Risked

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  But somehow he couldn’t even think about food right now.

  “Not hungry,” he mumbled.

  Katherine nodded.

  “Got it,” she said. “Neither am I.”

  “Sometimes it’s better not to eat before a battle,” Chip agreed.

  He’s thinking of what lies ahead as a battle? Jonah wondered.

  That made Jonah feel even worse.

  The entire Romanov family began moving back into the living room. Jonah, Chip, and Katherine followed Anastasia/Daniella and Alexei/Gavin and, in hasty whispers, tried to fill them in as much as they could on the exact details of the plan. Chip had figured out which gate the whole group could walk through once they were invisible; he’d also scouted out an empty shed nearby where the whole group could rest and decide their next step.

  “Why don’t you just make us all invisible now?” Daniella asked, hiding her words as she bent over to pick up some unfinished needlepoint. “None of us are doing anything important to history, as far as I can tell.”

  It appeared that she was right. The whole family was settling back into more listless card-playing, reading, and sewing. They were just passing time.

  But Jonah whispered back, “We can’t know for sure. We don’t want to damage time any more than we have to. And anyway, Chip says we’ve got a better chance of getting away if we’re outdoors when we turn everyone invisible. The guards will have to take everyone outside to get them to the basement, because there’s only that one door.”

  He couldn’t explain anything else because Maria leaned too close to Anastasia just then, asking, “Do you think I’ve hemmed this skirt well enough, or should I tear out this section and start again?”

  She held up a threadbare black skirt. It looked like she was moving the hem to hide the spots where the fabric had worn thin.

  Wish it were that easy to fix time, Jonah thought. I’d like to start again with this whole trip—with a fully working Elucidator. And with open communications with JB, so he could tell us the best way to handle all of this. . . .

  Except—would Jonah want that? Wouldn’t JB disapprove of this plan every bit as much as he’d disapproved of some of the things Jonah had done in 1903? And hadn’t it turned out then that Jonah was right and JB was wrong?

  Oh, God, you approve of what we’re planning, don’t you? Jonah prayed again.

  Jonah’s parents had taken him and Katherine to church their whole lives, but for his first thirteen years Jonah had never thought deeply about anything connected to religion.

  Time travel had changed all that.

  But for all the thinking I’ve done, shouldn’t I be more sure that I’m right? Jonah thought. More sure that we’re doing the right thing now?

  Jonah was driving himself crazy. He moved over beside Chip and tugged his friend into an isolated corner of the dining room.

  “Isn’t there anything else I can do right now, besides just talking and thinking?” he asked. “Wouldn’t it help if I went down to the yard and, I don’t know, built a booby trap or something to take out as many guards as I can before tonight?”

  “Oh, yeah, great idea,” Chip said sarcastically. “That wouldn’t put the guards on alert, or make them change their plans—which would throw off our plans. . . . Anyhow, how are you going to build a booby trap in just four hours?”

  “We’ve still got four hours to pass with nothing to do?” Jonah groaned.

  “Talk to the Romanovs,” Chip said. “They’ve been waiting here for seventy-eight days with nothing to do.”

  Jonah looked toward the living room. Anastasia was now down on the floor, playing with all three dogs. Olga had joined the card-playing with her father and Dr. Botkin. Tatiana was taking her turn reading Bible verses to her mother. Maria was reading with Alexei, with Katherine hovering translucently nearby, looking frustrated because Maria had cut off any chance for Katherine to whisper some more in Alexei’s ear. Katherine was bouncing up and down, jittery with impatience.

  She couldn’t last through seventy-eight days of doing nothing, Jonah thought. And neither could I.

  Now Jonah saw the Romanovs’ calm blandness in a different light yet again. He still couldn’t decide if they were noble and brave or total delusional idiots. But they were definitely very patient people. And . . . nice. How else could they have they managed to stay cooped up together for so long without killing one another? Or at least arguing constantly?

  The Romanovs stayed peaceful. They just calmly traded around who was reading and who was playing cards. When the grandfather clock in the corner of the living room area chimed ten, they gathered for evening prayers with Dr. Botkin and the servants. Then they began heading for bed.

  “Maybe we should try to get some sleep too,” Chip whispered to Jonah. “So we’re fresh and alert when the time comes.”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Jonah said.

  “Me neither,” Katherine agreed, joining them in their secluded corner of the dining room.

  It seemed that Dr. Botkin had the same problem. Long after the Romanovs and their servants disappeared into their bedrooms and turned out the lights, he stayed up writing. Jonah tiptoed over and peeked over the doctor’s shoulder. He was adding more to a letter that seemed to have been started a few weeks ago, addressed to someone named Alexander Botkin—a brother? A son? Dr. Botkin had his hand over a large section of the letter, but Jonah read the portion he could see:

  I don’t think I am fated to write again . . . my voluntary confinement here is not so much limited by time as it is limited by my earthly existence. In essence, I am already dead, dead for my children, for my friends, for my work . . .

  He knows, Jonah thought. He knows what’s coming.

  What if that was all that was required for fate to take over—everyone expecting his life to go a certain way?

  Or to end a certain way?

  TWENTY-THREE

  Jonah actually did doze off, because there was nothing else to do. He awoke to the sound of a ringing bell. In the darkness it took him a moment to remember where he was, and by then Dr. Botkin had a light on and was struggling his way out of a makeshift bed in the corner of the living room.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he muttered, shuffling over to open the door to the guards’ section of the house. “What’s wrong?”

  Commander Yurovsky stood on the other side of the door.

  “The fighting’s getting close,” he said. “We don’t have much time. If the White Army attacks the city, it won’t be safe up here on the top floor. When the artillery hits, when the bullets are flying . . .”

  Dr. Botkin stared silently at Yurovsky. Jonah couldn’t tell if the doctor was hiding terror or hope. Maybe he wanted the battle to come into the city?

  “So everyone needs to go down to the cellar to be safe,” Yurovsky continued. “And then I’m ordering a truck to move the family somewhere else. Will you let them know?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Botkin said curtly. He shuffled away to tap at bedroom doors. Yurovsky went back to his office.

  Jonah rubbed his eyes. His back was stiff from sleeping hunched over against the living-room wall, but he could feel the nervous energy zinging back.

  “That’s just wrong, him saying that everyone has to go down to the cellar to be ‘safe,’ when really that’s where they’re going to die,” Katherine whispered, waking up indignant.

  She and Jonah quickly told Chip everything Yurovsky had said.

  “Yurovsky is good at lying,” Chip whispered back. He tilted his head. “But I think part of what he said is true. I think maybe the fighting really is getting closer.”

  Jonah listened too. At first he thought he was just hearing thunder, but there were too many booms, too close together.

  “The White Army—whoever that is—if they’re coming to attack this city, does that mean that maybe they’re on the same side of the war as the Romanovs?” Jonah asked.

  “I bet they are,” Katherine said. “And I bet they’re coming to rescu
e the whole family. Well, after we rescue them first.”

  And if this army puts the tsar back on the throne of Russia when he’s supposed to be dead—wouldn’t that change a lot of things in history? Jonah wondered.

  “Things won’t get that far,” Jonah said, to reassure himself as much as to argue against Katherine. “As soon as time agents see that we’ve saved the Romanovs’ lives, someone like JB will come and pick us all up. So we don’t change 1918 too much, but the whole family gets to live. In the future, I mean.”

  This type of plan had worked out before in connection with some of Jonah’s other trips through time. But it seemed riskier now. Somehow the year 1918 felt more like a time where one change could have massive consequences.

  Jonah could hear the Romanovs in their bedrooms asking one another, “Which clothes should we put on?” “Where do you think they’re taking us after the cellar?” “What should we take with us?”

  He even heard Anastasia’s and Alexei’s voices in the mix, undoubtedly just saying whatever they would have said in original time.

  “It’s a good thing we arranged all our ‘medicines’ this afternoon,” Anastasia’s voice rang out, a bit too loudly. “We wouldn’t want to go anywhere without our ‘medicines’!”

  Why does she have to remind her sisters to wear their camisoles with the jewels sewn into them? Jonah wondered. Would any of them forget?

  The clock showed that forty minutes passed before the Romanovs and their servants gathered in the living room. Jonah was amazed—it didn’t feel like time was crawling now. It felt like time was zipping by, each moment bringing them closer and closer to the “do or die” beginning of Katherine’s plan.

  “Now,” Katherine whispered.

  Dr. Botkin was opening the door to the guards’ section again. And then Jonah, Katherine, and Chip made sure they got ahead of the entire group headed for the stairs. It was Yurovsky and three guards in the lead, followed by the tsar, who was carrying Alexei. Even in the dim stairway Jonah could see Alexei grimacing with every jolt and bump.

  Behind the tsar and Alexei, Olga walked with her mother, who struggled forward leaning on first a cane, then Olga’s arm. The three other sisters walked behind them, and then Dr. Botkin and the servants. The giant stuffed bear and her cubs loomed ahead of the group in the shadows, and the entire family stopped and crossed themselves.

  “Ah, yes, respect for the dead,” Yurovsky said. “And, of course, for Russia the bear. Very nice.”

  For the first time Jonah heard a certain nervousness in the man’s voice. Would any of the Romanovs notice it too? Or would they just think he was worried about the attack on Ekaterinburg?

  Just as the family was turning to go on down the stairs, three shapes zipped out of the darkness, barking.

  The family dogs.

  “Joy! Jimmy! Ortipo! Down, all of you! Stay! Stay here!” Anastasia called to them.

  All three of the dogs whimpered but obediently sat down.

  Can’t the dogs at least hear the fear in Anastasia’s voice? Jonah wondered. He saw a flash of tracer light back by Anastasia: the little Pekingese’s tracer squirming past the servants and leaping up into Anastasia’s arms. More tracer light showed that in original time Anastasia would have cradled the dog, hugged him tight—and carried him on down the steps.

  In original time she would have thought she was carrying the dog away from danger, Jonah realized. But now she knows the dogs are safer staying here.

  The glow of the tracer lights was just bright enough that Jonah could see the tears glistening in Anastasia’s eyes.

  Don’t look—just focus on what’s working well, Jonah told himself. The dogs wouldn’t stay quiet when the time comes for us turn everyone invisible and sneak away. So they have to stay here.

  The tracer light kept glowing near Anastasia’s arms, where they dangled free and empty instead of carrying the dog. But, tracer or real, her arms were covered with the sleeves of a simple black dress, rather than her University of Michigan sweatshirt. Jonah was glad that he and Chip and Katherine had taken the precaution of telling Gavin and Daniella to put on an extra layer of Alexei’s and Anastasia’s clothes, so that even apart from their tracers they would still look like their twentieth-century selves.

  Not that it’s going to matter once everyone’s invisible, but it helps for moments like this, Jonah told himself. See? We thought of everything. This is going to work!

  The entire group descended the narrow staircase. Then they walked toward the same door that Jonah, Chip, and Katherine had used to come into the house that afternoon. Jonah tensed up. The crucial moment was just ahead. He saw Chip reach into his pocket and pull out the Elucidator. Then, as the guards opened the door, Jonah, Chip, and Katherine slipped past them.

  “Ready?” Jonah whispered.

  Chip nodded, clutching the toy-soldier Elucidator tightly in his hand.

  As soon as the tsar and Alexei stepped outside, Chip put his hand on the tsar’s shoulder and bent his arm so he was touching Alexei’s back as well.

  “Make the tsar and Alexei invisible,” Chip whispered, and spun them into the darkness behind him, in the opposite direction from the basement.

  It had been Chip’s idea to change only two or three people at a time, as they stepped out from the doorway. That way, he said, there’d be time to warn each person individually, before the whole group noticed all at once that their bodies had vanished and they started screaming.

  Jonah could hear Alexei—or, rather, Gavin—murmuring into his father’s ear: “Papa, something wonderful just happened. This is all a dream, but we’re invisible now. We just have to be quiet and we can all escape.”

  They’d added the “this is all a dream” part because they didn’t think any of the Romanovs would catch on quickly enough to the true explanation.

  The tsar, at least, took the news calmly. He didn’t make a sound. Maybe he was too stunned to say anything.

  Chip reached for the next two Romanovs coming through the door: the tsarina and Olga. This could be a difficult pair, because the tsarina was bound to have questions, and would ask them. Loudly.

  It’s a good thing the tsar is taking this so quietly. Now Gavin will be able to explain to Olga and his mother, instead of Katherine or me having to do it, Jonah thought.

  He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Gavin would be ready. Just then, a beam of light shone through the cracks in the wood fence—maybe from a car or truck driving by. The light fell directly on the tsar and Alexei/Gavin, glowing all around them.

  But—not glowing through them. They weren’t see-through. They were solid and whole and normal, a man and a boy in tunics and caps, looking just as they had before Chip called out the Elucidator command.

  The invisibility hadn’t worked.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Alexei/Gavin must have noticed this at the same time as Jonah, because he began yelling, “It didn’t work! It didn’t work!”

  He jumped down from his father’s arms—or, rather, Gavin jumped down, suddenly appearing as a healthy, able-bodied kid with a streak of purple in his hair, but still in Alexei’s tunic and pants. He grabbed Chip and yanked the Elucidator from his hands.

  “Make my family invisible!” Gavin screamed. “Make my entire family invisible!”

  Nothing happened.

  At least, no one turned invisible.

  One of the lead guards cocked a rifle in Gavin’s direction. The tsarina leaped toward the gun, knocking it aside. The gun went off, but the bullet zinged uselessly out into the garden.

  Somehow the tsarina was unafraid.

  “See what you’ve done, putting my son under this strain in the middle of the night?” she accused. “You’ve threatened his sanity now! Alexei, baby, go back to your father. He’ll take care of you! Everything will be all right. . . .”

  But she was sprawled on the ground now, the guard pointing the rifle at her.

  Gavin threw the Elucidator down and scrambled over to the tsari
na.

  “Don’t shoot her,” he cried.

  Olga, Tatiana, and Maria raced out the door and joined Gavin by their mother’s side. Tracer lights were glowing all around now: the tracer Romanovs still obediently following the tracer guards toward the basement while the real Romanovs huddled together and the real guards looked toward Yurovsky to see what they were possibly supposed to do now.

  Daniella split from her Anastasia tracer as well, but dived for the toy-soldier Elucidator that Gavin had dropped.

  “Make my family invisible! Make my family invisible!” she demanded. Nothing happened. She thrust the Elucidator at Jonah and Chip and Katherine and wailed, “Why won’t it work now? It’s like it’s just an ordinary toy soldier again!”

  Ordinary toy soldier, Jonah thought. Ordinary toy soldier . . .

  He grabbed the toy soldier from Daniella’s hand. In the glow of all the tracer lights, Jonah looked closely at the toy soldier: same khaki-green uniform, same fierce stance, same tilted cap, except . . . where was the tiny patch of bare metal where Gavin had chipped off the paint?

  “Jonah!” Chip cried, horror racing across his face as he came to the same conclusion as Jonah. “What if I picked up the wrong toy soldier back in Alexei’s room?”

  “I can find it!” Jonah cried. “I know what to look for!”

  His cries got lost in the sound of all the Romanovs and the guards—and now Dr. Botkin and the servants, too—screaming and shouting and pleading. But at least no one had been shot, so maybe there was still time. . . .

  Jonah shoved his way past the last servant coming out the door—the cook? The footman? The man gasped and looked instantly mystified, but Jonah figured that was the least of their worries right now. Jonah dashed back to the stairs and leaped up them three at a time. He raced to Alexei’s room and hit the lights.