together, her hands methodically tying the knots in the fabric.
“Who is it?” Ruby asked.
“I have no idea.” Matt could not remember anyone else the captain might have erased, but whoever they were, they were angry. Matt could actually feel the rage buzzing around his cells that were still attached to the threads.
“Where am I?” Mr. Hudson said. “How did I get here?” He looked at his surroundings, then looked at all the people crowded in the orange bus. He squinted, then his eyes lit up with recognition and surprise.
“Mom? Is that you? And Chuck?”
Matt realized he wouldn’t know Chuck as being his brother right now. Chuck seemed to realize this, too, so he just waved and said, “Hey, Matty.”
But then Mr. Hudson looked at Haha, and here he had the biggest surprise of all. “Dad?”
Haha smiled. “Hey, son.”
“How did you . . . where did you . . . ? I . . . I don’t understand. What just happened? What’s going on? I was just in New York. I was looking for someone, and then this crazy guy attacked me. It was like he was ripping out my throat or something.” He rubbed at his neck, and then another realization seemed to don on him. “Am I dead? Is this the afterlife or something?”
“You’re not dead, sweetie,” Gaga said gently. “But things are a little mixed up right now. It’s hard to explain.”
Mr. Hudson nodded. “I think I did something foolish. I think I got mixed up in something I wasn’t supposed to, and I messed things up.”
“Hey, it’s not your fault,” Haha said.
“The maniac who attacked you has hurt all of us,” Uncle Chuck said.
“But we’re going to make it right,” Ruby said. “That’s why we’re here now.”
Mr. Hudson looked at Ruby when she spoke, and then he glanced at Corey, then Matt, then back at Corey, who strongly resembled his father. Matt could almost see the wheels turning in his brain. Clearly, he saw something familiar about the children before him, even if he did not fully understand their connection. He turned around, surveying the view before them. “Where are we?”
“The Lost City of Colombia,” Matt said.
“It’s beautiful,” Gaga said.
The ancient ruin was a series of green grassy terraces, layered one on top of the other and held up on the sides by rough stone walls. They were standing on the highest terrace on one end overlooking the rest, with lush green mountains and jungle in the backdrop, all blanketed by a thick mist.
Matt had done some research on Ciudad Perdida, after his mom had told him he’d been found very near here. The Lost City of Colombia had once been a thriving civilization that existed more than a thousand years ago, even older than Machu Picchu. The people had been called the Tairona, and they’d lived peacefully until Spanish conquistadors invaded, spreading disease and killing off most of the population. Survivors abandoned the city. What was left had been overgrown by the jungle and hidden until explorers discovered it in the 1970s. Matt knew he had been found near the Lost City by some tourists around this time, but he had no other idea where or when he’d come from, or why he’d been abandoned in the jungle. Now, standing here, he had this feeling of connection, to another time and life. To a people long gone. Just a gentle echo in his heart.
“It’s so still,” Jia said.
It was, Matt realized, and quiet too. The trees did not move. He neither saw nor heard any signs of animal life. There were no calls of birds, no rustling of shrubs or vines. He couldn’t even smell the earth. It was as if the place itself had been paused in time.
“Hey, look at this,” Ruby said. She had climbed down to the next terrace. She was standing by a flat-faced boulder propped up against one of the walls. It was about as tall as Matt and had a series of lines carved into it, with larger dots chiseled in at several intersections.
“Is this, like, an ancient game of connect the dots?” Corey said.
“Almost,” Jia said. “It’s a star chart.”
She was right. Matt traced his fingers over the lines, the patterns. Toward the center he found three dots connected by equilateral lines. The Summer Triangle. An image suddenly flashed through his mind, unbidden—a man and woman, dressed in rough woven cloth, standing on the highest terrace of this city at night. The man was observing the stars through some kind of ancient astronomy instrument. The woman was carving lines into a huge boulder, likely the very boulder he was touching.
“Matt,” Jia asked, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m okay.”
He dropped his hand from the star chart, feeling a curious energy running through him. It was like he was remembering things of which he had no previous knowledge. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did. The ancient Tairona had been astronomers. They must have noted the fading of the Summer Triangle as well, and, just like Emperor Kangxi, knew something terrible was going to happen, something that could destroy their entire civilization and the
