How could he be thinking about home ec at a time like this?
Er, no, Alex would know about tapestry because he can think with his fifteenth-century brain. So Alex ought to be safe. Oh, please, let us all be safe. …
On the other side of the room Jonah heard a door slam—slamming open, not shut, he guessed, because suddenly the whole room was flooded with torchlight.
Actually, “flooded” was an overstatement, because Jonah looked down instantly, at the first hint of light, and he still couldn’t tell if he was looking down at his own shoes or if he might be able to see straight to the floor—if he and his shoes were invisible. But the contrast between the total darkness and any glow at all made Jonah’s heart pound with fear.
They’re going to be able to hear me, even if they can’t see me! Jonah thought in a panic.
He felt just like he always did in language arts, his hardest class in school, when Mrs. Bodette started passing out tests. He’d get that sinking feeling that he should have studied more, should have been better prepared, but now he was out of time, there was nothing he could do. … If only we’d studied all the options on the Elucidator before we started messing around with the tracers, before the murderers showed up … if only we’d scoped out the truly foolproof hiding places … if only we’d had time to make sure that these tapestries went all the way down to the floor, that they could hide us completely …
Well, he wasn’t going to risk looking down now. If the men searching for the king and prince could see his sneakers peeking out below the tapestry, he’d find that out soon enough.
The glow through the thick tapestry was getting brighter, which meant that the torches were getting closer. He could hear the searching men muttering to one another: “Seek ye under the bed. …” “Aye, and here’s another door. …” The distorted words were even harder to understand through the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears. This was so much worse than waiting for Mrs. Bodette to slide two or three stapled sheets of paper onto his desk. At least at school he was always able to see Mrs. Bodette coming toward him, instead of just imagining, with every second that passed, that he was only an instant away from staring into the hairy face of some appallingly cruel medieval soldier. Though come to think of it, Mrs. Bodette herself could probably pass for some appallingly cruel medieval soldier. …
Oh, no! That thought was going to make him giggle!
Panicked all over again, Jonah bit down hard, trapping the insides of his cheeks between his teeth. The pain barely stopped a laugh.
Think about something that isn’t funny! he commanded himself. Oh, yeah. Impending death. Ruining history for all time. Being burned at the stake for wearing weird clothing …
At that exact moment the tapestry jerked back from in front of his face. The violent motion sent it crashing toward the floor. Torchlight flickered directly into his eyes, from a torch right before him.
Jonah and the others were completely exposed.
TEN
Nightmarishly, the torch kept coming toward Jonah, the flames leaping mere inches from his face.
These men aren’t even going to wait to burn me at the stake, Jonah thought, terrified. They’re going to set me on fire now!
He tried to peer past the flame, to the man holding the torch. Did the man have even a glimmer of possible compassion in his eyes? Would Jonah have any chance to plead his case? Jonah couldn’t tell. He could see nothing but the torch blazing toward him.
Reflexively, he turned his head to the side, avoiding the fire. He’d turned toward Katherine, but his eyes were too flame-dazzled to see her.
No. He couldn’t see her because she wasn’t there.
Thanks a lot! She went and hid somewhere else, somewhere safe—and left me to deal with Mr. Pyromaniac 1483!
Something tugged on his hand, pulling him down. That didn’t seem like such a bad idea—Jonah didn’t think there were any torches down near the floor. At the last moment before the flames touched his skin, he slid down into a crouch.
Katherine was down there too.
Or—she was sort of down there.
In the flickering light of the torches she looked as ghostly and insubstantial and nearly see-through as the tracer boys had. Actually, the only difference between her wispy frame and the way the tracer boys had looked was that she didn’t glow. So Jonah could clearly see the stone wall behind her, the dark shadows in the corner. … He could feel her clutching his hand—she’d been the one who pulled him down toward the floor. But he still wasn’t entirely sure that she was there.
Jonah squinted, trying to make out the lines of Katherine’s right arm and hand, trying to tell where her hand ended and his hand and arm began.
His own arm and hand were every bit as hard to see.
Jonah opened his mouth to ask, “What happened? What’s going on?” Or maybe, “Do we look like this because Alex pressed INVISIBILITY? Did it have the word ‘almost’ in front of it, and we didn’t see it because we were in such a hurry? What good does it do to be almost invisible? This way, we can’t even pretend to be ordinary, normal, innocent fifteenth-century kids. …”
Katherine clapped her almost-invisible-but-still-quite-strong hand over his mouth. She mouthed the words, “I don’t think they can see us!”
Jonah shook off Katherine’s hand and tilted his head back to look up. It was true that the man holding the torch had not followed Jonah’s motion—he hadn’t lowered his torch toward the floor when Jonah jerked his body down. The man was only swinging his torch back and forth along the wall, scanning every crevice and corner.
Okay, I guess that makes sense, Jonah thought. People who live in this time period can’t see the tracers, and we can. So maybe time-traveler invisibility works the same way. …
Just then, as Jonah was peering up, a charred bit of wood broke off from the torch and plummeted down.