They broke apart, though, when they heard someone crying. Matt soon saw the source, and his heart turned to ice. Gaga and Uncle Chuck were on the ground, each of them holding Haha, who was propped up against the side of the lower terrace. He still had Captain Vincent’s dagger in his ribs. Jia was there, too, kneeling on the ground in front of Haha. She had some strips of cloth that she was gently pressing over the wound, trying to stanch the bleeding that was starting to soak into the ground beneath him. She had torn the sleeves off her shirt, Matt realized.
“Dad,” Mr. Hudson said, kneeling down. Haha was pale and gasping for breath. Gaga was also gasping for breath as she cried. She looked up at the rest of them in desperation.
“Please do something,” she cried. “Please save him!”
“He needs a hospital,” Mrs. Hudson said. “I can transport him right away. I can get him there in moments.” She still had the compass around her neck.
“I think moments are all he has,” Mr. Hudson said.
“It’s okay, Gloria,” Haha said with effort. He reached for Gaga’s hand. “This is how it’s supposed to be.”
“No, Henry,” Gaga said. “We’re going to get you help. You’re going to be okay.” But she cried all the harder as she spoke.
“Yes,” Haha said, his voice little more than a whisper. “I’m going to be okay. I’m okay. When I was stranded, and I . . . didn’t think I’d make it,” Haha said, gasping for breath between his words, “all I wanted was to see you one more time. All I wanted was . . . my family.”
Family. All Matt had wanted to do was save his family, for them all to be together. Shouldn’t he be able to save all of them? Shouldn’t Haha get to live too? “We can still save him, maybe,” Matt said. “I can pull his time tapestry. We can go back and . . . and . . .” Matt wasn’t sure what he was saying. He knew he was grasping at straws, but he had to do something. He had to try. He felt for the threads of Haha’s time tapestry, pulled at them from his hands. The tapestry was barely there. It was nothing more than a faint, shimmering mist. He couldn’t see any images inside of it, and he realized there wasn’t anything he could do. Haha’s time tapestry hadn’t been blown up, destroyed, or damaged. Matt’s cells were not attached to it in a way that he could pull it back together. It was simply fading, because Haha was fading.
Haha took a breath, and his next words seemed to take every last ounce of energy he had. “I love you,” Haha said, his voice fading. “I love you all . . . so much.”
Gaga grabbed his hand. She pulled it to her chest. “I love you, Henry,” she said. “We all love you.” Henry smiled, squeezed his wife’s hand. He closed his eyes, took one final rattling breath, and was still. His time tapestry began to fade. Gaga reached for it, brushed it with her fingers, until it was gone. She fell over him and cried.
32Baby Beginnings
They buried Henry Hudson on the edge of the Lost City. Gaga said he would like it, being buried in a jungle, no gravestone to mark his whereabouts. Uncle Chuck and Mr. Hudson dug the grave, while Gaga and Mrs. Hudson wrapped Henry Hudson in some of Uncle Chuck’s colorful crocheted blankets.
“Henry loved to be in nature,” Gaga said as they all gathered around the burial site to pay their respects and say goodbye. “He liked the feeling of being lost. Sometimes I told him to get lost, and he didn’t seem to mind following my orders.” She laughed a little through her tears. “But I’m glad we found him in the end, even if just for a moment.”
Mr. Hudson and Uncle Chuck shared stories, things they remembered about their dad from when they were little, how he loved to play board games, and give the boys “horse rides” on his back, and take them hiking and fishing in the Catskills and give them candy and soda and told them not to tell their mother, which all sounded very familiar to Matt. Gaga laughed at this, and then cried. They all cried. But it was a good cry.
When all was said and done, there was quiet for a time. Matt felt strangely peaceful, like all was right with the world even though he was sad at the loss of his grandfather. They stayed for a long time. No one seemed to want to move.
Finally, someone said something about going home. Matt wondered if they still had a home. Would it be the same? Would everything be back as it was before? Or would there still be battles on the Brooklyn Bridge and in Central Park? Would dinosaurs still be roaming the subway and flying around the Statue of Liberty?
They all made their way up the stone steps that led to the Lost City. Gaga moved slowly. Burying her husband seemed to age her twenty years, and the other adults stayed with her.
“Go on ahead,” Mrs. Hudson said. “We’ll be there in a minute.”
Matt, Corey, Ruby, and Jia made their way back to the grassy terraces of the Lost City. It was as empty as it had been when they arrived. Only Blossom stood in the center. Well, it was mostly Blossom. Oddly, she had a mast sticking out of her with the flag of the Vermillion. The two vehicles seemed to have melded together in the battle, and Matt thought his theory that they were one and the same was probably correct. Just as he and Marius Quine were one and the same, and every now and then they overlapped.
Corey climbed onto the roof of the bus. “Hey!” he said. “Our names aren’t here!”
“You’d better carve them in then,” Jia said. “Or else how will you know when you’re supposed to stay?”
“I
