Torn

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  But, what do you know? Looks like that saying actually does work when you’ve traveled through time and people are talking to you about stuff you’ve got no clue about, Jonah thought.

  Because Hudson was backing away and murmuring, “Of course. Of course. Sometimes you show wisdom beyond your years, my son. We’ll talk later. After you’re out of the stocks.”

  “Um, you couldn’t let me out early, could you?” Jonah asked. “Like, give me time off for good behavior? Or—for showing wisdom?”

  Hudson looked around, as if suddenly remembering the sailor with the frayed rope, the other sailors clustered around the ship, everyone who could have heard what Jonah said, even if they’d heard none of the whispers and murmurings.

  The sailor with the rope resorted to lopping off the end with an axe. The sound of the axe hitting made Jonah jump.

  “Of course I can’t let you out early,” Hudson said coldly. “I run a tight ship. You will stay in the stocks until sundown tomorrow—not a minute more, not a minute less.”

  And there’s another thing that’s different than it seems, Jonah thought. Henry Hudson doesn’t treat his son the same in private as he does when other people are listening.

  But what did that have to do with the map? And what in the world had the real John Hudson “volunteered” for?

  Hours passed. A crew member Jonah hadn’t noticed before brought out a crust of hard bread and a flask of rancid water. Jonah discovered that if he thought about something else—the arrangement of desks in his math class back home, say, or the way Andrea had said goodbye the last time he saw her—he could choke down the food and swallow the water without gagging.

  Shortly before dusk Katherine came up on deck and hovered nearby. Jonah waved her over and mouthed the words, I have to tell you something! But she shook her head and pointed at all the sailors standing nearby.

  Later, she mouthed back. She said something else—maybe when they’re gone? And then she launched into a long, silent explanation that Jonah couldn’t make heads or tails of.

  If we ever get out of 1611, Jonah thought, I am definitely learning how to read lips before I ever travel through time again!

  Katherine disappeared back down the stairs.

  Jonah kicked his feet against the wooden deck.

  “Tsk, tsk, what a show of bad temper,” Prickett said, lurking nearby. “Is your punishment wearing on you?”

  Jonah wished he’d looked around a little more before he’d started kicking.

  “Oh, no,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I’m just stretching my legs.” That didn’t seem like enough when Prickett was sneering so obnoxiously, so Jonah added, “Really, if you think about it, you rewarded me, putting me here. I’m getting out of two days of work.”

  Prickett fixed him with a level stare.

  “Indeed,” he said. “I will take that into account the next time I recommend your father punish you.”

  He turned and followed Katherine down the steps.

  That was the awful thing about being in the stocks—people could just walk away, even when you weren’t done talking to them.

  Jonah resisted the urge to kick the deck again.

  The sailors coiled up their ropes, tied down the sails, and retreated belowdecks.

  Katherine didn’t come back.

  The sun vanished over the horizon, and everything around Jonah grew darker and darker and darker.

  Streetlights, Jonah thought, listing things he missed about the twenty-first century. Flashlights. Even tiny glowing cell phone screens …

  The Boy Scout camp he’d gone to back home was supposedly out in the middle of nowhere, but even there he and his friends had been able to see the glow of the nearest suburb on the horizon, every night.

  The darkness that would descend on this ship tonight would be complete.

  Jonah heard footsteps and saw a candle advancing toward him. It was amazing how much better the sight of that candle made him feel.

  “Katherine?” he whispered eagerly into the darkness. He knew he should tell her to blow out the candle, but … maybe another minute or two of it would be all right?

  “Katherine?” a deep voice repeated. “Is that the name of the girl in that picture you dream about?”

  The candle drew nearer, and Jonah saw that Staffe was the one holding it.

  “No, no,” Jonah muttered, embarrassed. How was he going to explain this one? “She’s … just someone else I was thinking about. Remembering.”

  “Another girlfriend?” Staffe teased.

  “No! My—” Jonah started to say “sister,” but then he remembered that Staffe had been on the same ship with John and Henry Hudson for more than a year. He’d know if the real John Hudson had a sister named Katherine or not. And odds were he didn’t.

  “Just a relative,” Jonah finished weakly.

  Jonah couldn’t tell if Staffe believed him or not. The man’s expression grew thoughtful.

  “I see,” he murmured. “Thoughts do turn to faraway family on dangerous nights like this one. But—” He held the candle near Jonah’s face, and seemed to be looking at him intently. “You weren’t thinking you saw this relative on the ship, were you? Thinking you see people and things that aren’t really there?”

  “Of course not,” Jonah said indignantly. “I know what’s real and what isn’t.”

  Note to self, Jonah thought. Don’t say anything about how my sister’s invisible, and she and I traveled through time to get here, and we’d be okay if we could just get through to someone who’s stuck in 1600, and …

  “Good,” Staffe said, seeming to relax a bit. “Too many people on this ship are having trouble not knowing what’s real. Did you hear Wydowse is down below, on the verge of death, and talking half out of his mind?”

  He shook his head sorrowfully. Jonah tried to remember which sailor was Wydowse—oh, yeah, the one from the shallop, with the compass.

  The one who’d pointed out that the Discovery could not possibly have come back for them from the southwest, when it had sailed away from them toward the northeast.

  “But I did not come out here just to bring you bad news,” Staffe said. “Look.”

  He pulled a book out of his coat and held it out to Jonah. By squinting, Jonah could just barely make out the title in the dim candlelight: New Views of the New World.

  That’s what it said at the top of the picture of Andrea! Jonah thought excitedly.

  “Now you stole one of my father’s books?” Jonah asked incredulously. “After yelling at me about taking just one page? And throwing my paper into the water?”

  He was not going to forgive Staffe for that.

  “I am no thief,” Staffe said sternly. “I got your father’s permission to borrow this book, to look at the picture of the natives’ kayaks. I suggested that we might want to try building one ourselves, for use in fishing.”

  Jonah didn’t care about kayaks right now.

  “I just didn’t tell your father I would also be showing the book to you,” Staffe said.

  Staffe sounded so pleased with himself it annoyed Jonah. Jonah had been trapped in the stocks for most of the day. His knees hurt, his back ached—and now that he thought about it, his stomach ached, too, probably because of the moldy bread and the rancid water. His mind was full of maps that he had supposedly found and rivers that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere … and friends who were counting on him, that he was going to let down, because he didn’t understand anything that was going on.

  “Why would you think I care?” Jonah asked sulkily. “Why would I care about that book when my favorite page is missing?”

  “Because,” Staffe said, his face glowing in the candlelight, “there’s another picture of that girl in here.”

  “Let me see!” Jonah said, reaching for the book.

  He thought Staffe was probably mistaken—how closely had Staffe looked at the picture of Andrea, anyway, before he threw it overboard? But if there was even a chance, Jonah had to lo
ok.

  Staffe moved the book out of Jonah’s reach.

  “Careful,” he said. “You haven’t exactly proved trustworthy with books. You hold the candle. I’ll hold the book.”

  Jonah gritted his teeth and took the candle in his hand as Staffe turned pages.

  “I think it was here—nay, a few pages on,” he murmured. “Yes, this is it.”

  He held the book up before Jonah’s eyes. The candle illuminated only half the page, so Jonah saw the caption under the picture before he saw the picture itself.

  The Death of John White, the caption said.

  Jonah gasped.

  “It’s not her?” Staffe asked sadly.

  “No, no, I think it is—let me see,” Jonah cried, grabbing the book from Staffe’s hand.

  He tilted the book and the candle, so most of the light landed on the picture.

  It did indeed show Andrea, bent over an elderly, white-haired man. Both of them had their eyes closed, but somehow the artist who’d drawn the picture—was it one of their friends? Brendan? Antonio?—had managed to make it clear that Andrea’s eyes were closed in sorrow, while the man had abandoned consciousness altogether. The tips of Andrea’s braids brushed against his collar, and she seemed to be kissing his forehead.

  Kissing him good-bye.

  “Careful—the dripping wax,” Staffe said.

  Jonah tilted the book and the candle the other way around, so the wax rolled harmlessly down to the wooden deck.

  “You didn’t tell me her grandfather died,” Jonah said in a choked voice.

  “Are you crying?” Staffe asked.

  Jonah didn’t answer.

  “Do you know this girl and her grandfather?” Staffe asked, sounding even more puzzled. “Did you not know of his death before we sailed? Your father has had this book on his shelf the entire journey. Did he not tell you of this man’s passing?”

  Jonah sniffed.

  “It’s complicated,” he said.

  John White—Andrea’s grandfather in original time—had been the reason Andrea had wanted to stay in 1600 as Virginia Dare. He’d been the reason Second had been able to use Andrea to manipulate time, the reason Second could change time.

  And after all that, John White had just died?

  “When?” Jonah asked. He moved the candle to illuminate the text below the picture again, so if there was a date, he’d see it.

  The type below the caption was tiny and blurry, and said nothing about John White’s death.

  John White, governor of the ill-fated Roanoke Colony, reported that rumors of the lost John Cabot map were rampant among sea captains sailing the North American coast. But the natives he encountered in Virginia knew nothing of it, and nothing of the Northwest Passage.

  A shiver flowed through Jonah’s body that had nothing to do with the cold air blowing across the deck.

  “A map!” he whispered. “The Northwest Passage! Then it’s all connected? But how? And—who’s John Cabot?”

  “‘John Cabot.’ “Staffe repeated the name thoughtfully. “Seems I have heard your father speak that name—have you not?” He pitched his voice a bit lower, and elongated his vowels a bit more, imitating Henry Hudson. “‘John Cabot accomplished nothing. ’Tis hard to believe he sailed to any of the places he claimed to have seen. But I—I shall bring back proof! People will know and remember me!’”

  Jonah laughed.

  “Sounds just like him!” Jonah said. “You’re really good at that!”

  A look of fear dropped across Staffe’s face like a mask.

  “I—I’m sorry,” he stuttered. “I do not mean to mock the captain. I pray you, tell no one!”

  “Hey, I’m in the stocks,” Jonah said. “Who’s going to believe anything I say?”

  This didn’t seem to comfort Staffe. He snatched the candle back from Jonah and held it out in a circle around them, to see if anyone was nearby.

  “Did you just hear something?” Staffe asked.

  Wind, Jonah wanted to say. The ropes thumping against the masts. The current hitting against the ship. The same sounds I’ve been hearing all day.

  But he knew what Staffe was really asking.

  “Relax,” Jonah said. “Everyone’s either belowdecks or holed up in the captain’s cabin. Nobody could have heard y—”

  He swallowed the last word, because Staffe’s candle illuminated a face right behind him—a face that the light passed through, a face that was almost completely transparent, a face that Staffe didn’t see at all.

  It was Katherine.

  You can’t sneak up on people like that! Jonah wanted to yell at her. I almost jumped out of my skin, and now how am I supposed to explain my reaction to Staffe?

  “What?” Staffe said, in a panicked tone. He swung the candle more widely, even though that made the flame flicker and almost sputter out.

  “Nothing,” Jonah said. “I just saw a shadow that tricked my eyes for a moment.” He tried to shrug, but that was pretty much impossible with his neck trapped in the stocks.

  He glared at the spot where he’d seen Katherine’s face, even though that whole area was suffused in darkness now, since Staffe had moved the candle.

  Katherine tapped Jonah on the shoulder. She stepped into the new area dimly illuminated by the candle’s glow, pointed to Staffe, and made a shoving motion. Then she pointed to her own mouth, pantomimed talking, and then pointed to Jonah.

  Back in 1600, Katherine had gotten very annoyed with Jonah once because he didn’t instantly understand her improvised sign language. But Jonah was sure that he understood her perfectly this time. She was saying, Get rid of Staffe! I have to talk to you! Now!

  “Um, could I maybe talk to you about all of this later?” Jonah asked Staffe. “It was really nice of you to show me the book, and I want to look at it again, but—”

  “Do you know how hard it was to sneak away?” Staffe asked incredulously. “I had to stay awake until everyone around me was soundly asleep. I—”

  “I know!” Jonah interrupted. “I just don’t want you to get into trouble because of me! If you get caught out here, and then you’re punished because of me—I’d feel terrible.”

  Staffe stared at Jonah. Jonah decided he hated candlelight after all. It provided just enough illumination that you thought you could see, but you could never see enough, no matter how much you strained your eyes. Staffe’s face was still mostly in darkness, his scars transformed into deep shadows. Jonah couldn’t even begin to tell what the man was thinking.

  “I see,” Staffe finally said. “How thoughtful of you.”

  He doesn’t believe me, Jonah thought. He can tell I’ve got ulterior motives. Now he won’t trust me ever again.

  “Thank you for showing me the book,” Jonah said.

  Staffe shrugged. He took the book back and walked away.

  Jonah turned to Katherine as soon as the man was gone.

  “This had better be important,” Jonah hissed at her.

  “It is!” she whispered back, urgently. “Something really awful just happened!”

  “Well, what is it?” Jonah asked impatiently.

  She put out her hand, bracing herself against the frame of the stocks. Holding on, to counter the rocking of the waves. Or—Jonah looked at her a bit closer—to counter her trembling legs, her shaking hands.

  “I started paying attention because I found out who left that letter in the crow’s nest,” she said. “It was Wydowse. You know, the really old guy? I saw him writing another message.”

  “That doesn’t sound so awful,” Jonah said, because she was really starting to freak him out. “Unless—what did the message say?”

  “I haven’t read it yet,” Katherine said. “Because, because then—” She started gasping for breath, panic and fear battling in her expression.

  “Because what?” Jonah asked. “What happened then?”

  Katherine took in a huge, desperate breath.

  “Prickett killed Wydowse,” she said.

 
“Killed?” Jonah gasped. “He killed him? Are you sure?”

  Automatically he glanced toward the stairs, because if a murder had just occurred belowdecks, surely there’d be men running up to notify the captain. Surely there’d be sailors screaming, Put that gun down! or Put that sword down! or No! Don’t kill me, too!

  The stairs were silent and dark and, as far as Jonah could tell in the little bit of light that remained, completely empty. The only sound Jonah could hear from below was the thin edge of a snore.

  “Why isn’t anyone screaming?” Jonah asked.

  Katherine’s face twisted in anguish.

  “Nobody knows he’s dead yet, except me. And Prickett.” She pressed her hands over her mouth, then let them slip down. “Oh, Jonah, I should have stopped him, shouldn’t I? But I couldn’t—I didn’t know what was going on until it was over.”

  “Start at the beginning,” Jonah said, which was what Mom always said to Katherine whenever Katherine came home from school in hysterics over some friend being mean to some other friend, or Katherine not getting invited to the biggest party of the year, or something like that. And then Katherine would talk endlessly.

  Jonah thought murder was actually something worth saying “Start at the beginning” about.

  “I looked all over for more of those notes like we found in the crow’s nest,” Katherine said. “There were some hidden in a writing desk down below, but they were just about things that happened weeks ago—some guy named Juet being demoted, some other guy named Bylot being promoted above him, the captain making everyone mad.”

  “Juet—wasn’t that one of the people Prickett said he put out on an ice floe? One of the mutineers?” Jonah asked.

  Katherine shrugged.

  “I guess,” she said, sounding hopeless. “How many people do you think Prickett killed today?”

  Jonah shook his head. “Don’t think about it that way,” he said. “Go on.”

  “So then, while I was standing there, Wydowse hobbled over to the writing desk and sat down. And his handwriting was exactly the same as the writing on the letters in the crow’s nest,” Katherine said.