“Did he?” Katherine asked. “How can we know which version of history really happened?”
Jonah waved his arm warningly at her. He was trying to look threatening, trying to keep her from slugging him again. But he’d forgotten that he was still clutching the paper that had blown against his face. Moving the paper back a little meant that his eyes could focus on it now.
It was a page torn from a book. The top of the page had the words NEW VIEWS OF THE NEW WORLD printed in old-fashioned type. Below that was a drawing of a girl in a deerskin dress and a white-haired man standing in the midst of a crowd of Native Americans. The old man was shaking hands with a dark-skinned boy who was wearing a loincloth.
Below the drawing was the caption: John White and Virginia Dare joining a native tribe, welcomed by One Who Survives Much. Drawn by Walks with Pride.
“This happened,” Jonah whispered.
Katherine stared at the paper.
“Then—the ripple,” she said. “It’s here.”
Jonah thought about that. He thought about how he’d landed and then the paper had come fluttering down onto his face.
“We got here first,” he said confidently. “That’s good, don’t you think?”
The Elucidator crackled to life again.
“Jonah, Katherine, I have to tell you what to do,” JB shouted.
Jonah was still looking at the drawing on the page before him. He saw the way Virginia Dare/Andrea held her grandfather’s arm, the peacefulness that shone from her face.
“Not if it means undoing 1600,” Jonah said. “I won’t do that to Andrea.”
Time travel was so confusing—making it hard to see what was right and what was wrong, who was a friend and who was an enemy, even which events followed which, and which led to something else. But this was one fact Jonah was sure of: He didn’t want to do anything to erase the joy on Andrea’s face in this picture.
“You don’t have to worry about that,” JB said grimly. “Believe me, nobody can undo anything about 1600 now.”
Katherine gasped.
“Then you’re all stuck there?” she asked. “You, Brendan, Antonio, Andrea—none of you can ever get back to the twenty-first century? None of you will ever see your families again, ever—”
“I didn’t say that,” JB said, his voice tense. “The year 1600 is sealed off now, all but carved in stone. But we’re living through it. We’re not in any imminent danger, and there are still some possible escape routes up ahead.”
“Then why can’t we just come back and get you?” Jonah asked. “Meet you at one of those escape routes, maybe. At the bottom of the exit ramp, or whatever you’d call it for time travel.”
“Because those escape routes will work only if you and Katherine fix things in 1611,” JB said. “Everything’s connected.”
“That kind of sounds like what Second told us,” Katherine whispered.
“You have to keep 1611 stable!” JB yelled, speaking quickly now, as if he was running out of time. “You’re our only hope! You’re time’s only hope! Or else—”
The Elucidator went dead again.
Jonah didn’t mind too much. He wasn’t quite ready to think about or else’s. He went back to staring at the drawing of Andrea, soaking in the peace and joy in her expression.
I did help her, he thought. And she helped me. It worked in both directions.
“I can see why some old people just want to think about their pasts,” Jonah muttered. “Where they know how things turned out.”
“We know some things about the future, too,” Katherine reminded him. “We know, no matter what, that we’re going to do everything we can to fix time and rescue our friends. Second was wrong—some things are always predictable.”
Second was wrong, Jonah thought. He was wrong about a lot of things.
It was dizzying to think about how much Second had manipulated them—had manipulated even JB. And though the projectionist had made Andrea happy, Jonah knew that Second had been too reckless, too dangerous, too much of a threat to time.
There would be consequences.
Jonah lowered the picture of Andrea and squinted out toward the world beyond. It was all still just a big gray blur, but he knew that everything would come into focus soon.
Maybe they hadn’t exactly outsmarted Second in 1600. But they’d held their own: Everyone was still safe for now. And 1611 wasn’t just another dangerous year.
It was also another chance.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
If you go to Roanoke Island in North Carolina right now, in the twenty-first century, you can get there by driving across Virginia Dare Memorial Bridge. And, when you arrive, you’ll be in Dare County. Go a little farther east, to the islands that make up the Outer Banks, and you can drive along Virginia Dare Trail. Go north, to Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia, and you can take a cruise on a ship called the Virginia Dare. Or, if you just want to stay home, you could bake a cake using Virginia Dare vanilla or listen to music by a band called Virginia Dare.