Alice wasn’t on deck. She wasn’t poring over maps in the radio room. She wasn’t in any of the cabins, as far as I could tell. So I made my way to the galley. Faint voices came from inside—one male, one female.
I tried the door, but it was locked. “Alice?”
There were sounds of movement, but no answer.
“Alice?”
More scurrying around, and this time, a response: “Hold on.”
I shook the door, but it wouldn’t budge. A moment later, Alice opened it. “What?” she demanded.
So much for apologizing. As if to emphasize how much she didn’t appreciate the intrusion, Alice ran a finger across the burned side of her face and squinted her left eye, reminding me of what I’d done to her. Behind her, Jerren sliced fruit with mechanical regularity.
“I get it,” I said, looking from one to the other. “I’ll leave you two alone.”
“We’re preparing food for everyone.”
I snorted. “Sure you are. You’ve always been first to volunteer for meal preparation, Alice. Everyone knows that.”
She produced a thin-lipped smile. “Sarcasm. Nice. What are you going to hit me with next, Thom? You going burn me to death with my own element?”
I stepped back. Alice was expert at offending people, but she’d never turned on me. We’d had our differences, but she’d always respected me enough to be up-front about what they were. I still didn’t fully understand what was happening between us, but it was clear that she didn’t want me around. Why would she, now that she had Jerren? How perfect that they could lock the door and be alone. To talk. To touch.
How perfectly unfair.
I headed straight for Rose’s cabin. Except it wasn’t her cabin, of course. It was a place for her to have some company while she waited to die.
The first thing I noticed as I entered was that Marin was tending to Nyla. Rose and Dennis were both sleeping, but I’d figured that the Guardian would ignore everyone except her son. Instead, she was applying ointment to Nyla’s neck in a gentle circular pattern.
That’s when I saw the angry black lumps. The boils migrating across Nyla’s bare legs. And most horrifying of all, her ash-gray fingertips.
Marin raised a finger to her lips, warning me to hold my tongue. At first, it seemed like a ridiculous thing to do—Nyla must have been aware of her condition—but in the quiet and calm of that cabin, it actually made sense. Nyla was awake, but from the way she stared blankly at the ceiling, she obviously wasn’t fully conscious of everything that was happening. Wasn’t aware of the fact that her short life was already entering its final chapter.
Griffin kept vigil beside her. As much as she had deteriorated in just a few short strikes, he had recovered. The night before, his body had been a mess of blood-red wounds. Now the scabbed-over cuts were itching. He ran his hands along his arms, desperate to scratch, but knowing that he shouldn’t. Hard to believe he could be bothered by something as mundane as itching after everything he had been through. It was a sign of how near he was to a full recovery.
Marin leaned back and rolled her neck. She replaced the lid on the container of ointment.
“What’s it for?” I asked.
She placed the container beside her. “It has a numbing agent . . . reduces the pain. Doesn’t cure anything, though.” She glanced at Griffin—curing the Plague was the solution’s role. But how?
“You can take a break, if you want,” I said. “Alice is making food.”
She gave a curt nod, and stood. A moment after she left the room, Griffin rolled over and laid a hand softly on Nyla’s bruised and swollen arm. She moaned as if he was hurting her.
Griffin turned his face toward me. Help, he signed.
How?
Combine. He studied my reaction, and clearly didn’t like what he saw. Me. Solution.
How could I explain that everything I’d known about combining had just been turned upside down? Even if it hadn’t, even if I still believed that combining was something we could safely do, Griffin was too weak to be using his element to help someone else. He couldn’t even sit up to sign with me.
Unable to find words, I stared at Nyla instead.
Me. Solution, he signed again, stabbing his chest with his free hand. How?
I. Not. Know, I told him.
Must. Find. Out, he insisted. Please.
I hated denying him this after everything he had been through, but there was no way I was combining with him. Even without me, his touch made Nyla flinch. Who was to say we wouldn’t kill her instead of curing her? He must have been coming around to the same idea, because he pulled away from her. Seeing her pain had weakened his resolve as well.
“Thomas?” Rose’s voice pulled me around. She smiled a little as she saw me, and the smile was genuine.
“How are you doing?”
“Better than you, I think. I look at you and all I see is hurt.” She reached out and ran a finger along the fabric of my tunic. “It makes me sad.”
I watched the progress of her finger as it slid under my tunic and onto my skin. I felt the familiar rush, the simultaneous hope that she’d do more and the fear of what would happen if she did. She kept her finger still for a few moments. Her expression was neutral, but the perspiration on her forehead told the real story: It was hurting her to touch me.
I eased my arm away. “Please,” I whispered. “Don’t hurt yourself.”
“All right.” She touched the hem of my tunic instead.
Behind me, Griffin let out a groan. I didn’t look around, though. I wanted Rose to know that even if we weren’t touching, she still had my full attention.
“What’s Griffin doing?” she whispered. “I think . . . he’s hurt.”
As I turned to see what was happening, my heart sank. Blood dripped from Griffin’s wrist, and ran in rivulets along his forearm. The wound was fresh—it hadn’t been there just a moment before.
I ripped material from my tunic and wrapped it around his wrist. What. Happen? I asked.
He pulled away and kept his eyes fixed on Nyla. That’s when I realized that her left wrist was bleeding too. Worse, a knife lay between them. The edge was rimmed with their blood.
It wasn’t an accident. Griffin had made both cuts.
He hid his bloodied wrist. At. Sumter, he protested. Blood. Machine.
I remembered it perfectly: The large machine in the gunroom at Sumter—the plasmapheresis unit, Chief had called it—that would extract Griffin’s blood. Chief had believed that the antibodies in Griffin’s blood might provide immunity to everyone else, and prevent them from getting Plague. But that was just speculation. Did Griffin honestly believe that it would work, and that he could give Nyla his blood without the machine?
You. Crazy. The signs exploded from me. Maybe. You. Kill. Her.
Then. Combine, he fired right back. Combine. Combine. Combine.
It was only then that I understood the full meaning of what he was saying. He’d already tried to help her by himself, and hadn’t seen any difference in her. He was telling me that I was his last hope. Which meant that I was Nyla’s last hope too.
If. You. Do. Nothing, Griffin continued, calmer now. She. Die.
I placed one shaking hand over Nyla’s arm. My heartbeat was so fast I thought I might throw up. I imagined that I could see my element spreading out from each finger like a mist—opaque, insidious.
Nyla shifted position slightly and our bodies came into fleeting contact. Where she’d appeared almost unconscious before, now she gritted her teeth and yelped. It only lasted a moment, but it was a sign.
I left the cabin immediately. Not even Rose could keep me there any longer.
CHAPTER 14
It was a long night of short tempers. Alice seemed flustered and impatient. Marin never stopped tending to Nyla, Rose, and Dennis. Jerren couldn’t bring hims
elf to leave his sister’s side. Griffin was grieving too. It left us with only a skeleton crew on deck, so we kept our shift patterns brief. It was a good idea in theory, but I found it hard to go to sleep and even harder to wake.
My father and Ananias and I were in charge as the tepid light of sunrise broke through clouds to the east. Alice emerged a few moments later, carrying a breakfast of nuts and dried fruit. She didn’t look as if she’d slept at all. Dark circles hung from her eyes.
“You need to rest,” I told her.
“I can’t. There’s too much to do.” She placed the tray of food beside us and slid a map from underneath. She studied the barrier island that ran parallel to us, engaging her element, telescoping the land so that she could work out our exact location. Then she ran a finger across the map.
“We’ll probably reach the Oregon Inlet in one or two strikes,” she said, referring to the narrow channel that joined the Pamlico Sound to the ocean. Roanoke Island sat in the middle of the sound, just a few miles north of the inlet. We were getting close.
No one responded. Father and Ananias just stared into the distance, as if they too could see what lay ahead, and feared every part of it.
• • •
“We’ll have to wait for the tide to turn,” Tarn announced one strike later as we approached the Oregon Inlet. But what she really meant was that Marin and Rose weren’t around to use their water element to push us against the falling tide. Neither was Dennis, with his element of wind.
We sailed past the mouth of the inlet and turned the ship around in a slow circle so that we’d be in position to move as soon as the tide turned. There was a clear edge to the turbulent water. We drew in the sails, and lowered anchor just shy of it.
A half mile ahead of us, the inlet stretched forward invitingly. The whitecaps were no more than one foot high, but they were laced together, overlapping as the water fought to escape the sound. I hadn’t passed through the inlet very often, but the unpredictable currents were legendary.
“Is this where John White’s crew drowned all those centuries ago?” Alice asked, breaking the silence.
The question came out of nowhere. I hadn’t thought about John White’s expedition since we’d left Fort Sumter two days earlier. The Guardians had told us about White’s Roanoke Island settlement, but they hadn’t mentioned that his crew had drowned.
“What are you talking about?” demanded Ananias.
“It’s just a story I heard,” said Alice, eyes fixed on her mother. “About the Oregon Inlet, and seven drowned sailors. Except, I don’t think it’s a story at all.”
Tarn took a swig from a water canister and recapped it carefully. “A story you heard,” she repeated.
“Exactly.”
A personal war of words was playing out here, only I didn’t understand the meaning. And then it hit me: Alice hadn’t heard the story at all. She must have read it. And the only source for new stories about John White was the missing third journal.
I wanted to ask Alice right then if she had taken the journal from Rose’s cabin, but why bother when the answer was clear? The more important question was why she had done it, and why she’d hidden the truth from me.
Tarn held her daughter’s gaze for a few moments. Then, instead of answering Alice’s question about John White, she sloped over to the wheel and took it from Ananias.
Alice wasn’t going to let her out of the conversation so easily. “Tell us what happened to White’s expedition, Guardian Tarn.”
Although they were ten yards apart, my father stepped between them as if he were trying to avert a fight. “John White,” he murmured, playing for time.
“Yes, Ordyn. John White,” said Alice. “Let me refresh your memory. He led an expedition that established a settlement on Roanoke Island in 1587. The colony was in trouble, so he returned to England for extra resources. He got held up there for years. While he was gone, some of the colony’s children developed the ability to control the elements. The shock of it divided the colony. Most people left instead of coexisting with the children. When White finally returned, he sent a small crew to Roanoke Island to look for the colonists. But the men never made it through the Oregon Inlet.” She tilted her head. “Sound familiar?”
It sounded familiar, all right, and not just to my father. But nowhere in the Guardians’ account had there been any mention of drowned crewmen.
Father looked at Tarn, but she had her back to him. He cleared his throat. “White wanted to reconnect with the colony. But as he got nearer, the weather turned suddenly—strong winds and rain. He probably thought it was bad luck, but luck had nothing to do with it. It was the young elementals. They’d seen his ship approaching, and were warning him to stay away.
“He should’ve given up, or waited, but White was impatient. He’d waited years to get back. So he sent an exploratory crew through the Oregon Inlet. The elementals conjured ferocious currents and powerful gusts. When the crew still pressed onward, the elementals panicked. The children probably didn’t mean to hurt anyone, but they didn’t have complete control of their elements yet. It only took one wave to capsize the boat.” Father exhaled slowly. “Either the sailors couldn’t swim, or they weren’t strong enough to overcome the conditions. Seven men drowned.”
I stared at the inlet and pictured the scene. It wasn’t hard to imagine how it would have happened. “Why didn’t the children rescue them?” I asked. “Whoever had the element of water could’ve swum out.”
“Depends how close they were. No one knows where the children were at the time. Anyway, if they’d done that, the sailors would’ve discovered the truth: That the children wielded impossible power.”
“Who cares?”
“Everyone cares, Thomas.” This from Tarn. She spoke softly, measuring each word. “Ever since the beginning, ours has been a story of incompatible groups. Elementals and non-elementals don’t coexist equally. They never have, and never will.”
“It’s true,” agreed Father. “Even White recognized it. The next day he saw smoke rising above Roanoke, and tried to get there again. This time the elementals didn’t stop him. He found them, and discovered what they could do. He was so amazed that he sketched the children. Even made notes about them. Maybe he didn’t realize they were responsible for the drowned crewmen, but he knew what would happen if anyone else saw the children: They’d be burned to death as witches. That’s why he lied to everyone . . . told them he hadn’t found a soul on Roanoke Island.”
Tarn turned to Alice, one arm loosely draped across the wheel. “So now you know. Unless . . . there’s more.” She made it sound like a question.
Alice smiled, but didn’t answer. “We should ready the sails,” she said. “Looks to me like the tide is slowing. It’ll turn soon.”
She was right about that, so whatever battle of wills was playing out was momentarily put on hold. All the same, I stole a glance at Alice as I joined Ananias in turning the sail winches. Nothing she’d heard seemed to have surprised her at all. She’d known the story already, and she hadn’t shared it with me. I could have forgiven her for that. But the only way she could have known the story was if she had taken the journal. Which meant that she was responsible for preventing Griffin from reading it. That was too much.
The ship kicked as the sails filled. Waves crashed against the prow. Tarn gripped the wheel tightly with both hands, struggling to hold a course against the constantly shifting currents.
We passed the southern tip of Hatteras Island—nothing but sandy beaches and dunes tufted with windswept grass. It was a wild, desolate place, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was returning home. If only we could know what we’d find there.
A bridge had once spanned the mile-wide inlet. Now all that remained of it was a series of columns that loomed large a couple hundred yards ahead of us. It wasn’t until we drew closer that I recalled the words that Alice had seen
painted on one of the columns as we’d left the inlet more than a week before: Croatoan, and murder. Croatoan was a reference to the elementals’ abandoned colony. I figured that murder was a reference to the drowned men from John White’s exploratory crew.
Seeing the columns reminded me of the other thing I’d spotted on the day that we’d left: an abandoned settlement on the south side of the inlet. I tried to spy it again now, but couldn’t. So I climbed the ladder that ran against the mast.
“What are you doing, Thomas?” my father shouted.
“There’s an old settlement to the south,” I said. “Tarn told us about it . . . about how you used to trade with them years ago.” That wasn’t all that Tarn had said. She’d explained that rats had brought Plague to the settlement, and that the people had opted to stay together, even though it was a death sentence. Hard to believe that they’d surrender so easily when survival was as simple as crossing the sound and joining us in our colony on Hatteras Island.
“You shouldn’t be up there,” my father protested. “These currents are unpredictable.”
Not as unpredictable as they were on the day that White’s men drowned, I thought. Unless . . .
An image formed in my mind then: the abandoned settlement’s inhabitants crossing the sound in an attempt to escape the rats. Only something was holding them back—the very same thing that had held back John White’s exploratory crew centuries earlier.
“That bridge column didn’t exist when John White’s men passed through the sound, did it?” Alice asked no one in particular.
Neither of the Guardians seemed eager to answer her. “No,” said my father finally. “The bridge was built centuries later.”
“So the words were written later too.”
“What words,” my father chided. “There’s only one word.”
“There are two,” I called down. “The word murder is written on the blind side of the column. I saw it when we were leaving. But then, you already know that, don’t you?”
Father and Tarn exchanged glances.