Torn

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  Staffe kept looking directly into Jonah’s eyes.

  “I am trying to trust you,” he finally said. “But as you know, this ship is a hard place to see what is right and what is wrong.”

  The door of Hudson’s cabin cracked open, and Staffe nervously walked on. A burst of raucous laughter came from the cabin, as the door opened wider. A few more sailors stepped inside, and the door closed again.

  Jonah was relieved to see that Katherine had stepped out of the cabin while the door was open. She stomped toward him, shaking her head.

  “Remember how I always complained about walking past the boys’ locker room at school, because you guys all stink so bad?” she said. “That’s nothing compared with sitting in a tiny room with a bunch of sailors who probably haven’t taken a bath in fourteen months. And they’re all drinking something called aquavit, that makes them belch a lot. Ew, ew, ew!”

  She pretended to gag.

  “But did you find out anything?” Jonah asked.

  “Yeah—Henry Hudson’s got the biggest ego on the planet,” Katherine said. “‘My name shall be written on the tablets of the sea. … My name shall be written on the tablets of the sea’—he must have said that, like, fifty times. And Abacuk Prickett just kept encouraging him: ‘Yes, master, you shall be the most famous sea captain of all time.’ Made me want to turn visible just so I could say, ‘Guess what? Four hundred years from now, schoolkids are just going to get you mixed up with Vasco da Gama on tests. The really stupid ones aren’t going to remember your name even when the question is, ‘Who discovered the Hudson River and the Hudson Bay?’”

  Jonah thought maybe he’d done that once.

  “But what if that isn’t the question on tests four hundred years from now?” Jonah asked. “What if Second messing up time makes it so the question is always, ‘Which discoverer found the Hudson Passage and changed history forever?’ What if Henry Hudson becomes the explorer that everyone remembers, the way Christopher Columbus is now?”

  Katherine stopped her rant.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I—I’m going to go look for more secret messages and see if we can do anything.”

  Before Jonah had a chance to answer, she rushed down the stairs into the hold below.

  Maybe Jonah wouldn’t have noticed if he had been able to walk around too. But he could see what Katherine was doing: She was trying to keep moving, trying to keep busy, so she didn’t have time to think about what a mess they were in.

  Jonah had nothing but time to think.

  I am trying to trust you, Staffe had said.

  My name shall be written on the tablets of the sea, Hudson had said.

  We didn’t know what we were doing, JB had said. And then, later on, We made even more mistakes than I thought.

  “But you still thought Katherine and I could fix everything, didn’t you?” Jonah muttered. “Don’t you still think that?”

  It did no good to talk to JB, when Jonah knew he wasn’t going to answer. Jonah would be better off actually praying, the way Staffe thought he was.

  Just then some of the sailors over by the railing let out a shout. One of them scurried toward Hudson’s cabin.

  “Sir! Sir! We’ve spotted a savage in one of their odd little vessels—a kayak? What should we do?”

  The native came onto the ship.

  Jonah thought this was incredibly brave of him—there was only one of him, and more than twenty Englishmen. And surely the native had never seen anything as immense as the ship before.

  But the man climbed calmly onto the deck and watched expressionlessly as Hudson advanced toward him.

  “I am Henry Hudson, the great sea captain,” Hudson said, tapping his chest.

  “Ikau,” the man said, pointing to his own chest, which was covered in a loose-fitting shirt of some sort of lightweight animal skin—seal, perhaps? He also wore matching pants and moccasins.

  “Mayhap he’ll have food to trade with us!” one of the sailors near Jonah whispered, a little too loudly. “Fresh-caught fowl or deer or …”

  Hudson silenced the whispering sailor with just a glance.

  “Know you where this river leads?” Hudson asked. “Does it go all the way to the great sea to the west?”

  Ikau said nothing.

  “The river,” Hudson said, pointing out toward the water, and then moving his hands in a swimming motion, imitating the current.

  “Yes, tell me about the river,” Ikau said.

  Jonah jerked back, hitting his head against the stocks yet again. He’d understood Ikau! How? How could Ikau possibly be speaking English?

  Jonah realized that Hudson and all the other sailors were looking blankly at Ikau. They hadn’t understood a word he’d said.

  “Oo-oo-uh-nu-oo,” one of the sailors muttered, imitating the sounds Ikau had made.

  Ooooh, Jonah realized. He’s not speaking English. He’s speaking whatever language he normally speaks. I just understand because JB gave Katherine and me those translation vaccines. It’s like the way I could understand Algonquin back in 1600. And medieval English back in 1485.

  Should he volunteer to translate? How in the world would he possibly explain knowing Ikau’s language?

  “We are from England,” Hudson said, speaking distinctly.

  Whoa, Jonah thought. Even in 1611 people think that if they just speak loud enough and slow enough, foreigners will understand them.

  Except, here, the English speakers were the foreigners.

  “We are a strong and powerful people, and if you don’t tell us what we want to know, we could kill you, just like that,” Hudson said, snapping his finger.

  Ikau blinked at the sudden sound. But when John King pointed a gun at him, he only looked at it with a mildly curious air, the same way he was regarding everything else on the ship.

  So he’s never seen a gun before? Jonah thought. Should I translate, after all, just so he knows he’s got to be careful?

  In a sudden, fluid movement Ikau pulled out a harpoon that he’d been hiding somewhere in his clothes. He pointed it straight at Henry Hudson and looked defiantly at everyone else around him.

  Okay, he gets it, Jonah thought. No translation needed.

  “You will tell me about the river!” Ikau thundered insistently.

  Now, that was weird. Ikau lived here, didn’t he? Wouldn’t he already know about the river? Wouldn’t he want the Englishmen to tell him about England, or their ship, or the gun, or stuff like that?

  Ikau pulled his harpoon back a bit, as if he thought the Englishmen might be too frightened of him to reply. Jonah realized suddenly why Ikau wasn’t worried that there was just one of him and more than twenty Englishmen.

  He sees how sickly everyone is. He probably thinks he could fight the entire crew and win, Jonah thought. And maybe he could, if there wasn’t a gun involved.

  “This river was not here!” Ikau said. “It was not here in my father’s time or my father’s father’s time or my father’s father’s father’s time. It was not here the last time I came this way! Who brought it? You? You, with your floating mountain of wood? Or did you just find it this way, like me? Who can carry away rocks and dirt and ice and trees and leave only a crater behind, for the water to fill?”

  “What?” Jonah exploded. “What do you mean, the river wasn’t here before?”

  Everyone looked at him.

  Uh-oh, Jonah thought. Did I somehow manage to speak in Ikau’s language by mistake?

  The astonished faces around him made him think that he had. He hadn’t known the translator vaccines could work on speaking, as well as hearing. But he’d never actually had reason to try it out before.

  Ikau looked as surprised as everyone else. He swung his harpoon at the sailors near him and stepped closer to Jonah.

  “You don’t know about the river?” Ikau asked, a furrow appearing between his heavy brows. His deep-set eyes took in the wooden frame of the stocks, holding Jonah in place. “And you speak my language—and the
y have you trapped?”

  “Pretty much,” Jonah said. “It’s kind of a long story.”

  Ikau looked around—from Jonah in the stocks to Hudson’s self-important stance to the skeletal sailors to John King, with the gun pointing directly at him.

  And then in a flash Ikau ran to the railing and scrambled over. A second later Jonah heard the muffled splash of an oar speeding through water.

  “Shoot him!” Hudson commanded. “He’s getting away! He might have stolen something! He might come back with a war party!”

  King shot off the gun, but then he shook his head and tried again. And again. And again. Finally Hudson put his hand on King’s arm.

  “Hold your fire,” Hudson said. “He’s too far away now.”

  Jonah let out a silent sigh of relief.

  But then Hudson turned toward Jonah.

  “It appears my son has been hiding his talents from me,” Hudson said. “I did not know he knew how to speak savage.”

  “I’ve just been … studying a little … on the side,” Jonah mumbled.

  “Then pray tell,” Hudson commanded, glaring down at him. “Whatever did the savage reveal?”

  Jonah looked for Katherine in the crowd. Surely she’d heard the commotion on the deck; surely she’d raced up the stairs to see what was going on—surely she’d have a better idea than he did about what he should say.

  But when he caught a glimpse of Katherine’s see-through face behind a bunch of sailors, she looked just as worried and confused as Jonah felt.

  “Um,” Jonah began. He gnawed on his lip and tried to figure out what to say next.

  “I, too, know a bit of the savage tongue,” Prickett said, stepping between Jonah and the captain. “The boy was only speaking doggerel.” Prickett laughed, lightly, in a way that made Jonah seem ridiculous. “But I believe the savage was saying that the river is wide for many leagues ahead, until it spills into a vast sea none of his people have traveled. Isn’t that correct, boy?”

  Prickett turned to look at Jonah. Jonah opened his mouth. But Prickett was already turning his back on him again.

  “But what am I saying?” Prickett murmured, with a shrug. “The boy will only lie. Why should I ask him?”

  Jonah’s face burned.

  “Come,” Prickett said, taking Hudson’s arm. “Is not this cause for more celebration?”

  But Hudson pulled his arm from Prickett’s grasp.

  “I should like to see the scope of this passageway with mine own eyes,” Hudson said. “I shall stand lookout in the top.”

  “Sir, your bad knee—,” Prickett began.

  “It is not that bad,” Hudson said.

  “As you wish, sir,” Prickett said, backing away to leave Hudson a clear path toward the rigging.

  But Jonah caught a glimpse of Prickett’s face as Prickett turned aside. His eyes were squinted almost shut, and his teeth were clenched.

  He really doesn’t want Hudson up in that crow’s nest, Jonah thought. Why? Because there’s something about the passageway he doesn’t want Hudson to see? Or—because he knows there are papers up there saying he’s bad, and he’s afraid Hudson will find them?

  Jonah was pretty sure it was the second reason. Should Jonah call out, Yo, Dad, look under the canvas when you get up there!—or something like that, only sounding a little more 1611-ish?

  Or would that just make it look like Jonah was the one who’d written and hidden those papers?

  Prickett had his eyebrows raised, staring at Jonah.

  He knows I’m trying to decide what to do, Jonah thought.

  Prickett reminded Jonah of someone. Who? Jonah wondered. How many people do I know who have so many scars and sores and pockmarks? And that long, stringy, thinning hair … It has to be someone I’ve seen traveling through time.

  Then Jonah realized: It wasn’t. It was his old friend back home, Billy Rivoli, who liked playing games like Stratego and chess. Physically, Billy didn’t look anything like Prickett—Billy had short, thick black hair and braces and was a little bit chubby, because he also liked sitting around eating Oreos all day long. But Billy had always had this way of raising his eyebrows when he was planning to trap Jonah in chess or Stratego. The raised eyebrows always said, Ha, ha, ha. You will never figure out my brilliant plan. Give up! You’ve already lost!

  It was almost always true, because the raised eyebrows would make Jonah so mad that he’d do something dumb. And then he really would lose.

  Prickett’s raised eyebrows made Jonah mad too.

  “Father?” Jonah called out to Hudson.

  Hudson turned around.

  “Yes, son?” he said cautiously.

  Jonah caught a glimpse of Prickett’s face, though he turned away to hide it.

  Prickett was beaming. He must have thought Jonah was about to make a huge mistake.

  “Just—be careful on those ropes,” Jonah said quickly. “They’re still a little icy, up by the top.”

  “Thank you, son,” Hudson said.

  Jonah couldn’t tell from Hudson’s voice if Hudson was grateful for the warning, or if he was annoyed that Jonah was acting as if Hudson couldn’t even climb a rope without slipping. Jonah knew from his own parents that adults didn’t like being treated as if they were too old to do stuff. But Jonah decided he’d done the right thing when he caught another glimpse of Prickett’s face.

  Prickett was scowling now.

  The life of the ship went on around Jonah, trapped in his stocks. Katherine went down belowdecks again to look for messages. Hudson went up to the crow’s nest and then came back down. Various crew members raised and lowered sails, catching the best winds. Hudson conferred with Prickett, with King, with others. Late in the afternoon Jonah even saw Staffe stride into Hudson’s cabin for a brief conversation.

  Staffe didn’t even look in Jonah’s direction on the way out.

  Okay. So that hurts my feelings. So what? Jonah told himself. I’ve got bigger things to worry about. Like saving all of time. And—Andrea. Will I ever see her again?

  Jonah managed to distract himself for a while just thinking about how pretty Andrea was, with her gray eyes, and her long brown hair, and her fragile air.

  She was never as fragile as she looked, Jonah reminded himself.

  Again and again, traveling through time, Jonah had discovered that things often weren’t as they seemed.

  So, here in 1611, am I going to discover that Prickett is the good guy and Staffe is secretly the one who’s out to get me? Jonah wondered.

  He shook his head. He might be confused about a lot of things, but he refused to believe that the world could be that messed up.

  Jonah realized that while he’d been lost in his thoughts, Henry Hudson had come out of his cabin. He looked around, then veered toward Jonah and the stocks.

  Around them all the sailors seemed to be carefully looking away—carefully not watching Hudson stop beside his supposed son.

  “You know the story of why I ran away to sea, don’t you?” Hudson asked. “How I argued with my father about anything and everything, how we couldn’t see eye to eye, ever?”

  “You’ve told me that,” Jonah said cautiously, because, if he were the real John Hudson, he’d know a story like that, wouldn’t he?

  “I was just your age,” Hudson said. “Your age exactly when I left.”

  Jonah nodded, because what was he supposed to say to that? Uh, just how old am I, anyway? Or I kind of doubt it, Pops. If you want to be exactly accurate about how old I am, really, I think you’d have to use negative numbers.

  “And when I got back from my first sea voyage, my father was dead,” Hudson said, staring at a point just above Jonah’s head. “He died a week after I left, but of course I didn’t know that. I spent that whole two years at sea imagining coming home to my father, bringing him treasures, making up for all our fights …”

  Hudson’s voice trailed off. He wouldn’t start crying, right there, would he?

  “He probably knew y
ou wanted to bring him treasure,” Jonah said, a bit awkwardly. “He probably knew you didn’t want to fight anymore.”

  “But what if I did?” Hudson said. “What if the treasure was my way of saying, ‘See, I was right all along?’ The way boys think …”

  Oh, no, Jonah thought. Don’t make this about “boys.” Don’t make this about you and your son!

  Hudson shifted his gaze to meet Jonah’s eyes.

  He’s going to see that I’m not really John Hudson! Jonah thought, panicked. He’s going to see that I’m really some other kid in a mask and a wig and a cape!

  Hudson was almost glaring, his eyes narrowed to slits.

  “You volunteered!” he said fiercely. “I didn’t force you—I wouldn’t have forced you. Not my own son!”

  “Are you talking about putting me into the stocks?” Jonah asked, his voice coming out like a yelp in his surprise. “You may not have forced me, but John King sure did! Force was used!”

  Hudson looked around. A sailor who was rebraiding a frayed rope nearby bent his head lower, clearly trying to pretend that he hadn’t heard a thing.

  “I’m talking about yesterday!” Hudson hissed, sotto voce. “When you got us the special map!”

  Jonah’s eyes sprang open so wide he was afraid he might split the John Hudson mask. He barely stopped himself from saying, What do you mean, I got us the map? What did I do? I thought you got the map! I thought Second gave it to you! This is crazy! What am I supposed to think now?

  “I—,” Jonah began, then stopped, because anything he said would just be like screaming out, I’m not the real John Hudson! I’m a fake!

  Hudson leaned closer.

  “Did you run away? How did you do it? Are they following you?” he whispered.

  “I can’t talk to you about that right now,” Jonah said, which was straight out of one of those guidance assemblies at school, where the counselors played out ridiculous role-plays about being offered drugs or alcohol or dealing with bullies or coping with out-of-control emotions. “I can’t talk to you about that right now” was supposed to be an all-purpose answer, what you could use when anything else you could think of was bound to get you into trouble. The entire school had made fun of that saying for weeks afterward—even the teachers had joined in.