by Antony John
I helped her too. She raised her arms and the damp cloth slid over her skin. I glanced at her breasts, and fought the urge to touch her. I wanted so much to look at her, but I didn’t want to make her feel uncomfortable. I wanted to speak, but I didn’t know what to say.
The place was already quiet again, the diversion over as suddenly as it had begun. We hung up our tunics and removed the rest of our clothes.
Naked at last, Rose curled up in the blankets.
“So was it worth it?” I asked, joining her.
She gave a nervous chuckle. “I must admit, I do feel alive right now.”
“We still don’t know what Jerren was doing there tonight.”
“No,” she agreed. “We don’t.”
“And I can’t stop thinking about—”
“Shh.” She placed a finger against my lips, silencing me. She ran the finger down my chin and across to my bare arm. “You have nice arms,” she said. “I like how I can feel every muscle.”
I felt the progress of her finger, sliding toward my hand, so light I couldn’t tell whether she was touching my skin or just the hairs on my arm. All my senses focused on that one finger. By the time she reached my hand, my pulse was racing, each heartbeat so strong, I figured she could probably hear it.
We twined fingers. She was shaking. I wanted to pull her close to me, let us warm each other. I was as scared now as I’d been on the ship.
Rose let out a long breath. For a precious moment, I allowed myself to believe that it was a contented sigh, a sign that we could stay like this. But then she released my hand, and I knew that she still felt my echo. Felt the pain of my element flowing into her. Even weak, my element could be powerful enough to divide us.
We lay side by side, facing each other but not speaking. My pulse slowed completely, but it was too late for us to touch again. Finally, Rose turned away from me and pulled her blanket around herself.
We were apart once more. And Rose wasn’t the only one crying.
CHAPTER 17
I barely slept at all. The ground was hard and I was afraid that I wouldn’t wake up before the colony came to life in the morning.
I nudged Rose while it was still dark. We dragged our wet clothes back on, shook out the blankets and hung them back up where Rose had found them.
I peered over the crumbling walls to see if the coast was clear. The guards seemed to have left their posts, so we slipped out as far as the entry to the barracks. Then I checked again. It still seemed clear.
We didn’t see anyone as we crossed the grounds and padded up the metal steps. Beyond the walls, the ship was still. Going over had been a mistake—one we couldn’t repeat. We needed to embrace our new life and win the trust of everyone at Sumter. And we had to hope no one woke up as we crept back into our room.
At the end of the walkway, we turned into the corridor and stopped abruptly. Griffin and Nyla were sitting together, backs against the wall, a lantern between them and a small book in each of their laps. They startled as they saw us, and snapped the books shut.
Even in the low light I recognized the books. They were the journals we’d found back on Hatteras Island, hidden inside the Guardians’ dune boxes. Before we’d left Roanoke Island, the journals helped Griffin uncover some of the colony’s secrets. From the way he kept the book pressed against him now, I figured he’d discovered something else that interested him.
But why had he shown them to Nyla?
What. You. Doing? I asked him.
He placed the book in his lap deliberately. Reading.
Why. With. Her?
“Because you weren’t around,” muttered Nyla, before he could sign again.
I froze. “Wait. Did you really understand all that?” I asked her.
Nyla shook her head. “One or two signs, that’s all. But I read your face well enough.” She added her book to the one in Griffin’s lap. “Look. I get that you and Griffin are close. He’s told me about you. But, you know, Griffin is the closest I’ve come to having a friend since I got here. So there’s no way I’m going to tell anyone about what’s in these books, all right? I promise.”
It still felt wrong to me. But from the way Griffin was avoiding my eyes, I was fairly sure he wasn’t in the mood to discuss it. Besides, Nyla was probably the closest he had come to having a real friend too.
Rose pointed to the journals. What. Find? she asked Griffin.
Glancing from Rose to me, he opened the first journal and held it up. At the top of the page was a single word: CROATOAN.
Nyla pulled the journal around so that she could see it too. “What’s Croatoan?” she asked.
I wished I knew exactly how much she’d already learned. “It was written on an old bridge column in the region we came from,” I explained. “Alice saw CRO written on the wall of a cabin over on the mainland too.”
Nyla never took her eyes off me. “But what does it mean?”
“Tarn says it’s a legend—an ancient colony that disappeared.”
Griffin was still holding up the journal, his finger pressed against another line of text farther down the page. The handwriting was faint, the glow from the lantern barely enough to read by. But the words were all too familiar: union of Ananias and Eleanor.
“Why does it say that?” Rose’s voice shook. “I don’t understand.”
Neither did I. Had Ananias and Eleanor been promised to each other? Had an arrangement been made without them knowing?
Griffin leafed through the pages again, stopping at one that featured a strange diagram, like the branches of a tree connecting different names. Ananias and Eleanor were joined by a straight line; another smaller line hung down from it, and beneath the line was the word Virginia.
Virginia. I’d read that name before, but I couldn’t remember where.
Nyla handed Griffin the second journal—the one from our father’s dune box. He opened it to a page I’d seen back on Roanoke Island. It was an illustration of a little girl with giant flames shooting from her fingertips. Beneath the drawing was the same word: Virginia.
Nyla must have seen this page too, but if so, she didn’t seem to make anything of it. Maybe she thought it was just a picture, nothing more.
I studied the journals side by side. I had an inkling what it must mean, but it seemed impossible that there had been another Ananias and another Eleanor. And that they, too, had been connected.
Griffin tried to get my attention again. He was pointing to Ananias’s last name: Dare. Before I could process this, he slid his finger above Eleanor’s name. Her father was named John White.
I looked at my brother, confused. The name meant nothing to me, and yet Griffin behaved as though this name, not Dare, was the one I should be focusing on.
Exasperated, he stabbed a finger against the picture of Virginia in the other journal. Below it were two letters, presumably the initials of the artist: J.W.
John White.
“What does this mean?” asked Rose.
I struggled to piece it together. “Tarn said Croatoan was a legend. But what if that ancient colony didn’t disappear? What if these people were our ancestors?”
Rose continued to stare at the page. “The Guardians reused their names and possess their journals. I’d say we’re definitely related.”
Griffin watched us carefully. He no doubt had ideas of his own. When he had my attention, he put down the book and signed: Need. All. Dare. Logbooks.
No, I responded, the motion short and sharp. Dangerous.
“What’s he talking about?” demanded Rose. “What Dare logbooks?”
Griffin was already annoyed at me. So was Nyla. But Rose would be angriest of all once she knew the truth.
“Answer me, Thomas,” she pressed.
I rubbed my eyes, heavy from tiredness. “Alice found a key to Dare’s cabin. Griffin’s been read
ing Dare’s logbooks.”
Griffin waved a hand. When. Get. Logbooks?
No, I signed again. I pointed in the direction of the ship. Much. Dangerous.
“He’s trying to work out who we are,” snapped Rose.
“Doesn’t matter.” I shook my head vehemently. “We have to stop this now. We could’ve been caught last night. We risked everything . . . and for what?”
Griffin slapped his palm against the book. Sign!
I knelt down beside him, wishing so much that Nyla wasn’t around to see all this. No. More. I picked up the two journals and laid them gently on the ground. Everything. Different. Now.
I didn’t expect him to agree, but I at least hoped that he’d understand.
We. Safe, I tried again. He watched the signs, but I may as well have been speaking out loud for all the effect they had. Safe.
Nothing. Safe, he responded. He picked up the journals and pulled to a stand. With a nod to Nyla, he limped into the room where the others were still sleeping.
There was no mistaking the look Nyla gave me then. I’d broken up their meeting, and let Griffin down. Both were unforgiveable. She took the lantern beside her and turned it off, so that I could barely make her out as she retreated to her room.
Rose moved in front of me. “What’s going on, Thomas?”
“I’m sorry. I should’ve told you about Dare’s cabin—”
“I don’t care about Dare’s cabin,” she hissed. “When you first discovered your element, you said you wanted to know who you really are. Now you won’t even let Griffin find out about himself. If he’s the solution—”
“We didn’t come here to find out if Griffin can cure the Plague.”
“I know. We came here to start a new life. But what about the old one?”
“The old one was a lie. You said so yourself.”
“That doesn’t mean we can ignore it. If we pretend our life on Hatteras never happened, this place will be a lie too.” She crouched down beside me. “We can’t ignore what we are, Thomas. We’re elementals. What else do we have to offer this place?”
“There are other ways we can help.”
“Like what?”
I hesitated. “Food-gathering squads. Chief sends groups out to get food from other islands in the harbor.”
Rose leaned against the wall. “Tell me there aren’t any rats.”
I wasn’t willing to lie, so I said nothing.
“Let me get this straight,” she continued. “You’d sooner risk your life on a rat-infested island than let me use my element to catch fish.”
“We can’t just live on fish, Rose. Chief says there are vegetable gardens on the islands. This is how life has to be here. We’re part of this colony now.”
“Is that how it felt while we were hiding on our own ship last night? Like we were part of it?” She folded her arms. “Seems to me, Chief has you saying all the right things already.”
“He’s a good man, Rose.”
“I hope you’re right about that.” She looked over her shoulder at the empty parade grounds. Or maybe she was looking beyond, to the harbor, and the islands, and whatever might be on them. “At least tell me you’ll take Griffin. If he’s the solution, he can protect you—”
“No! Our elements are done now.”
She flared her nostrils. “Not using them doesn’t mean they’re done. We are what we are. Denying it doesn’t change a thing.”
“I just want to keep him safe,” I groaned.
“So do I. But sooner or later you’re going to have to let Griffin decide what he wants for himself. And whether or not there’s such a thing as safe anymore.”
CHAPTER 18
Grab your pack,” Kell shouted. “Tide’s rising. Time to sail.”
Breakfast was over and Rose hadn’t joined me. I wanted to see her before I left for food gathering.
“Pack, Thomas!”
I picked up the canvas bag. Someone had filled my water canister for me, and wrapped my lunch portion inside a piece of freshly washed cloth. The smoothness of the whole operation was comforting. It reminded me that the colonists made these trips regularly.
They almost always came back alive.
Kell headed for two sailboats tied to the jetty. I’d been too distracted to pay much attention to them before, but they were extraordinary: two slender hulls instead of one, connected by a metal frame. There were no seats, just a piece of canvas strung tight across the frame.
Jerren climbed aboard and rapped his knuckles against the mast. “Ever seen a catamaran before?”
I shook my head.
“Then you’re in for a treat.”
As he rigged the first boat, Alice copied him in the second. The process quickly turned into a competition, Alice’s fierce determination to be first in everything against Jerren’s familiarity with the sails.
When they were done, Alice took the helm of her boat, and Jerren, his. Ananias and Kell joined him, so he made sure to tell Alice that his crew was heavier. Alice didn’t respond, but raised an eyebrow, recognizing the excuse for what it was.
Jerren pointed to Charleston. “I’ll see you over there, then.”
“Where?” said Alice, sounding impatient.
“Over there,” he replied with deliberate vagueness. “As long as you don’t fall too far behind, you won’t get lost.”
For a boy who’d only met Alice two days earlier, he sure knew how to get under her skin. Before the words were even out of his mouth, the race was on.
Jerren set off first. He understood the harbor conditions well and began to pull away from us. As she struggled to make up ground, Alice wore the same grim expression she’d had ever since Eleanor had died. Griffin and I sat beside her in awkward silence, spectators in her personal battle with Jerren. Behind us, Sumter faded from view.
“We’re closing in,” muttered Alice. She seemed to be speaking to herself, not to me, but she’d said so little the past two days that I leaped on the words.
“What can I do?”
“Nothing.”
We caught Jerren after a mile. When we were only a few yards back, he eased the tiller toward himself, blocking our path. Alice baited him into changing his course even more drastically and then slipped under him. The breeze was blowing from the south and too late Jerren realized that we were going to steal his wind. We glided past as though he wasn’t even moving. The only sounds were the water lapping against the bow and Kell’s laughter.
I stole a glance to see if Alice was smiling too.
She wasn’t.
A couple more miles and we were bearing down on Charleston. It was the largest place I’d ever seen—a mishmash of battered buildings, crammed together so tightly that it seemed they’d had nowhere to go but upward. It must have looked beautiful once. Hard to imagine that such a place could be uninhabited. And uninhabitable.
We overshot our target because we didn’t know where we were headed, but after turning about we joined Jerren and beached our catamaran on a long, slender island about a half mile east of Charleston. A ruined wall ran around the eastern tip; tree branches emerged tentacle-like from every hole. It had a similar feel to Sumter—a stronghold from a past too distant to imagine.
“Welcome to Castle Pinckney,” announced Jerren. “Glad you could join us.”
I scanned the land for rats but didn’t see any. Neither Kell nor Jerren seemed concerned at all. Maybe that’s what happened after years of food-gathering trips—you let down your guard. Did that make you more efficient? Or more complacent?
“This way,” said Kell. He stepped through a blanket of weeds, heading straight for an arch in the nearest wall. “This place is even older than Sumter. Not as strong or stable, but you can’t have everything.”
We passed under the archway and into the ruined castle. Then we stopped in our
tracks.
Plants ran in several orderly rows, green and healthy. There was weeks’ worth of food here. About twenty barrels too, arranged neatly against the walls. Pipes connected them to the top of the walls, where a series of sloping wooden panels diverted rainwater.
Jerren took a seat in the shade beside a barrel. He rapped his knuckles against it. “Sounds full,” he said. “Got to love storm season.”
Kell looked up at the clear blue sky. “Easy to say when you’re on dry land.” He turned to Ananias. “You were on the ocean when the last storm came through, right?”
Ananias took a sip from his water canister and gave a curt nod.
“How’d you handle such a large ship with your crew?”
The questions seemed innocent, but it was the answers that worried me. Ananias didn’t seem fazed, though. He just tilted his canister toward Alice. “Same way her crew handled us on the way out here. With her on board, anything’s possible.”
Jerren grabbed a metal bucket sitting beside the barrels. He placed it under a tap protruding from the barrel and turned a lever. Water gushed out.
“We’ll start with the top rows,” Kell told him. Turning to us, he added, “Don’t drink this water. We can’t purify it out here, and we’ve lost too many days to sickness after someone drinks this stuff.”
I thought of Rose and how she used to be able to tell the purity of water from a single drop. She’d be able to do it on Sumter too if we combined elements. But who would trust her? And if they found out about our elements, how would they react?
I pushed the thought aside and joined Griffin as he wandered along the rows. With the element of earth, he knew better than any of us how difficult it was to keep plants alive. Who. Plant? he signed.
I relayed the question to Kell.
“Chief did,” he told us. “He was a botanist; a plant expert. A survivalist too. While everyone else was leaving Charleston, he put down the master plan for the colony. Enlisted the help of a fish expert and a water and sanitation specialist. They died a long time ago—old age—but Sumter was sustainable by then.”