Summer of Lost and Found

by Rebecca Behrens

  After George’s murder, on the eighth of August, Governor White called for a meeting among all the local chiefs, whom the Croatoans promised to bring. ’Twas his aim to enter parley with them. But the werowances of Pomeiooc, Aquascogoc, Secoton, and Dasemunkepeuc ne’er responded. It riled the men of our group, and although some—including my father—urged against it, they became set on revenge. The next day, a secret attack White did lead on their dwelling place to avenge poor George. The miserable souls fled into the reeds, but our men followed.

  ’Twas a tragedy, a mistake most wretched. One that weighs my heart heavy with guilt and shame. Those our men killed in the village—including womenfolk!—were none of the tribe that murdered George. Instead, by a cruel twist of Fate, those we slaughtered were Croatoans—Manteo’s people, the very tribe that had offered guidance since our arrival. They had gone yonder to gather corn and fruit, which our enemies had left when they fled. Mother cried for days when she heard of the cruelty we had done.

  Fortune repaid us in kind. A drought most terrible befell the island, and even those who had lived thither for ages upon ages scrounged for food. After the attack, the Croatoans did refuse to help us gather more. We lacked sufficient supplies. The wicked drought made even this most goodly soil inhospitable. Aside from the luscious grapes, we struggled to gather plenty to eat. The sea still provided: fish and crabs. Yet catching enough to feed 116 hungry bellies morning, noon, and night was a challenge.

  Fearful of being found by enemies, we did choose to raise new cottages to the west, and south, of the last colony’s fort, which was on the northern tip of the island. We could follow a creek down to the bay; our homes nestled between it and the sea. They had two stories, built of wood, and grass-thatched roofs. O, the joy and comfort I did feel—once again having a roof o’er my head.

  Father and I walked to the water e’ry morn, to watch the sun rise over the waves. We kept watch for Spanish ships that perchance might have found us, despite being hidden from the open sea—the shallow water surrounding the island, rife with shoals, does make it impassable for large ships. As we fished, Father did spin tales of our life hither years from now—when our colony would bustle like those in the Caribbean. “Lords of Virginia,” we were to be. Better than being poor Londoners. Father had so much hope for our new life. But I dreamt often of mine in London, and my heart ached for its comforts. My shoes were worn near to shreds. We were desperate for more supplies—food, clothing, and building materials. Some of the planters did think Governor White ought to sail back to England before winter seas would make the voyage impossible. Yet he would not leave before he could see his grandchild born, the baby Dare.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I had to wait for five whole days to see Ambrose again. I helped my mom, and I spent some of my earnings on another book about the lost colony and one with Shakespeare quotations. Maybe I’d start sending them to Dad. But the first one I opened it to was “We have seen better days” from As You Like It, and that was a little too on the nose.

  I’d sworn to be on time to meet Ambrose at Fort Raleigh; the only problem was, we hadn’t actually set a specific time. If only I had Ambrose’s phone number, or even his e-mail address. Instead, I biked to the Festival Park around closing on Sunday evening. Maybe I’d run into Ambrose, or at least his mom. But even though I sat in the grass next to my bike and watched all the visitors and employees shuffle out to their cars and head home, neither emerged. I did see Lila walk Sir Walter across the bridge to the park, kind of conspicuously, although she pretended not to see me. Was she actually following me now? That was the last thing I needed: Lila becoming my shadow.

  Birds had barely started to chirp when Mom got up on Monday. We had been waking extra early to make the most of the cool morning hours. “Nell, are you sure you don’t want to come with me today? It would mean more allowance for books.” Mom stood in the doorway of my room. I was still in my bed, in pajamas. I didn’t want her to know that I had someplace to be. I sort of hadn’t mentioned Ambrose to her yet, and I didn’t know how she’d feel about me running around Roanoke with a local boy she’d never met. I could guess that she would not exactly be thrilled. I decided to wait until she could meet him—better yet, with his mom. I’d ask Ambrose if they wanted to stop by our cottage sometime soon. I should probably remind him to wear shoes, I thought, since he hadn’t at the gardens.

  Mom continued, “I need to estimate the number of fruit on the vine. Yesterday, I noticed that in one area, it looks sparse. I could kick myself for not calculating earlier how many grapes were on it, because now I can’t tell if it’s losing them at an abnormal rate.”

  “Maybe a deer got hungry?”

  “Or an alligator,” she said offhandedly.

  “What?”

  Mom gave me a duh look. “Didn’t you know we’re right across the water from the Alligator River wildlife refuge? It’s not like the Everglades—but they’re here.”

  Great—another thing to worry about while tramping around in search of clues.

  Mom shrugged. “Anyway, somebody—or something—had a scuppernong feast. I could use your help counting.”

  “No, thanks. Threat of alligators aside, I’m kinda tired. Maybe I got too much sun yesterday.” We had gone to the beach again on Sunday morning. This time we saw a few horses, and I took pictures and sent them to Dad, along with one of Mom finally dipping her toes in the Atlantic. I wrote, This is what you are missing across the pond. He replied: “I like [that] place and willingly could waste my time in it.” (As You Like It)—plus a smiley face. It made me so happy to read that—maybe I was convincing him to come back. I also sent him an e-mail with my Roanoke clues so far, and he replied to say that he was really intrigued.

  Mom put her hand on my forehead to check my temp. Satisfied that I wasn’t burning up, she shouldered her tote bag. “Suit yourself. If you’re feeling peaked, hydrate well today, and stay in the air-conditioning. Maybe you should call Lila and meet her at the bookstore.”

  I pulled the sheet up and over my mouth. “Maybe. Bye.”

  “Later, gator.” Mom halfway shut my door. I waited to hear the Jeep’s slam, then I hopped up out of bed immediately and threw on some clean shorts and a T-shirt. I had a brand-new pair of outdoorsy hiking sandals to wear, thank goodness. The blisters I’d gotten the first week still hadn’t fully healed.

  After checking the chain and the tires on my bike, I took a circuitous route out of Manteo to avoid any known Lila hangouts. Last thing I wanted was her tagging along and spoiling my day with Ambrose, or stealing any more artifacts. Rather than demanding she unhand the flask, I decided it would be better to act like I didn’t know that she’d snatched it, until I could figure out how to get it back. You know, keep under the Lila radar.

  As I biked, I realized how used to this very different island I’d gotten in the twelve days I’d been on Roanoke. At home I almost always woke up to street noise, like the shrieks and groans of trash trucks, or cabbies honking at people double-parked in front of the school across the street. The quieter sounds of Manteo had become normal to me. Sometimes the loudest thing was the strong breeze rustling the trees. This was probably the longest I’d ever gone without taking the subway, in my whole life. And the most bike riding I’d ever done, since Mom and Dad will only let me ride in Central Park on the weekends, and I don’t even do that very often because it’s a lot of effort to haul my bike up from the storage room. The tires have a magical ability to be low on air every single time I try to take it out.

  One particular adaptation bothered me, though: How I was getting used to life without my dad. I swallowed the lump in my throat. I didn’t expect him to wake me up in the morning anymore; I didn’t look for his toothbrush in the holder. I didn’t check to make sure I wasn’t going to trip over his laptop cord when walking around, or expect to clear a slew of notebooks and pens off the couch cushions. Maybe it was simply because I was adjusting to a new space, one he’d never shared with Mom and me. But
part of me worried that we were moving on from his being a part of our home. It made me feel both insanely angry at him for running off to London and creating this situation, and incredibly ashamed with myself for not missing him all the time. Was I letting him down by allowing life to move along? I didn’t understand how my mom could forge ahead like we weren’t hurting.

  I pushed that out of my mind and focused on the scenery along the winding road. The trees were tall and mysterious. Lila’s theory about using ghostly energy as a way to find the lost colony made sense—if you believed in ghosts. I’d never thought about them too much, other than on Halloween and when Jade and I sneaked scary movies on her computer. But why would a ghost want to stay where he or she got stranded? Couldn’t a ghost decide to go haunt the place he or she liked best in life? That made more sense—or haunting where a ghost’s loved ones still were. If I weren’t locked into a feud with Lila, I’d talk to her about that.

  Fort Raleigh was on the same land as the Elizabethan Gardens, but I hadn’t seen it the week before. After the fork in their shared road, I came upon a woodsy area with a visitor center and a bunch of administrative and research buildings. I had expected a big military-looking thing, like a medieval fortress, but Fort Raleigh looked like a state park. A sign showed where people could park for The Lost Colony drama, which was performed in something called the Waterside Theatre. I’d forgotten about Lila’s audition debacle. I decided that watching the play would be my next weekend tourist excursion with Mom.

  Not seeing Ambrose, I started to wander. Beyond the visitor center was the reconstructed fort. I ran into the center of it, hoping to feel something. Even if it wasn’t where the lost colonists’ village had been, it was still a spot where a whole lot of history happened. I wanted the weight of time to press on my shoulders. But all I felt was the breeze and a mosquito biting my ankle. The Grandmother Vine, frankly, had more of an energy. I walked onto a path called the Thomas Hariot Nature Trail. The air smelled woodsy and floral-sweet, almost like Jade’s mom’s favorite perfume. Patterns of sunlight danced on the piney path as I crunched along. The soothing sound of waves crashing on the shore, punctuated by songbirds, was the only noise. I stopped to read some of the placards telling me what the plants were: more loblolly pines, a type of persimmon the Thomas Hariot guy called “medlar.” Suddenly, I heard a rustling in the woods, to my left. I peered into the brush.

  “What is up, Nell?” Only one person could be botching slang like that.

  Ambrose hurried toward me, waving his hand. “Where are you coming from?” I asked. It didn’t even look like he was walking on an actual trail.

  “I was taking a stroll.”

  I gave him a funny look. “More like taking a hike. I hope you’re careful about ticks.”

  He stopped next to me, panting a little, although his face was sweat-free and not even a bit red. I don’t know how someone who works in an outdoor park and spends so much time in the sun can be that pale, but he was. His mom probably is a sunscreen freak too. But he kind of had that post-stomach-flu look—perhaps he’d gotten sick. “It’s good to see you again, Nell.”

  I blushed. “You too.” I cleared my throat. “Let’s head inside. I could use a drink. I should’ve brought the flask.” I winced, almost clamping my hand over my mouth. Why did I say that?! I still hadn’t figured out how to tell Ambrose that it was gone. Grasping for a quick way to change the subject, I remembered what my dad had told me about my Dare lineage. “Oh! I found out something cool. Apparently I’m distantly related to Virginia Dare’s family, because my ancestors were their cousins. My dad’s looking into it. Neat, huh?”

  “That is very neat!” He looked impressed, but he didn’t sound as surprised as I’d expected. “The world is tiny.”

  I frowned. “I think you mean ‘small world.’ ” It was like he’d never heard of the Disneyland ride.

  I wrestled with the visitor center’s heavy door. Ambrose slipped in behind me, so close he almost bumped into me as it quickly shut. What a gentleman. My mom would chide me for thinking that—she’d tell me that I can handle a door by myself, thankyouverymuch. Even so, it would’ve been nice of Ambrose to help me hold it open as I flailed. Weren’t Southern, and British, boys supposedly known for their chivalry and good manners?

  Inside, the visitor center had a darkened movie-screening room, a small exhibition room with ornate wood paneling, and a larger exhibition room. Glass cases full of artifacts filled the hushed space, with illustrations, maps, and educational panels mounted above them. Looking at shards of pottery, glass beads, and other items in the cases, I felt a guilty pang. How much would the clue we’d found help the researchers at Fort Raleigh? Assuming we get it back from Lila, Ambrose and I will definitely turn the flask over to the people here, I thought. When we know the truth.

  “Where do we even start?” I asked after gulping mouthfuls of water from the fountain.

  Ambrose scanned the lobby. “Let’s split up to look around.”

  “What exactly are we looking for?”

  But he had already flitted off to examine something in the room with all the carved wood panels. I walked to the center of the lobby, stopping in front of a big display. The label read: CARTOGRAPHY: A KEY TO THE MISSING COLONY? I leaned in to get a good look at a picture of an old map, titled “The Englishmen in Virginia.” I tried to find Roanoke among the shaded areas I took to be land. The labels didn’t make much sense to me: WEAPEMEOC, TRINETY HARBOR, PASQUENOKE. Next to it was another map: “The Modern Area.” I recognized the Albemarle Sound on that one.

  “Need some help interpreting?” I whirled around to see Lila’s dad walking past the gift shop. He slipped a pair of wire-rimmed glasses out of his front shirt pocket and set them on the bridge of his nose.

  “Hi, Mr. Midgett,” I said. “I’d love help, if you’re not busy.”

  “Not at all. It’s been quiet here today.” Luke stopped beside me and peered at the display. “Can you tell what these two maps have in common?”

  “Hmm . . .” I squinted back and forth at the two. “Both have something called ‘Weapemeoc’ marked.”

  “Excellent! That’s a village on the mainland, across the water from Roanoke Island. It’s where the Weapemeoc people lived.”

  “Okay.” I nodded my head. “Why’s it on both maps? Is it because . . .” I thought about the labels for each. “One shows what places were called in the sixteenth century, and one shows today?”

  Luke smiled. “You’re right! This map is made from John White’s drawings of the area in 1585. It’s remarkably accurate. The other shows the same area today. But it’s not just the names of places that have changed—the land has too. A lot of these inlets”—he pointed at breaks in the little islands sketched on the old map—“have disappeared. Roanoke Island itself is smaller by almost a quarter mile along the shoreline. Places that were safely on land at the time of the colonists are now underwater. That’s because of erosion. Entire islands that were south of Roanoke in White’s time are now gone.”

  “So the lost colony could actually be underwater?” Like the knee-deep spot where I stubbed my toe on the flask.

  He nodded. “It’s possible. That’s why in addition to searching for archaeological evidence on land, we search in the sound, too.”

  “How?” I could only picture archaeologists working in dirt and dust.

  “Same tools—just plastic, because that’s waterproof. Things that divers use—like scuba gear—help us access sites.”

  I wished Ambrose were around to hear this information. I scanned the lobby, but I didn’t see him anywhere. Looking back at the map, I thought about what the flask’s scratches said—that some of the colonists had left Roanoke. “Could the colonists have fled to the islands that are now underwater? Maybe that’s why we’ve never found clues they left behind.”

  “Perhaps. There are lots of theories.” He pointed to the tribe labels on the map. “We can use what we know about the history of Native people living
in this area to figure out what happened to the colonists. If they moved, they might have assimilated with tribes in other places, becoming part of those communities. There are stories of European explorers meeting Native people with typically European features, like gray-blue eyes or light hair. The research your mother is doing interests me—because the colonists and the local tribes had different methods of cultivating plants.”

  “Cool.” I thought about the old map. “If White made maps, then why didn’t he draw one showing where he left the colonists?”

  “The colonists faced a lot of threats. White wouldn’t have wanted some people—their enemies—to be able to find them. Here.” Luke motioned me over to a small map, locked a big glass case. He pulled a key chain out of his pocket and undid the lock, then removed the paper. He carefully set it on the glass in front of us.

  “Is it very old?” The paper looked crumbly and thin. The whole map was covered in little patches and almost worn through in places. The writing was so faded, it was hard to read.

  He nodded. “This is a map Sir Walter Raleigh actually used.” I assumed he didn’t mean his dog, but the other one.

  “Are you serious?” I breathed. “Don’t you need gloves to touch that?”

  He shook his head, laughing a little. “Honestly, those gloves are mostly for show. Using them on parchment this delicate might actually cause more harm, because it can make it difficult to handle the paper gently. When we use gloves, it’s partly to remind others not to touch.” He pointed to one of the patches stuck on the paper. “See that? For a long time, we thought that the patches were here simply to preserve the map, or correct errors. But”—he carefully tapped the square—“now we’ve discovered that they actually conceal portions of it. Perhaps because it was so important that the English keep their location secret from Spanish spies.”