“You changed the rules of time, then,” Jonah said. “You re-created them.”
“Not exactly,” Second said, with fake modesty. “For once you give me too much credit.”
“But if we can go back—why don’t we go back and fix 1600?” Katherine said, already thinking ahead. “That way we could avoid this whole mess.”
She waved her hand toward the darkness beyond the crow’s nest, but Jonah knew she meant the river that wasn’t supposed to exist, the stocks she’d taken an axe to down below, the dead man lying in his hammock in the hold.
And the mutineers who were left on an ice floe, when it was the captain and those faithful to him who were supposed to die? Jonah wondered.
“You can’t go back to 1600,” Second said impatiently. “You can only go back and relive a moment where time is unraveling. Where everything is falling apart.”
“You’re really making this sound appealing,” Jonah muttered.
He looked down and saw that his knuckles had turned white where he’d been gripping the railing so hard, for so long.
“I see that I will have to give some explanation,” Second said with a sigh. “What do the two of you know about physics?”
“Nothing,” Jonah said flatly.
“Um—black holes?” Second tried again.
“They’re out in space and scary,” Katherine said. “They suck everything into them, and never let anything out.”
“Not even light,” Jonah added. The darkness beyond the crow’s nest was really starting to bother him.
Second sighed again.
“I suppose that will do as a basic explanation,” he said. “I bring them up because things happen near a black hole that would seem to defy the rules of physics as they were understood before black holes were discovered. In the same way, in a spot where time is unraveling—”
“You’re saying that makes the rules of time different?” Katherine asked.
Second nodded.
“And nobody knew, because nobody unraveled time before,” Jonah said. “Not before you. It’s your fault.”
Second twisted his expression in a way that could have been called a pout if he’d been a little kid.
“You’re always so determined to see the negatives,” he complained. “Someday my accomplishments will go down in history. I guarantee it.”
“That’s if history still exists when you’re done with it,” Jonah muttered.
“It will, it will—shall we proceed?” Second asked, lifting the candleholder from the hook on the mast. He seemed to be looking closely at … Was that a digital clock on the side of the candleholder?
Katherine gasped.
“Yours is an Elucidator too,” she said.
Jonah was watching Second’s face. His habitual smirk had returned.
“And your Elucidator still works,” Jonah said. “Unlike ours.”
“You think so?” Second practically taunted.
Katherine grabbed his arm.
“Let us talk to JB before we do anything else,” she pleaded. She glanced at Jonah. “And to Andrea.”
Second shook his arm out of Katherine’s grasp.
“Who do you think is in charge here?” he asked. “We don’t need another mutiny on this ship. I have all the power here. I’m in control.”
“No—you just said you need us to help you,” Jonah said. “You need us on your side. To save all of time. And all your plans—”
“You’ll help me, whether you want to or not,” Second said.
He had his head bent over the Elucidator, punching in commands. Jonah saw that they didn’t have much more time. He did the only thing he could think of to stall: He yanked his cloak off and threw it toward Second.
Jonah’s goal was to have the cloak settle over Second’s head and shoulders, snuffing out the candle and keeping him from finishing his commands. Then maybe Jonah or Katherine could grab the Elucidator; they could scramble down the rigging with it; they could …
It didn’t matter that Jonah couldn’t figure out what they would do then. Because the ship lurched violently to the right just as Jonah tossed his cloak. It missed Second entirely and dropped over the edge of the crow’s nest, plunging down toward the deck.
“Interesting choice of weapon,” Second murmured, completely nonplussed. “It will be even more interesting to see what you do next.”
Katherine and Jonah both lunged toward Second, their hands outstretched, reaching for his Elucidator. But he was already stabbing his finger at the Elucidator with a disturbing finality.
“What a fascinating experiment!” he crowed. “I can’t wait to see what you choose!”
Katherine and Jonah were on the verge of tackling Second—and then he vanished.
No, Jonah corrected himself. We vanished. Katherine and me.
He could no longer see the crow’s nest, the railing or the battered rigging. He couldn’t have said if they were speeding through Outer Time or not, because everything happened so quickly.
Second said we’d go back to earlier today, Jonah thought, and even his thoughts seemed chopped up and rushed. We’ll have another chance to choose … something….
He felt a cloak around his shoulders again. Of course; I had the cloak on earlier today. But this was a clue—he wouldn’t get a chance to choose again whether or not to impersonate John Hudson. That decision had already been made.
Now Jonah could feel hard wood pressing against his spine. He’d stopped moving backward through time. He’d arrived … somewhere. He realized that he’d had his eyes squeezed shut, in a panic, and he forced himself to open them.
He expected to see the deck of the ship below him, the early-morning glow of sunrise starting to cut through the fog, the mutiny beginning around him.
Please let this be after that sailor hit me over the head with a club, Jonah thought.
His eyes came into focus almost instantaneously—timesickness was evidently nearly nonexistent when you traveled less than twenty-four hours back in time.
He wasn’t on the deck of the ship. He didn’t have to worry about the sailor with the club.
He and Katherine were back in the shallop, all their choices in the mutiny behind them.
“What?” Jonah actually said out loud. “No!”
Nobody else in the shallop looked at him oddly. Maybe “What? No!” was an appropriate thing to say right at this moment. Actually, nobody was looking in his direction at all. They were all staring down toward the other end of the boat—toward the severed end of a rope.
He realized he and Katherine had arrived just as the shallop was cut adrift from the Discovery.
Another collection of possible choices eliminated, Jonah thought. I can’t scramble back up the rope, back onto the deck of the ship, to fight against all the mutineers.
The wind caught the Discovery’s sails, and the ship sped away. Jonah couldn’t get back to the ship now unless he wanted to jump into the water, struggle through the ice floes—and probably freeze or drown in the process.
And this is already past the point when we last heard JB’s voice on our Elucidator, Jonah thought, still trying to figure out what he could possibly do.
He felt a hand against his chest.
“Let me read your half of Wydowse’s letter,” Katherine hissed in his ear. “Now, while nobody’s looking.”
Jonah wasn’t sure it would still be there—what were the rules for objects transferred backward through time, perhaps even duplicated in time? What happened to those rules when time itself was unraveling? Then he stopped wondered about theoretical issues, because he was too busy trying to figure out how he could keep Katherine from making it look as if a torn sheet of paper were floating through midair.
“I’ll get it,” he whispered back.
He reached into his shirt and curled his fingers around the paper he found inside.
Okay, so we brought the paper with us, he thought. So that means …
He lost track of his thoughts, because se
veral people gasped just then. Had they seen the paper in his hand? Had they figured out that, technically speaking, it was a letter from the future, from a man who was going to die in less than twenty-four hours?
No, they were gasping because they’d just seen the huge ice floe floating toward them—the ice that, the last time around, Jonah had feared would sink the shallop.
Jonah slipped the paper onto the seat beside him, hoping no one could see it but Katherine. He remembered that the last time, this was the moment when he’d yelled out, JB! Get us out of here! Now!
Should he yell that again? Was that something that needed to be repeated, or something that needed to be changed?
He remembered that his yell had led to Henry Hudson being suspicious of him, and Staffe standing up for him, saying that he was actually praying.
Maybe Jonah should just pray to begin with, and not make Staffe have to lie?
“Please, God!” Jonah screamed. “Help us!”
It felt good to yell that.
“The Lord helps those who help themselves,” Staffe called over to him from the opposite side of the shallop.
At the same time Hudson cried out, “Raise our sails! Row toward starboard!”
Jonah remembered that the last time around Hudson’s cry had been followed very quickly by a hand slamming against the side of his head, and Hudson growling at him, I said, row!
This time Jonah decided to avoid getting hit.
He grabbed for an oar. John King, on the other side of the shallop, was barely a split second ahead of Jonah beginning to paddle. And Hudson and Staffe set up sails in the middle of the boat.
Katherine did not help Jonah row this time. She kept her head bent over the papers hidden on the seat beside Jonah.
The wind caught the sails, and the shallop lurched to the left, narrowly edging past the ice.
Jonah stopped rowing.
“I am an excellent captain!” Henry Hudson screamed out into the fog. “You had no right to banish me!”
Just as before, during the time that they’d spent avoiding the ice, the larger ship had disappeared. Once again Hudson’s screams echoed off nothing but ice. Jonah was certain that no one from the Discovery would be able to hear.
Jonah remembered that this was the moment the last time when Hudson had hit him for calling out to JB. Automatically he cringed down in his seat, ready to avoid a blow.
None came. Instead Hudson just looked at him, a puzzled squint traveling across his face.
“Was it all a trick? A lie? A prank?” he asked Jonah, speaking so softly that few others in the shallop would have been likely to hear him. “Were you toying with your father’s dearest hopes?”
Okay, that was new. What did he mean?
“I—I wouldn’t do that,” Jonah protested. “I support your dearest hopes. If they’re possible.”
Wouldn’t the real John Hudson have said something like that?
For a moment Jonah thought that Hudson really would hit him. Staffe edged closer, as if ready to protect him.
But Hudson fell back, still squinting.
“The map,” he murmured dazedly. “The map has to be real.”
“Um, sure,” Jonah said.
Katherine tugged on Jonah’s arm.
“Here’s what happened!” she hissed in his ear. “Wydowse said John Hudson disappeared last—well, I guess it would be last night. He left his dad a note and a map that was supposed to show the Northwest Passage, drawn by this earlier explorer who vanished, named John Cabot. John Hudson supposedly wrote that he was sailing on ahead with some natives in kayaks, and he’d meet his father in the Northwest Passage….”
No wonder Henry Hudson looked so betrayed and confused when I showed up as John Hudson in the middle of the mutiny, Jonah thought. No wonder Henry Hudson actually had hope before I appeared, even in the midst of the mutiny—he thought he’d just meet his son and a group of friendly natives a little ways ahead….
Jonah was trying to puzzle out how things had happened. The real John Hudson would have vanished when Gary and Hodge kidnapped him from time, to take him to be adopted in the future. The real boy wouldn’t have had time to leave a note, and wouldn’t have known anything about a map. So Second had undoubtedly slipped those onto the ship sometime in the night, to serve his own purposes.
And now he expected Jonah and Katherine to serve his purposes too.
Jonah realized that while Katherine was talking, he’d missed hearing the conversation between Hudson and Staffe and King.
“Huh?” Jonah asked.
“I said, your prayers for deliverance were answered,” Staffe replied.
“For now,” King said gloomily, staring off into the fog. “We still have no food, we’ve lost our ship. … Shall we sail toward shore, to set up camp at the winter cabin?”
That’s what he asked the last time, Jonah thought. We’re back to this whole conversation again. And next, Hudson will say …
“The winter cabin?” Hudson sneered. “Odd’s bones, man, we’re sailors, not rabbits. At least I am. Henry Hudson does not cower in a hole when there are treasure routes to be found, glory to be attained, continents to be conquered.”
Jonah’s hopes sank. It seemed as if everything important were inevitable; time could only repeat. How could he and Katherine make any changes to save anyone or anything—especially when neither JB nor Second had told them what to do?
Maybe we’ll just have to make multiple tries, Jonah thought. If we come back again and again to the same moment, maybe eventually we’ll figure out how to fix it.
The shallop lurched strangely, practically leaping out of the water. Jonah remembered that the only reason he could relive any of these moments in the shallop was because time was unraveling.
He and Katherine couldn’t count on getting multiple chances. He wasn’t even sure they had a chance now.
“We’ve got to do something!” Katherine hissed in his ear. “I don’t think we have much time left!”
Jonah turned and glared at his sister.
“Not helping,” he whispered back, without moving his lips.
Meanwhile Staffe was trying to persuade Hudson.
“But if we go to the cabin, we can lay in supplies for next winter,” Staffe said, taking up John King’s argument. “By next spring a rescue expedition is bound to come for us—”
“Henry Hudson will not be rescued!” Hudson thundered, smacking his hand down on the side of the shallop just as hard as he had the last time. “Henry Hudson will sail home in glory, with a shipload of treasures from the Orient!”
“You still believe in the Northwest Passage?” one of the sickly, dying sailors murmured. “Even now?”
Jonah realized that the sailor asking that question was Wydowse. Wydowse, who by the end of the day would write the letter Katherine was clutching in her hand, hidden behind Jonah.
Wydowse, who would soon be dead.
“You shall refer to it as the Hudson Passage, henceforth,” Hudson said haughtily. “Because I shall discover it.”
Last time Jonah had heard Hudson say that, he’d still been hoping for JB to rescue him. Jonah had whispered frantically into the Elucidator in his pocket.
Now he knew there was no use trying that.
Everything’s up to me and Katherine, Jonah thought. That’s one of the few things JB and Second still agree on.
The shallop rocked unsteadily, the regular rhythm of the waves turning jerky and unpredictable. Was it possible to actually feel time falling apart? Off in the distance Jonah could see a shadow in the fog—the ship coming back for them from the wrong direction, completely manipulated by Second.
If we get back on that ship, we’re locked into that fate, Jonah thought. Second will be in control all over again, posing as Prickett, leading us to the end of time. And—Jonah glanced over at Wydowse, who was already reaching into his cloak for his compass. And Second will murder Wydowse all over again.
It was odd to focus on the death of one s
ickly old man when they were faced with worldwide disaster, universal destruction. But the thought of everyone and everything dying was too big for Jonah. It paralyzed him. One man—Jonah could handle saving one man.
It was just like before, when Jonah could only focus on Andrea. Except, of course, that Andrea was beautiful, and Jonah was kind of in love with her.
Wydowse was hideous.
He’s going to die no matter what, Jonah thought. Just look at him.
Wydowse had hollows in his cheeks, bruises around his mouth, teeth that seemed barely anchored in his gums. But Jonah had just spent an entire day with similarly sickly-looking men who had still somehow managed to raise and lower the sails, scramble up rigging, steer an entire ship through a minefield of ice. Maybe Wydowse wasn’t actually as close to death as he looked.
Second kept changing the subject, every time we brought up Wydowse’s death, Jonah thought. It was like … like a magician trying to distract the audience: “Look! Look at this empty hat!” While the whole time he’s stuffing a handkerchief up his sleeve, keeping it out of sight until the next trick.
But in Second’s case what he was trying to distract them from was a dead body.
Jonah kept staring at Wydowse. Jonah didn’t know what JB had ever expected him and Katherine to do to save 1611. He didn’t know how they could save Andrea, Brendan, Antonio, and JB from 1600. He didn’t know how Second expected them to keep all of time from collapsing.
But he did know a way to keep Wydowse from being murdered. He just had to keep Wydowse and Second apart.
If you only knew how to fix one thing, wasn’t that at least a start?
“Maybe …” Jonah stopped and cleared his throat. “Maybe Staffe and King are right. Maybe we should go to the winter cabin.”
Belatedly Jonah remembered that he’d said pretty much the same thing the last time. But that had been only for selfish reasons then, not to help anyone else.