None of that seemed to bother Andrea.
“Don’t you think . . . it’s weird how . . . Andrea isn’t scared anymore?” Jonah muttered to Katherine. It was hard to simultaneously walk, talk, and keep an eye on Andrea, who was practically running now.
Katherine nodded, an action that almost knocked her over. She stopped for a moment so she could speak without falling.
“Don’t you think it’s weird how, well . . . JB knows where we are, right?” she muttered back. “So why hasn’t he dropped in a replacement Elucidator for us?” She peered over at Jonah. Her whole face was twisted with fear. “You don’t think us losing the Elucidator made this Damaged Time, do you?”
“Don’t say that,” Jonah snapped. “Don’t even think it.”
But the idea had wormed its way into Jonah’s head now too. No time travelers could get into or out of Damaged Time. If they’d damaged Virginia Dare’s time period, no matter how well they helped Andrea, they could still be stranded here for days.
Weeks.
Months.
Years.
Forever, Jonah thought. It could be for the rest of our lives.
He forced himself to think only about keeping up with Andrea.
He kept losing sight of her and having to plunge desperately forward just to get the briefest glimpse of her hair or her shirt. Then he’d lose sight of her again. He finally decided it was hopeless—there was no way he and Katherine could keep up.
Just then, very suddenly, Andrea stopped.
“Can’t she at least hide behind a tree until she sees what’s out there?” Katherine mumbled.
Jonah realized that Andrea had stopped right on the edge of a clearing. He thought about calling out to her, ordering her to hide, but it didn’t seem worth the risk. It would have been like yelling at a statue. She had frozen that completely.
Jonah crept forward, Katherine alongside him. They reached a huge tree right behind Andrea and, in silent agreement, they each peeked around opposite sides of the tree.
What’s Andrea’s problem? There’s nothing out there!
That was Jonah’s first thought. And then, because Andrea was still standing stock-still, her face a stunned mask, he looked again.
In the clearing were . . . ruins.
What Jonah had first taken for a few downed trees out in the center of the clearing were actually the remains of a tall wooden fence. The fence we saw in the scene when Virginia Dare was born? Jonah wondered. A shudder ran through his whole body. That scene had seemed so happy, so hopeful, and now it was clear that everything had been destroyed. Rusting, arched metal that might have been the remains of a suit of armor lay off to one side of the clearing, beside an overturned old-fashioned trunk, half-rotting in a trench. There were no houses anymore, no people. Vines were creeping over the last part of the fence that was still even slightly upright, as if they were on a mission to pull it down too. It was no wonder that Jonah had first mistaken the scene for more wilderness: Soon it would all be wilderness again.
“I don’t remember any of this,” Andrea murmured sadly.
Dare whined beside her, as if he was upset too.
“Andrea, you aren’t supposed to remember any of it,” Katherine said briskly, sounding more like herself again. Or maybe Jonah’s ears were just functioning better. “You won’t remember being Virginia Dare until you step into your tracer.”
“No, I mean . . . ,” Andrea let her voice trail off. “Maybe I just went the wrong way.”
She threw an anguished glance over her shoulder, as if she expected to find some other way through the woods, away from this devastated clearing. Jonah knew she would see nothing but more trees.
“Andrea . . . , I think this is the Roanoke Colony,” Jonah whispered. “Or what’s left of it.”
“Really?” Katherine whispered back. Now she was the one who seemed inexplicably excited. “Then . . .”
She gave one cautious look around before stepped out into the clearing. She peered at each tree ringing the clearing, paused for a second, then went over to the partially collapsed wooden fence. She seemed to be trying to lift the logs, to look at each one. Jonah was waiting for her to discover that that was impossible, when suddenly she let out a shriek.
“Katherine! Shh!” Jonah hissed, all his fears coming back about wild animals, hostile natives, or some other enemy.
“This is it! This is it!” Katherine answered, her voice screeching even louder. “Come look!”
Katherine was acting like she’d discovered the Seven Cities of Gold—wasn’t that one of the things the early explorers had been looking for? Jonah glanced around quickly and sneaked out to join his sister. Dare padded along beside him, and even Andrea crept forward after a few seconds.
“There!” Katherine exclaimed, pointing at the top log. “Don’t you see it?”
Jonah didn’t.
Impatiently, Katherine grabbed his hand and rubbed his fingers across the exposed side of the log.
“Oh, there’s something carved into the tree?” Jonah asked. “Letters?”
He could feel a crescent—a C, maybe? And then maybe an R . . . He tilted his head, so he could see the log from a better angle.
“It says, Croatoan,” Katherine said. “Croatoan!”
“So?” Jonah asked.
Katherine gave Jonah’s chest a shove.
“Didn’t you pay any attention in fifth-grade Social Studies?” Katherine asked. “Didn’t you learn anything?”
“I know that Virginia Dare was born in the Roanoke Colony,” Jonah said, feeling just as queasy as he always did when he took pop quizzes.
“And?” Katherine prompted.
“And then everyone disappeared?”
“And?”
This was getting annoying.
“Katherine, you had a better teacher than I did. I bet Mrs. Rorshas never even told us.”
Katherine rolled her eyes.
“She had to. This is, like, the best part of the whole story!”
“So, what is it?” Jonah challenged.