“We don’t know that,” said Alice. “The only way there can be Plague is if the pirates carried rats ashore when they landed.”
“And if they did?”
“We can outrun a few rats. We did it on Sumter, remember? Unless . . . you don’t think your mother is worth that risk.”
It was a cruel thing for Alice to do, calling Ananias’s bravery into question. But as Ananias turned his attention to Tessa, bringing the conversation to a close, I knew that he was going to do what she asked of him.
I took Tessa’s legs and we carried her downstairs. Behind us, Alice was explaining her plan to Tarn and Father. I wondered if they’d offer any resistance, or if Alice would pass it off as a joint decision with Ananias and me.
Ananias paused at the bottom of the stairs. “We can’t put Tessa with the others,” he said.
He was right about that. There wasn’t room, and besides, the sight of her might make them panic.
I tilted my head toward the nearest cabin, and we carried her inside.
Alice must have asked for the sails to be opened again, because the ship began moving. Light from the porthole swept across the cabin as the boat rose and fell with each wave. Tessa didn’t stir as we placed her on the hard wooden floor. She didn’t make a sound as Ananias left the room.
The Tessa I’d found hiding on Roanoke Island had been deceptively strong, like a strip of leather, toughened with age. But Plague had cracked and weakened her. She didn’t have long to live, I was certain of that.
I poured water onto a cloth and ran it over her lips. When she didn’t respond, I leaned back against the wall and shut my eyes.
I must have fallen asleep, because I woke to the sound of the cabin door opening. “It’s time,” said Ananias.
I rubbed my eyes. I felt achy and disoriented. Tessa was still beside me, but her eyes were open. She was gazing at the water canister.
I tipped the canister, and she drank. When I stopped, she tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come. I poured again, and she drank again, and even though I knew that she should go slowly at first, I let her have as much as she wanted. The moment I stopped, she rewarded me by tilting her head to the side and vomiting bile across the floor.
I wiped her mouth with the cloth. “You need to rest.”
She opened and closed her mouth, but all I could hear was wheezing.
“I’ll be back,” I told her. “We’re going to rescue Skya.”
I figured that hearing her daughter’s name might please her, but her eyes grew wide and her breathing quickened. She labored to speak, firing indistinct sounds that left spittle in the corners of her mouth. She resembled a caged animal, giving everything so that her words might break free.
“Thomas!” Ananias’s voice came from the top of the stairs.
I pulled to a stand. But as I stepped toward the door, Tessa grasped my right ankle. “Solution . . . Plague.”
Did she want Griffin to cure her? Probably, but there wasn’t time to explain that Griffin had so far only managed to cure himself. “I’ll be back soon,” I told her.
I pulled free of her grasp and reached the door before she spoke again. This time, her words were clearer. “Solution is death.”
She didn’t sound crazy or delusional anymore. She sounded like she needed me to know the truth, even if it was the last thing she ever said.
CHAPTER 17
See anything yet?” I asked Alice.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
We lay on our stomachs on the deck, hidden behind a crate, eyes fixed on the Roanoke Island shoreline. Ananias and my father were with us. Jerren too, which surprised me.
“Maybe the pirates haven’t seen us,” I said.
“If they’re alive, they’ll have seen us.”
The bridge column was only a hundred yards away. Tarn was crouched on the deck, one hand on the wheel to keep a steady course.
Alice craned her neck to get a view of the shore again. “It’s too quiet,” she murmured. “Far too quiet.”
I fought the urge to look for myself. If Alice couldn’t see anything, neither would I.
The bridge loomed over us. Halfway across its span was a large gap, a precaution to prevent rats from spreading from one island to another. Had rats really made it to Roanoke? Until recently, I’d have thought it was impossible. But finding Tessa had changed everything.
“Get ready,” said Alice.
The ship slid alongside the column, hiding us from the shoreline. On Alice’s signal we ran to portside. Standing in a line, Ananias, Alice, Jerren, Father, and I dove overboard.
The ship continued its progress, gliding from behind the column and out onto open water. From our position, it was impossible to see that anyone was sailing it.
“Come on,” said Alice. “Let’s head for the reeds.”
We swam in a line for two hundred yards, where the waters of the sound merged with marsh, and a reed-lined channel cut deep into Roanoke Island. Alice kept us hidden behind the reeds. Insects buzzed about us, persistent and irritating, but no one complained. Even our strokes were precise and quiet. Our best chance of success was to remain invisible and silent. At the slightest sound, the pirates might locate us, and we’d witness firsthand how they dealt with unwelcome arrivals.
We were well into the creek when I recognized it as the same one Alice and I had paddled along after spying on the pirates on Hatteras. We’d discovered a remarkable kayak near Bodie Lighthouse, and had hidden it in these very same reeds. It didn’t seem accidental when Alice crawled out of the water some distance from that spot. She even shot me a quick look, defying me to mention the kayak to the others. Even now, she liked to keep secrets.
We pushed through the reeds until they ended abruptly a few hundred yards south of Skeleton Town. When Alice raised her hand to stop us, we all followed her command, even Father.
“See anything?” Jerren whispered.
Alice narrowed her eyes. Something about whatever she was seeing frustrated her. Or maybe it was what she didn’t see that was the problem. She sighed as if she no longer trusted her own element.
“Seems clear,” she said finally. “Let’s keep to the south of Skeleton Town, though. Head west, then make a wide loop around the town.”
We resumed walking. Alice usually moved quickly and decisively, but not now. With every irregular footstep she swept the area with her eyes. Even the sound of our breathing seemed to irritate her.
Jerren stayed at the back of our group. He was preoccupied too, although with something altogether different than Alice, I figured. I wanted to ask how Nyla was doing, but I could guess the answer to that.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” I told him.
He stared straight ahead. “I have to. Remember how I met your mother on Sumter? Well, she told me that help was coming, and she was right. From what I hear, she also said that Griffin would be the solution to Plague. I have to believe she’s right about that as well.” He cleared his throat. “Trouble is, I don’t know how he’s the solution. Something tells me we need her to unlock the secret. Without it, there’s no solution, and my sister’s as good as dead.”
Just ahead of us, where tall reeds gave way to wild grass, Alice signaled for us to crouch down. We were drawing closer to the ruined stone buildings of Skeleton Town. To the northeast, the water tower tilted precariously. Below it, out of sight, was the hurricane shelter. I could still remember the night, a couple weeks ago, that the Guardians had sent us there. I could even picture Guardian Lora, our chaperone, scowling at me, wasting her dying breath to blame me for my weakness.
Well, I wasn’t so weak anymore.
“I don’t see anything,” said Ananias, growing restless.
Alice didn’t respond.
“I said—”
“Shh!” Alice hissed. “There’s a street ab
out three hundred yards away. Cuts east–west. If the pirates are on the lookout, that’s where they’ll see us.”
“And what are you going to do about it?”
“Find out if they’re on the lookout, of course.”
Anger flashed across my brother’s face. He wasn’t aware of Alice’s ability to bring sights and sounds closer, and must have thought that she was being sarcastic. Before the situation escalated, I scooted forward and tugged on his tunic. “Trust me,” I whispered, “it’s better to let Alice lead.”
I didn’t imagine that Ananias would accept that, but Father was nodding in agreement too, so he backed down. Perhaps he suspected that Alice had a talent the rest of us lacked. If so, he wasn’t letting on.
“Nothing,” said Alice finally. “Just silence.”
I swallowed hard. “You think they’re all dead, don’t you?”
“I don’t know. But something’s wrong. Humans aren’t the only things that make sound on Roanoke Island.”
Jerren shuffled forward and joined Alice. Hands raised, he turned in an arc, using his element to draw all sound toward her, giving her a better chance of hearing something . . . anything.
“Well?” he asked.
“Where are the birds?” she murmured, more to herself than to us.
She continued walking, quicker than before. She didn’t pause as we reached the street, and didn’t slow down as we headed northeast to approach Skeleton Town from the blind side.
We wound through trees as the backs of the buildings came gradually into view, including one I recognized from our time on Roanoke Island: the clinic. The door was slightly ajar, inviting us to enter.
“Did we leave it open when we were here?” Alice asked me.
“I don’t know. Even if we did, it’s possible the pirates have been in here too.”
“Hmm.” She stared at the sheer gray walls, as if she might use her element to see right through them. “Stay here. I’ll only be a moment.”
“No, Alice. Wait.”
Alice ignored me. Bent double, she padded through the grass toward the clinic.
The tall mast of the Sumter ship was just visible above the buildings. Tarn must have reefed the sails, because it wasn’t moving. Strange that the pirates still hadn’t approached the ship, or even fired a warning shot. Are they scared of us, I thought. Or are they all dead?
When she reached the clinic, Alice shimmied around the door and peered inside. I expected her to return to us then, but she slipped into the building instead.
I wasn’t the only one who was anxious. Beside me, Jerren picked at the bark of a young pine tree.
Alice emerged a moment later, thumb raised, signaling for us to follow.
Jerren ran. The rest of us followed his lead. There was a different sense of urgency than earlier. I’d thought we knew what we’d be facing on Roanoke—hostile pirates holding my mother prisoner—but none of it had come to pass. What if the pirates had deserted the island altogether? And if so, why?
We entered the clinic through the back. Light filtered in through small windows just below the ceiling and large cracked panes of glass at the front. The place felt eerily familiar from our time in Skeleton Town. I’d tried to consign those memories to another lifetime, but now they came flooding back: how I found the lantern that had revealed my element to me; how I had discovered Tessa hiding in the space above the ceiling. So many important things had happened here. How different my world would have been if I’d never set foot in the building.
“See anything familiar?” whispered Alice. She rested her hand on a large rectangular wooden box placed upon a table. “It’s the same one, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “The same.” I ran my fingers along the smooth edges, recalling the evening we’d evaded Dare on Roanoke Island. With a storm approaching, his men had come ashore, and brought the box with them. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that my mother had been trapped inside it. Not anymore, though—the lid was open, and the box was empty.
Here was proof that the pirates had been in Skeleton Town. But were they still here now?
Ananias tapped my arm. He pointed to our father, who wasn’t even looking at the box. Instead he stood beside a tattered chair, a faraway look on his face. “Are you all right, Father?” he asked.
Father looked up. “Yes. I just . . .” He ran his hand across the back of the chair. “This is where I was sitting the first time your mother used the word solution—this chair right here. Skya was pregnant with Griffin, and Tessa was checking that everything was progressing well.” He smiled. “She said it so casually, like a solution was no big deal. I think maybe that’s why I didn’t take her seriously at first. But looking back, I think she was afraid to say exactly what she thought Griffin would be. Afraid that I’d think she was crazy.”
Alice and Jerren continued to search the clinic for clues, but both stayed silent. They were listening in, learning about the past, just as we were.
“What really happened back then?” I asked.
Father sat down in the chair and ran his palms along the moth-eaten arms. “Your mother mentioned the solution a few times over the next couple months. Each time she’d watch me, like she was trying to grow the seed she’d planted weeks earlier. Trying to convince me that it was real. But I still didn’t believe her. Even though she was a seer, it seemed too improbable—this vague cure. But then she woke up one night and the vision wasn’t vague anymore. She couldn’t have been any more specific: Dare was going to return, she said. He was going to steal the solution away from her.”
“But Dare didn’t steal the solution,” said Ananias. “Mother stopped him from taking Griffin.”
Father gave a melancholy smile. “Yes. And no. Your mother had a plan, see? When, as she predicted, Dare arrived, she stayed well away. It must have been obvious to him that Skya knew what was going on—he knew she was a seer—so Dare spent the night planning to kidnap her. He was so blinded by that one task, it never occurred to him that she wasn’t the solution—that the solution was inside her.
“Your mother went into labor that night. To this day, I don’t know if it was a coincidence, or fate, or stress, but Griffin was tiny. No one was certain he’d survive. For that one night, we were all together—Skya, me, Griffin, and you two. It was our first and only night as a family.”
Father pulled to a stand. He placed a hand on the chair back and let it take his weight. He looked tired. Old.
“She was gone when I woke up. Dare and his men had rowed ashore at dawn and come looking for her. She went without a fight, content to know that Griffin—the real solution—was safe. Dare was too focused on capturing Skya to realize what had happened. It seems impossible to me now. Skya had just given birth. She was exhausted. But Dare saw only what he wished to see. That’s how he always was: chasing one prize after another. And this time, he had his prize.
“I went after her, of course. Dare wouldn’t let his trigger-happy men kill me, but when I began to use my element, someone panicked. I was shot three times. I managed to capsize their boat before I blacked out. The last thing I remember was seeing Skya floating facedown on the ocean. There was blood all around her. My blood.” He pinched the skin around his mouth, rekindling a little of the pain he’d felt that day. “The Guardians said Skya died that day, and I believed them. What could be more prophetic than that I’d been too weak to save her? I figured that was the reason she never warned me exactly what was going to happen: Because she knew I’d fail her. Turns out, she was right—I failed her the moment I gave up believing that she was still alive.”
He looked around the room then, as if he might find our mother standing nearby, wide-open smile assuring him that everything could be the way it had once been. He moved from place to place, looking for a sign. But apart from the wooden box, everything was exactly as we’d left it a couple weeks earlier: shattered glass cov
ering the floor beside the entrance, and a thick coating of dust on every surface.
As his anger grew, my father moved quicker. He knocked over chairs and stripped shelves from walls. Alice and Jerren fired anxious glances my way as the noise grew louder, but Father was possessed. Tears streamed down his face.
“Father,” I called out.
He took no notice.
“Father!”
He yanked open the doors of a large, floor-to-ceiling metal closet. For a brief moment he was mercifully still. Then he staggered back, hand pressed against his mouth. When he tripped and fell, he never once took his eyes away from the closet.
I ran over to him. So did the others. In the closet, hanging from a short piece of thick rope, was one of the pirates.
CHAPTER 18
What the hell is going on?” demanded Jerren. His hands were fists at his sides, but his voice cracked as he spoke.
The body was purple-red and bloated. Now that the doors had been opened, an overpowering stench filled the room.
Alice padded over to the window and scanned the street outside. “We need to get back to the ship,” she said. “Everything here is just . . . wrong.”
I pulled my tunic up so that it covered my mouth, and stepped forward until I was standing beside the body. I didn’t recognize the pirate, but he had the look of one of Dare’s men: malnourished and wiry; leathery, sunburned skin.
“He doesn’t look like he has Plague,” said Ananias.
My father drew alongside me. He lifted the dead man’s hands and inspected them, looking for signs of a struggle.
The man’s hands appeared no different than his arms: dirty, but not especially scratched or scarred. There was no blood or skin under the fingernails. No broken knuckles, as far as I could tell. “He died without a fight,” I said.
“Unless he killed himself.” Alice sounded frustrated—angry, even. She punched her thigh as if the thought offended her. As if this was somehow personal. “We need to go. We’ll talk back at the ship.”