He looked over at Andrea, wanting to compare. But Andrea had turned her face to the side.
Meanwhile, the tracers were still conferring over the picture. Both tracer boys were shaking their heads, shrugging apologetically. Disappointment clouded the face of John White’s tracer.
It was so clear what each of the tracers had been saying. John White had been asking if the tracer boys had ever seen his daughter and granddaughter, if they knew where his family was.
The tracer boys had said no.
John White’s tracer swallowed hard, struggling to regain his composure. He weakly lifted his arm and swiped it through the air, telling the boys to turn the page again.
The next picture—which Jonah turned to in the real version of the tablet as well—was of an Indian. He stood proudly, posing with his chin held high. He was wearing nothing but a loincloth, unless you counted the tattoos on his chests and the feathers in his hair. The word at the bottom of this page was Manteo.
“Manteo was the Indian who got along with the English the best,” Andrea said. “Do you think these boys know him? That might be a clue!”
But the tracer boys were already shaking their heads. John White’s tracer grimaced and lowered his head into his hands.
“No, no—don’t give up!” Andrea exploded. “I’m here! Look at me!” She waved her hands in front of the tracer’s face, but of course he looked right through her. She dived through the tracer and grabbed the real man by the shoulders.
“Why can’t you see me?” she shouted. “Why can’t you hear me? Why don’t you know I’m here?”
“Andrea,” Katherine said softly. “I don’t think—”
But Andrea had stopped yelling. A horrified expression was spreading over her face.
“Look at him,” she mumbles. “Without his tracer he looks . . . he looks . . .”
Awful was the word that jumped into Jonah’s mind. Without his tracer, John White was ghostly pale, but with beads of sweat trickling down into his hair. His cheeks were sunken, the hollows almost an ashy gray.
“He looks like he’s going to die,” Andrea whispered. “Quick! Help me put him back with his tracer!”
But just as she started to tug on his shoulder—before Jonah had a chance to even think whether that was the right thing to do—John White’s tracer lay back down, rejoining the real man completely, even down to the closed eyes. Was the tracer giving up?
No. He was still struggling to speak, even as he seemed to be slipping toward unconsciousness.
“Please,” John White said, the tracer and the man talking as one now that they were back together, thinking alike. “Please take me to Croatoan then. Canst thou take me to Croatoan Island?”
Jonah glanced up just in time to see the tracer boys nodding their heads yes.
“That’s it!” Andrea exclaimed. A smile spread across her face, instantly hiding the anguish. “That’s how everything is supposed to work! I understand now! We’ll all go to Croatoan, and that’s where we’ll find my tracer! It makes sense, if that’s where the Roanoke colonists went. And when I’m with my tracer, my grandfather will be able to see me. . . . He’ll be whole again; there won’t be anything throwing him off. . . .”
She bent down and hugged her grandfather’s shoulders. The real version of the man flinched and she sat back.
“Andrea, remember, your tracer will be a three-year-old,” Jonah cautioned. “When you join with your tracer, you’ll have to go back to being a preschooler again—not that they probably had preschool in this time period.”
Andrea’s smile trembled slightly, but she replied evenly, “I don’t care. It’d be worth it, being a little kid again, if that’s how things are supposed to work for my grandfather to see me.”
How things are supposed to work, Jonah thought, a little dizzily. It wasn’t just the lack of food that was making his head spin. Was this what JB would want for them? Was this the way to fix time and rescue Andrea? Or was this another setup?
“What if this is just part of Second’s plot for us?” he asked. “You said in original time, John White never made it to Croatoan Island. He never saw you or anyone else from his family again!”
“But they’re taking him!” Andrea said, pointing. Already, one of the tracer boys was bending down, as if preparing to carry John White away. “The historical accounts that I read were wrong about other things—they must be wrong about this, too!”
“Or Second is tampering with time again,” Jonah said darkly. “Tricking us . . .”
“How could he?” Katherine said. “Andrea’s right—if the tracers are taking John White to Croatoan, that’s how original time went. Tracers are always right—er—accurate, I mean. They have to show how time really went.”
Jonah squinted at the girls.
“How did John White know to ask to go to Croatoan?” Jonah asked. “He hasn’t even been to his old colony yet, to see the word carved in wood.”
“Maybe he was actually leaving Roanoke Island when his rowboat broke up, and we rescued him?” Katherine suggested. “Maybe he was here two days ago, went back to his ship, and then came to Roanoke again only because the ship was wrecked?”
“None of that’s what history says,” Jonah said stubbornly.
“But this is what time says is supposed to happen,” Katherine said, gesturing toward the tracers.
“You want to make time go right, don’t you?” Andrea asked softly. “Don’t you think we should go to Croatoan with the tracers?” She was looking at Jonah, not Katherine. And, for that matter, Katherine was looking at Jonah. Both of them were waiting to see what he had to say. He thought about making a dumb joke: Hey, America isn’t a democracy yet. You don’t have to wait for my vote! But they were all in this together. Andrea and Katherine did need to hear Jonah’s vote.