Jonah realized that the whole time Antonio and Brendan had been with their tracers, he really hadn’t heard them say much back and forth with John White.
“But back on Roanoke, all the tracers seemed to be talking to each other,” Jonah said. “Making sense. When John White asked the tracer boys to get his treasure chest . . . When he asked to come to Croatoan . . .”
Jonah remembered the slow, deliberate way the tracer boys had nodded. Had they said something before or after that, trying to explain? Jonah hadn’t really been paying attention, because he and Katherine and Andrea had gotten so excited about going to Croatoan Island themselves.
“Everything John White said, he said in both Algonquian and English,” Brendan explained.
“Oh! That’s why I could understand!” Andrea said, as if this was something she’d been wondering about.
“Even though his Algonquian’s like baby talk, our tracers can follow some of it,” Antonio said. “But no matter how much they tried to use easy words, he couldn’t understand much of what they said. So . . . they thought they’d just have to show him.”
Jonah was kind of hoping they’d just keep talking about translations or some other boring, useless topics. But Brendan and Antonio’s tracers had stopped staring silently at the skeletons on Croatoan Island. The two tracer boys set their jaws and clenched their teeth—tiny, almost imperceptible signs that they were bracing themselves for an unpleasant task—and got into position to paddle toward the Croatoan shore.
Brendan and Antonio themselves didn’t move.
“We don’t have to stay with our tracers for this,” Brendan said softly. “They’re not planning to be on Croatoan long. We can just stay in the canoe and wait for them.”
Everyone turned to Andrea, as if they all silently agreed that she deserved to make this decision.
“No, no,” she said in a strangled voice. “We should . . . I should see this. The rest of you can wait with the canoe, but I have to go. . . .”
Without another word, Antonio spun around. With a few deft movements, he’d caught up with his tracer. In the back of the canoe, Jonah could hear Brendan’s paddle dipping quietly into the water.
They reached the shore too quickly, Antonio and Brendan tying the canoe to a tree too efficiently.
I’m not ready to see this, Jonah thought.
“John White wouldn’t be able to tell any difference between Croatoan skeletons and English skeletons, would he?” Andrea asked faintly.
“I don’t . . . think so,” Katherine said, with none of her usual confidence.
“I just wouldn’t want him to look at the skeletons and be able to know, This was my daughter, this was my son-in-law, this was . . . ,” Andrea’s voice shook, but she made herself finish, “. . . this was my granddaughter.”
“Andrea, your skeleton won’t be here,” Jonah said. “Remember? You feel good in this time period, so you’re still alive; Virginia Dare is still alive. Your tracer’s still out there somewhere.”
It was hard thinking ahead, past this island of death. But they were still going to have to look for Andrea’s tracer . . . somewhere.
Even if they were out of clues.
Andrea winced.
“I’m not . . . exactly . . . feeling so good right now,” she said, and made a brave attempt at a smile.
Andrea stepped out of the canoe right behind Brendan and Antonio. Dare jumped out beside her and rubbed against her leg, whimpering, as if he understood that she was facing something awful.
Meanwhile, Antonio bent over and started to pick up John White. Then he stepped back, so it was only his tracer picking up the tracer of John White.
“We’ll leave the real man safe and asleep in the canoe,” he mumbled, and Jonah felt a little guilty for having thought that Antonio was nothing but a jerk.
Antonio rejoined his tracer as soon as the tracer straightened up. Jonah and Katherine climbed out of the canoe too.
“Really, you don’t all have to see this,” Andrea said. “It could just be me and the tracers.”
“We’re all in this together,” Katherine said, and for once Jonah agreed with his sister wholeheartedly. He even forgot to be annoyed that he hadn’t thought to say that himself.
Antonio carried John White’s tracer very gingerly past the animal bones littering the shoreline. The others all stayed close by, picking their way around the bones. Antonio stepped so carefully—and gracefully—that John White’s tracer stayed asleep, snoring gently. No, Jonah corrected himself. Antonio can’t affect the tracer. Antonio couldn’t wake him up if he tried! But Antonio was moving completely in concert with his own tracer, so it looked like the boy really was interacting with the old man’s tracer. Once they reached the row of collapsing huts, Antonio crouched down with the tracer man, seeming to shake him awake and place him in a seated position, facing away from the bones on the shore.
“He’s being so kind,” Andrea marveled. “He’s trying to keep John White from seeing the worst of it!”
No, Jonah wanted to correct Andrea, too. It’s Antonio’s tracer being kind. But right now Antonio and his tracer were one, so it was impossible to think of them separately.
And then Jonah forgot everything else, watching the drama before him. Brendan, also completely joined with his tracer, crouched on the other side of John White’s tracer.
“This Croatoan Island,” Brendan said softly, speaking in his tracer’s voice. Jonah could tell how hard he was trying to speak slowly and simply for the sake of John White’s limited Algonquian skills. “Understand? Everyone gone. Maybe all dead. Maybe just left.”
“Dead?” John White’s tracer repeated numbly. His expression was so stark that, for once, Jonah thought he could read lips accurately. “Dead means . . .”