It was far too dark to see Chip’s face, not that Jonah’s eyes were working very well anyhow. But just from his voice Jonah could tell that Chip was grinning ear to ear.
“All those times my dad told me I was dumb and stupid and worthless and … and—I’m really the king of England? And France?” Chip laughed. “That’s great!”
Chip’s glee reminded Jonah of something. Someone crowing about being king … No. About wanting to be king. Simba in the Lion King movie, singing “I Just Can’t Wait to Be King.”
Great, Jonah thought. My mind’s working well enough that I can remember Disney movies. Now I’m as smart as the average three-year-old.
But he couldn’t remember everything about The Lion King. There was something wrong with Simba singing that song, some twist the little lion cub hadn’t grasped … something like not understanding that for him to be king, his father had to die.
“Uh, Chip …,” Jonah started to say, but he couldn’t get the rest of the thought out. Somebody in the movie killed Simba’s father, didn’t they? And tried to kill Simba, too?
What if it wasn’t such a great thing to be king?
Before Jonah could get his brain and mouth to work together to form any sort of warning for Chip, another voice spoke out in the darkness.
“So if he’s the king, who am I?”
By squinting, Jonah could just barely make out the shape of another boy, sitting against the stone wall. Alex, he realized. The other boy who’d been kidnapped from the fifteenth century. The other kid JB had sent back to the past.
“You’re his younger brother. Prince Richard,” JB said.
Alex seemed to be considering this.
“One of those ‘heir and a spare’ deals, huh?” he asked.
“You could say that,” JB said, sounding reluctant.
“So what happens to us?” Alex asked. “Happened, I mean—the first time around?”
“I can’t tell you that,” JB said. “For you it hasn’t happened yet.”
Katherine moaned again.
“Can you all just … stop talking?” she mumbled. “Hurts …”
With an effort that seemed practically superhuman, Jonah managed to prop himself up on his arms. They trembled horribly.
“Katherine?” he asked. “Are you all right?”
“No,” Katherine groaned. “I think I’m going to die.”
“Timesickness,” JB diagnosed, his voice slightly smug. “You don’t die from it, but like seasickness or airsickness, sometimes you want to.”
“Oh … my … gosh,” Katherine moaned. “Is this what it felt like all the time for you guys in the twenty-first century? Being out of place? In the wrong time period?”
Jonah thought about that. He didn’t know who he was supposed to be in history—the day he’d found out that he had another identity, there’d been a lot of fighting and screaming and scrambling desperately to get the upper hand. It hadn’t exactly been a good time for absorbing life-changing news and thinking through the ramifications and asking good follow-up questions. But if he really did belong in another time, did that mean practically his entire life had been, well … wrong?
“No,” he told Katherine emphatically, just as Chip whispered, “Oh, I see,” and Alex murmured, “It all makes sense now.”
“What?” Jonah demanded.
“Remember?” Chip said. “I told you. That day on the school bus. I told you my whole life I’d felt out of place, like I didn’t belong, like I belonged someplace else. Only, I guess it was some place and some time else. …”
“Do you feel really, really great right now?” Alex asked. “Better than you’ve ever felt in your entire life?”
“Oh, yeah,” Chip said. Even in the darkness Jonah could tell that Chip was nodding vigorously.
“Well, I don’t,” Katherine muttered. “I feel worse than ever before. This is worse than the time I had strep throat and Mom had to put me in an ice bath to get my temperature down. Worse than the stomach flu. Worse than—”
“Katherine, I can still tell you and Jonah how to come home,” JB spoke through the Elucidator, and even across the centuries and through the slightly tinny reception Jonah could hear the craftiness in JB’s voice. Reflexively Jonah clenched his hands, bringing numbed nerves back to life—oh, he was still holding on to the Taser and the Elucidator. The Elucidator just felt different now. Before, Jonah would have said it was smooth and sleek and stylish: a futuristic version of a BlackBerry or Treo or iPhone, maybe. Now he seemed to be holding something rough-hewn and scratchy.
So my sense of touch is still a little off, Jonah thought. So what?
“I’m fine,” Jonah assured JB. “I don’t need to go anywhere. But maybe Katherine—”
“I’m. Staying. Too.” It was impressive how, even lying helplessly on the floor, Katherine could make her voice sound so threatening.
“If timesickness is like seasickness, then I bet she’ll recover fast,” Chip said comfortingly. “No one stays seasick for long once they’re on land, right? And we’ve landed now. …” He made a noise that seemed to be half giggle, half snort, and a giddy note entered his voice. “Hey, Katherine, maybe once you’re feeling better, you’ll decide you like the fifteenth century and want to stay for good. Maybe you’ll want to be queen of England!”
Wait a minute—that’s my sister you’re talking about! Jonah wanted to say. But JB spoke first.
“There are actually two kinds of timesickness, and Katherine is undoubtedly suffering from both of them,” he said. “One is just from the act of traveling through time—which probably felt worse to Katherine, since it was her first trip.”