“Of course,” JB said. But he looked like he wanted to say something else.
Jonah stared hard at his friends, trying to discern any hint of an Einstein T-shirt showing through Alex’s tunic, any trace of a Nike swish on Chip’s black shoes. He couldn’t. He stared at their faces: Were they thinking fifteenth-century thoughts or twenty-first-century thoughts? It was impossible to tell.
Then he noticed something else.
“Is that hair on Chip’s lip?” Jonah asked. “Has he started growing a mustache just in the couple of days he’s been there?”
JB glanced down at the Elucidator, checking the date.
“That’s 1485 you’re watching,” he said. “Summertime again. Chip and Alex have been there two full years. Chip’s fourteen and a half now—closing in on fifteen.”
Jonah fingered his own lip. Back home sometimes he’d lock the bathroom door and stand there staring into the mirror, searching for his first signs of facial hair. If he stood in just the right light, at just the right angle, it was possible to see at least six faint hairs on his upper lip. He would have said Chip’s crop of mustache hair was about the same.
This new, 1485-era Chip had enough hair on his lip that it showed up at any angle, in both sunlight and shadow.
“Chip’s the same age as me,” Jonah argued. “Thirteen.”
“If you pull Chip away from the tracer, he’ll be thirteen again,” JB corrected. “But right now …”
Chip lifted his sword triumphantly in the air, and the sleeve of his tunic slid back on his arm, revealing well-defined biceps. His hair streamed back in the breeze—somehow the shoulder-length blond curls didn’t look girly at all anymore.
“Wow,” Katherine whispered. “He looks like he could be in high school. On the football team. Varsity.”
On the ground Alex started to sit up. In a flash Chip had the wooden sword back down, aimed at his brother’s throat.
They aren’t playing after all, Jonah realized, chills traveling down his spine. They’re practicing.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“You have a very narrow window of opportunity,” JB said.
“Really?” Katherine said sarcastically. “You never mentioned that before.”
They were finally ready to go rescue Chip and Alex. JB had been through their instructions a million times, repeating again and again how important it was that Jonah and Katherine separate the boys from their tracers at exactly the right moment. Too soon and they’d mess up time.
Too late and Chip and Alex could die.
It was that possibility that made Jonah’s stomach churn, his skin prickle, his mustacheless face break out in a cold sweat.
I’m a thirteen-year-old kid, he thought. Katherine’s not quite twelve. Why would anyone trust us with life-or-death decisions?
He knew the answer to that. He knew, because JB had told them, that the time experts had run computer projections checking out every possible scenario. The only way Chip and Alex could survive the fifteenth century was if Jonah and Katherine saved them.
It didn’t make Jonah feel any better to know that he and his sister were Chip and Alex’s only hope.
“Well, let’s go, then,” Jonah said gruffly.
“Wait! Just make sure that …” JB broke off. A rueful grin spread over his face. “Oh, never mind. What I was about to say—you already know that, too. Just … be careful, all right?”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Katherine said, rolling her eyes.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” JB asked, hesitating, with his fingers poised on the Elucidator.
Jonah nodded so vigorously that his armor rattled.
“Send us already!” Katherine demanded. “Now!”
Everything vanished from before Jonah’s eyes.
Traveling back into the fifteenth century was not quite so distressing this time. There was the nothingness again—Yeah, yeah, seen that before—and then the distant lights far below, zooming closer. Once again Jonah felt as though his whole body was being tugged apart during his reentry into time. But maybe the armor helped; maybe he was protected because he’d been in the fifteenth century before. He didn’t feel quite so miserable and disoriented when he landed.
Darkness? Check.
Spinning head? Not really.
Churning stomach? Nope. If anything, it was more like his stomach had just awakened and was crying out, FEED ME!
He’d forgotten how hungry he’d been when he left 1483. His stomach almost felt like he’d lived through an entire two years without food.
“Katherine?” Jonah whispered. “How’s your timesickness?”
“It’s …” She hesitated. “Not too bad. Not bad at all.” She sounded surprised.
“Good,” Jonah whispered back. “I’m going to go look for some food.”
He scrambled up, swaying only slightly.
“Jonah!” Katherine whispered. “Are you crazy?”
Jonah shrugged, which wasn’t the easiest thing to do while wearing armor and dealing with even a mild case of timesickness.
“The battle’s not until dawn, remember?” Jonah asked.
JB had sent them back early so they’d have some time to adjust, in case their timesickness was extreme. Also, the battle they were about to witness had always been something of a historical mystery, so many, many time travelers had watched it over the years. That made travel in and out during the battle difficult—there was always the danger of running into someone from another time, someone equally out of place.
“JB said to hide,” Katherine reminded him. “That’s the safest thing to do.”