It took the fist slamming into his jaw to remember that Hudson had punched him for saying that before.
Hudson used his other hand to pin Jonah back against the side of the shallop.
“You dare to challenge my authority?” Hudson snarled, looming over Jonah, just as he had before. “I said we will not retreat to the winter cabin. We sail on to glory! Do you not remember who is captain here?”
Jonah felt Katherine beside him, practically holding him up.
“You’re doing this for Wydowse, aren’t you?” she whispered in his ear, and it gave Jonah extra courage, that she was thinking the same way as he was.
Jonah stared into Hudson’s eyes. He remembered how he’d felt the last time, how he’d seen so many choices before him. And then all those choices had been taken away from him, because the ship had shown up from the wrong direction, looking so much like their salvation, their rescue. But that wasn’t what the ship had been—it wasn’t what the ship would be this time around. With Second disguised as Abacuk Prickett at the helm, the ship could only take them toward disaster.
For the first time Jonah thought to wonder what had happened to the real Abacuk Prickett—had Second cast him out on the ice with the mutineers?
Jonah could see Second doing that, and not caring in the least.
Of course, he says he’s trying to improve history, Jonah thought. He’s granting Henry Hudson his dearest dream. He’s giving the world a true Northwest Passage. He’s saving the lives of everyone in this shallop.
But how did Jonah know that their lives weren’t going to be saved anyway? What if John Hudson was supposed to save them?
“Father,” Jonah said, still staring directly into Henry Hudson’s eyes. “You’re not the captain anymore.”
He’d considered saying something very much like that before, but he’d known nothing about Hudson then; the words would have come out sounding harsh and mean.
This time he sounded as if he felt sorry for his supposed father, as if he truly regretted insulting him.
Hudson’s grip on Jonah’s cloak faltered.
“You … too?” he murmured. “Even my own son …?”
“I know you want to find the Northwest Passage,” Jonah said soothingly. “It’s a great dream. But—it’s not worth the lives of your own crew. You have to think of your men first. Do you want their blood on your hands?”
Hudson stared at Jonah. Jonah could kind of guess that sea captains in the early 1600s hadn’t typically been very concerned about their crews’ lives. He realized that what he’d said wasn’t really what he wanted to tell Hudson—it was what he wanted to tell Second. Second also had lofty dreams, and he’d gone to great lengths to carry them out: changing 1600, making the Discovery sail an impossible route, digging a river that shouldn’t exist. But it was all a game to him. Second didn’t care about any of the people his changes affected; he acted as if he were only playing with puppets.
Jonah looked up at Staffe and King.
“Do what you know is right,” he said. “Set the sails to take us to shore.”
They both looked startled but did exactly as he said.
And then Jonah felt the oddest sensation. On almost all his trips through time he had endured a phase where it felt as if every cell in his body—and every atom of every cell—were being pulled apart from every other cell, every other atom. This time Jonah would have sworn that he felt his individual protons, electrons, and neutrons being pulled apart as well. Pulled apart—and then torn again, maybe even ripped in half.
“I feel … so strange,” Hudson moaned beside him.
The old man slumped over onto the seat—fortunately, he landed just beyond Katherine, because she wouldn’t have had time to get out of his way.
“All my dreams, ruined,” Hudson mumbled, burying his face in his hands. “Gone, everything’s gone.”
“Changed,” Jonah said gently. “Maybe just postponed?”
But the words sounded distorted to Jonah’s ears. He wasn’t sure if he’d actually managed to say them aloud.
Jonah realized that everyone else must be feeling the same tearing sensation, too—maybe theirs was even worse than Jonah’s. Staffe and King slid down to the floor of the shallop. Wydowse and the other sickly crew members hunched over in agony. Then a new symptom cropped up for Jonah: something like double vision. He could see two versions of everyone in the shallop: two Katherines, both looking see-through and anxious; two Hudsons, one defeated, one defiant; two Staffes, one huddled on the floor, one standing by the mast; two Wydowses, one with his head in his hands, one staring confusedly at a compass.
A compass.
Jonah realized that he was seeing two versions of time at once: the current one, and the way it had gone the last time he and Katherine had been in the shallop. But this wasn’t like seeing real time beside tracers with their wispy, ethereal glow. Each version of each person was equally substantial, equally solid. Equally real.
Now Jonah could even see a second version of himself, dressed in John Hudson’s cloak, the mask and wig completely disguising his real face and hair. His other self was staring in drop-jawed dismay at …
The ship. His other self was watching the Discovery, newly returned, hijacked and redirected by Second.
Jonah forgot all caution and grabbed Katherine’s arm.
“We can’t change anything!” he whispered urgently in her ear. “Any minute now everyone’s going to see the ship, and we’ll be right back where we started!”
“No!” Katherine whispered back, just as urgently. “I don’t think our version of the crew can see that! Look! Isn’t John King staring right at it?”
Actually, both John Kings were gazing toward the ship: One was pumping his arm in the air and looking as if he’d just been rescued from almost-certain death. The other one was writhing on the floor in pain, his eyes unfocused and unseeing, even though they were indeed directed toward the ship.
“Think this is another case of time travelers being able to see things others can’t?” Jonah asked quietly. “What is this, another time shift, like Second used in 1600?”
“I don’t think time shifted,” Katherine whispered back. “I think it split. See how neither version is fading away?”
This was true. Even as two versions of the shallop and its passengers sailed apart—one toward the Discovery, the other toward land—they both stayed substantial and real.
Behind him Jonah heard the sailors in the other shallop calling out, “Huzzah! Huzzah! Hooray!” as they sped toward the Discovery.
He heard that shallop’s Henry Hudson make his confident boast, “I planned this. I knew it would work out this way.”
Nobody currently in the shallop with Jonah seemed to hear any of it. They were still writhing in pain, hunched over in defeat.
“Maybe we’re the ones who are going to fade away,” Jonah muttered. “Maybe this is how Second planned things. We repair time by—well, with whatever we did—and then we vanish.”
“No,” Katherine whispered excitedly. “No. We’re going to be okay. Everything’s going to work out.”
“How can you be so sure?” Jonah asked, shaking his head in disgust.
“Because,” Katherine said, and now she was practically squealing. “I see tracers.”
Katherine was right.
A tracer shallop lay directly ahead of them in the fog, its tracer sails billowing.
“Time’s back on track!” Katherine hissed. In her exuberance her voice arced upward, too loudly. The sickly sailor nearest Jonah gazed in her direction with a baffled look on his face.
“Hear that wind?” Jonah said quickly. “Isn’t it odd how it sounds almost like a human voice?”
The sailor nodded and slumped back in his seat.
“Shh,” Jonah told Katherine, trying to make the sound whistle like wind.
“But this means we succeeded!” Katherine whispered back, keeping her voice pitched only slightly softer. “We did it! If the tracers are back
, then original time is back! We can know what’s supposed to happen! We can make everything go the right way!”
Only if we catch up with the tracers, Jonah thought.
“Maybe we should paddle,” Jonah said loudly, speaking to the whole boatful now. “We’ll get there faster that way.”
He dipped his oar in the water. After a moment he saw that John King had inched up from the floor and was paddling as well, opposite Jonah. The shallop sliced through the water, closing in on the tracer version.
With each stroke Jonah felt better. The ripping sensation was gone. Jonah was pretty sure the others in the shallop had gotten over it too. Even the sickliest-looking sailor had straightened up in his seat. Staffe stood by the mast, guiding the sails. Only Henry Hudson still sat with his face buried in his hands.
But—Jonah could see more clearly now—Hudson’s tracer was sitting the same way.
The shallop drew near to its tracer version. John King was paddling harder now. The other sailors seemed to be straining forward, drawn toward their tracers.
Jonah remembered that back in 1600, Second had complained about tracers being like fate, trapping people in place. It probably did look that way if you watched the same bits of time again and again, through hundreds of repetitions, as Second had done as a projectionist. But the sailors in this shallop didn’t know their fates. They were only straining toward the lives they belonged in.
The shallop lurched into the same space as its tracer. Instantly all the sailors made small adjustments so they matched their tracers exactly. Some scooted slightly to the left; some scooted slightly to the right. Staffe slid his hand a little higher on the mast. Hudson slumped a little lower. King drew his oar back into the boat.
“Right,” Jonah said approvingly. “We can give it a rest and just use the sails for now.”
King nodded at him, and Jonah wondered what he had been nodding about in original time.
“We didn’t build the winter cabin intending it to last past one season,” one of the sickly-looking sailors whined.
“It’s sturdy enough,” Staffe said impatiently. “It’ll still be there.”
“And we survived winter in that cabin,” King added. “Won’t be nothing to survive there, summertime.”
“We can lay up supplies for next winter,” Staffe said. “We’ll be prepared.”
Jonah saw that none of them entirely believed what they were saying. Jonah had once been on a soccer team that lost every game. Before each game the coach always told them lies about how they really were so much better than these opponents, and this would be the team they finally defeated.
And then Jonah’s team would go out on the field and lose 8–0, 10–0, even 12–0 once.
That’s what the talk in the shallop reminded Jonah of: his soccer coach’s fake pep talks.
And that was only soccer, Jonah thought. This is life and death.
He remembered that way back when he and Katherine first arrived in 1611, JB had said, It’s been a hard winter. And spring. Jonah could read on the faces of every man in the shallop how much they’d already endured.
And what about me and Katherine? Jonah thought. What can we endure?
Jonah’s excitement at finding the tracers again faded. What good did it do to save time if everyone in the shallop was still doomed?
Land came into sight. Using the oars again, the sailors maneuvered the shallop into a sort of impromptu dock in the midst of the marshy soil. Across the flat, scrubby land Jonah could see the peak of a roof perhaps a half mile away.
“Cabin still stands,” Staffe said, a note of relief in his voice.
“Staffe, you must go ahead and do what you can to make it weathertight again,” Hudson said. “King, you shall get the lame sailors to the cabin. I shall supervise getting the shallop to a safe place before that storm arrives.”
He nodded his head toward dark clouds on the horizon. Then he looked at Jonah.
What? Jonah wanted to say. Was this the father-son showdown, the battle for control? What would the real John Hudson have done?
Jonah wished he could scoot quickly away from John Hudson’s tracer, so he could at least see the expression on his face. But there wasn’t time for that.
If I challenge Henry Hudson and say I have to be in control—good grief, what would I tell people to do? Jonah wondered.
“And I, Father?” Jonah said quickly. “What task would you give me?”
Relief flowed over Henry Hudson’s face. No second, angrier tracer expression appeared along with the real one, so Jonah guessed that the real John Hudson must have bowed to his father’s authority in this moment, too.
For a second Jonah thought Henry Hudson might say, Thank you, my son. Thank you for giving me my dignity back. He could feel everyone in the shallop watching the father-son drama.
But then Hudson said only, “You shall go hunt for food.”
“Get some scurvy grass, if you can find it,” Wydowse murmured.
Jonah had no idea what scurvy grass was, but he was kind of relieved that hunting for food wouldn’t involve, well, actual hunting.
Then one of the other sailors half moaned, “Meat.”
“Fowl, like we found last winter,” another man whispered.
“Deer,” another man said.
“Bear,” another added.
Okay, they did expect actual hunting. Would it sound too weird if Jonah asked, What would you have me use as a weapon? Or did they expect him to kill all those animals with his bare hands?
“Take one of my knives,” Staffe said, opening the wooden tool chest he’d brought with him from the ship. He pressed a crude-looking handle into Jonah’s palm. The blade attached to it looked rusty and dull, but Jonah supposed it was better than nothing.
“Find a stick to attach it to, and you can use it like a spear,” King advised.
Jonah nodded numbly and stepped out of the shallop, because he’d noticed that that was what John Hudson’s tracer was doing.
“Now! Finally we’re away from all those people!” Katherine exploded beside him as soon as they’d taken a few steps away from the shallop. “Call for JB on the Elucidator!”
Jonah looked at her and blinked. Why hadn’t he thought of calling for JB himself?
Because … if he could communicate with us right now, wouldn’t he already be contacting us? Jonah thought.
Jonah crossed his arms over his chest. He could feel the Elucidator inside his cloak, pressing against his shirt, poking his skin.
I can’t tell Katherine that, Jonah thought. I should let her keep some hope.
“Let me concentrate on staying up with John Hudson’s tracer,” Jonah told her.
Katherine frowned. Jonah half expected her to swing toward the Elucidator and call into it anyway: JB! JB, hello? Are you there? But she only squinted at him for a moment and then stepped out of his way, letting him move into the same space as John Hudson’s tracer.
Maybe she didn’t have much hope right now either.
We’ll deal with all of that later, Jonah thought. He’d always been particularly good at procrastinating with things he didn’t want to think about. That was part of the reason he’d never asked about his own true identity as a missing child of history.
If Katherine and I die here in 1611, I’ll never find out who I really am, Jonah thought.
Somehow that didn’t bother him too much. Or maybe it was that he couldn’t get past the first part of the sentence: If Katherine and I die here in 1611 …
Staying alongside John Hudson’s tracer, Jonah and Katherine moved farther and farther away from the shallop, away from the men, who were beginning a slow, unsteady trek toward the cabin. It would be completely safe now for Jonah and Katherine to talk out loud, to figure out exactly what had happened out on the water, to debate their options going forward. But Katherine stayed silent, and so Jonah did too.
Maybe it’s too scary to talk about what everything means, and what we think is going to happen next? Jonah thou
ght.
He’d felt so odd in that moment when everything doubled and split. His mind shied away from thinking about it, just as his mind had shied away from similar oddities that Second had orchestrated in 1600. It was easiest just to concentrate on walking forward, moving and looking around at the same pace as John Hudson’s tracer.
The ground beneath his feet became less marshy. The tracer’s jaw dropped suddenly, and he took off running toward a stand of short plants with small white flowers and spoon-shaped leaves. He began hacking at the plants with the dull knife.
“You think that’s scurvy grass?” Katherine asked.
The tracer stuck a leaf of it in his mouth, so Jonah and Katherine did the same. Katherine quickly spat hers out.
“I don’t think they’re asking for it because of the taste,” she muttered.
Jonah tried to cut as much of it as the tracer did. The tracer tucked the scurvy grass in the hood of his cloak, so Jonah did the same.
As they moved on, Jonah expected the tracer to find a stick to use to make a spear, as John King had suggested back in the shallop. After a few moments Jonah realized that that was one of the things that the tracer was looking for, as he peered around. But there weren’t any sticks lying around on the ground. And the nearest trees were miles away, just clumps on the horizon, as dark and foreboding as the clouds.
“What did you say the native people in this area are called?” Jonah asked Katherine, because that, at least, was a safe thing to talk about.
“Um—Inuits?” Katherine answered.
“They survive in this environment, so it’s possible, right?” Jonah asked.
“Do you see any of them around here, rushing out to greet their new neighbors?” Katherine asked. “Do you see any sign that anyone lives here?”
Okay, maybe that wasn’t such a safe topic. Maybe it was possible for people to live down in the area by the fake river Second had created, or would create, or however Jonah was supposed to think of that other time. That didn’t mean that it was possible for people to survive here for very long.
Especially if they were a bunch of English sailors, without food or other supplies, who weren’t familiar with the area.
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