Oh, yeah, Jonah thought. Chip probably got used to being fourteen and a half, almost fifteen—his voice probably never squeaked then. It must be pretty grim to have to go back to being thirteen all over again.
“See,” Alex explained to Emily, “with time travel you can be away for years—decades, even, if you need to—and then come back to your original time so quickly that no one would even notice that you were gone.”
“Oh,” Emily said. “I get it.”
“Is that what’s going to happen to the rest of us?” Andrea Crowell asked in a small voice. “You’re going to send us away, and then we’re going to come back looking that … weathered?”
Weathered? Jonah thought. What kind of a kid uses a word like that? He sort of liked it, though. It was better than being described as “battered” or “beat up.”
“I don’t know about the ‘weathered’ part,” JB said, “but yes, you’re all going back in time.”
Andrea gulped.
“Now?” she asked.
“No,” Jonah said.
JB and Hadley turned to him in surprise.
“Well, actually, I thought—,” JB began.
“No,” Jonah said again. “You’re going to give us a chance to go home and get used to the idea that we’re missing kids from history. You’re going to let us eat our favorite foods and hug our parents good-bye if we want to.”
JB frowned; Jonah could tell he wasn’t convinced.
“Look,” Jonah said. “It’s not like we can tell anybody about this, because nobody would believe it anyway. So … just give us some time to adjust.”
Several of the other kids were nodding. Even one of the scariest-looking kids, who had a skull on the back of his sweatshirt, muttered, “He’s right, dude.”
Angela stepped forward.
“I think you should listen to Jonah,” she said. “He knows what he’s talking about.”
Me? Jonah wanted to say. Somebody’s acting like I’m the expert?
JB and Hadley exchanged glances. Jonah couldn’t be sure, but he thought maybe the two men’s images flickered for a second, as if they’d time-traveled out of the cave to have a long discussion about the pros and cons of Jonah’s suggestion and then returned to give their final decision.
“All right,” JB said reluctantly. “If Jonah thinks that’s for the best, that’s what we’ll do.”
“What about us—me and Alex?” Chip asked. “Now that we’ve been to the past and back, aren’t you going to erase our memories or something, so it doesn’t mess up our lives now? Like in the Men in Black movies?”
JB looked puzzled.
“Chip, we can’t do that. It’s not possible. Or desirable,” JB said. He appealed to Angela. “Don’t people in your time know the difference between science and science fiction?”
Angela shrugged. “From my perspective a lot of it looks the same,” she said dryly.
“No, listen,” Chip said, a panicky edge to his voice. “I was the king of England, then the prince hiding in exile. I know Latin now. I can sword-fight. I know diplomacy. I can recite The Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers almost word for word, by memory. I can’t go back to being who I used to be!”
Hadley looked down at him sympathetically.
“None of us can, kid,” he said. “That’s the point. You get what you get. Life changes you. Time travel or no, you always have to build on what you live through.”
Chip still looked a little upset, but he shut his mouth firmly.
Is that what diplomacy looks like? Jonah wondered. He wasn’t sure he’d ever be capable of it himself.
“So we’re going home?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes,” JB said. “You’re going home.”
Katherine started to stand up, and the leather strap on her armor gave way, one huge metal boot crashing to the ground.
“Oh,” she said, “do we at least get our regular clothes back? That was one of my favorite shirts.”
“Oops,” JB said. “It’s all in the back of the cave. I stashed it there when … well, never mind, it’d take a long time to explain, and it doesn’t really matter. You can take turns changing. And when you’re done, just leave the armor back there. I don’t want anyone asking why kids at an adoption conference were playing with priceless antiques.”
Things happened quickly after that. Jonah and Katherine changed back into modern clothes (blue jeans never felt so good), JB returned the cave to the twenty-first century, and all the kids hiked back to the high school, where their parents were meeting to talk about “identity issues for teen adoptees.”
It was strange to see Mom and Dad again, when Mom and Dad thought they’d only been apart for a matter of hours, and Jonah and Katherine knew they’d traveled half a millennium away and back. It was actually rather hard for Jonah not to run up to his parents and throw his arms around both of them and cry out, “I thought I’d never see you again!”
“Hey,” Jonah grunted in the crowded high school lobby as soon as he spotted Mom’s familiar tan raincoat, Dad’s familiar bald spot.
Mom and Dad rushed toward Jonah and Katherine and Chip, as other kids and parents reunited all around them.
“How was it?” Mom asked cautiously. “Do you feel like you learned a lot?”
“Yeah,” Chip said. “Actually, we did.”
Jonah knew that it would take Mom only a moment to notice that he and Katherine had mud in their hair. He wanted to talk about something that was a lot more important first.
“It was okay, but they didn’t feed us nearly enough,” he said. “Could we please, please, please pick up some pizza on the way home?”
Mom laughed.
“Jonah, I swear, nobody could ever feed you enough. You can’t go five minutes without eating, can you?”
“You’d be surprised,” Jonah said. “You’d really be surprised.”
EPILOGUE
Jonah, Katherine, Chip, and Alex were playing basketball in the Skidmores’ driveway. A week had passed since the so-called adoption conference, and they were proud that they’d managed to convince their parents to let their “new friend,” Alex, come over, even though he lived half an hour away. The basketball game was mostly just a ruse, though, since they were all much more interested in talking about their trip through time.
“I’ve been doing research on medieval history all week, and it’s disgusting—nobody knows much of anything about me and Chip,” Alex complained, bouncing the ball halfheartedly.
“Just about everybody thinks we died in the Tower of London,” Chip agreed. “Just because some Tudor historian told a bunch of lies, just because they found some unidentified bones in the Tower in the 1600s … didn’t anybody who saw us at the Battle of Bosworth say anything? It’s much more honorable to die in battle than to be a silly youth murdered in his own bed.”
Jonah and Katherine exchanged glances, and Chip grimaced.
“I’m talking medieval again, aren’t I?” he asked.
This had been a recurring problem for Chip all week. He’d used the word “doth” in language arts class, and everyone had laughed at him; he’d explained to a bully on the school bus exactly how it was possible to carve out a man’s innards with a sword or battle-ax.
On the bright side, this had made the bully stop bothering anyone on the bus.
“Are you having problems with that, Alex?” Chip asked wistfully. “Forgetting that you’re not an English prince in the 1480s anymore?”
“Some,” Alex said. “But people always thought I was weird anyway, so nobody really cares. I’m just telling Mom it’s all her fault because she’s always quoting Shakespeare at me. I told her it’s finally happened—she’s completely rotted my brain.” He caught the basketball on its next bounce. “Look, this is starting to hurt my hand. I can see the point of archery and swordsmanship—men needed to know how to do that in the fifteenth century to protect themselves and their families and their lords. But basketball—why?”
“We don’
t have to play,” Jonah said, though he wondered if Alex had always disliked basketball, or if this was another way the fifteenth century had changed him. “Here.”
He motioned for Alex to bounce the ball his way, and he dropped it on the concrete. Then he flopped down in the grass by the driveway, and all the other kids followed his lead. For a second Jonah got a flashback to weeks earlier, when he and Chip had been playing basketball and then flopped down in the exact same spot, carefree and laughing, only moments before Jonah got the first hint that there was something very odd about his life.
At least Chip and Alex know who they really are, and where they came from, Jonah thought. Even if they have trouble remembering to speak modern American English, at least they have their mysteries solved.
In the cave, after returning from the Battle of Bosworth, Jonah had been so eager to return to normal life—to see his parents, to eat pizza, to be a typical twenty-first-century kid again—that he hadn’t asked about his own original identity. This was what bothered him now, more than any lingering questions about the fifteenth century. Sometimes when he was alone in his room, late at night, Jonah would whisper, “JB? JB, can you hear me? Are you watching? Is it my turn in history yet?” But then he felt foolish, talking to no one. And scared. Chip and Alex had come so close to dying tragically in their moment in time. What if Jonah’s original identity was even more dangerous?
“But did you read anything about the Shakespeare play?” Katherine was asking indignantly. She shook her ponytail for emphasis. “His Richard the Third is pure evil. And a deformed monster, when, really, he looked perfectly normal.”
“Shakespeare changed all sorts of things in his history plays, to make his stories better,” Alex said. “And when Queen Elizabeth, a Tudor, was on the throne, it was definitely to his advantage to make the Tudors’ old enemy seem like the devil incarnate.” He clapped his hands over his mouth. “Oops,” he said, wincing. “I think I’m quoting my mother exactly. Ugh!”
Jonah had gotten a good look at Alex’s mother when she dropped him off. She was not exactly what he’d expected: She had bright-red-framed eyeglasses and dark blond hair that was even curlier than Chip’s and Alex’s—practically an Afro—and she was wearing a T-shirt that said something Jonah thought maybe would be obscene, except that it was in Shakespearean English.
“But people should know that Richard wasn’t that bad,” Katherine said. “They should know what he did at the very end. Do you think … do you think he really was forgiven?”
“I forgive him,” Chip said softly. “I … I know what it’s like to be willing to kill for the throne.”
Jonah had a flash of remembering the murderous look in Chip’s eye as he charged out onto the battlefield, crying, “My crown! That’s my crown!”
No wonder Chip looked so haunted by his past. No wonder he’d wanted JB to erase his memory.
“Isn’t it different, being willing to kill someone on a battlefield?” Jonah asked. “Instead of wanting to kill innocent kids in their beds at night?”
“You said death on the battlefield was pointless,” Chip reminded him. “You said if I died there, it would mean absolutely nothing.”
“I didn’t know you were supposed to die trying to save your brother’s life,” Jonah said.
He’d surveyed the others—he was the only one who’d caught that last glimpse of the tracers, the glowing ghostly versions of Chip and Alex under the battle-ax. He was actually glad none of the others had had to see it.
But he was also glad he knew how the story had ended. It made him think better of Chip.
Jonah saw Katherine reach out hesitantly and squeeze Chip’s hand. To Jonah’s relief, neither one of them had made a big deal about the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing. Chip squeezed back, and then they both let go.
Jonah peered off into the distance—a distance defined by two-story houses and faux wrought-iron streetlamps and neatly trimmed suburban oaks and maples. Even after the brief time he’d spent in the Middle Ages, it was still a bit of a jolt to see so much … civilization. It must be much, much stranger for Chip and Alex, he thought. What’s a “doth” here and there if they can still manage to act somewhat normal?
Far down the sidewalk a man was coming toward them, walking a large English sheepdog. Beside Jonah, Katherine suddenly stiffened.
“Oh, no,” she muttered. She jumped up and began running toward the man.
Jonah squinted, and understood.
The man was JB.
“No!” Katherine yelled at him. “I know what you’re here for—you can’t take Jonah away. I won’t let you! I’ve been thinking about this all week, and I’m going to scream and yell and say you’re a kidnapper, and—”
“I’m not here to take Jonah back to his time period,” JB said. “I didn’t come to force anyone to go anywhere they don’t want to go.”
Katherine still stood firm, blocking the sidewalk—a five-foot-tall, eighty-five-pound barrier. The sheepdog probably could have knocked her over with one paw. But Jonah was a little touched that she was trying.
“I promise,” JB said, drawing closer. “Look—I’ve learned a new expression from your time period.” He raised his right hand. “Scout’s honor.”
Jonah exchanged glances with Chip and Alex. He wondered which of them would have to tell JB that no grown man should do that, unless he was a Scout leader—dealing with really, really little kids.
Both of the other boys just shrugged.
“Well, then …,” Katherine sputtered a little, shifting gears. “Tell us this: When are you ever going to release the ripple? Is everything okay with time?”
JB seemed to be trying hard to hide a smile at Katherine’s using a time-travel term like “release the ripple.” JB had explained this to them back when they’d first learned about being missing children from history. JB and his fellow agents had frozen the impact of the kids’ being stolen; the whole point of returning them was to allow time to follow its natural courses again.
“We already did release the ripple,” JB said. “Everything’s fine.”
“But … but … unless it changed in the last ten minutes, none of the Web sites have the right information about what really happened to Chip and Alex and Richard the Third,” Katherine objected.
JB stopped a few steps away from her.
“Did you expect history to say that Richard got religious advice from time travelers the night before he died?” JB asked. “Did you want it on Wikipedia that Chip and Alex were saved at the last minute and carried off to the twenty-first century?”
“No.” Katherine shook her head stubbornly. “But people should know that Richard wasn’t all bad. He repented at the end. He wanted to give his crown back.”
“Sit,” JB told the sheepdog. The dog eased his hindquarters down onto the sidewalk. Then he lay all the way down and put his head on his front paws, as if he expected this to take a while.
“Time needed Richard to be a villain,” JB explained carefully. “The year 1483 was something of a turning point in history. Before that, killing for political gain was … expected. Ordinary. But the way the princes disappeared from the Tower, the way everyone thought they knew what had happened, the way people were so horrified at Richard killing kids … that changed history. Killing children became something you usually couldn’t do and still be considered a decent human being. It became part of the change in how people viewed children, how they viewed humanity. Richard was held up forever after that as an example of what leaders shouldn’t do. In some ways this was almost as important as the Magna Carta.”
JB sounded as earnest as a college professor trying to explain why history mattered. Jonah couldn’t quite remember what the Magna Carta was, but everything else kind of made sense.
Of course Katherine wasn’t satisfied.
“But that’s not fair to Richard,” she complained. “He doesn’t deserve his bad reputation.”
“Do you think that matters to Richard?” JB asked. “H
e died five minutes after offering Chip the Crown.”
“But did he go to heaven?” Katherine persisted.
“That’s between him and God, not him and history,” JB said.
Alex started, jerking so spastically that he kicked the basketball, and would have sent it spinning out into the street if Chip hadn’t caught it. Amazingly, Chip still seemed to have a swordsman’s quick reflexes.
“You believe in God?” Alex asked JB incredulously. “But you know how to travel through time. You’re a scientist.” He hesitated. “Aren’t you?”
JB rolled his eyes.
“It amazes me how people of your time set up such a false dichotomy between science and religion. Fortunately, that only lasts for another … well, I can’t tell you that,” he said, stopping himself just in time. “But I assure you, the more I travel through time, the more I witness, the more I realize that there are things that are both strange and wonderful, far beyond human comprehension.” He turned to Jonah and Katherine. “Like how a couple of untrained kids could save time, when expert professionals would have failed every time.”
Katherine tossed her head as if she was ready to launch into a victory dance: So there! We showed you!
“You helped us some,” Jonah said modestly. “With Hadley signaling us there by Chip and Alex on the battlefield so we’d find them in time. And with how you let us use invisibility.”
JB shook his head.
“But you did everything wrong,” he said. “We’re still cataloging how many sacred rules of time travel you broke. No certified time traveler would have dared to speak directly to Richard—and you did it twice!”
“Why didn’t you yank us out of time when we were breaking all those rules?” Jonah asked.
“We, uh, couldn’t,” JB said sheepishly. “We kept being blocked by the impact of your actions. And then … we kept discovering that everything you did worked.”
“But …” Alex shifted uncomfortably. “We didn’t stay with our tracers exactly. Chip and Jonah and Katherine and me … we did change history. Why doesn’t anyone know that?”
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